Tag: rage

KOREA VERSUS EVERYBODY

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

BBC: South Korea wrongly introduced as North Korea at the Paris Summer Olympics

If anyone has ever been curious to why I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the treatment of Koreans, this is a perfect example of why.  The bottom line is that my general opinion is that Korea; Korean culture, Korean contributions to the world, and Korean things in general; gets no respect from the rest of the fucking world.

Everything Japan does is admired and revered by the rest of the planet, and all UN countries are so scared of China’s population numbers and economic potential, that they all kowtow to them, as if they were the grasshoppers from A Bug’s Life, after the ants had uprisen against them.

Meanwhile, Korea has historically been an exemplary ally to the UN, the United States and many other countries.  They haven’t enslaved or bombed anyone, they’re not always lurking in the shadows installing sleepers all around the globe to spy and disrupt.  Korean economy is stable, prosperous, and other than the fact that everyone is black haired and narrow eyed, Korean society really is a lot like American culture.

Yet, people can’t even put down Asian people without disregarding Koreans, like when racists mock Asian people, asking them if they’re Chinese or Japanese.  Saying any other country much less Korea usually results in the person asking having to grind gears in their brains to process the existence of any other Asian race, but the fact that Korea is lumped into that denigrating B-tier of Asian countries fills me up with piss and vinegar.

Just in general, Korea is overlooked and not shown the respect that I think that the entire fucking culture is worthy of.  It doesn’t matter how many global industries Koreans dominate, how competent and good at athletics or competitive events they become, because we’re not Chinese or Japanese, the rest of the world tends to gloss over us, and it leaves me feeling disgusted with the entire world whenever shit like this occurs.

I mean seriously, the fucking Olympics?  The announcers had one goddamn job to do, which was to just name countries, and they can’t even get the Koreas correct?  You know they have rehearsals and practices for putting on monumentally things like this, and yet on global television, they still manage to bungle it the fuck up and mistake the Koreas.

The thing is in America, there have been numerous announcers, news anchors and commentators who have been shitcanned getting caught on a hot mic saying things that were either flagrantly racist or perceived to be racist, primarily to black people.  I would, seriously and as objective as I could try to be, put this up there with that kind of mistake, and if I were the superiors to the both English and French announcers, consider dismissal for both of these ignorant fucks for one, not knowing their world geography for the fucking Olympics, and two, being a colossal embarrassment to the entire International Olympic Committee.

But seeing as the only party being denigrated by their mistake was “just” Koreans, I don’t really see much retribution occurring.  Twitter apologies are not sufficient, and on behalf of Koreans worldwide, I do not accept it.  It’s insulting and embarrassing, and Koreans deserve better than this.

I hope this slight lights a fire under the asses of the 159 Korean Olympians, North and South, and they squeeze out a few extra medal wins here and there out of vindictive spite alone.  Not that it would really matter or be noticed, since the only countries that ever really get any spotlight at every Olympics is the US, China, Japan, Russia and whatever host country.

But whatever, fuck it.  It’s just another day at the office for Korea versus Everybody.

Can I get a do-over on my birthday?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So far, I’m having a birthday that has been leaving a lot to desire, and I’m trying my best to stay positive because I don’t want to get down on my birthday no matter how much I try to tell myself to treat it like any other day, but it’s feeling like one of those days where I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed and I should’ve taken the day off from work.

Because it’s naïve of me to have thought that being a WFH day, things would be easier on the workfront and that being my birthday, I would be a little more resistant to bullshit flung in my general direction.

Honestly, it didn’t start off poorly, my kids wished me a happy birthday before they went off to school, and I got some early work accomplished.  I felt like a million bucks when I was able to go to the DMV and successfully renew two cars’ registrations in four minutes because people that typically go to the DMV are afraid of technology and the self-serve kiosk was completely available, easy to use, and I was in and out in a manner that made post a bunch of eggplant emojis to various friends/groups.

I had a good run on the treadmill, and I’ve already come to the conclusion that my home treadmill and the ones at work are two completely different species of treadmills, because a 6.3 speed at home is completely tolerable, but trying anything 6.0 or higher at the treadmills at the office, and I might as well be trying to race Usain Bolt.

And that was really the last positive thing to happen, because, and I blame myself for this one, I really shouldn’t have tried to accomplish selling something on Facebook Marketplace on my birthday, because the failure rate of a sale is astronomically high, but I’ve been desperate to unload this item for months now, and I got a general commitment from this one shithead.

Naturally, he ghosted, so at this point since I had it loaded into the car, I was determined to not return home with it because I just wanted it fucking gone, so I took it to a Goodwill drop, where they claimed it was basically a piece of furniture, and wouldn’t take it, so now I’m pissed, but at this point there’s nothing else I can do about it, so I go get some lunch, so I can try to redeem some free birthday shit.

Or so I thought, despite the fact that I had an offer for some free loaded fries, the restaurant is saying I can’t redeem it because they’re already half off for a FRYday promotion, and that I should save it.  I tell them that I’d rather pay $0 than 50%, and I don’t come here often to where I probably won’t be able to save it until it’s expired, and at this point I’m annoyed that they’re challenging me at all, that I just turn around and walk, and so I end up paying for my own lunch somewhere else nearby, very agitated.

So as I’m driving to my next free shit, I remember that there’s a pawn shop, and despite the racket those places typically are, at this point, I’d take $0-10 for this piece of shit in my car.  Surely, they’d take a piece of fitness equipment right??

Wrong.  Maybe if I had some jewelry, or a gun, or perhaps some spare Air Jordans laying around, I might be able to have done business, but who would’ve thunk that lowly pawn shops have become so insufferably curating, to where they wouldn’t take my crap, even for free?

Which brings me to now, where I’m at Starbucks, amazingly the one place that made it free and easy to get something, where I decided to bring my laptop to where I could check my work email, cruise for the remainder of the workday, and perhaps do some casual writing.

I get my free drink and sit down, and lo and behold, Outlook is blowing up with many emails about new tickets, and shocker of the century, all of the tickets have less than a week turnaround.  I stare at my screen with a  face, and ping my boss that I should’ve taken the day off, and instead of doing the mountain of work that materialized out of nowhere, I opened up Word and started vomiting this colossal failure of a brog post out, because so far, this has been a real forgettable birthday that it’s taking a tremendous amount of patience to not go scorched earth on.

I want to hope that my birthday will get better, but with the exception of myself, my entire household is sick and combating various illnesses, so it doesn’t seem likely that anything but taking it easy at home is going to be on the agenda for the remainder of the day, but honestly, compared to the afternoon that I’ve had so far, that doesn’t really sound bad.

Does nobody move for ‘excuse me’ anymore?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

During my last family trip, I observed a noticeable amount of instances where saying ‘excuse me’ to people, resulted in absolutely no response at all.  And it’s not like I’m taking any off-path routes to get from point A to B to C, I’m talking about very general, public and heavy-traffic walkways or paths, where people clog up traffic, I want to get around them, and they have the space to move elsewhere, but for whatever selfish reason, they exist in the way.

I say excuse me, in a normal, neutral tone, and in some instances, people glanced over at me, and in other either people pretended like they couldn’t hear me, or proceeded to completely no-sell the fuck out of me.  It’s at this point, I say excuse me in a louder, more insistent tone and this usually does the trick to get them to acknowledge my existence, and when I usually just proceed to move at them, will they actually move.

It’s not like I was walking by myself in most cases, and could just as alternatively take longer, wider routes to avoid being close to people in the first place.  In most of these cases, I’m wheeling a stroller, luggage, or, in a rush carrying a toddler that needs to go to the bathroom, but for whatever reason it is, it just felt like a conspicuously high number of instances where it just seems like people have dropped common courtesy of moving the fuck out of the way when people say excuse me.

And when I have to repeat myself, louder and more hostile sounding, all these cocksuckers look at me like I’m the asshole for trying to get somewhere, where they’re the conceited selfish shitheads blocking walkways and thinking their inane conversations or needs are higher priority than others.

It’s not lost on me that this is sounding like an old man yelling at the sky kind of rant, but what’s really wrong with hoping that people have common decency to continue honoring the simple and basic human interaction of moving out of the way when someone says excuse me?  It’s not like I’m barreling through with the intention of initiating contact and shoving people out of the way, I’m simply alerting people that I need to get around them, and to pardon any potential contact and give them a heads up to move if they can.  Fuck me, right??

Dear world: it’s not you, it’s me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After all, I am Korean.  And no culture has higher expectations from other people as Koreans do, and I ponder the day if and when anyone can prove to me that anyone can work harder than a Korean can, because as far as my personal experiences are concerned, I’m hard pressed to ever have bared witness to such.

Mythical wife and I got into a little tiff coming back from the airport, because she was tired of everything coming out of my mouth being a complaint, and I was tired of being criticized for speaking negatively in a scenario where everything was going annoyingly when I feel that everything else I do is usually for the sake of others because I’m always trying to please everyone.  Atlanta Hartsfield Latoya-Jackson Ching Chong Chang really is capable of bringing the worst out of everyone at the drop of a hat, even those who are on their way out of it.

We landed right at midnight, and having sat at the very back of the aircraft, we’re the last to deplane, which is never a pleasant experience sitting in a giant metal tube with stagnant air for an extra 20 minutes than most other people.  Naturally, we’re at the very end of the terminal, so it’s a quarter mile to get to the escalators only to find out that the Pain Train shuttle is on reduced service and only one side of the tracks are operating, so we start walking, only for there to be assholes who clog up the moving walkway with wheelchairs they’re using as push carts or people just too fucking stupid and/or oblivious and not moving out the way for those actually walking.

We get on the next pain train, and of course, it stops because the tracks are clogged, right before we need to get off, adding even more time to our arrival, to which I am being cognizant about because as it’s past midnight, a new day is ticking, and I don’t want to get charged even more for parking than I have to at this point, so getting out as soon as possible is the objective.

Arriving at the main terminal, it turns out that basically the entire north wing is cordoned off, so we have to do a really cumbersome detour around south and then back to north, and of course the parking payment machines are all gone, presumably so that people can no longer pre-pay for their parking and increase the chances of time lapsing further while you get to your car, and drive through the maze-like exits of the on-site parking.

By the time we’re off the premises, mythical wife and I are already not speaking, because she’s tired of my complaining, and I’m over not being allowed to be upset at the fact that Atlanta Hartsfield Latoya-Jackson is run by brain dead invalids who love to parrot that they’re the busiest airport in the world, leaving out the fact that such business is wholly a result of the fact that they’re run by a bunch of brain dead invalids.

I don’t apologize for having higher expectations of the world around me, and I understand that the only one set up for failure for having such a mindset is myself, because the rest of the non-Korean world is way more accepting of substandard performance out of fucking everyone than I am.  And like a self-fulfilling prophecy, I am failing, because I fall victim to getting annoyed by fucking everything, because nobody in the world is capable of performing a job at a satisfactory level, seemingly anywhere I go.

I know the easy solution to a large percentage of the angst I experience on a daily basis would probably go away if I simply lowered my expectations on the world around me and were better capable of accepting the fact that the world is way less competent than I hope they could be, but it’s difficult for me.  I’m Korean, and culturally, Korean people expect a lot out of other people, and it’s never not disappointing when our expectations are not met.  This is a facet of my personality that in spite of my American upbringing that remains very much Korean, and it sucks because it means I’m an easy mark for disappointment, negativity and pessimism.

I don’t mean to be so negative and pessimistic and nihilistic about the world around me, but sometimes I really can’t help it.  I expect basic competence from everyone around me, and when everyone around me mostly, inevitably falls short, it’s a disappointment.  But I’m not going to apologize for voicing my opinions; I may try to be more cognizant that not everyone is going to want to hear them, but I don’t apologize if they come out.  If the world around me were more competent at their jobs and fostered efficiency and smooth operating, I wouldn’t have room for complaint, and in fact be grateful and praising of good work, because few things please me more than benefiting from efficient operating.

But as the subject of this post says, I know it’s not the world’s fault that I’m always so cranky and critical.  It’s entirely on me, because I have too many expectations from everyone, that I’m only setting myself up for let down and disappointment when they all inevitably fail to meet such par but lofty standards.  I’m working on it as much as a person like me can possibly work on it.

My kitchen counter is like Animal Crossing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the pet peeves that I’ve developed is that it annoys the ever-living piss out of me whenever my kitchen counter becomes overrun with crap that really has no place being on a kitchen counter.  Purses, junk mail, kids toys, handbags, regular mail, kids toys, clutches, old mail that never gets opened, and kids toys come to mind as the most common things that end up on my own kitchen counter, and it always gets on my nerves when things are placed there “for now” and for now turns into until I lose my cool and passive aggressively relocate things myself.

The thing is, either nobody notices or nobody cares how much this annoys me, neither of which is good.  But it’s not like I don’t have reason to be bothered by it so much, because the fact of the matter is that I do the majority of the cooking, especially for the kids, and when I’m making things, I just want to have some space on the counter to do my thing, without having to worry about toys, junk mail or a bunch of purses getting in my way.  Fewer things are more irritating than setting everything I need out, and then having no room for the cutting board or a bowl, or a place to just set an immediate need down.

But no matter how many times I clean the counter, relocate everyone’s shit and getting the surface nice and clear again, it’s only a matter of time before it just gets all overrun again.  Somewhere in time, it became as human nature to throw all your shit on the counter when you walk in the door as going to the bathroom first thing in the morning, because it usually only takes 1-2 days of people coming in from outside for the counter to get covered up with everyone else’s shit again, and then I get annoyed again, and this cycle repeats itself over and over again.

I came to the realization of the perfect analogy for the kitchen counter, which is that it’s just like playing Animal Crossing, and the endless chore of plucking weeds throughout your little islands.  It requires endless maintenance, and every day you let go by without tending to it, the worse it gets, and because my life is already packed to the brim with bullshit tasks and chores, sometimes I don’t always get to assessing and cleaning the counter every night.

And when the counter does get overrun, I just feel dejected, disappointed and annoyed, and after there are 10+ weeds all over the place, I just wish that that ghost from Animal Crossing would show up and clear everything from the counter for me magically.

But even that would be just a temporary fix, because in only a matter of days, the mess would just respawn, and I’ll be having a bad day as it is, and then I’ll try to make the girls a meal only to have all this shit all over the place and I’ll just get pissed all over again.

The thing is, I know this frustration is not limited to just me.  And I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to hear just how many people share this frustration, but again, somewhere in history, it became a reflex for people to throw all their shit over the kitchen counters.  It’s gotten to a point where I’ll judge television shows now, that the most unrealistic thing about portraying a modern household is if the kitchen counter is clean, because I’m just not convinced that Americans are capable of living without countertops overrun by a whole bunch of unnecessary shit that doesn’t need to belong there.

I would just love one day where I don’t feel like I have to hard carry, everything

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I am really fucking miserable right now, and this is another post where I don’t really feel like I can unload my baggage onto anyone, so I just put it all into writing the best I can and throw it up on the internet onto a brog where I have zero readers and hope that my words are heard.

But as the subject of this post says, I would just love to have a single day in my life where I don’t feel like the weight of absolutely every responsibility was on my shoulders.  I’m exhausted with life right now and I don’t particularly see anything getting better any time soon, and it’s becoming harder and harder to keep up the façade some days that I’m anything at all beyond an overworked dad and basically nothing else of any redeemable contributions.

I’m sure it’s of no surprise that a lot of this stemmed from the recent homeownership woes that my house has been going through.  I say my house, but the reality is that it’s what I’m going through, because when it comes to any of the home maintenance stuff, that pretty much falls solely on me to do.

I’m grateful to my neighbors almost to the point of tears for their generosity in time and effort in helping me get the whole fallen tree thing resolved, but as expected, the bigger issue was the plumbing matter, where I had a leak infiltrating the lower level from the bathroom above.  After all, moisture is the bane of homeownership, and I just knew that this was going to be a more aggravating matter than the fallen tree.

To summarize, plumbers came out to assess the situation, and I was fully bracing for a $1,000 expense, because nowadays, my old belief that most every small matter pertaining to cars, medical, home repairs, or any sort of labor, usually comes to $500, but due to inflation and just ‘Murica, I’ve upped it to $1,000.  Anything under $1,000 would be decided to be a win.

The showerhead was spraying back, which was determined the culprit of the leak, and a new shower head was affixed.  $467.  I was pretty pleased to have made it under $1,000 and I had hoped that the matter was solved. 

But this post wouldn’t be here if that were the case, and that evening sure as shit, the leaking was still present.  I got in touch with the plumbers, whom were total pros, polite, and I genuinely like them, but seeing as how all this shit was happening behind walls, the next solution would be to convert my 30+ year old three-valve shower hardware to a single pipe system, because the dated hardware was probably what was leaking.  Suddenly, I’m up to $1,700, and add in the showerhead and I’m looking at not just $1,000, but $2,000+ to solve this conundrum.

Whatever fine, I just need this shit fixed.  But since I’m poor as fuck and mostly living paycheck to paycheck these days, I have no real idea on how I’m going to cover this, but I know I need to get this resolved sooner rather than later, because the last thing I want is my home to deteriorate from a leak, because I really do take serious that moisture is the antichrist when it comes to homeownership.

Continue reading “I would just love one day where I don’t feel like I have to hard carry, everything” →

Dad Brog (#105): when the Karens become real

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s no secret that many of us of a certain demographic love good Karen stories. Stories of uppity white women making outlandish entitled demands, asking to speak with managers, getting off on generally being pains in the ass to millennials, minorities, and society in general. 

We love when the internet feeds us stories of them, exposing their bullshit, low-key doxxing them and revealing them left and right, but I have to say it’s not nearly as entertaining when the Karens start targeting you, or attacking your personal world, proving themselves to be real-life insufferable c-words, and not just demons from stories on the internet.

On my daughter’s birthday, we went out to eat; a rare occurrence considering my two toddlers, but the grownups outnumbered the runts, so we braved the excursion.  My group was sequestered in a wing of the restaurant that it became quickly apparent that this was where all larger groups, parties with kids, diners needing special accommodation, and ironically, black people (this is a pretty white area), were all stashed away.

The booth seat in which I was sitting at with my daughter, had small openings in the wall behind, that can peek into the booth behind us, if she stood up.  And being a curious now-three year old, of course she stood up and took a peek at the neighboring booth.  Despite my quick admonishing her to not do such, the woman in the adjacent booth wasn’t slow to hide her displeasure at being seated near some young children.

I get it, I’ve been them before too. When I was in my teens and twenties and had no consideration of the challenges of being parents dining out with toddlers.  And she probably was too 40 years prior, the old fucking Karen hag who started making remarks about “it was so empty here” and clearly voicing her displeasure at being near my kids.

I took #1 to the bathroom and when we came back, I noticed that they were gone.  They had moved somewhere else in the restaurant, because they didn’t want to be near my kids.

Here’s the thing, had they stuck it out 10-15 minutes, I wouldn’t have blamed them one bit for wanting to move.  My girls did get noisy for some bursts, and #1 did poke her head over the partition again.  If they moved after those little annoyances, I wouldn’t have taken it as a slight.

But the fact that they did, in advance of any troubling behavior, irked the shit out of me.  It’s like they banked and hoped that my kids would do some mischief to justify their self-important moving so they could continue to have their trite white people conversations about probably how colored folks are ruining their town or some shit.

I felt insulted and unfortunately triggered by it, and it was a stinky moment in what was supposed to be an entirely great dinner with family for my daughter’s birthday. 

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#105): when the Karens become real” →