Tag: bataria

Getting penalized for being competent

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Well that’s bullshit: program funded by $110 million federal dollars will provide up to $50,000 of relief to homeowners stuck in underwater mortgages; under specific conditions, none of which demonstrate the ability to be financially responsible much less competent at all

There’s no sugar-coating it, my home’s been underwater for the better part of, since I’ve lived in it.  The house was purchased in 2004, the value of the home rose a little bit for each of the first three years, and then the housing bubble popped, and the values of homes sunk faster than Yahoo stock.  My life was in a way different place back in the day, but I remember getting the first letter that stated that my home no longer had any equity that could be borrowed from, and as far as I know, that hasn’t recovered, even to this very day.

Needless to say, I’ve become very attuned to the concept of underwater mortgages throughout the years, and I should feel fortunate that my household has been in the minority of most underwater homeowners, and that we’ve always been able to pay the bills every month, and have been able to maintain good standing with all home expenditures throughout the years.  We’re actually getting to the point where the mortgage is practically whittled down to where we might be able to even hit a break-even point, with the underwater estimates.

At this point, a push is a win, and Jen and I can brush ourselves off from this failed gamble and figure out the next steps in our lives.

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Season’s Greetings!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite my tepid enthusiasm for Black Friday shopping season, I still did a little bit of shopping.  Such is somewhat of a tradition in my household, and nothing says the holidays have arrived than spending a bunch of money on things that we don’t actually need, but still cave into the general consensus that it’s shopping time, when Thanksgiving rolls around.

So for the better part of the last few days, it’s been that Christmas-y feeling of checking the myriad of emails that have shipping tracking codes, and checking statuses, to see just what we can expect to arrive, unbox, and be excited to receive, because getting packages in the mail is almost always a fun thing.

A while back, a package was stolen from our front stoop; although never confirmed definitively, the fact that there was a delivery confirmation, but then no package, led to Jen and I determining that it had to have been stolen, given the fact that there are several hours of many of the work days in which someone might not be able to open the front door, combined with the fact that USPS, UPS and FedEx are all incapable of using common sense, and leave packages in plain sight in front of our front door, instead of the slightest of pivoting and placing them behind the shrubs.

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Atlanta doesn’t give a shit about its south end

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This morning, on my way to work I watched numerous police cars with lights blazing and sirens blaring speed past me, while I sat at an intersection.  They peeled into this shopping center that’s not terribly far from my home; but while only one of the cars went into the center itself, two of the cruisers literally drove into the grassy area and my girlfriend observed cops running upon exiting their vehicles.

As I resumed driving, wondering just what the heck was going on at this location not far from my home, several more police cruisers came flying down the road, headed to the scene of the incident.  My last count was seven cop cars in total that were seen heading there, and I couldn’t help but think that such necessity for police presence would had to have been something along the lines of armed robbery, hostages, or any other scenario that could only be construed as “very dangerous.”

Given the fact that such an incident was happening close to my place of residence, it goes without saying that I’m interested in knowing what it could possibly be.  When I got to work, I immediately started visiting all of the websites of the local media, hoping to get some answers.  WSB, FOX Atlanta, 11 Alive (NBC), CBS46 and even the oft-criticized Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Surely, one of them should have some sort of coverage of an incident that necessitated a large quantity of police presence.

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I LIVE IN A DESERT

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus:

Food deserts are defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as low-income communities located more than one mile from a reliable source of fresh produce and other healthy whole foods.

That’s a new term to me.  “Food desert.”  lol.

Naturally, we’re inclined to hear the word “desert” and naturally visualize harsh terrains of flat land, high heat, sand everywhere, and the sun beating down unmercifully.  Contextually, it makes sense what a food desert should be, but it’s still amusing to me that my particular area would likely be considered one.

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‘Tis the season, I guess

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was driving around one day, and I stumbled upon this black Santa Claus statue.  I know there’s a defiant, black power kind of mentality that leads to creations like this, but typically, racial chips on the shoulder aside, Santa Claus has always typically been portrayed as a whitey.

I mean, lookit – Santa Claus, Jesus Christ, the Easter Bunny: all whiteys.  Black people worship the same Jesus as all the other cultures and religions that worship Jesus, but they don’t see fit to alter his image.  Why does Santa Claus get denegrated in the style of Blacula in this instance?

I don’t really get it, but whatever, it’s not my house.  ‘Tis the season to spread racial agenda.  Seeing as how I hadn’t seen this in any prior years, I wonder if some of the country folk living outside of the region will be offended by this statue.  I wonder if it will actually make it out of December intact?

I had a disturbing dream the other night

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Nobody was sure how it was revealed, but outside of the building we were all residing in, the rest of the world had more or less fell into anarchy.  Our building had limited resources, but there were a lot of people so certainly, there was the manpower to make things work as long as everyone did their part. Communication with the rest of the world no longer seemed possible, so we were all sort of off the grid.

There was another building not far from where the building this dream was taking place in, and I suggested with the people I was with, that perhaps we should send some people over there, and forage for supplies and gather anything that we could use in our new residence for an indeterminate amount of time.  Many agreed with me, and we made tentative plans to make the trek over to the other building.

Before executing the plan to travel, someone brought to my attention that what if the other building were not completely empty as I had initially hypothesized it was?  What if there were other people in that building, in the exact same predicament as we were in?  I hadn’t considered such possibilities.  The trip to the other building never happened.

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BHM query: Why the insistence on walking in the middle of the street?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Oh no, I haven’t forgotten about Black History Month.  I’ve just had several other things occupying my time and writing fulfillments recently, and to be honest, I haven’t been agitated recently to where I’d want to verbally retaliate.  Until yesterday.  It’s bad enough that yesterday was my last day at my previous assignment, that I had to turn down work because it was going to cockblock my chances to get in with a company I really want to get with, but on my way home from work, there were about three emergency vehicles that necessitated pulling off to the side of the road and yield to them.  Each time I courteously moved aside for an ambulance or fire truck, I would have to wait a little bit longer than necessary to get back on track, because each time, there were at least four vehicles, driven by you-know-whats, that were essentially tailgating emergency vehicles, thus preventing me from getting back onto the road without waiting for their aggressive, me-first driving behavior to pass first.

So, now that I’m all agitated and shit again, I have to ask:

Why do black people always have to walk in the middle of the street?

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