Tag: greed

lol Alpharetta white people

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SMH: racists sue city of Alpharetta because they can’t display the Confederate battle flag at a Veterans Day parade, get shot down in court; however, due to the attention, the city opts to cancel the parade outright

My reaction to reading this story was the following line, said in the mocking southern white supremacist impression I’ve found myself doing an awful lot more than I used to since 2016: 

if I cain’t be racist at the parade, I don’t want there to be a parade at all.

That’s kind of the takeaway of this whole story.  Supposedly, the parade still happened, whether or not it was sanctioned by the city in the first place, I don’t have the care to dig and find out, but supposedly the Sons of Confederate Veterans did not participate or fly any Confederate battle flags during it.

Either way, Alpharetta is a super white suburb north of Atlanta, and I’m actually more surprised that the courts ruled in favor of outlawing the Confederate battle flag, given their demographics.  But Alpharetta is also pretty flush with new money which tends to lean towards the left, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned throughout history, money speaks louder than racism and political correctness, and by product of it, sometimes the right calls are occasionally made.

The new era of college sports

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A while back, I used to have the attitude that agreed with the notion that college athletes shouldn’t be getting paid to apply their talents under the banners of their respective schools, and that the education that they receive, should they actually choose to accept them, was compensation more than adequate in the tradeoff.

Things change though, and for every Cardale Jones that flaunts his hired gun status that gives no shits about a college education, are still countless other student athletes who are stalwarts at the college level, but the harsh reality is that they have very little to no actual future in professional ranks.  It’s those guys that that have helped change my tune when it comes to compensation for student athletes, because college is most likely going to be the pinnacle of their athletic careers, and it would be great if they could cash in on a modicum of it before their window of opportunity to earn, is shut.

So the news of the NCAA now allowing student athletes to start making money on their likenesses, endorsements and social media accounts is definitely a positive step in the right direction at a knee-jerk reaction, but at the same time, there’s a lot of gray area and things that could potentially go in an unsavory direction, that spurred this train of thought post.

Like I said, my knee-jerk reaction is one of positivity, and general happiness for all student-athletes who will now start to be able to make some money off of their sweat, efforts and contributions.  They won’t be explicitly being paid by their schools, which is still something that I agree should not be allowed, but it’ll be nice to know that an innocuous autograph session or them showing up to a local car dealership or restaurant to make an appearance can get them some punishment-free cash, just because they play some sport for their school.

The one thing I like the most from this is that I think it will help curb the culture of one-and-dones, in mostly basketball and football.  Fringe prospects that aren’t Zion Williamson or Trevor Lawrence-good might actually stick around for another year or two, and now have options to choose from whether or not it’s worth becoming a benchwarmer in the pros versus remaining a god on campus and cleaning up on endorsements and other profitable endeavors.

College-good athletes will be more likely to stick around four years, and not only will their teams benefit from having physically and mentally matured juniors and seniors on their squads, the ones that actually take life seriously might actually get educations and graduate legitimately, instead of a parade of paper African-American studies majors trying to survive illiterately in the world after college.

The benefit to this is that fringe contenders’ windows of contention might remain open a little bit longer, because key members of contending teams might stick around longer if they’re capable of earning while in college, instead of bolting for any Euroleague hoops or XFL or CFL if they can’t make it to the bigs directly. 

And it goes both ways when it comes to the power schools in the nation, because obviously schools with preexisting relationships with major companies will still get the lion’s share of top prospects, but if programs start to get a little crowded with upperclassmen staying in school, it’s going to funnel prospects or force incumbents into the transfer portal to go to other schools, which may or may not raise the amount of parity throughout college athletics.

But like I said, it’s not a perfect solution, and for all the good that’s possible, there’s still a lot of room for negative things to be or remain the case; like the aforementioned obvious aspect that the major schools with preexisting relationships with companies like Nike, UnderArmour and other relationships are still going to get the best prospects, due to their now-available opportunities for endorsements, so it will still probably feel like the rich will remain getting richer, while all the other schools will feel like they’re fighting over scraps.

And foolishly counterpointing one of my positives, programs like Duke will be tailor-made to probably do well under this new era of college sports, because as much as everyone loathes Duke, Duke is great at producing college talent.  Sure, a lot of it has to do with Coach K’s brainwashing, and he is allegedly on his way out, but the fact of the matter is that Duke rosters historically have been loaded with well-built teams that dominate the college level, and keeping these rosters mostly together for 3-4 years at a time might result in some return to prominence by the Dukes and other programs that operate in similar manners.

Finally, let us not overlook one of the more annoying outcomes of this development: the era of self-promotion and rise of obnoxious social media presences of student athletes now who are going to embark on missions to promote themselves, develop personas, brands and identities to try to monetize and make bank while they’re in college now.  If I had as much time to fart around on the internet and sports websites as I once did, I can only imagine how obnoxious things have the potential to be as college athletes across the nation will be getting up in our virtual faces trying to become famous so they can make money.

Either way, it’s ultimately a step in the right direction, with both positives and negatives up in the air, and the fact that it’s so new and unrefined, it’ll take all of two seconds for college athletes and the inevitable wave of agents that will prey on them, to find all sorts of loopholes and gray area for things to get muddy really fast.

But man, how much must it suck to be the graduating seniors of 2020/21’s NCAA athletes?  Sure Najee Harris probably was cleaning up on all sorts of under-the-table non-monetary compensation while winning a national championship for Alabama, but how salty do you think he’s going to be knowing that all the freshmen coming in are going to be able to make money without needing to hide and be as secretive as he once was?

The world will one day drown in cardboard

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Every other Sunday, I spend an inordinate amount of time outside with a box cutter, slashing up cardboard boxes as if I were plotting to hijack an airplane.  This is an activity that I have grown quite exhausted with, and every other Sunday, I curse my waste management company for being greedy pricks who have handcuffed my general area with a monopoly of the waste disposal everywhere.

Seriously, they’ve literally purchased all of their competitors, and regardless of the fact that there are waste bins with three different companies, it turns out that they’re all owned by the monopoly and it’s just more cost efficient to let all the other-brand bins remain as-is.  I know, because I’ve reached out to these other companies to seek an alternative waste provider, only to be told this.

The monopoly has grown complacent and lazy with their service, and used coronavirus as an excuse to curb their recycling pickup to every other week, citing safety for their workers or some other bullshit, but really it’s probably to reduce overhead and maximize profits, especially considering the reduction in service seemed to coincide with an increase of cost.

As it is, every two weeks, my household has the capability to generate an absurd amount of cardboard that needs to be recycled, because we do pretty much all of our shopping online, and we’re purchasing a ton of shit because we’ve got a second kid on the way.  Needless to say, without any sort of actual physical effort involved, the amount of cardboard we typically amass is usually impossible to be securely placed inside of the pedestrian 96-gallon waste bin provided by our waste management company.

So every two weeks, when I’m in the driveway cutting boxes down to more compactable chunks, all I can think is that the world is destined to drown in cardboard, because of all the online shopping that is done these days.  And as convenient as Amazon is, they’re the ones probably leading the forefront of this inevitable destiny, and I can’t imagine that no matter the claims of recycled materials or environmentally-friendly initiatives, I’m dubious that the recycling of all this cardboard can keep up with the demand for shipping boxes, and that the world is really headed for a future where we’ll drown in all this brown corrugated shit.

Given the endless escalation of Amazon Prime, and online shopping, I would wager that I am the only household that generates ridiculous amounts of cardboard on a regular basis, and it’s simply a game of basic math; all the households that generate tons of cardboard every single week, versus the time and resources it takes to break down, sort and actually recycle all this shit, and we’re all on borrowed time.

Unless someone invents a way to turn all this cardboard into masses of land to plop into the water like the landfills in Sim City, I do think that if coronavirus doesn’t kill us, overpopulation doesn’t kill us, climate change doesn’t kill us, then drowning in cardboard probably stands a chance to land on the endless list of things that will one day overrun the earth.

Here we go again

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Up until this week, I had no idea what the Colonial Pipeline was.  But when I heard that it had something to do with the supply of fuel to the southeastern region of the United States, my first thought was, hmm, maybe I should go fill up my tank.

Seeing as how I still have the luxury to be able to be working from home, I decided to dip out for a spell, at a time in which people might still be working, and head to a gas station, since I was sitting on just a quarter of a tank left, and I didn’t want to be in a position to if another fuelmageddon were to begin, I’d be left with my dick out with no way to get more gas for my car.

The first gas station I got to, every pump was full, but it wasn’t pandemonium yet.  I did one circle, and was able to get to a pump, but it turned out that the display screen was busted, in a constant state of reset mode, and I wasn’t able to actually use it to start a transaction.  I punted on it, as there was already someone waiting behind me, and I was technically on the clock at work, and I figured I should get back sooner rather than later.

I went to another gas station, which was deserted, and I was able to fill up without any issue.  I felt relief knowing that if shit did hit the fan, I would be okay, because since I work from home, I barely drive much as it is, and I typically have been filling up like, once a month, and I’d hope that if any fuelmageddon were to start, I could probably weather the storm; sure mythical wife who has to drive daily wouldn’t be so lucky and her problem would become my problem because that’s what good spouses do, but at least that would be one less car to worry about.

Later in the day, when I went out to go grab dinner, I realized that the shit did hit the fan.  The first gas station I passed had all their prices pulled, the sure-fire tell that they were out of gas.  The giant QT gas station that I occasionally go to because they’re the cheap gas was all out of gas too.  And across the street was a line onto the main road, for the diminutive 4-pump Shell station that wasn’t probably long with the size of their facility.  The picture above is a RaceTrac gas station that I had the leisurely position to take a photo of at a red light.

But here we are again, another fuelmageddon plaguing the Atlanta area.  I remember the last one in 2008 like it were yesterday, seeing all this mayhem over gas, and I really hoped that it wouldn’t get to those levels, because that shit was really scary back then.  Prices climbed to $4+ a gallon, and any stations if they even had gas at all, put a $40 max transaction, which for most vehicles with a fuel tank over 10 gallons, wasn’t ever enough to fill up.

Naturally, a lot of this bullshit stems from the fact that Americans are greedy motherfuckers who always feel the need to hoard and amass for themselves, with zero compassion for their fellow human beings.  Even at the first station I went to, I saw one guy filling up gas canisters, as if he were preparing for the zombie apocalypse, and if stations were running dry, that means other people were doing similarly all over the place.

Of course, it goes without saying that with chaos comes people who try to profit, and there’s been no shortage of reports all over of people trying to re-sell fuel at egregious markups, which is nothing short of disgusting.

However the best part about this whole post is that as long as it took for me to write it is about how long the offline status of the Colonial Pipeline lasted, and at the time I’m writing this, it’s already been reported to be up again, and hopefully that means that fuel production will resume again to normalcy pretty soon.

But my biggest hope is that every asshole who hoarded and amassed gasoline over the last 48 hours, is stuck with canisters of gas in their garages and homes, that nobody needs, and they have to eat the cost of having stockpiled, while it deteriorates and stinks up their properties with noxious fumes.

People never fucking learn that their greed seldom results in anything good.

Oh Miami (Marlins)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For as hip of a city Miami thinks they are, when the day is over, the pursuit of money tends to run roughshod over everything else, like the naming rights to a fancy, high-tech baseball stadium.  And I’m not entirely sure why, perhaps I just sometimes feel that no other team is capable of making boring, square-like business decisions other than the Braves, but I guess it should be of no surprise that the long-awaited naming rights to Marlins Park have finally been sold, and moving forward, will be loanDepot park, the home of the Miami Marlins.

And because identity is everything, it will be in that precise format, with lowercase L and lowercase P, with an uppercase D in the middle, which is appropriate, because the stiffs that chase the dollars that ultimately go to them are typically dicks to begin with.

Maybe it’s because Derek Jeter is among the ownership group of the Marlins, that I thought that perhaps even they would break from the timeless tradition of chasing dollars, and actually name the park that isn’t something as soulless and boring as loanDepot park, but as stated above, when the day is over, money rules the world, apparently even for a guy like Derek Jeter, who often played every game like it was his last.

Because there’s little reason to believe that whatever hundreds of millions of dollars loanDepot pay the Marlins to be a giant billboard, will actually invested into the team itself, and the baseball organization will continue doing what the Marlins have historically always done, which is rely heavily on their scouting department and development to continuously find diamonds in the rough at an impressive clip to keep the team remotely passable while ownership swims in pools of money like Scrooge McDuck.

Honestly, this is no surprise, but it’s always a little bit sad to me whenever any ballpark or venue sells out to some regional no-name corporate entity that makes them sound lame as shit.  The Braves have a bank and two different regional HVAC companies that own the naming rights to various facilities of theirs, and all across the country, whether they’re sporting venues or event spaces, they’re all just named after boring companies as if the impact of their advertising is anything but residual name recognition.

Long gone will we see another Fenway Park or Veteran Stadium, or venues with names that roll off the tongue, or at least are capable of having interesting nicknames, that help mitigate the lameness of corporate greed.

And after four years, in spite of Yeah Jeets’ acquisition of the Marlins, the culture of the team hasn’t really changed as much as I thought it would, and as a closeted supporter of the team, it is sad to see them just kind of falling into the status quo of obscure lower-middle class teams.

It’s hard to even describe the cringe of Randy Orton apparel

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Perusing through my news feeds, I came across this story that detailed how WWE wrestler Randy Orton has apparently released a clothing line, known as SLTHR; presumably as in “slither” because his in-ring persona is that of a snake-like aggressor who cannot be trusted and strikes quickly. 

After looking at his announcement image for five seconds, and the painfully low-effort design of Old English typeface, and the horrible utilization of the no-vowel spelling of words as if we’re trying to go back to Aramaic, and my face literally did the Steve Carell from The Office face meme.

Holy shit man, it’s hard to really put into words just how terrible the idea of Randy Orton clothing is.  It’s awful because in all the years Orton has been on screen in non-gear attire, it’s always douchey bro clothing, and it basically validates the blurred line between character and person that Orton’s personal clothing line is basically the same kind of crap.  It’s awkward because as much as Orton loves to pick fun at wrestlers with indy pasts or those who he feels has not made a respectful amount of money in their careers, a guy schilling out his own apparel seems a little desperate to be making more money himself.

And it’s just plain bad, the way it looks, how it’s branded, and how it’s “announced,” over social media.  If the one shirt is any indication of what any other products are going to look like (I can’t under good consciousness make any conceited effort to check out the rest), I wouldn’t be too optimistic.  I’ve never actually see anyone wear a WWE-licensed Orton shirt in public before, not even ironically, so I have a hard time believing anyone would be willing to actually spend real money and purchase much less wear Orton’s SLTHR crap either.

Another funny thing to me is that this is barely a week removed from where Vince McMahon himself put the company on blast, to tell all wrestlers to stop using their WWE gimmicks and likenesses to try and profit on shit like Cameo, Twitch or any other third-party creative outlets.  Orton is notoriously infamous for being coddled and protected by the WWE, and numerous wrestlers past and present have all insinuated all the rules he’s been allowed to bend and outright break, on account of his privilege, and this is turning into a glaringly prime example of just such.  Sure, “Randy Orton” is actually Randy Orton’s name, and there’s nothing against the rules of him using it to sell his own shit, but the optics of this combined with the eggshells all his other peers are walking on certainly doesn’t help the overall picture.

Overall, just everything about this is cringeworthy and turrible.  For a guy that is currently being billed as the greatest wrestler of all time, it reeks of desperation, and much like Orton himself, seems so very flat, boring and completely lacking in creativity.  But hey, if there are any wrestling fans out there that get put into the friend zone of anyone they’re unrequited crushing on, at least now they have an official shirt that can wear to really drive home the reality of the situation.

Make Em Say Ughhhh . . . on the crapper

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I grimace face’d: has been rapper Master P releases line of instant food with the intention of replacing Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, aptly called “Uncle P’s”

Lately, I’ve been in one of my writer’s ruts.  My janky ring finger that makes it occasionally difficult to type, combined with the fact that now that my brog is back up, I haven’t really found a good rhythm to write, and I’ve kind of lost touch with all the sites I used to hit up to seek out inspiration.  And then there’s that thing called “the baby” which commands the vast majority of all my days, and I sometimes struggle to find things to want to write about, or find the time to carve out in which to do some writing.

It’s times like these, when stories like Uncle P’s Louisiana Seasoned instant food line, kind of help trigger my brain into spurting out words again, and see if I can break some of the rust that’s forming on my writing chops before they go too dormant.

Honestly, my first thought when I read the headline and then saw the hero image was, is this for fucking real??

I haven’t heard Master P’s name since like, 2000 when he showed up on WCW to do a rap vs. country music storyline that ironically ended up with the heel country faction helmed by the late great Curt Hennig inadvertently getting super over, when it was obviously clear that the rap faction was the intended stars.

He also released this shitty song that somehow was always in the top-5 music videos on MTV that I used to watch the countdown after school because I literally didn’t know what else to watch and MTV seemed like it might be cool.  Coincidentally, the lyrics are what I would imagine the average Uncle P’s customer would be doing, while on the crapper after eating too much of Uncle P’s hackneyed instant food products.

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