Tag: ohgeorgia

I’ve never been more unafraid of an armed individual in my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, we sent the kids to grandma’s house so that we could get some major organization done at home.  Frankly even with the help of our au pair, there would’ve been a lot of going in and out of the girls’ rooms well into the evenings that made it optimal to just have them not be present in order to maximize productivity.  That being said, it also afforded all of us in the house, to be adults for two days, and on the second evening, we collectively decided to get out of the house.

At one point, we went into a 2nd and Charles to kill a little bit of time; at one point in my life, this place would’ve been my heaven, since I like comic books, video games, books and all sorts of the nerdy crap that they sell and buy there, but at this point in my life, I just want to look and don’t want to actually bring any more shit into my house that I feel is already full of a lot of unneeded crap.

While we were there though, I was looking through comic trade hardcovers, and not far to my left, I could hear some guy doing some serious mansplaining about the differences between the Infinity War in comics versus the MCU.  A smirk emerged on my face at hearing him blather on, because he was perpetuating all sorts of stereotypes of comic book geeks inside the bookstore.

As I passed by him, I couldn’t help but notice that beneath his vest that I have to imagine was put on completely non-ironically, was a holster equipped with what I’m pretty sure was a Glock of minimal size, I’m no expert on the granular details, especially when I could only see the handle.  The point is, the guy was carrying openly, which is completely legal in the state of Georgia.

But as the title of this post states, I don’t think I’ve ever been more unafraid of an armed individual in my life until I saw this guy.  Think about it, the guy is carrying a firearm, presumably loaded, completely in public, at a place of business that probably had upwards of 80-100 people inside of it at the time I saw him.  We live in the age where mass shootings happen at almost a weekly basis in similar conditions, and not only did I feel zero concern for my life, all I could feel were jokes formulating in my brain instead.

Like, this guy got dressed with the express intention of leaving the house, and going to 2nd and Charles of all the places in the Metro Atlanta area, and as he’s mentally inventorying all the things he needs prior to walking out the door, and oh yeah my gun is one of the things on his checklist.

“Honey, we have to get to 2nd and Charles before they close at 8, have you seen my gun?”
“Yeah baby, it’s right next to my Loungefly”

On action television and in film, there are occasionally montages of heroes getting ready to go into battle, and they’re equipping themselves with a gun before they go into the fights of their lives.  And then we have Firearm Fred over here consciously strapping on his holster to go into the nerd store, as if he might have to flex it on someone trying to get the last pack of Yu-Gi-Oh booster packs ahead of him.

Seriously, I was giggling to myself for the rest of the night at the thought of Sidepiece Samuel actually feeling like he had to be carrying a firearm inside of a fucking 2nd and Charles.  I’ve never felt so opposite of concerned or intimidated by another human being’s presence in my entire life.  I felt like even if he were a mass shooter ready to pounce, I could probably take him without there being any loss of life; I know it’s not really a laughing matter, but that’s how seriously felt looking at this guy.

Regardless, my au pair got a kick out of seeing such a sight with her own eyes.  And after we took her to a Hooters for dinner, I told her that she basically had the most American night of her life, having seen an armed individual out in public, followed by the aforementioned Hooters for dinner.  Welcome to America!

What an incredible way to New Years

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve made it pretty clear that I am no fan of Ohio State, especially when it comes to football.  I won’t call them “The” unless it’s in irony and with the intention to mock and ridicule, and few things make me happier during any given college season is seeing them get lose, be it to Michigan, Oklahoma, or better when it’s against some unheralded school.

However, regardless of my bias against them as a program, there’s no denying that they are talented and are always a threat to win a National Championship.  And the way that the media has been overwhelmingly favoring Georgia over them for the CFB semi-final Peach Bowl, I couldn’t help but have this sinking feeling that it was all tempting fate a little too hard, and it was a ripe scenario where Georgia was going to get their shit pushed in and choke hardcore to a program that should frankly never be overlooked.

I didn’t watch the game at all, but I was casually following the gamecast, because it’s not so much that I’m any bit of a UGA fan as much as I like that they represent my home, as much as I was just hoping to see Ohio State lose.  And as much as I didn’t like seeing it, I wasn’t really at all that surprised to see just how tightly TOSU was playing them, and when they went into half with TOSU up by a hair, I spoke with my one friend who actually liked sports at our chill New Years Eve gathering, about how I just had a bad feeling about this game.

When TOSU was up by two scores in the 4th quarter, I had the split feeling of being disappointed that Georgia was on the verge of choking against another team notorious for choking in TOSU, and how they were no longer buoyed by the baby luck that brought them, the Braves and Virginia Tech successes over her first year of existence, which is why they were crashing back to normalcy.  But at the same time, a degree of satisfaction at being right at the prediction that TOSU would pull the upset, because this is exactly what happened in 2014 when TOSU was so overlooked in favor of Alabama, before they steamrolled them en route to winning the first-ever CFB natty, but when it came down to it, I still would’ve preferred to see Georgia win, because seeing TOSU is always a treat.

But then fates intervened again, and TOSU just had to pull another TOSU and threaten to choke themselves, in a battle of notorious chokers.  Georgia would threaten, but it looked like TOSU got the stop, and forced Georgia to settle for the seemingly fruitless field goal that didn’t change their need for two TDs, but at least put them into a position where the second one would be a game winner and not a game tie-er.

Next thing you know, Georgia gets a stop, scores, and then gets another stop, and suddenly in crunch time, Georgia’s in a position to take the lead, which they do, with less than a minute to go.  In a battle of two programs notorious for choking, it was a war of who was going to fuck up last and go home as a result, and it was looking like it was going to be TOSU. 

But as many football fans know, 0:54 seconds might as well be 54:00 minutes, and before you know it, TOSU has gotten down the field, passed the arbitrary television field goal range marker, and they’re suddenly in a position to possibly win the game with a field goal.

All the while, the clock is ticking down towards midnight, where my friends are all watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years Eve, as tourists in Times Square who have been likely standing there since 5 am, with pee jugs all hidden from cameras, are pretending like they’re having the greatest day of their lives, while the most exciting college football game in recent history is happening 15 miles away in Downtown Atlanta where not any one of us wants to be remotely close to.

The countdown to midnight starts taking up the screen, and I’m watching on my phone as Gamecast seems to be frozen forever, presumably where TOSU is setting up for the game winner while Georgia is presumably burning their last timeouts in an attempt to ice the kicker, and as we get to the last ten seconds of 2022, the snap and the kick are happening, and by the time the kick sails wider than I-285, and the refs are signaling NO GOOD, it’s suddenly 2023.

Seriously, it’s bonkers to me just how perfectly timed everything occurred, where Georgia completes a legendary comeback and survives the upset, at the very same time when the ball drops in Times Square, and the Peach drops less than a mile outside of Mercedes Benz Arena, and there are probably 100,000 people going apeshit gonzo in the 30303 zip code with thousands more around the Georgia, Ohio and sports bars across the nation, all while the new year changes, with millions more celebrating that.

I could only imaging the insanity that was occurring in Downtown Atlanta after the new year had lapsed.  Jubilation over survival and being on the winning side of an epic bowl game, all capped off with the celebration and jovial happiness of many others for bringing in the new year in memorable fashion.  With the cherry on top being THE Ohio State getting jobbed in a humiliating manner.  As much as casuals will throw the kicker under the bus, frankly he should never have been in a position where he was relied upon to deliver the win.  Watching the highlights of the game after the fact, TOSU’s defense got absolutely shredded in those last two drives, and they’re the motherfuckers who lost the game, not the kicker.

Whatever though.  TOSU loses, Georgia gets to defend their championship and go for two, and the New Year was brought in with good company and a chill and relaxed evening.  Seems like a fun start to me.

If life were wrestling, Stacey Abrams turns heel now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I never wanted to be a person whose gave much concern over politics, but maybe it’s a symptom of getting older, or the world is just getting so progressively fucked up that people like me are organically becoming more aware of them, but I’ve found myself caring enough to the point where when the political season starts heating up, I feel the need to ignore everything, because I care, and I’m treating the whole thing like how I treat sports game that I’m vested in.

That being said, I can’t say that I’m the least bit surprised at the results of Georgia’s political battleground, namely the two key races that most people have been paying attention to.  Despite all of the available facts out there, Georgia unsurprisingly embarrassed themselves on a national stage, by having a legally brain-dead Hershel Walker garner so much voter support, that his deadlocked race against Raphael Warnock is now headed to a dreadful run-off race next month.

To my recollection, Democrats haven’t won a single run-off since I’ve lived here or paid any attention to, so instead of losing in November, Warnock seems destined to lose a bigger and more scrutinized race in December, because from what I can observe, the Democratic party can’t seem to put together a single winning strategy against the formulaic low-fruit smashing tactics of the GOP.

But the main point of this post is about Stacey Abrams, who lost for the second time to Yosemite Sam for governorship of Georgia.  I can’t say that I’m at all surprised by this outcome, but I was hoping that Sam’s bickering with the orange guy in 2020 would have done enough damage to him to where it might have shifted some voters to not vote for him, but when it really comes down to it, and the exit polls kind of confer, Stacey Abrams being both black and a female just makes it way too hard to overcome both racist and sexist reflexes of the Georgia voters that actually decided to vote.

According to census numbers, Georgia has about 7 million people who are of voting eligibility, but only about 4 million people actually voted.  Obviously, this isn’t to say that both Abrams and Warnock’s chances of victory would have been improved by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s still frustrating to learn that nearly 3 million people just didn’t vote at all.  If I’m a Hershel Walker supporter, I’m just as frustrated by this, seeing as how the margin of voters between Warnock is what’s sending this to a run-off in the first place.

Either way, to no surprise, Abrams is taking her loss with dignity and class, as was the case the first time around.  She vows to continue to fight for Georgians, and is saying all of the right things that those in the political career should be saying.  But honestly, if I’m Stacey Abrams, and life were actually professional wrestling, at this point I’m fucking sick of Georgians, tired of trying to win Georgia, and I’m turning heel on the state and vowing to move onto bigger and better things.

3 million motherfuckers not voting at all?  What’s the point of Fair Fight when there are a bunch of people who just don’t want to fight at all?  Twice now, Georgians have left Stacey down by not turning up to the polls, and she’s basically had to eat a shit sandwich twice over now.

Abrams is no stranger outside of Georgia too, as she was one of the names that was on the short list of potential Vice President candidates.  Who’s to say that after jobbing twice to Dutch Mantell that she just stops giving a fuck about Georgia and doesn’t move on to bigger and better opportunities in Washington? 

Frankly, I think it would tickle me delirious if Stacey Abrams were to go have a press conference on WSB to announce what she’s going to do next, and unleashing a scathing promo on the state of Georgia, that she’s sick and tired of trying to prop this sexist and racist backwater state up to civilized standards, and that she’s peaceing the fuck out of here, before dropping the mic.

As she gets down from the podium, a bunch of white rednecks in UGA sweatshirts are seen throwing Bud Light bottles and toilet paper rolls onto the stage, like a 1998 episode of WCW Monday Nitro.

At this point, I can’t say I’d blame her.

Someone pinch me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No freaking way: Wawa convenience stores to begin opening stores in Georgia starting by 2024

Man, if anyone were to tell me that in the mid-2020s, Georgia would have Buc-ee’s, Tim Hortons and Wawas, I’d tell them that they were out of their minds.  Buc-ee’s is Texas’s thing, Tim Hortons is all of Canada’s thing, and Wawas were like this VA/MD/PA and central FL thing, and there was absolutely no reason to believe that any one of those companies would have any business coming to fucking Georgia, in the southeastern United States of ‘Murica.

And yet, here we stand where by 2024, the humble state of Georgia, run by Yosemite Sam, and on the cusp of having a braindead former football player be an actual senator of the state, will be home to some of the most dominant brands in convenient road food in the western hemisphere.

Like seriously, is there anywhere else more fortunate than Georgia is going to be once Wawa gets here, when it comes to being a place to be able to get beaver nuggets, iced capps and gobbler hoagies?  Florida has Buc-ee’s and Wawa.  Pretty sure Tim Hortons left PA, which means all they have are Wawa.  But for Georgia to be privy to all three of these cult-status brands?  Pretty incredible.

It’s like every time I get slammed in traffic, and I curse the state and ask why I live here?  I’ll have to hope I live somewhat reasonably distanced to all three of these businesses to where I’ll have my immediate answer to why I still live here.  Hopefully closer than Buc-ee’s is, and it’ll be a jump ball if both Wawa and Timmy’s are nearby.  When the day is over, the iced capps will probably be my most frequent purchase, but I’ll be damned if Wawa doesn’t become an immediate routine meal option if there’s one within remote convenient distance.

Oh, Georgia #354

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

/stevecarrellwinceface.gif – Cobb County elementary school unveils new logos, immediately likened to Nazi symbolism, results predictable

Seeing as how mythical wife is an educator, I’ve become more familiar and cognizant of many schools in the Metro Atlanta area by osmosis, and I actually know of this particular school in question.  East Side Elementary is right off of GA-120 which is a pretty major thoroughfare, and I pass by it regularly, despite not knowing what the name of said school was until I read about where it was located.

But man, talk about a major, major, major fuck-up from this rebranding.  Whatever designer(s) they utilized to come up with this inflammatory design really needs to be scrutinized from a character standpoint, because either they’re some deep-repressed bigots, bigots that think they can pull the wool over the public, trolls who thought it would be a real gas to sneak in Nazi symbolism, or a little bit of all of the above.  However, seeing as how it was still government work, it can probably be safely assumed that the degree of creativity wasn’t particularly high.

When mythical wife showed me these logos, I immediately recognized the red flag, because when I was a wee lad, I played a lot of Wolfenstein on my 486, because it was about the only game it could handle, and Nazi eagles were all over the place.  Imagine my mortified and amused surprise to see something so close to Nazi symbolism, being used to represent an elementary school.

The best part about the trio of logos that they moved forward with, the only element that remained consistent between them all, was the Nazi eagle in the middle of it.  Complete with a monogram that replaces one of the S’s in SS with an E, to suddenly stand for East Side.  Like they were very insistent that of all the elements to be concrete, it had to be the Nazi eagle.  Font, shape, dynamic, all flexible, but nah dog, we GOT to keep that Nazi eagle intact.

To add insult to this embarrassingly ironic design faux pas is the fact that East Side elementary is literally next door to a synagogue.  Like very literally; not down the street literally, or catty corner literally; the school parking lot, if you go straight out of it, you will run right into a synagogue literally. 

Furthermore, this is about one of the whitest parts of East Cobb there is, and that’s saying something considering just how white East Cobb already is.  The neighborhood has “country club” in the name and is flanked by a golf course, and I’ve driven through and picked up cheap/free shit that rich white people were peddling on Facebook marketplace, so I’ve seen first-hand how elevated white it is compared to the rest of the town.

None of it helps feed the narrative of a lily-white community being so dense and ignorant as to not notice their neighborhood elementary school adopting Nazi imagery to be a part of their logo.  In the end, I don’t think the school or community is really that Nazi, so much as the person(s) who developed these logos, probably have some explaining to do.  But what’s done is done, and the internet never forgets, so it’ll be etched in stone that there was a school in Cobb County that was almost branded with Nazi eagles.  hashtagGeorgia hashtag’Murica

Feebly attempting to play catch up

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a minute since I last took some time to write.  Long past the period of time where I begin to get anxious because I haven’t written anything in a while, and to a point where I start to get dangerously apathetic about doing it at all.  The problem, as I’ve alluded to numerous times is that I’m a peculiar personality that really likes to have so many conditions met before I find it possibly adequate time to write, and pretty much all month, they just haven’t been met.

Most obviously, the time factor.  It’s not like this is going to devolve into an angsty dad brog where I make all sorts of poorly veiled remarks about how hard parenting under my circumstances are, because frankly the girls haven’t really been much of an issue other than the fact that one or both of them seem to pick up some rando sickness every single month this year.  But they’re eating well, sleeping is improving, and those are the key things at this stage of life, and I can’t say that I’m having so many ragey emotions at how overworked I am on account of the difficulty of parenting.

No, it’s just that I haven’t have any adequate time to do any writing.  I get up, feed the girls breakfast, go to work; if I’m at the office, I actually get a good amount of shit done, and I get to hit the gym on most of those days which elevates my feeling of well-being.  Or if I’m working from home, my days kind of wrap up sooner, and regardless of which, I go right into the fires of the chaos of a toddler and infant until it’s dinner time, bath time and then bed time for them.

But by the time they’re down it’s usually 8 pm-ish, and if mythical wife and I haven’t eaten yet, then it’s a mad dash to get something to eat because we’re probably starving and we don’t want to cook and every food option is close to closing since we’re out in the burbs.

Then comes the nightly reset which somehow I’m the only person who does any of it, which takes about another hour or so of cleaning, straightening, cleaning and filling bottles and just getting everything ready to get used up and torn up the next day.

Sometimes I have work I need to catch up on, and on my work-from-home days, I mandate treadmill runs to compensate for not going to a gym, to which yes, is an activity that would classify as a me-activity, but I treat exercise like a job in itself, so often times I don’t want to run, which is exactly why it is that I have to.

And then the clock is at the point where I don’t feel like I have adequate time to write something before I need to get to bed so that I’m not completely dead the following day.  I get angsty about this, and instead of starting and stopping something in text, I usually just end up playing Fire Emblem Heroes on my phone or doing surveys or waiting for the next day’s Wordle to queue up before going to bed feeling like I’ve accomplished nothing for myself.

But TL;DR, I’m finally at a point where I feel the compulsion to write about something, but also feeling like that because I haven’t written anything in so long that this pile of word vomit needed to be stated first before I can actually get to the gradually growing list of topics and things that I’ve earmarked as having to want to write about, and hope I can mentally get back into the right places to where I can.

Otherwise, kids are good, job is going fine, my health has been a bit wonky since I hit 40, and I’m sure I’ll delve into it more in depth if/when things straighten up, but I’m still able to workout and run.  It’s just the same old song and dance, with probably less angst than when my second kid was younger and still working out her sleep issues.  Went to Savannah for a brief spell, for a wedding of a former co-worker, which was quite pleasant, so that’s where the image above comes from, where I sacrificed sleeping in when I could, because I really wanted to jog along River Street while we were staying right on it.  Priorities.

Getting a Peach Pass was one of the best choices I’ve ever made

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve noticed that the more I get older, the more monetary value I put on my time. 

I still reminisce about a story quite some time ago when mythical then-girlfriend and I were at Epcot and in typical Florida fashion, it started pouring.  As we were leaving the park, unsurprisingly there was a massive line of people waiting for the complimentary shuttle back to the hotel.  I said fuck that, and immediately hailed an Uber, and it turned out that an Uber was right there and picked up the fare as they had just dropped someone off.  Ten minutes and ten dollars later, we were back at the hotel where we could dry off, clean up and settle in for a relaxing evening, instead of the likely hour we’d have had to have waited just to not have to pay for transport.

That shit happened maybe seven years ago, and I still look back fondly at that memory as a good example of how much I value my time over money.

Anyway, I recently got a PeachPass, which is Georgia’s equivalent of a FastPass, SunPass, or whatever Pass exists in your states that basically allows the driver to hop into lanes of lesser traffic for a flexible fee, effectively having monetized the ability to buy your way into lesser traffic.

I used to abhor the idea of the PeachPass or any sort of FastPass in general, because it’s a flagrant cash grab by whatever region it’s implemented in, and a poor excuse to avoid having to build mass transit or any other superior infrastructure.  Clearly though, the judgment of myself and anyone else who might’ve felt similarly isn’t ever going to change things, and as I said, as I’ve gotten older, the more I’m willing to pay in order to save myself some time.

So I got a PeachPass, primarily because there was the possibility that mythical wife and I were going to go to drive down to Florida for a Disney trip, and as it is compatible with Florida’s SunPass system, and we could’ve avoided the obnoxious tolls in the Orlando area.  But also because Gwinnett County exists, and I hoped having a PeachPass would help give us the option to nope the fuck out of the perpetual traffic going north or south, whenever we visit the family in South Carolina.

Anyway, coming back from a trip to Savannah, there was some build up starting to form on the south end of the city.  And fewer things suck than getting hit with traffic on the tail end of a road trip, especially the magnitude of Atlanta’s jurassic traffic.  But lo and behold, at this stretch of I-75 had a set of express lanes, that happened to be headed in my direction, so there was no better time like this present to break in my new PeachPass.  I jumped into the express lanes, and for the next 6-8 miles, watched with the most smug and satisfied glee, as I soared past the congestion going 70 miles an hour.  And it cost me, $2.22, for saving maybe 10 minutes of time and a whole lot more in aggravation and annoyance.

I genuinely felt as if I could chub up from such immense satisfaction, and much to the feined dismay of mythical wife, my reference to Colin Robinson’s euphoric joy at watching the community board meeting devolve, as an accurate analogy to how I felt having just PeachPass’d my way past a logjam, was met with rolling eyes.

Seriously though, I may have had to have paid actual money for this bullshit system, but god as my witness, it was one of the best $2.22 I’ve ever spent.

I look forward to other opportunities in the future, and hope that I’ll again experience the utmost joy and smug satisfaction of PeachPassing the fuck past some stupid bullshit traffic in another time.  One of the best decisions I’ve made in a while.