Tag: triggered

#TRYHARDSZN2024: Tryharding out of boredom

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: St. Louis #TRYHARD accepted into 40 different schools

I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is probably one of the weaker #TRYHARDs of the season, since of all this one’s 40 acceptances, there are no notables named, and from the cherry-picked humblebrag screen shots of her holding acceptances, none of the schools that I can see are particularly anything to ring home about.

Plus, no academic merits were listed anywhere in the article, which means that this kid didn’t have a brag-worthy SAT score, ACT score, GPA, AP class regimen or already begun amassing college credits.  But hey, she can wrestle and is a part of the step team!

Naturally the weakness of a #TRYHARD usually resorts to the cumulative amount of scholarship dollars they’ve been offered, and in this case, this #TRYHARD has amassed over $1M in offers but lest we forget that it doesn’t work that way and $1M does not go to the school of choice.

What really sets me off about this particular #TRYHARD is the seemingly flippant attitude demonstrated when it came to the college application process, to which anyone who’s ever done one knows, is a colossal pain in the ass where you might excited and optimistic when you start, but by the time you’re getting to the end, you’re over it and glad to just be done with it.  And to repeat that process more than 3-4 times, to the magnitude of 40+?  Yeah fuck that.

But for this #TRYHARD, applying to colleges is something that she seemingly did, out of boredom:

I would just be sitting in my room applying, just as I am with scholarships right now. When I’m bored, I’m just applying. When I’m not bored, I’m just applying,” the 18-year-old said.

For starters, I’m guessing there’s some amended process available to them, otherwise I don’t think they’re filling out 40+ college applications.  Either that, or they’re copy/pasting their personal essays, if they’re required to write one, and I’m sure colleges are as thrilled to be reading someone’s copy/paste as much as the kids are thrilled to have to write them in the first place.

But it’s the attitude of someone applying out of boredom that kind of irks me; now I didn’t finish college in the traditional sense, but I still know that there’s a lot of power in the degree, and I know the value of a strong education.  It make me feel annoyed that there are people who apply for schools out of boredom, and I’ve touched on this before, because if and when they are accepted, they’re effectively blocking someone else from getting the spot, and forcing people to be put on waitlists until #TRYHARDSZN winds down, people make their choices, and the scraps of slots are re-opened up to people who have had to wait.

Fortunately in the case of this #TRYHARD, it doesn’t seem like a lot of necessarily prestigious schools are being clogged up by her.  Based on her aspirations and what I can tell are some of her acceptances, there was a fairly mid-tier ceiling to all of her boredom applications.

Considering her top pick is Alabama State, I’m guessing they’re one of the schools that probably offered a full-ride, and there’s nothing wrong with phishing for that because school is an expensive endeavor, but I’m also allowed to opine that as #TRYHARD as applying to 40+ schools is, settling on a school like Alabama State might be reaching for some low-hanging fruit.

Dad Brog (#130): Parenthood did this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t really felt much like writing over the last week or two.  It’s like no matter how much I try to streamline my days and look for ways to open up a little bit more time in the evenings to where I can have some quiet, wind-down time to myself, the more it seems like the windows of freedom get smaller and smaller.

Whether it’s daily chores and the resetting of the house for the kids to wreck it the following day, food prep for the kids, side projects that have long since gotten to the point where it almost feels like a chore but I still have to follow it through to the end, or when I feel like I need to do some exercise, what used to be 4-5 hours a night of downtime feels more like three hours, sometimes two, where I feel like I can actually goof off and do something, not necessarily productive.

And then I get choice paralysis and/or trapped into doom scrolling on my phone, where I fall into a reel pit of Game of Thrones clips where I muse about how good the television show really was in spite of the dodgy ending.  Now I have like an hour to myself, and an hour doesn’t feel like an adequate time to get my head into the act of writing, so I end up watching Ted Lasso clips on YouTube or continuing to fall into the pit of old GoT clips among other useless things.

Or, I watch an episode of Yellowstone, which is actually something that’s been on my list of things to watch.  I’m on season three currently, and I’m relieved that save for the pilot episode, the episodes are a fairly manageable 45~minute range.  It’s not necessarily the banger of a series that I thought it might be, but at the same time it’s still slowly intriguing.  I have yet to watch Succession, which is another show on my list, but given what I know about that show, I feel like Yellowstone is basically a cowboy version of it.

Not giving anything away, but some of the moments of the show that I’ve found myself enjoying every time, is whenever Kevin Costner’s John Dutton character, is interacting with his grandson, Tate.  At least so far, the boy is as innocent to the world as they come, and in spite of being the cunning mastermind of just about everything that goes on in Yellowstone, Montana, John Dutton turns into a tender, caring and seemingly awesome grandfather to Tate, and as a parent to young children, it’s scenes like these that pique my interest every time they present themselves.

But it’s not just Yellowstone solely, I’ve come to the realization that when it comes to watching shows or movies, what tends to elicit the most uncomfortable reaction out of me is whenever there’s anything pertaining to violence, trauma or just a negative situation against young kids.  Like if a kid is in danger, I find my anxiety beginning to spike, and these are the instances where I feel like I might squirm or squeeze an arm rest. 

It bleeds my heart when children characters have to deal with non-physical trauma like learning of a death in the family, abandonment, or divorcing parents.  Just about anything that results in a child becoming sad, breaking out in tears or wailing out hits a place in me that obviously didn’t exist prior to having children myself.

I’m not saying that I was ever immune to empathy for children prior to having my own, but now that I do, it’s amplified and it’s almost like I’m going to start needing trigger warnings on things that feature children having to deal with trauma of any sort.  Having my Dada-radar tripped and bringing me close to tears watching innocuous television is something I didn’t know was going to happen when I had children.

#TRYHARDSZN2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Feels like it’s starting earlier than usual: two South Fulton teenagers accepted into 63 and 50 colleges respectively, trying really hard to not humble brag about it

It’s apparently already started, that time of year, in which throughout the country there are overachieving high school seniors who begin announcing, as loudly as they can on social media, just how many colleges they have been accepted to.  Some aim for the stars and only go for the cream of the crop like just the Ivy Leagues, and usually upper echelon schools like MIT, Johns Hopkins and Stanford, and then there are others who just apply for every school under the sun, as if there were no such thing as application fees.

And once the acceptances start rolling in, if the number is impressive enough, then onto the internets they go, boasting-not-boasting and humble bragging about how many schools they’ve been accepted into, with the hopes that some media outlet catches wind of it and puts any sort of spotlight onto them at all.

Of course, it can’t be ignored the dollar amounts of all these scholarships love to be extrapolated and added together, so that there can be somewhat of a tangible number to implement a degree of success and value of their accomplishments as a whole, and regardless of if and when they inevitably choose to go to whichever school is giving a full ride, no matter how lesser-heralded it may be, doesn’t change the fact that they put themselves into a position where they could brag about how many schools, simply said yes, you may attend our prestigious institution of higher education if you are willing to pay our egregious costs for credit hours, books, boarding and other bullshit expenditures.

But let’s get #TRYHARDSZN2024 off with a bang, with these two teens in my old stomping grounds of South Fulton county, which is the area’s PC way of lumping together the hood sections of the Southwestern region of the Metro Atlanta area.  But despite the fact that when watching the video in the article, there appears to be a whole legion of tryhards that have been accepted into 10-15+ colleges, these two particular teens who have hit 63 and 50 acceptances get the spotlight as being the biggest tryhards of the tryhards.

Sure, most of the schools that I was able to catch in the article are mostly smaller school, HBCUs, and schools nobody has really ever heard of, there were some notable Power-5 schools that have shown interest in them like Michigan State, Iowa, Kansas, Oregon and Mississippi State to name a few. 

Continue reading “#TRYHARDSZN2024” →

Of course it’ll be Duke that kills a tradition

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: #8 Duke loses to unranked Wake Forest, students storm the court; Duke center Kyle Filipowski allegedly injured by fan during the mob, coach Jon Scheyer calls for an end to storming

The low-hanging fruit is that if Duke could just stop sucking and getting upset by lesser-heralded opponents, they wouldn’t have to deal with other schools’ fans storming the court on them.  Furthermore, we’re long past Coach K’s retirement and it’s apparent that Jon Scheyerface isn’t helming a perpetual national champion anymore, so if the NCAA could stop overrating the fuck out of Duke and having them in the AP Top-10 all the time, then maybe opponents will stop thinking they’re upsetting Goliath every time they eat another L, and fans won’t feel the need to storm the court.

Put me in the segment of sports fans that is particularly enjoying the new reality that Duke is far from the automatic win they used to be, and regardless of the diminishing importance of beating Duke is becoming, it’s always a pleasure to see them take a loss.

But here’s the thing, I can see where Jon Scheyerface is coming from, as well as all those who are in support of his remarks to plead with an end to court storming.  Just because it’s a long-standing tradition across the college athletics landscape, most notably in football and basketball, and just because it’s something that’s “always been done,” it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t ever been a potential risk to tons of student athletes and team and venue personnel, and it doesn’t mean it’s really ever been right.

It’s just that this particular season, there have now been two noteworthy incidents where players have gotten bodied by jubilant fans storming the court, where Iowa’s Caitlin Clark was trucked by a fan, and now Dook’s Kyle Filipowki* took a tumble and had to be helped off the court.  If there’ve been any other incidents in the past in hoops or football, none have really made the media such as these.

*which sounds about like the whitest name in the world, even for a Dook player

As traditional and exciting it is to see a court storming, it really is a recipe for disaster where it’s a miracle that things haven’t gotten worse than these isolated incidents throughout the years.  Hundreds to thousands of people, swept up in emotion and excitement of being on the right side of a victory, rushing towards a central point where there might still be opposition present, trying to process an L while going against the flow of human traffic; suddenly accessible when they typically aren’t, because a venue’s security has long since been physically overwhelmed.

The reality is that a court storming can happen at any point of a game, not just the finish, and there is literally nothing a venue could do about it.  There is nothing short of employing the Justice League to guard the access points to the court or field from being swarmed by hundreds to thousands of rushing human beings, and even the most imposing of security will get overwhelmed by a mass of people eventually.  Unless there is a ratio of security that is closer to 1:1 and not 1:500, court storming is literally impossible to prevent from happening.

It’s just that traditionally, there is an understood agreement and civility that saves court storming for upsets of heralded opponents.  Dook has done a good job historically, be it through their students, alumni, PR and brand management, of becoming the school that everyone loves to hate, and seemingly regardless of their rank or position in the NCAA rankings, has probably been the school to have to deal with the most number of court stormings against over the last 25 years or so, so in spite of my general disdain for the school, I actually do understand where the concerns over court storming come from.

Like I said, it’s easy to make the joke that maybe if they just stop losing, they wouldn’t have to deal with it, but the concerns and potential dangers are no less real when it comes to when it actually happens.  Frankly, I don’t think Filipowski was actually hurt as much as he was more trying to cushion his bruised ego for taking an L against Wake Forest, much like any player who gets rocked in any sport suddenly having an spontaneous injury announced afterward to try and salvage their ego.

But if court storming actually does have action taken against it, regardless of the fact that nobody can really stop it from happening, all eyes are going to be on Duke as the party responsible for attempting to kill a tradition that has been a part of college sports almost as long as the existence of college sports.  And as much as people who didn’t go to Dook generally revile Dook, this outcome would probably, undoubtedly make things much worse for them, and probably set up a situation where even more schools will feel the compulsion to storm on them if they ever lose in their houses.

Would be pretty impressive to be Kyle Filipowski, because it would most definitely put him up in the upper echelon of Hated White Duke Player history, with Christian Laettner, JJ Redick and Grayson Allen, but unlike them, it’s not because he was so good at basketball as much as he was trying to kill off a timeless tradition and change the general landscape of college sports.

So cruel, is the human body

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It started the previous weekend, when #2 just began projectile vomiting all over the place.  No warning, no indication of illness, just vomit, lots of it, and spread out throughout the duration of the day.  It was quite unpleasant.  But after a good night’s sleep, the worst of it was over, and after another 24 hours, it was as if she were never sick at all.

A few days later, mythical wife rolls in from work, and is pretty much laid up for the remainder of the day with similar symptoms.  That night, I hear more crying from usual from #1 on the baby monitor, to the point where I feel like I have to check in on her.  The scent of vomit is in the air upon entering her room, and it turns out that she too has caught the bug.  After several hours of hanging out with her, reading her books, and letting her purge everything that’s been in her system, by 1 am, she’s finally asleep.

Same thing, a day later, nobody is vomiting anymore, and a day after that and everyone is mostly back to normal again, although mythical wife seemed to drag a little bit more than the girls did.

Days later, I’m on the phone with my mom on the way home from work.  It had been a long day, and one that really required the second cup of coffee in order to make it home.  I’m telling my mom how it very fortunate that I managed to avoid the bug, considering how hard it hit the wife and kids. 

Sure enough, no sooner than maybe a half hour after getting home, I’m beginning to feel unsettled.  After the kids are put to bed, I don’t dawdle much and head to bed myself, feeling cruddy.  About an hour later, the first bout of vomiting occurs, and its apparent that I must definitely did not escape the wrath of the bug either.

The following day is a miserable day of illness where the only thing I did when I wasn’t laying down drifting in and out of sleep, is a death march to and from the bathroom with some rather unpleasant purges.  I slog through the work day, and my entire WFH Friday is completely burned, where I get no work done, and accomplish none of the little side chores I do in between.  I’m starving and thirsty, but don’t want to put anything into my body when it’s clearly rejecting everything in sight.  I don’t get back to sleep until closer to 4 am due to the constant need to get up and go to the toilet.

But much like everyone else, I’m mostly fine in 72 hours, which seems to be the norm for the adults with the bug.  Lucid enough to be able to watch and slog through the Super Bowl, which was boring as fuck until the end and OT.

However, the real tragedy of me getting the bug is that, circling back to that second cup of coffee that I had on Thursday, I know that had nothing to do with me getting sick, but because it was one of the last things I consumed before I started getting sick, my body has decided to hold it responsible all the same.  Even now as I write this, I’m leery on the idea of drinking a cup of black coffee, which is how I drink it at work because my workplace offers no creamers or additives and often times doesn’t even provide the coffee in the first place.  But when I do drink coffee at the office, it’s black, except now my body is revolting at the idea of consuming anymore black coffee right now.

Even my morning cup of coffee, which has some flavored creamer in it, I’m still a little ehhh about at the moment, but I guess the added flavor and the fact that my body can’t really start without it, it’s an exception to be allowed, but frankly coffee in general has been very unappealing since I’d gotten sick, which completely sucks because I love coffee, and this is why the human body is capable of being so cruel.

Coffee had nothing to do with my getting sick, but because coffee undoubtedly made its way out during my mass purging, it’s like my body is blaming it anyway, and I’m still working myself back to being able to actually enjoy coffee again, and I feel like it’s going take an obnoxious amount of time before I really feel comfort and relaxation from a really good cup of coffee again.

No way this doesn’t backfire on Southwest

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Good intentions, unwinnable situation: Southwest Airlines becomes only airline to accommodate larger passengers with complimentary adjacent seats

How it works: plus-size travelers either purchase two fares on Southwest in advance, or purchase one fare; either way, at the airport, they have to speak speak to a representative to discuss accommodation, be allowed to occupy two seats.  If they purchased two in advance, they can be retroactively be refunded one fare, or if they purchase one fare, speak to someone at the airport and get a second one for free; airline reserves the right to exorcise the benefit or shift other passengers based on availability.

First of all, I do think it’s cool that Southwest Airlines for making this choice to be accommodating to larger passengers.  It is a decision made on empathy, positivity and inclusion, and in the calculation of the business world, it’s a choice that will all but ensure that larger travelers will be looking at Southwest first, with them likely to make some bank on the fact that they’ll probably buy two Southwest fares knowing they can be refunded for one of them based on their girth, as opposed to buying two fares on any other airline and not getting any recompense.

But I also just think that Southwest is opening a can of worms, and has created something that will inevitably be abused and met with a lot of opposition, hostility and negativity by all other travelers who don’t fall into the same large category of those that this is intended to accommodate, almost like an ironic reverse form of discrimination.

I’m not the buffest, most swole guy on the planet, not by a long shot, but when I sit back and am in a relaxed sitting position, my shoulders often times creep over the plane of space that is the armrest.  When traveling with mythical wife, this is mitigated because she is petite and I can just raise the armrest and we can lean on each other, or share our adjacent space, but the fact of the matter is that regular old me, could constitute a person who “encroach past the armrest” which is the language that Southwest’s policy declares as being criteria to receive the large person BOGO, as I’d like to call it as politically correct as I care to speak it.

This policy just seems like it’s begging to be abused by all sorts of people, mostly active, muscular, tall and other physically large people whom might not necessarily be overweight, but still with bodies capable of taking up a lot of space.  And considering the fact that airline seats are tuna can sized to begin with, I don’t think it would take a tremendous amount of arguing for people to think they can lay claim to the large person BOGO as much as a person who tried out for My 600 Lb. Life.

Already, there are instances of the backlash of giving larger folks free bonus seats, as cited by the example of a woman and her kids who were bumped off an oversold flight because one or more larger passengers were getting free extra seats.  And this is where it’s really a nobody wins situation, because I understand that large passengers go through a lot of shit already, flying in an airplane doesn’t make it any easier, but at the same time, as a person with a lot of miles flown in my life, I know the general frustration of the traveling process to begin with, and can understand the frustration that must bubble up when you have to sit next to a large person who encroaches on your space or denies you the ability to board outright.

Furthermore, as altruistic of a policy this is meant to be, it’s still going to be subject to the opinions of live human beings that oversized travelers will have to subject themselves to when they are at the airport and wish to plead their cases.  Imagine the general sense of spectacle and embarrassment many already go through having to go to the counter to discuss the large person BOGO, but imagine how much worse it would be if the person at the gate is having a bad day or is someone who’s in no mood to be empathetic of a large person’s size, and then they deny the second seat, or they prioritize parties over a large person. 

Nobody wins in these cases either, and it’s only a matter of time before Southwest gets sick and tired of dealing with all the headaches, complaints, accusations of abusing rules, and other negative connotation before they decide to punt on the program outright, and large passengers are back to either purchasing two seats and taking a financial hit, or risking denigration and humiliation when they get seated next to a Karen who live-tweets their misery at being sat next to a large person on an entire flight.

Again, it’s cool that Southwest is trying to be more inclusive than all the other airlines, but the airline industry is already one of the most miserable and volatile experiences for people in the first place, trying to rock the boat to this magnitude just seems like an idea that’s just begging to backfire with catastrophic results.

I am so over shopping for presents

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I understand that over the last year or two, I’ve been coming off like a tremendous Scrooge.  I will be the first to admit that I am suffering from depression in the span of that time, because at the root of everything I feel that my life is very difficult, and largely in part due to the feeling financially insecure, and the gamut of factors why it is as well the results of it.

In this span, I have been largely incapable of enjoying holidays in the manner in which they really should be enjoyed, because when you’re in a position that I’m in, holidays mean a lot more work, a lot more effort, a lot more money, with the latter variable being largely in part of why I’m often times so anxious and fretting over the most.

But to the point of the subject of this post, I’m really over shopping for presents, mostly because I just don’t know what the fuck anyone and everyone wants, but I feel obligation to provide gifts to a lot of these people, because it’s the most efficient way of demonstrating that I care and I really do care and I really do want to show my appreciation, but the truth of the matter is that I just don’t know what people want and/or I do, but it’s something that’s ridiculously expensive and I don’t have the means to get it and that’s a whole result of sucking as well.

Anyway, I have a list of people whom I want to get something for, and the vast majority of it is blank currently, because I just don’t know what to get anyone.  These days, or maybe that it’s always been the case, people are capable of getting what they want, when they want, to a degree that by the time the holidays roll around, there’s nothing left to ask for.  And not knowing what to get someone seems like the worst possible outcome, because if I knew what to get everyone, I wouldn’t be typing up this conversation piece in the first place.

Yet I feel obligated to get things for everyone because I know that the most of them will be doing the same for me.  Honestly if it were up to me, there would be no gifts shared, so that neither party feels obligated to exchange gifts and go through the time, effort and finances to demonstrate with gifts the importance of one another to each other.  I try to do that for others by giving them time, effort, favors when called upon, or being there in times of need.

But the point is, I’m sick of gifts.  I’m sorry if that sounds horribly crass and blunt and really curmudgeon but that’s where I’m at right now.  I’m tired of not knowing what anyone wants because I don’t have the capacity to be around everyone that matters to me to pick up hints and ideas for what I can provide for them, and it’s driving me insane sitting in front of my computer and trying to rack my brain fruitlessly for ideas of gifts that will inevitably end up being shitty because the rationale for them will be so convoluted and stretched that they’ll suck and people will try their hardest to be nice and try to not feel in the backs of their minds that they were given a stinker.

I want nothing, so that I can be absolved of the feeling obligated to return the favor, so that I can spend my sparse time, shits to give and money on more important thing than gifts, which is exactly what I’d really like the most.  There is a direct correlation with my depression and those things being in more copacetic places than they are now, and I just don’t know what to do to improve things and this is not how I want to be feeling at a time of the year where people are expected to be happy, festive and grateful for things.