Rambling Rather than Ranting

Once again, it has been more than a month since last posting. I wish this was due to being really busy having summer fun, however it is solely due to not being up to my normal levels of subhuman energy. Every day has been a tightrope walk managing health versus activity ever since spring arrived.

Adding to the misery has been chronic problems with the new silicone hydrogel contacts and trying to figure out just what is triggering allergic reactions that make me look like Christopher Lee as Dracula. What is mystifying is how one or the other eye acts up, but rarely both at the same time. Maybe a trip to an allergist is needed since I’ve used every kind of solution and cleaning regime out there.

Ironically, the optometrist recommended hydrogen peroxide method has been the least successful. Instead, Alcon’s Pure & Moist solution along with Walgreen’s contact lens cleaner (same formula as the discontinued Miraflow) has gotten me up to ten hours usage before the things turn into hot pokers to the eyeball. Some days one eye will go insane right after a contact is put in, even if fresh from the packaging.

Then it takes days to recover with crystals forming in the eyes crusting the lashes while the eyeballs feel as dry as the Sahara.

Currently mucking about with taking supplements out of my daily consumption one at a time to see if they are affecting the eyes. Right now, DHEA is out due to causing out of control acne that may be aggravating things all over the face. Next up is generic Zyrtec to see if allergy suppression is a dry eye culprit. Seems against logic, but it really is a possibility that tears are not forming properly due to it.

Speaking of tears, the ongoing meltdown of both major political parties in the U.S.A. has been fascinating to watch. Both are dealing with populist uprisings and it is most informative to see which one suppressed the candidate they didn’t want and which one grudgingly accepted theirs. All in all, it is obvious the country is heading to the left and has been for some time. The silly season has illustrated that succinctly in 2016.

I’ve been saying get used to saying President Trump for a good long time now and see nothing to convince me that this isn’t the future. Now the big question is whether or not Ted Cruz survives the primary challenge that will occur when he runs for the Senate again. His biggest money providers have turned on him over his speech at the Republican National Convention and rumors of Governor Perry possibly taking him on indicate stormy waters ahead for the calculating politician.

The overt corruption of Hilary Clinton is getting farcical or would be improbable fiction except it is actually happening. I never thought I’d feel sorry for Bernie Sanders supporters, yet his betrayal of the cause broke hearts that at least were set against government cronyism. That’s a large block of people who most likely won’t vote Hilary in November and that block is much larger than the Cruz backing Never Trumpers.

Makes one wonder if it is a race to see which side turns out the least at the election. If so, then it enters landslide territory for Trump given how many first time and inactive voters are backing him. Mike Pence was a terrific VP choice which will not hurt him one bit and will make voting for the ticket easier to swallow for quite a few who view Trump as a bitter pill.

Two things that showed just how corrupt Clinton is this past week. The first was picking the ethically challenged Senator Tim Kaine for VP. That is simply all about clearing the deck for their old buddy, Terry McAuliffe, to appoint a replacement and then run for the seat himself after his term as Governor of Virginia is over. The second action was announcing Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was joining her campaign right after being kicked out as chair of the Democratic National Convention. Even if rumors are correct that Debbie has dirt and threatened to use it, the flipping of the finger at Sanders supporters was dramatic.

Oh and Wasserman-Schultz may have a primary problem herself. Bet she gets a lot of Clinton support now to fend that off. Ever get the feeling politicos watch too many TV dramas and think that’s the way to live in reality? Or is it just a question of House of Cards or Game of Thrones with unattractive people?

Shifting topics over to official entertainment, the mess that has become video streaming is starting to irk me. Showing that every silver lining has a cloud, a recent upgrade to local internet equipment means we get 14.4M down now, allowing all sorts of 1080p goodness to stream. The cloud? Content leaving the services I subscribe to and specifically making Hulu pointless come this fall.

Not only are they losing the Criterion Collection of foreign and art films, they are losing all of the CW content which makes up most of what little television shows I watch. Die hard fans of comic books shows there will have to go to CW’s ad riddled site to stream current season shows starting in October. Criterion is also setting up their own subscription service to exclusively carry their licensed content.

I thought cord cutting was going to save money? Or so the argument went, I always said the different studios were going to break the big aggregate streaming services by pushing their own separate sites at a premium. It was a nice ride while it lasted.

The anime world is fragmenting across services now too. Netflix exclusives have now been followed by Amazon Prime exclusives for all future NoitaminA productions. Content on Hulu evaporated a month or two ago with Funimation only putting one recent series up as they try to go there own way more seriously than before.

Funimation has made a few missteps lately with the worst being the Kickstarter for Vision of Escaflowne on Blu-ray. I’m a backer at a low tier so the part that rankles most doesn’t affect me. They offered rewards including the finished product and now pre-orders for the CE version of the set are cheaper than the reward tier. People are livid and I don’t see Funimation getting as much support if they attempt a Kickstarter for another property.

Well, I’ll be dropping Hulu come September or October, depending on how far I’ve made it into the Criterion content I queued. Crunchyroll is hanging by a thread and almost was canceled only to be saved by the adorable Sweetness & Lightning anime. Netflix will stay thanks to Longmire and the new Mystery Science Theater 3000 being exclusive to the channel.

Another thing dropped is hunting down referral spam on Blogger. Most of that is due to an impressive drop in it showing on the stats and the rest due to a lack of interest on my part. It is hard enough to get going on writing reviews without that distraction. Contributing to the decision is the slow death of TOR and I don’t feel like exposing my IP number to spammers.

Back to entertainment, the ultimate cut of Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice is a vastly better film that actually flows. Every bit of the thirty minutes originally cut was needed for narrative cohesiveness while providing much better transitions from scene to scene. While R rated due to more violence (didn’t notice any) and Affleck’s bare Bat-butt, the content doesn’t justify the rating in my opinion. Though I am sick of the one random F-bomb inserted into every PG-13 film like this now.

Juvenile.

Anyway, I digress. Can one digress from rambling?

Being at very low ebb physically means that I’ve been killing time with video game playing split between Civilization V: Brave New World and Star Trek Online with the latter dominating. The latter has gotten a superb new expansion featuring a character that can be made set in the original Star Trek series complete with 1960s styling to the ships and costumes. Even the sound effects are accurate for 23c player characters making it a delight to wander through various times all the while rocking old style phasers and red shirts.

The surprise inclusion of the android officer and ships from the new J.J. Abrams movies was icing to the cake, though the ships are fiendishly expensive to get from random drops from lockboxes you pay real money to open. I chose to reward the tremendous amount of improvements to the game by dropping the monetary equivalent of a new game on ships, costumes, and a few lock boxes.

Actually got luck on the latter, while I didn’t get the new Kelvin Timeline Enterprise, I did get the ship I’ve been dying to have since starting the game over three years ago: the Cardassian Galor cruiser from Deep Space 9. Not only is it still a competitive ship despite being obsolete, it is a real world beater if properly configured. Now it is my main characters main ship using its unique weapons to mow down Borg with impunity.

Sometimes good things do come to he who waits. Here I was worried it would be a disappointment given the newer generations of ships and I finally have a cruiser that handles like an escort.

I’d still rather have a real life, but one must make do with what is provided.

At the moment, I’m between callings at church. After years of teaching Gospel Doctrine in adult Sunday school, I was released last week. No clue what awaits, other than I’m terrified of Primary. One of the few good things about being a single male is that it is highly unlikely to be called to teach there. Then there is the terror of stake level callings… hopefully, I’ll get the long coveted position of greeter.

And winged pigs will fly.

Over fifteen hundred words?! Yep time to put this post to bed.