Reviews of movies, anime, and the occasional TV show mixed with warnings on Blogger spam. Also to be found are musings on whatever I am thinking about - all from the point of view of being left to watch everything from the sidelines of life.
The last few nights have been ones of utter misery as pain has made sleeping very difficult. Swelling in the head, pinched nerves, and muscle pain have combined to make for a nasty mix. Add in a slight cough to make things interesting and I am not pleased.
There is much to do this weekend, even if the weather does not cooperate. Speaking of that, it may be the wildly fluctuating weather fronts that may be causing the pain. Time will tell.
Rain, rain, go away!
Being a human barometer is annoying, for every time a significant front goes through the pain index shoots up like mercury in a thermometer on an August day. Last night featured quite a drop in temperature, so sleep was fitful at best.
At least I got my Civilization V strategy testing over with yesterday afternoon. That was a pain of a different kind, one of playing a game you do not like to find a way to beat it and yes, it cost me hours of sleep the past week.
Why do I mention it in a post on health? Because the Civilization series is the most dangerously addictive games I have ever played. In fact, I removed Civilization IV from my computer due to becoming addicted to it.
The good news is that I am burned out on gaming other than with friends online, which is sporadic. Other than that, it is time to take a break from it. After all, summer is nearly here.
The more we connect electronically, the more we invite crime it seems. This past week, I have had to change my passwords to LinkedIn and lastFM – the latter I had only tried out briefly in 2009. Both services have suffered cyber break ins with millions of passwords compromised. League of Legend European site had user data stolen along with passwords as well. After logging in on another service on a friend’s laptop, I was so appalled by his meager security and use of shady pirating sites that I changed that service’s password once I got home.
An over reliance on antivirus and firewall software, deleting browser history and cookies, and running malware scanners is no substitute for smart browsing in the first place. While useful tools, they mostly are of use after your system has been compromised. IP filtering via service such as OpenDNS is more proactive, but no substitute for avoiding where you should not be in the first place.
Yet there is no real protection once you sign up somewhere online for something. At that point, you are at the mercy of the security employed by that service. It turns out that a lot of them are not that secure. With so many people willing to hack for money and kicks, the attacks are escalating. That is not even counting what is going on with cyber attacks from government, China in particular.
So you can add cyber dangers to the economic insecurity we are already feeling. Get used to it, it will not be getting any better. No wonder some of the white nights in cyber warfare have bailed out.
While I am no longer active on Facebook, I did go back today to remove the remaining hundreds of “friends” I accrued while gaming there in past years. As it stands, I have 67 people left, most of whom I know in reality or through politics. Read what you will into that.
I doubt I will ever be active again there, as I forget it even exists until someone brings it up. Meanwhile, Google + is a bust, which can be of no surprise to most. Over at LinkedIn, I had to change my password due to the massive hack attack that exposed many passwords.
Social media sites, or the Web 2.0 as the wits dubbed it, are losing their luster since they are inherently superficial. But the greatest threat is the lack of security and the fact that hackers are targeting their databases more and more.
Blogging at least allows coherent thoughts to be put up, so I am content to write here where nobody pays attention. I would rather post substance and be ignored than to post twaddle and have “likes” dinging it up!
What can be learned from the fiasco that was the recall effort?
First, the Democratic Party will do anything to win. There is no depth too low, no line that cannot be crossed, and no limit to their harassment/bullying. Locally in La Crosse County, brand new roofing nails were tossed into driveways of residences that had Walker signs up. Signs were stolen, vandalized, and I directly know of one renter who had her sign taken by her landlord and replaced with a Barrett one.
So much money, time, and emotions were invested by the unions and their puppets in the Democratic Party that things got more than a little out of control. The image of Barrett being slapped for conceding illustrates that in a way no words can. All of this rage only netted State Senate District 21 for the Democrats, which gives them control of the Senate. However, that will most likely end in November due to redistricting. I should note they got another seat to flip in earlier recall elections, so they got two. Unless there is a special session called, they will not even meet until after November.
One of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury, died last night. While he lived a good and long life of 91 years, I still feel sad that he is no longer in this world. It was The Martian Chronicles that introduced me to his wonderful writing style that evoked moments of time so familiar to me even as a child. But my favorite work of his would have to be Dandelion Wine, which is about a momentous summer for a young boy in a small town in the nineteen twenties. Thanks to my sister, Ann, I have this in a leather bound edition from Easton Press.
While he wrote Fahrenheit 451 as a warning against television wiping out literacy, he was prolific in that industry. The Ray Bradbury Theater series is available on DVD and I recommend that highly, as it was the author’s chance to adapt his own stories after being disappointed with Hollywood’s attempts.
I will end with the opening from Dandelion Wine, for it is one of my favorite openings to any book:
It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.
Hopefully, Bradbury is enjoying his first morning of true summer.
This wildly inconsistent movie catapulted the Marx Brothers to fame on the eve of the Great Depression and heralded a new form of utterly insane humor. Long before Monty Python or even the Goon Show, the Marx Brothers brought savage wit, inspired lunacy, and irreverence toward all authority to the big screen. Over eighty years later, are they still funny?
The Marx Brothers burst onto the scene and achieved stardom quickly, or so it probably seemed to the American people of the 1930’s. Instead, the Marx family had spent many years traveling and performing while grooming their sons for success on the Vaudeville circuit. Sons of immigrants, they were part of a Jewish invasion of American humor, much like the British invasion of pop thirty years later.
The Cocoanuts was their first film and an adaptation of a smash hit on Broadway, not to mention anywhere else they toured with it. Fast talking, absurd sight gags, and a mocking hostility toward authority were their trademarks and Americans ate it up. Yet superstardom would not have been possible for them except for that great innovation in cinemas: sound. The timing was perfect for Groucho’s quips and Chico’s flimflamming to hit the big screen. Then there was Harpo’s mute horn honking and harp playing to add to the madness. Oh yeah, there was Zeppo to play straight man, if anybody noticed him at all.
A bad weekend followed a good week of increased activity. Having been successful at getting in a walk a day, my body decided it was time to get a cold on Friday night. So I missed out on gaming night and church. Instead I ended up playing video games and reading.
Hopefully, things will go a bit better today.
After more than twenty years of slamming my head against the proverbial brick wall, it finally occurred to me that if endurance is the main problem exercising, maybe I should cut back on the length of the walks and weights sessions. I fell into the trap of trying to do that the minimum that a normal person can do and never got out of that mindset. Since my endurance does not increase despite exercising and, in fact actually crashes downward, it is time to let go of any attempt at normalcy.
Meanwhile, the changeover to a primarily rice diet has resulted in much more stable bowels, less appetite, and seems to working out well.
UPDATED
Just when I had given up on anything interesting showing up in the genre, the current crop of shows have been a welcome change. While it is too early to declare anything to be a classic, entertainment is to be found for all age groups. What follows is some short thoughts on the better shows, all of which are available on legal streaming services:
Space Brothers (found here)
A rarity in current anime, a story starring adults feauturing adult life, Space Brothers follows two brothers in their quests to become astronauts. Actually, it is only one brother’s quest, since his younger brother already has made it. Set in the near future of the 2020’s, the struggles and doubts of the main character, Mutta, are easily related to by adults dealing with hard economic times. Set to run 48 episodes, it has a breezy, laid back charm that is given additional warmth by flashbacks of the brothers growing up together.
Recommended to adults, those struggling in life, and lovers of serious science fiction/space exploration.
Here in the United States, it is Memorial Day. This holiday was set aside to honor those who fell in service to their country, thereby making the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of their fellow countrymen. So please stop to think about what you have and enjoy, then about the people who have died to make that possible.
I am grateful to the fallen understand that freedom is purchased at a very high cost. Sadly, too few appreciate this today, if the ceremonies locally are any indication. While a local auditorium was packed, the average age of the attendees had to be in their sixties or higher.
So if you are treating this as just an extra day to the weekend, I implore you to stop and think on why the holiday was established.
Today is a day about defending freedom of speech and exposing a man who will go to any lengths to suppress information about what he has done, including threatening people. That man’s name is Brett Kimberlin and I do not expect you to take my word on it. Instead, I will give you links to search engines for you to explore for yourself:
Check them out and come to your own conclusions about who Brett Kimberlin is and why this is important.
That is a pretty sensational headline and sounds inflammatory, doesn’t it? It also happens to be true. Beyond the idea of having to go on the run for your own safety reflecting the decay of America, this is a fascinating story of how a convicted terrorist and conman became influential in the Democratic Party. His nonprofit (for whom, I ask) has been heavily funded by some big name leftists such as the Tides Foundation, the Heinz Family, and Barbara Streisand.
I suggest people read up on Brett Kimberlin and ponder just how dysfunctional our society has become when people like him are allowed out of jail and into positions of influence. There has been a call to blog about him on Friday, but I felt the need to jump the gun in this case.
And people wonder why firearms sales are up.
UPDATED
The story gets worse as another blogger reveals how he has been harassed by Kimberlin and his cronies, including having an armed SWAT team sent to his house by placing a fake murder call to 911.
Basically everyone who posts about this thug are risking their livelihoods, if not their lives. While I am not even a small fry and will not be noticed, it does not matter. Unlike others, I really have nothing to lose, so I really appreciate what the bigger bloggers are doing by tackling Kimberlin.
Sawako’s fledgling efforts at making friends begin to pay off, while Kazehaya attempts to get closer to her. It is an uphill battle, but he has a secret weapon in reserve. Everything seems to be going well in this beautiful episode…
I am not a lover (or even a liker) of chick flicks, but I find myself utterly smitten with this lovely story. Slow moving and heartfelt, there is purity to it that has sadly gone missing from our modern world. It does not hurt that I went through most of school being the outsider and turned from an extrovert to an introvert for a good chunk of years. I can remember that slow coming out of the shell even decades later.
That was not a fun week to get through. Sinusitis, headaches, bouts of nausea, sneezing fits, and chills ebbed and flowed across the days. At first I thought it was allergies causing fits, but then remembered that they never make me nauseous. Multiple naps a day meant that I spent a lot of time in bed. It is hard to tell if it was a virus or if it was CFS reacting to my increased walking and other light exercise.
Since my life is one never ending cycle of frustration, you would think I would be used to this by now. At least I feel a little more energetic (relatively speaking) today and need to spray the gigantic weeds that have popped up over the past couple of weeks.
