Now that the summer of Pokemon is fading into fall, I find myself wondering how much more the mobile app that conquered the world is going to grace some of the news apps I use. When I am getting more updates on future updates to the game than I am on the impending electoral showdown between Empty Pantsuit and Idiot Billionaire, I know it's a game that's got legs, even in spite of some puzzling attempts by Niantic to fix problems and fixing some problems that didn't exist. 

I play Pokemon Go as a family activity. While I don't feel like listing and defending my various geek credits, as far as hanging out with family goes, there could be far worse things than catching little digital monsters on our phones. The game could be credited in many places, I imagine, for revitalizing their communities. Here in southern Indiana, when me and the wife are out, we can tell the large uptick in people puttering about, especially at the Ohio Riverfront, where the Pokemon are plenty (especially that goddamned Magikarp). Whether or not that is translating into increased commerce for the local businesses is a question for another post, the trick is the appearance of more activity. 

I recently headed over to the St. Louis area with my best friend, to visit with friends and family, and take in a Cards-Cubs game at Busch Stadium. When I made it home, I was laughing with my wife when I realized I had spent three whole days on the road across Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri without opening the app at all. How in the hell did I manage that? I had briefly thought about checking it during lulls in the game, but then, in the back of my mind, there was that flash of winding up on SportsCenter for missing a homerun or something. Nobody wants to be that guy, not at a major league sporting event. If I'm going to be humiliated over nine dollar beers, it's going to be in a strip club, the way God intended.

Now that Summer is winding down, I wonder if the first day of Autumn tomorrow will be the starting point of Pokemon Go's Winter of Discontent. Schools are back in session, temperatures will start to dip, and with the start of the NFL season, the wind-down of the MLB season, and election coverage, it will be interesting to see how the game's numbers hold up from season to season.

It's also going to be interesting to see how Niantic continues to develop the game. They've had a bit of an uneasy growing period, with complaints over updates, systems failures, and third party apps have taken turns sharing the news about the game. How they handle the heat, as well as how they continue to develop and improve the game will go a long way, I think, in whether the foot traffic continues into the months with snow. 

It occurred to me that it had been quite a while since I had posted anything, about anything, on the blog. That got me to thinking it was time to refresh a bit, especially after running through everything on here and realizing there was half-edited shit up on a couple of pages. Unfortunately, since there is no stud farm for me to retire old blogs to, a name change (or would it be a rebranding?) was in the works.

I mean, I guess I had an excuse in there somewhere, seeing as how I am currently:

• Running for the Indiana House of Representatives.
• Still technically a candidate for the Presidency of the United States (more on how that's going to follow).
• Reorganizing several business interests and projects to get that end of my life back on track.
• Waiting like most everyone else to see it was Glenn who bought it (finally) at the hands of Negan when The Walking Dead returns in October.
• Working on again/off again on my first (serious) attempt at a novel, a long overdue symptom of being a writer for over 25 years.
• Trying not to drive my wife (not a fan, generally, of politics) insane. That has been mostly successful, insofar as I know.

Not that I haven't lamented the cornucopia of material to cover, with the two absolute staggering dipshits that have inexplicably made it to mainstream nominee status. I have not been totally silent, as my Twitter account will attest, but I found myself falling into the occasional ruts that accompany the 140 character limit, such as engaging trolls and idiots, and trying to cram too much thought into too little a space. Given the logic presented to me by Hillary and Donald's sheeple, it can be like selling Eskimos on the notion of a volcano god.

I still plan on writing about politics, although I am probably going to trend a bit closer to state and local issues affecting people here in Indiana. It is becoming an interesting time to be a Libertarian, and the effects are just as noticeable here as they are starting to become on a national level, and we still have a lot of work to do here. I'll save my national analysis for when somebody political says or does something stupid or really questionable. Hell, maybe I will have some good news to post come November. 

I'll still snark at celebrities when they say or do something either stupid or really questionable, and will still not care when people start pissing and whining about my being "mean." Whenever a news story comes along that looks like the drunken offspring of truth and fiction, I will no doubt poke fun at it or drown it in a tub of sarcasm. In other words, nothing much has changed, rather than the name.