Tag Archives: glasses

Feb 03 2017
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BQB’s Glasses Dilemma

Hey 3.5.

Your old pal BQB here.

So, I hate when bloggers talk about their personal problems on their blogs.  The readers came from entertainment and insightful conversation and…

3.5 READERS: We come for not of that BQB.  We have literally gotten none of that here.

Oh ok then.

So here’s the deal, and I figure since you are all nerds, you too have had problems with glasses:

  • About midway through last year, maybe 6 months ago, I started noticing that when I sit a certain distance away from a computer monitor, I had trouble seeing it.  It didn’t look in focus.  Now, to explain, well I don’t want to say my life story, but once a week I find myself at one desk in particular.  It’s kind of large.  The computer is positioned kind of far away, yet not so far away that it should be a problem.  It worried me but I never experienced the problem anywhere else so I didn’t worry about it and when I’m at that particular desk (I’m only at this desk once a week so it didn’t seem like a big deal) I just scooch myself closer.  Still, when I’m on a desktop, I’ve always prefer to lean back in my chair like a fat, bloated lounge lizard and I used to be able to do that with no problem but now I have to sit up and lean in to see the screen.
  • I’ve been going to the same optometrist since childhood, literally the same man who gave me my first set of glasses as a little boy nerd.  So, since I’m no spring chicken myself, you can imagine this guy is an old timer.
  • I always stuck with the guy because I never really cared for places like Pearl Vision or Lens Crafters or shit like that because I never really liked the idea of turning health issues into a franchise.  I’ll go to a franchise for pizza, chicken and burgers, but I wouldn’t go to a franchise for assistance with any of my body parts so why go to one for my eyes?
  • Well anyway, long story short, one of those franchises opened in town and I’m not sure what happened but my long serving optometrist closed his office and went to work for those corporate franchise bastards.  I don’t want to cast aspersions.  He seemed happy enough.
  • So, I tend to let eye appointments go a long time.  I know you should go once a year but if I’m not having any problems I tend to let it go a long time.  Last time I went in was 2013 and the old timer still had his office.  So, give or take some months, its been three and some change years.
  • I also don’t like going because I don’t like the idea that my prescription might change.  Since childhood, it has always amazed, and frightened me, that there are all sorts of precision tests (X-rays, lab work, procedures) to help a doctor determine what is wrong with certain parts of your body, yet all of optometry revolves around the optometrist putting a damn metal mask that contains like a zillion lenses inside and then he starts flipping them and going, “1 or 2, 1 or 2, 1 or 2…” Shit, I don’t know!
  • Literally, most of the time I can’t tell a difference between “1 or 2.”  So I hate to go to appointments because I fear he’ll up my prescription to the point where he’ll have me wearing a pair of goddamn hubble telescope fucking Mr. Magoo like glasses on my face.  My glasses are pretty thin and I’d like to keep it that way.  I’m sorry, but it’s hard enough to get chicks with thin glasses and its virtually impossible to get it with coke bottle glasses.
  • So, it having been a long time and it worrying me about my screen issue, I finally bit the bullet and followed the old timer to his new home in the evil franchise.
  • He does the “1 or 2” bullshit with me.  I don’t blame him.  I’m sure at optometry school there is a giant room with a thousand aspiring eye doctors who sit in front of a thousand mannequins with their faces stuffed into eye glass machines and they spend all day peppering the mannequins with, “1 or 2, 1 or 2…”
  • If I can’t tell a legit difference or even if its close, I always say, “same.”  Again, I don’t want to go up if I don’t have to.  If there’s like a real, “Holy shit that’s so much better” moment then OK, I won’t deny myself the comfort but I’ve never had it.  It’s just always “1 or 2” and they both look close so I just go with same.
  • This time I let the dude kind of bully me.  On one try, he kept going 1 or 2 and I kept saying same and then eventually he was like, “Come on you must be able to see a difference” so I caved and picked one and shit, he upped one lense just a bit.  The other stayed the same.
  • I didn’t contest it.  I’d had the problem with the screen so I figured maybe I was having a problem.  Maybe an adjustment would help.
  • OK here’s where it gets interesting.  I let his eyeglass saleswoman talk me into getting anti-glare coating on my glasses.  I usually never let sales people talk me into add ons.  When I buy a car, I tell the salesman trying to sell me undercarriage wax to go pound sand.  When I buy a video game, I tell the cashier trying to sell me scratch protection for the game disk to shove it where the sun don’t shine.  But here, I thought I was in a medical establishment.  Anti-glare?  Yes.  Shield my eyes from UV rays.  A small price to pay for eye protection.
  • I’ve had these new specs close to 2 weeks.  For the first week, I didn’t notice a problem.  Then starting Monday, I noticed I’m having the problem of not being able to see computer screens clearly…on every screen.  Lap top.  All other desk tops, not just the one I had the problem with once a week.
  • I wondered if it was the anti-glare coating.  Computer screens give off light, maybe that doesn’t sit well with the anti glare.  But then I put on my old glasses and I didn’t notice a difference.  I still had a problem staring at screens.  Yes, I also have a problem staring at my cell phone.
  • So I don’t know what to do.  Let’s review:

A)  I should go in and since I’ve got a month to change the glasses with no extra charge, tell them the anti-glare coat smokes pole and that I’d like a new pair without the glare.  I have talked to a few nerds who have gone to the same store and they too tell me they hated the anti glare.

B)  But if I experienced the problem with the old glasses, this is likely a sign of some bigger problem with my eyes that the anti glare removal may not fix.  Perhaps I should see the doctor and ask him to test me again.  I did mention the screen issue when I saw him and he said ok and proceeded to test me and that’s all that came of it at the time.

C) If I ask him to test me again, I’m not sure what he’d find since it has only been two weeks.  I’ll feel like an asshole explaining this to him.  I’ll go through the same test.  Most likely it will have the same result.  I’ll go through a bunch of shit and get rid of the anti glare glasses for regular glasses and I’ll still have screen problems.

D)  There’s literally a part of me that wants to lie and go in with a story about a hobo who punched me in the face on a subway and my eyes haven’t felt right since just so I have a better story as to why I want him to look at my eyes again after seeing him 2 weeks ago.

E)  On top of that, I have been

Advise me, 3.5 readers.  What should I do?

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May 07 2016
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Movies

The Plight of Watching 3D Movies for People With Glasses – A BQB Special Report

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Lousy norms with their perfect vision.

Nerds.

Thanks to the rise of the Internet, social media and the overall acceptance to let your nerdy freak flag fly, they’re a rising demographic.

And no, hot attractive person who watched half of Star Wars once then texted all your friends with “O-M-G I am such a nerd” I’m not talking about you.

I’m not saying all nerds have glasses, but a vast majority of them do. It goes with the territory.

I’m sure my story is similar to that of many a geek, dweeb and/or poindexter.

There I was minding my own business. I start having a hard time seeing what the teacher is writing on the board. I mention it in passing to the parents, my little brain unaware of what that means. They get me tested. I end up with spectacles for the rest of my days, which didn’t seem all that terrible when I was a little kid but alas, they were no fun as I got older.

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Bookshelf Q. Battler – Blogger for 3.5 Readers/Glasses Wearer

PROBLEM KIDS WITH GLASSES FACE – Other dumb kids think they’re funny and want to grab your glasses and try them on.  Oh sure, dumb kids and why not grab that other kid’s crutch while you’re at it. Hey, go push that kid out of his wheelchair and go for a ride. Let’s just nab everyone’s medical devices and have a grand old time.

Shit. Kids are stupid.

PROBLEM ADULTS WITH GLASSES FACE – Some may argue our romantic prospects go on the decline once we put on our specs. This could be a chicken or the egg scenario. There are a lot of people who won’t go for people with glasses but there aren’t so many that the bespectacled have to live in caves by themselves forever. Part of the plight of the glasses wearer is that it becomes harder to get involved in sports and stuff so we end up reading and studying and becoming interested in comic books and superheroes and shit to pass our time. Some of us even start blogs and write for the benefit of 3.5 readers. Thus, the gateway to nerd-dom opens.

But I’m not here to talk about all that.

I want to talk about why it sucks as a nerd to go to a 3D movie.

As a World Renowned Poindexter, I have had a hard time ever since movie theaters started bringing back the 3-D movie craze.

Movie theaters, I get it. With people able to stream films on their televisions, laptops, tablets, phones, and coffee maker screens, you need to come up with new ways to keep putting butts in seats.

And honestly, I hope you continue to do so, because the last thing I want to see happen is for movie theaters to go the way of the dodo.

I don’t know about the rest of you bespectacled nerds, but when I go to a 3D movie, I have a problem.

Case in point. Last night I went to see Captain America: Civil War.  I spent half the movie trying to line up the 3-D glasses to fit over my regular glasses.

It’s a logistical nightmare. My peepers are trying to keep track of all of these costumed schmucks running around at warp speed and my eyeballs need to look through one set of lenses that help me see and another set of lenses that help me see in 3-D.

When both lenses don’t match up, my eyes end up sort of seeing some parts of the movie in 3-D and then other parts look blurry.

For me, screen size is part of the problem. I have gone to 3D movies in large IMAX style theaters and there’s less of a problem. I’m not sure why, but when you have more screen to look at, it works out for me.

But at my local East Randomtown normal sized theater, I usually just avoid the 3D showing. I don’t know the exact science of it but an average sized screen plus 3D glasses plus an action movie where there are lots of people running around like jackasses makes for a not so great viewing experience for a glasses wearing nerd like me.

Unfortunately, I was preoccupied during the non-3D showing or else I would have gone to that one.

It’s not that I want 3D movies to go away just for the benefit of nerds with glasses.

Rather, I’d like to see the movie industry cater a bit more to their nerdy fans.

Because let’s face it, movie industry representatives. Nerds with glasses account for a high percentage of your movie sales:

  • It’s not like we have much of a social life so you can count on us to be there opening night for the latest movie about costumed assholes fighting other costumed assholes.
  • We live for movies about costumed assholes fighting other costumed assholes. We’ll talk about them on social media, blogs etc. so you get a lot of free advertising from us.
  • Sure, beautiful non-glasses wearing people watch movies too, but they’re too busy having fun parasailing, surfing, skiing, climbing mountains, running across beaches, banging hot chicks, flying F15 fighter jets and doing all of the other awesome things that I assume people with perfect 20/20 vision do while we nerds are struggling to watch movies about costumed assholes as we try to line up our regular glasses with our 3D glasses.

BQB, I’m a corporate shill for the movie theater industry and I just came across your blog by accident. I’m not sure I’ll do anything to help you glasses wearing nerds enjoy 3D movies more because if it is one thing you nerds have shown, you’ll all crawl on your bellies through a pit of fire just to watch movies about costumed assholes fighting other costumed assholes.

But, for the sake of argument, suppose I cared. What can I, a corporate goon, do to help make you glasses wearing nerds happy?

Thank you. I’m glad you asked, corporate goon.

When I was a boy growing up in the 1980s, one thing I used to do when I wasn’t busy worrying about the Soviets conquering America and confiscating all our toilet paper, I watched a lot of basketball.

There was a player by the name of Kareem Abdul Jabbar.  Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He played a copilot in that hilarious Airplane movie.

Today, he’s a) still alive and b) a novelist.

Here he is during his heyday with the LA Lakers:

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Notice anything?

Yup. Kareem was a nerd. But he refused to allow his vision problems keep him from becoming one of America’s favorite dunk masters and he owed it all to those fabulous goggles seen above.

That’s right. He had goggles set to his eyeglass prescription.

  • They were large so wherever he looked, he could still see well, even in his peripheral vision. Today, glasses keep getting smaller and smaller and when society calls for us nerds to sacrifice larger specs for fashionable petite specs, we also lose more ability to see out of the corners of our eyes.
  • They were made out of a durable material, so if Larry Bird accidentally bonked him in the face with a basketball, he didn’t have to worry about his glasses shattering and cutting his eyes up.

BQB it’s the corporate goon again. I get impatient when points aren’t made within 3.5 seconds.

Sorry corporate goon.

Here’s my point.  Stop being all like, “Well f%&k those nerds if they want to watch 3D movies in comfort then they should have not been born with genetic predispositions to vision problems like the rest of us norms.”

Help us out.  Take goggles like the ones Kareem wore and put 3D material in the lenses.

Have 3D goggles available for nerds at the theater. We’ll be happier. We’ll go to 3D movies more. We’ll spend more at your movie theaters because as nerds, we tend to drown our sorrows about being lonely and dateless with movies about costumed assholes fighting other costumed assholes and we usually buy a lot of soda and candy to zit up our faces and perpetuate our nerd-dom while we do.

Hell, if I had the scientific and/or engineering know-how, I’d develop these myself through a kickstarter or some shit and make a mint on 3D goggles nerds can take to the movies themselves.

Anyway, thanks for listening 3.5 readers. And you corporate goons, get to work on this.

For I guarantee the first movie theater that starts putting out 3D goggles will enjoy increased profits from nerds the world over.

Stop catering to the norms. The norms will get around to watching your movies eventually. They usually go the second or third week when they can fit your movie into their busy schedules of having perfect lives.

We nerds are your base and if Meghan Trainor has taught us anything, it’s all about the base.

No, I’m not saying we’re similar to a chubby singer’s butt. Just get to work and make the damn 3D goggles already!

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