Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

Sex, drugs and politics QUESTION

Here’s a promise for you: I’m never running for elective political office. You never know what skeletons, or even perceived skeletons, might pop up. Well, maybe when I’m 70, when I will be able to honestly say, “I don’t remember” when asked about my presumably sordid past.

I’m thinking about this because New York’s NEW governor, David Paterson, is caught up in some sexual infidelity. Truth is, I don’t much care because it’s none of my business, and, unlike his predecessor, “I’m a f***ing steamroller” Spitzer, he hadn’t set the morals bar so high that his affairs are major disappointments. Mostly because most people outside of Albany didn’t even know who David Paterson was until a little over a week ago. In any case, he’s likely to survive this politically because he would be succeeded by the Senate Majority Leader, who is a REPUBLICAN, Joe Bruno.

This begs the questions:
1) How much of a person’s personal life should be open to the public when he or she is considering running for public office?
2) How far does one get to dig about someone’s history and place as relevant? I recall that GWB said some years ago that he had not done certain drugs (cocaine, I believe) in the previous 25 years, answered in such a way that it suggested that perhaps he HAD used it earlier than that. As much as I dislike GWB politically – and I mean a WHOLE lot – I don’t much care about an old drug bust.
ROG

ROG

Spooky

Just after my birthday this year, after all the various members of my family were sick, and my wife had, a few days earlier, taken a tumble in the bathtub, appeared an obituary in the local newspaper for someone named Carol A. Green, which is my wife’s name. This woman was 48, a couple years older than my wife, had four brothers (Carol had three). There were other facts that suggested that it wasn’t my Carol (the deceased Carol’s parents were deceased, she had had a lengthy illness, she lived in East Greenbush – across the river, and she was apparently Roman Catholic.)

That’s not as bizarre, though, as something that happened four and a half years ago. I was away at a conference when Carol, pregnant with Lydia, got two sympathy cards regarding the passing of her husband Roger. Since she was reasonably assured that I was not deceased at the time, she was as confused as she was startled. Turns out that a Roger Greene (with the e at the end) had died in this area and that he had a wife named Carol. The folks sending the cards got our address from the phone book. So we just sent the cards back to the senders with an explanation.

In any case, condolences to the family of Carol A. Green, to whom I am not related.

ROG

Another Equinox-Driven ASK ROGER ANYTHING

I’ve seen this recently at the electronic homes of Messrs. Jaquandor and Scooter, with me contributing a question or two (or three…), and so now now it’s my turn to ask youse guys to ask me, well, anything. And I have to answer them. With the truth, not necessarily the WHOLE truth, but nothing but the truth.

You could ask: “Heyyy, didn’t spring USED to be on March 21, not March 20?” and I’ll say, Why, yes it did!

How am I feeling about a 260,000-square-foot Wal-Mart near Albany, the “retailer’s largest in the U.S.”? Yuck!

You ask me for the shortest Bible verse, and I’d say, “John 11:35”.

It’s all up to you. Post the questions in the comments, or e-mail me at the address in the side bar. Sometime before the end of the month, I’ll answer ’em all. ROG

ROG

Iraq Plus Five


I’m not quite sure what more there is to say. Just this month, there was a study discounting the Saddam Hussein/Al-Qaeda link. This follows this 2007 report, which merely confirms what the 9/11 Commission said back in 2004. I won’t even talk about the expense, which is now calculated in the TRILLIONS of dollars.

Here’s a website tracking the casualties. Let us pray that we’re NOT there for another hundred years.
***
I need to write more on this, but let me say that I really liked Obama’s speech on race.

ROG

ROG

The 123 Meme

From Jaquandor, again.

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Well, I happened to be in the public library so I went to the nearest shelf, which happens to have been the 7-day loan fiction, i.e. recent popular fiction, and got Street Love: A Triple Crown Anthology (2007). From The Fink, by Quentin Carter:
Not bionic. Not super. Just lil ole Shania Freeman.

Eh, try again. Nikki Turner presents Street Chronicles: Tales from da Hood (2006). From the story 360 by The Ghost:
The two agents walked out the door. They’d gotten what they wanted. Cojack’s mother kissed him on the cheek, sat down with him for a while, then headed home to get some rest.”

Well, that was better. One more time: The Lost Diary of Don Juan by Douglas Carlton Abrahams(2007):
My interest today, however, was in only one daughter, and from what I had seen, she was hardly defenseless.
The Marquis’s palace was an enormous brown stone edifice with three curved balconies and many large windows surrounded by decorative columns. Two guards stood by the door, and over their clothes they wore the sleeveless blue tunic that bore the Marquis’s coat of arms, with a castle and lion embroidered in gold.

OK, consider yourselves tagged if you haven’t posted in the past 33 days.
ROG

ROG
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