Ramblin' with Roger

Blogging about blogging can be habit-forming

We’ve gotta stop meeting like this.

As a result of a difficulty I had with one of my other blogs on Blogger – this weird bX error that others suffered through too – I copied this blog (and that one) in its entirety to WordPress this past month. I’m not that familiar with WordPress, though my Times Union blog appears on it, so I will play with that at some point. But this Blogger blog will still be my primary blogging outlet until further notice, if only because whatever minimal promotion I’ve done has been to the Blogspot address. Also, I haven’t followed up to post the subsequent items on WordPress, so that is a factor.

I added a couple of bloggers to my sidebar. One is Gary who describes himself as the “old dude”. He’s only 16 years older than I am, so I wouldn’t call him old at all; gotta be at least 25 years older than I am to be old. He’s, er, more politically conservative than I am, but he can tolerate me, then I can tolerate him. In fact, it was Gary’s sidebar that inspired me to START to tweak mine, so that at least I can see when at least some of the bloggers listed they last posted. (Yeah, Yeah, I can do the RSS feed thing; I just haven’t.)

I also added Demeur from Gary’s sidebar, just for some political balance. (Did I mention that Gary’s rather conservative?) Also, WayneJohn seems more comprehensible than the so-called “blogger help”.

Another is yet another damn blog from Alan David Doane, who currently kvetches a lot about his dental work. See, I do all my kvetching right here. And speaking of ADD, I liked this link he found about what makes a good blog.

My near-twin Gordon had a post about all the cool things he’s doing on his blog. I must admit I didn’t understand about 70 percent of it.

One of my blog posts was linked to the Comic Reporter this past month with this single sentence: “One retailer recalls the 1987 Comic-Con.” No mention of my name; no mention, even, of FantaCo. Talk about being damned with faint praise.

I came across a blogpost that read as follows: “A friend of mine, Roger Green, often reminds me that the enemy of excellence is not the pitiful or horrible, but rather just the good.” No, it was not me. I found the post and replied: “It seems also true the perfect can drive out the good; if I can’t be perfect in my relationship with God, I might as well give up.”

Another blog post about face transplants cites “Roger Green, president of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons, said: “This particular surgery is a way of giving back a life to a patient who has been horribly scarred by burns, trauma or a tumour.”
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In other news, my HP printer died, quite a few months ago, actually, and I was forced to go out and buy a new one. It’s a Brother, which not only prints but copies, scans, and if I had a phone line for it, faxes. It only cost $70, but after you add in the USB port cable and various ink cartridges, it was closer to $200. Still, once I’ve mastered the scanning technique – assuming I master the scanning technique – you’ll be able to see some of the results on this blog.
ROG

One Step Beyond

Monk / Nun
Take Your Secret Self 1 Step Beyond today!
Created with Rum and Monkey‘s Personality Test Generator.

Going 1 step beyond I am all about spiritual truth, bread and bad haircuts. For me the best part of the day is spent in quiet meditation where I don’t have to worry about my big ears and people laughing at me. No one really understands the depth of my soul, which is in here somewheres. I study, I work, I feed deer and am kind to little bunnies. I am making this a better world by shutting myself away from real life. Somehow. I am certain life’s questions can be answered by sleeping on hard things and chanting.

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Your result for The Director Who Films Your Life Test…

Francis Ford Coppola

Your film will be 61% romantic, 29% comedy, 34% complex plot, and a $ 45 million budget.

Filmography: The Conversation, The Godfather (and Pt. 2 and Pt. 3), Apocolypse Now, Peggy Sue Got Married, Jack, etc. He even used his clout after The Godfather to get George Lucas’ classic American Graffiti made. But then he notoriously went WAY overbudget with Apocolypse Now which sort of maimed his career since. He’s been doing a lot of small films lately which may give your life story an inside track. A high-budget simple romantic drama is best in the hands of this modern master filmmaker.

Take The Director Who Films Your Life Test at HelloQuizzy

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My sister, knowing my lifelong love of Wal-Mart (I seriously jest), sent this:
BANNED FROM WAL-MART………..

Mrs. Fenton insisted her husband accompany her on her trips to Wal-Mart.
One day she received the following letter from her local Wal-Mart.

Dear Mrs. Fenton,

Over the past six months, your husband has been causing quite a commotion in our store. We cannot tolerate this behavior and may be forced to ban both of you from the store. Our complaints against Mr. Fenton are listed below and are documented by our video surveillance cameras

1. June 15: Took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in people’s carts when they weren’t looking.
2 . July 2: Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute intervals.
3. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official voice, ‘Code 3 in Housewares. Get on it right away.’
4. August 4: Went to the Service Desk and tried to put a bag of M&M’s on layaway.
5. September 14: Moved a ‘CAUTION – WET FLOOR’ sign to a carpeted area.
6. September 15: Set up a tent in the camping department and told other shoppers he’d invite them in if they would bring pillows and blankets from the bedding department.
7. September 23: When a clerk asked if they could help him he began crying and screamed, ‘Why can’t you people just leave me alone?’
8. October 4: Looked right into the security camera and used it as a mirror while he picked his nose.
9. November 10: While handling guns in the hunting department, he asked the clerk where the antidepressants were.
10. December 3: Darted around the store suspiciously while loudly humming the ‘Mission Impossible’ theme.
11. December 6: In the auto department, he practiced his ‘Madonna look’ by
using different sizes of funnels.
12. December 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browsed through, yelled ‘PICK ME! PICK ME!’
13. December 21: When an announcement came over the loud speaker, he assumed a fetal position and screamed ‘OH NO! IT’S THOSE VOICES AGAIN!’
And last, but not least …
14. December 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door, waited awhile, then yelled very loudly, ‘Hey! There’s no toilet paper in here!’

Regards,
Wal-Mart

ROG

No Labor Involved

It’s Labor Day. No one’s reading blogs today. Time to be lazy and post a bunch of stuff from YouTube and elsewhere.

Watch the entire full length documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? right here.
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A sad Sesame Street moment.
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It’s only water, part 1
HERE.
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Lightening it up a bit, this video from the Smothers Brothers Show, or a reasonable facsimile, of the classic Mason Williams song:

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Still thinking about Isaac Hayes. And so was the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

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Ode To Joy, Muppet style

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A great episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.
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It’s only water, part 2

ROG

Because I Am A Lemming

I am participating in BlogDay2008:
BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.
With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

I must say that I like getting out of my comfort zone now and then. So I did the next blog thing on Blogger. I avoided the ones with fewer than five posts for no particular reason. I found these:

Nicole Jarecz Illustration by Nicole Jarecz, Detroit, MI, United States. A junior at the College for Creative Studies, majoring in illustration.
Unsurprisingly, she does a lot of drawings, many of which I like. Occasionally, she even talks.

VERACRUZ TURISMO DIGITAL. Las Noticias de Turismo del Estado de Veracruz Mexico
It’s in Spanish, and I don’t really read Spanish, but it seems to be a site about the
culture of Veracruz. Has photos, so it was worth looking at.

Kundalini Splendor.
Poems and Reflections on the Spiritual Journey by Dorothy Walters
She writes: “I invite you to contact me.” She has a kindly face. Pictures accompany her photos. I’m not much into poetry, I’m afraid, but the page gave me a soothing feeling, somehow. Clearly, my favorite of the five.

ADESPOTO Halandriou
Σύλλογος φίλων των ζώων Χαλανδρίου
It’s all Greek to me. This person from Athens takes photos of animals. I like animals OK, but my Greek is non-existent, so the context is lost on me. Yet that’s all right.

吕昕展臭Baby部落格.
Shinzhan 吕昕展, Mersing, Johor, Malaysia
OK. Not my favorite kind of page; that is, a bunch of pictures of somebody’s kid with no context, plus short videos. I don’t mind an occasional pic- been known to do it myself, but no narrative, even if I could read Chinese.
Still, I’m fascinated by this page because I put it through the Google translator, and the title of the page reads: “Lu Hsin-Chin foul Baby blog”. Really. Does this mean in translated Chinese what it means in English? And in the Chinese title: Are there no characters for “baby” in Chinese?

ROG

QUESTION: Time vs. Quality of Life

A couple weekends ago, we (OK, my wife) bought furniture for our porch. They come in these large cardboard boxes. Once upon a time, these boxes would have ended up in the garbage, but there I was cutting up the boxes, making them ready for the recycling. It took time, over a half hour for all of the boxes. It was a tradeoff between by time and the quality of life I want to maintain.

I’m recalling the local experiment the local paper Times Union did with test riders bus riders. One of the riders said, “I don’t know how anyone could subject themselves to that. (I excoriate them here.)

So the question is simple in structure: What do you do that could be done faster but that you feel is important to take on in a slower manner? My wife makes brownies from scratch. Maybe you participate in a gardening project. There’s a “slow-cook” movement that you might be part of. Perhaps you sew, knit, crochet. I was going to note that we compost, but I just don’t think of the time we spend separating the compostables from the other items as that substantial, though it does reduce the amount of trash we put out weekly.
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Miss Wasilla for 1984, Sarah Palin.

ROG