Ramblin' with Roger

2008

Happy New Year!

This is a leap year, being divisible by four. (There are exceptions; 2100, 2200, and 2300 are NOT leap years, but most of us don’t have to worry about that.) Next month (February), there are five Fridays. Three of them are paydays for me. The chance of that happening is about one in 56.

The Beijing Olympics will start on 08-08-08, eight apparently being a lucky number in the Chinese culture. I wonder if the air quality will be an issue for some athletics. I’ll go out on a limb and guess that at least one medal-contending athlete from the United States or western Europe will withdraw for that reason. Feelings will be hurt.

Rumor has it that there’s a Presidential election this year. The Iowa caucus is in TWO days; the New Hampshire primary is in a week. Super Duper Tuesday, when several states vote is February 5. The Democratic and Republican candidates are supposed to be all but selected by then, but I’m not sure, though the only states of any size that AREN’T having their primaries/caucuses by mid-February are Ohio and Texas, on March 4. The United States is holding its first Presidential election with no incumbent president or vice-president running since 1952 (unless Dick Cheney accepts a draft from the Republican convention – horrors!) It’ll be interesting. I have NO idea who the nominees of either party will be.

ROG

The final curtain

I was watching Wednesday’s JEOPARDY! on Saturday – no surprise there – and there was a $1600 question about Women of Distinction: “In November 1988 she was elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head a modern Islamic nation. ” It was, of course, Benazir Bhutto. On Thursday, she was dead. Yes, I know they tape the game show, but I still found it a bit spooky.

A couple musicians died this month, and I hadn’t noted it yet.

Ike Turner: recorded perhaps the first rock song, Rocket 88. Enhanced his wife’s career and the song Proud Mary. Beat his wife. Great musician, not so great human being.

Oscar Peterson: When I think of my father’s record collection, I usually think of the folkies like Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger and Odetta. But now that I ponder it, there were a few Oscar Peterson albums as well. But I did not really appreciate him until I was considerably older. Wonderfully lyrical pianist. I never knew he was Canadian.

Dan Fogelberg: seems like someone gave me an LP of his once upon a time. Actually bought the greatest hits album for my wife a couple years ago because she had a roommate in college who played Fogelberg incessantly. I could only recognize two of his songs, Another Auld Lang Syne, because it shows up every holiday season, and Longer, which appears on some compilation album. Conversely, my wife can sing along with over half of the tunes. I was on Barnes & Nobles’ online site this week, and along with the big current hits and Christmas music, high on the list was that same greatest hits album I had bought for my wife.

But it’s the fact that he died of prostate cancer – at 56! – which, of course, is what killed my father. I’m thus compelled to ask my male readers of a certain age (certainly by 50, or earlier with a family history) to get checked regularly.
ROG

Roger Answers Your Questions, Anthony

But before that, one last question from Scott:

5. (I may have missed this somewhere in your posts) Have you ever considered becoming a minister?

When I was 12, and probably a year or two before and after, I was pretty much convinced of it. I had a “born-again” experience when I was nine, and it seemed like the logical path.

And now to Anthony:

1. What is the one thing that if they didn’t have it in heaven you would seriously think about taking up residence in the other place because you would miss it so much?
Music. You get the sense that they’ll be celestial choirs singing all of the time. If heaven is tuneless, that’d be hell.

2. What is the hardest passage of Scripture for you to accept?
Interestingly, I’ve a great rationalization for any of those loopy Old Testament readings such as Deuteronomy 25 as a message for a different time.
(I can even go a couple hours on Thou Shall Not Kill: what DOES that mean in terms of self-defense, war, capital punishment, war, abortion, stem cell research, et al.?)

What’s harder to deal with, and this ties directly into the conversation about becoming a minister, is perhaps a core tenet of Christianity, at least as understood by many: John 14:6 – Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
At the point I was 15 or 16, I was having a difficult time with the notion that a good Hindu or Buddhist, who had never heard of Jesus Christ, was going to hell – the reason we were supposed to go out and “save those savages”, in Africa and elsewhere. It was at this point I pretty much turned away from the faith of my youth, and it took over a decade before I found my way back, with the ability not to necessarily buy into the doctrinaire positions of fundamentalism. I’ve gotten better with ambiguity. I’ve talked with Christian clergy, and at least a few struggle with the same issues.
I read a biography of Mahatma Gandhi decades ago, and there was a quote in there that has stuck in my mind about why he chose not to be a Christian: “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.” Don’t think that was the exact quote, but close enough.

3. What do you dislike most about yourself?
My ability to go to a very melancholy place rather easily.

4. What is the most profound spiritual experience you have had?
I was in a play (Our Town), and became good friends with this woman named Rusell. She ended up contracting this rare but almost always fatal disease and was at some hospital in Boston. A bunch of us went to our church chapel in Albany, stood in a circle and prayed for Rusell. At about that time, she was cured and fully recovered; it was, the doctors said, a miracle.
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Dorian reimagines Christmas.
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New England 16-0. Feh.

ROG

"The Line" QUESTIONS

~~Wrestling~~ Boxing Day, I’m coming out of a convenience store. A young woman is coming in, so I hold the door open for her. A young man, coming from a different direction, follows her in, saying “Ummm, sexy THAT!”

This led me to posit several questions:
1) Was he talking to her, or more to the universe at large?
2) Was she offended, delighted or what? (I was waiting for a bus, and I could have gone and asked her, but thought the better of it.)
3) Does that kind of line actually work on some people?

I never had a “line”, as far as I am aware. Sometimes I would do stuff (throw peanuts in someone’s beer, play air guitar), but smooth talking, I didn’t do.

So, I’d like you to answer question #3 above (and #1 and/or #2, if you have some insight). Additionally, I’d be interested in what kind of lines you’ve tried, and whether any of them actually worked.

I’m interested to know your gender, approximate age, and sexual orientation to see if it differs.
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a guy I know and his brothers singing in three-part harmony.

ROG

Roger Answers Your Questions, Chris and Scott

Our next contestant is Chris Black from across the pond, as they say.

Hi Roger

Do you have a favourte fictional librarian or library?

What got me thinking was there’s one in a science fiction novel that I read this year (- I’ll tell you about it sometime – ) called Glasshouse by Charles Stross. The book is set several centuries into the future and the hero finds himself working in a simulation of a late 20th century American public library.

First off, I must say that I cringe every time I see It’s a Wonderful Life, and George Bailey discovers that, without him, his would-be wife is reduced to this…librarian!

Yet I enjoy, on a radio program in the United States on National Public Radio, a segment on A Prairie Home Companion called “Ruth Harrison: Reference Librarian” that takes on the stereotype in a fun way. The last segment I heard, just last Saturday, she becomes the Scrooge character in A Christmas carol and at the end becomes wildly spontaneous.

If you are interested in the topic, you might want to check out this piece.
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Scott has a number of questions:

1. What do you think the Baseball Hall of Fame should do about the steroid problems?
I think we’ve already gotten an inkling of this last year when Mark McGwire, who was NOT specifically named in the Mitchell report but who was mum before Congress on the topic a couple years back, got less than 25% of the votes. HoF voters are going to determine whether a player would have gotten in without “assistance”. They’re going to decide whether the morals clause applies. As this guy notes, Gaylord Perry got into the HoF by doctoring the ball. My own sense of things is that, assuming the allegations are true – and the Mitchell report was not really designed for that purpose – the heavy users should all get lifetime suspensions. I would make a distinction between someone who tried it once or twice (Andy Pettite, assuming he’s telling the truth) and regular users. However, I would make it possible that they could all get into the Hall – Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, McGwire, Sammy Sosa (who’s been implicated in this by a different source) – when they’re dead. Same with Shoeless Joe Jackson, who played quite well in the Black Sox series, and Pete Rose. They’ll be there in the history of the game, but they will not be able to personally profit from it.

But I’m less worried about the Hall than I am in baseball cleaning up for the future. I agree that there should be an outside lab doing unannounced testing the players, which is what happens in most sports. The players’ union would be foolish to fight this, but I suspect it will.

2. Keying off of Chris’ question, do you have a favorite fictional character (librarian or not)?
Understand that I haven’t been reading it in the last decade or so, though I’ve seen the first two movies, but it’s Spider-Man. Or that duality of Peter Parker and the webslinger. On TV, possibly Pembleton (Andre Braugher) from Homicide: Life on the Streets.

3. What is the hardest part of your job?
Boredom. “Oh, golly, not THAT question again.”

4. Do you think those of us in the US are getting too politically correct by saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and worrying about the fact that Santa is too fat?
It’s a pluralistic society. “Happy Holidays” doesn’t bother me. I must admit that I was surprised, though, when I wished someone “Mery Christmas” a few years ago, and he said, “I don’t believe in Christmas.” I was in church at the time.
But slim Santa is dumb.

6. What is your favorite non-secular Christmas song? What is your favorite religious Christmas song?
I actually answered this question a couple weeks ago. But I’ll answer it again, and differently.
Secular: What Christmas Means to Me – Stevie Wonder; Christmas Wrapping – the Waitresses; Christmas All Over Again – Petty/Heartbreakers.
Religious: almost anything in a minor key (What Child Is This); anything with counterpoint (the chorus of Joy to the World); Adeste Fideles and Stille Nacht, in Latin and German, respectively.
Now let me me tell you what I hate: bad pronunciations. On Angels We Have Heard on High, it should be “glo ree ah” not the ugly “glor ee ah”. And the little town is “beth leh hem” not “beth LEE hem”; professional singers botch this often.

7. If the Patriots go the entire season undefeated, do you think people will complain more about it then about Barry Bonds breaking Aaron’s record?

Well, no. I think the Jets were going to lose that first game of the season. Yeah, there were a couple close games – Philadelphia and Baltimore, I think – that had some questionable referees’ calls. But they are a quality team, as much as I despise them.
BTW, I don’t understand the commentators’ point last weekend that the Giants should rest their best players this weekend now that they’re in the playoffs, rather than trying to stop New England from going 16-0. Bollocks! The psychological lift of NYG knocking off New England would be a tremendous for them going into the second season, especially now that’s going to be nationally simulcast on NBC and CBS.
That said, if the Patriots lose to Jacksonville (the best shot of the streak ending, I think), the Colts or an NFC team in the Super Bowl, then going 17-1 or 18-1 will be just a footnote in an ultimately disappointing season.

BTW, Scott, I saved one of your questions because it ties into some questions from Anthony that I’ll answer NEXT time.

ROG