Ask Roger Anything Archives - Page 13 of 24

Mixing it up: Ask Roger Anything

I will probably have to BUMP something I’ve already written for a date in favor of YOUR question.

Back in May, Eddie the Renaissance Geek wrote about trying to get ahead in the blogging game, especially when the WiFi goes out:

“Thankfully, I had several “silly season” posts already scheduled. I’ve started writing those as I think of them and scheduling several of them throughout each week, about a month ahead of time. That way, if something happens on this end, like an outage, you still get your dose of Eddie that makes you wonder why you keep coming back to this here blog.”

I replied: “You absolutely SHOULD post ahead. I went about 5 days not writing anything, but you wouldn’t know it.

I finished FOUR posts TODAY, but I may have no Internet access from Saturday-Wednesday. It’s particularly useful for occasions – anniversaries, holidays.”

Eddie responded: “My problem has always been that once I get the cushion built up, I slack off, instead of building on it. I am, however, working bit-by-bit on December posts, since that is the time of year when I tend to disappear from online life.”

The regular blog IS an art form. And because of this, the spontaneity of the blog sometimes gets lost. Which is where YOU come in. YOU get to Ask Roger Anything.

As always, you may ask me ANYTHING, ask for advice or opinions or philosophical musings. Not only I will answer, reasonably soon, generally within thirty days, but I will also probably have to BUMP something I’ve already written for a date in favor of YOUR question. Mixing it up: now THAT is exciting, in that 1) I have to figure out what to postpone and 2) it means I usually have NO idea what I posted that particular day until it goes live, and THEN see the typo I had missed when it was in draft form.

Your queries I will answer, to the best of my ability/memory/flashback honestly, though the mind is a sometimes thing. A little obfuscation on my part IS allowed!

You can leave your comments below. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s fine; you should e-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or end me an IM on Facebook (make sure it’s THIS Roger Green, the one with the duck) and note that you want to remain unmentioned; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to be cited.

College, and a LOT of politics (ARA)

Do I say to him what he ought to do in order to try to save the relationship OR assume those facts to be immutable. and advise him how to survive it better?

My friend Mary wrote:

Hi Roger- Re: “Ask Roger Anything” – I’m helping [my son] plan his courses for next semester, and so these questions come to mind: What was your very favorite course taken as an undergrad? Most useful later in life (for any reason)? One you struggled to get through but was worth it? Etcetera…

Favorite course: American Government and Politics, the intro course, which has also been quite useful for me as a librarian in ascertaining which federal department might have jurisdiction over different issues. Given his proclivity for politics – I follow his Facebook page – it might be a good fit.

I also liked a music intro course where I got a little music theory, composed some little ditties, and had a lot of fun.

Most useful later: intro to psychology, and logic. Understanding how the human mind works.

Struggled with, but was worth it: intro to anthropology, which I must confess was a struggle because it was at 8 a.m. Understanding where we as a species came from.

Struggled with, worth it as an exercise: intro to calculus. I was failing, going into the final, crammed for two days, passed the final. Looked at the book two weeks later but didn’t understand a thing.

In general, I believe a broad liberal arts education can serve one well, especially with someone as bright as your son clearly is.

A whole bunch of questions about our political election year

Best described in this parody: Finnish News Team Reports On U.S. Elections

The evil Amy from Sharp Little Pencil muses:

Why is Donald Drumpf? (That’s the whole question, hee hee hee)

After I started writing this, my friend Dan wrote The Presidential Distraction Examined, which touches on all the candidates, and which you should read. Or The rise of American authoritarianism. Heck, you answered your own question with Greedy Bastard.

We Americans have always been attracted to the carnival barker. We know that he’s probably giving us a bunch of hooey, but we’ll still spend the quarter to see the half-boy/half-alligator, or the bearded lady.

Drumpf is a master of self-promotion. The fact that his businesses, his brands are probably not as successful as he would have you believe is irrelevant. In a society where facts are at a premium, and celebrity is king – is Robert Downey Jr. moving to Albany? Er, no – a guy with an unconvincing combover of an unnatural color can be perceived as “genuine”, the fact that he contradicts himself regularly notwithstanding.

His birther attack on President Obama, I’ve come to see, was a trial run. Without a shred of evidence, Drumpf kept alive the notion that Obama was born in Nigeria. Or Indonesia.

Now he runs for President, and right out of the gate, he insults Mexican immigrants, and John McCain, and Muslims, and intelligent women. The punditry is SURE that his campaign will be over before it begins. But he gains support, not IN SPITE of those remarks, but BECAUSE of them. “He’s unfiltered! He’s not politically correct!”

And people watch. The ratings of the summer 2015 GOP debates were at least FOUR TIMES as large as the ones in 2011. As Les Moonves said about CBS News’ overabundant coverage of the man: “Who would’ve thought this circus would come to town?… It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah likened Moonves’ and the news media’s, attitude to that of a doctor who says, ‘I hate to see all these patients coming in with cancer, but I have to admit, it’s been really good for my practice.'”

Let me say a word in defense of political correctness. Saying whatever comes to mind is not the sign of maturity or bravery, but of the mindset of children, who used to say the darndest things to Art Linkletter on his daytime talk show many years ago. When grownups do the same things, they are often a$$@#^%! The fact that his speeches have been targeted to third- or fourth-graders intellect is, sadly, effective. Even when it’s crazy.

Maybe that comes from talking too much to himself. On Morning Joe (MSNBC), he said recently: “I know what I’m doing, and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people, and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are. But my primary consultant is myself.” To that end, here he is, consulting his campaign advisers.

And something else: none of his opponents are nearly as good as being contemptible as The Donald is. Marco Rubio started a riff suggesting the inferior size of Drumpf’s…er, genitalia. But Marco, not Donald, seemed the lesser person for this, as he admitted shortly before he dropped out of the race. The late-night comics had started referring to Rubio as Little Marco, just as the tycoon does.

Some ex-Jeb Bush operative said a Drumpf presidency would be like a chimp driving a tractor. Seems petty. Whereas The Donald is an EXCELLENT mudslinger.

One cannot underestimate, though, how much Americans HAVE been ripped off by the rich and powerful, the stuff that Bernie Sanders has been talking about. That anger and frustration are real, but Drumpf as the solution is surreal.

This, naturally, leads to Buffalo-area book scribe Jaquandor

Do you think Bernie Sanders would be an effective President, in terms of furthering a liberal agenda?

I chose to believe that, on the off chance Bernie Sanders gets elected – hey, he won the overseas vote – that his win would represent such a seminal shift in the body electoral that he would have actually a chance to enact some of his reforms. This would be especially true if some of those Senate seats in marginal states go to the Democrats.

And if he DOESN’T win, perhaps he’s started a movement that will prevail in 2020, when, presumably the country will, by then, realize that supporting a Nordic-style approach is not an act of altruism but of self-promotion.

Of course, I can only see this happening if, in addition to him making a miraculous comeback on the Democratic side against Hillary Clinton, that either 1) Drumpf gets the GOP nomination or 2) he is denied the nomination by some GOP machinations and goes third party.

BTW, I find it hysterical that the Republican establishment is now largely supporting Ted Cruz since they pretty much HATE Ted Cruz. Naturally, Cruz has called on US police to patrol Muslim neighborhoods in the wake of the Brussels attack.

You may have seen former GOP Presidential candidate Lindsey Graham say, less than a month ago, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” And now Graham is fundraising for Cruz.

It’s not that they’ve changed their minds about the obstructionist who is Rafael Cruz. Samantha Bee illustrates how unlikeable Ted Cruz really is—his whole life. It’s that the GOP establishment finds Drumpf the greater existential threat to the party, and perhaps the nation. Ruth Marcus, in the Washington Post back in December 2015, said that Drumpf was a better choice than Cruz because one could work with the former, but three months later, she changed her mind.

Both GOP candidates were criticized, though not by name, in this CBS Sunday Morning piece by a combat veteran this past week. “For too many Americans in 2016, war isn’t a dire act turned to once all other options have been exhausted. It’s a narcotic, a quick fix, something that happens in strange, faraway lands, where other people’s sons and daughters do violent things for country.”

The most eclectic Dustbury wonders:

What would be the one change you’d most like to see in the governance of the State of New York?

It appears that the sense of entitlement has brought forth all those indictments of our state legislators, including, in the last year or so, the Speaker of the Assembly AND the head of the State Senate, continues to run rampant.

Generally, I disdain term limits, because I believe philosophically the people should be able to elect who they want. But I also recognize that the state legislature gets to pick the gerrymandered boundaries of the state legislature.

I like the idea of a truly independent board that would redraw the lines every ten years, pretty much ignoring the previous boundaries, and primarily paying attention to finding the population balance, still with some consideration of neighborhoods, would be nice. I just don’t know what that looks like.

Coincidentally there will be a seminar this Friday at the Albany Law School, “Can a NYS Constitutional Convention Strengthen Government Ethics?”

“With so much talk about the erosion of integrity in government, can the problems with elected officials that so frequently dominate our headlines be fixed statutorily or are they more appropriately addressed through constitutional change? As November 2017 and a statewide referendum on whether or not to call a constitutional convention near, this and other questions will be increasingly on the minds of the voters. This forum will address these important issues.”

Jaquandor:

How is Andrew Cuomo doing, six years in?

He’s a strange egg. He’s been pushing the $15/hour minimum wage, and much of the literature shows him with his late father, the former governor Mario Cuomo. Mario, I liked; Andrew, not so much.

I remain convinced, with the fall of Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, both on corruption charges, that Andrew could be next. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.

It’s 2016’s first Ask Roger Anything

you may ask me ANYTHING, or ask for advice, or whatever you’d like

It probably because I’ve gone to the well too often with this, but the last time I did ask Roger Anything, I got a lackluster response. Which is to say, none whatsoever.

The drag of that was a struggle to keep generating content. I’d become increasingly dependent on your collective curiosity to engage in answering questions that I would otherwise not have considered. Or maybe I’m just a lazy blogger who thinks he can continue to blog 365 days a year (except 2008 and 2012, when it was 366).

Perhaps I should look more to reposting from previous years; Ken Levine and Mark Evanier have done so from time to time.

To remind the masses: you may ask me ANYTHING, or ask for advice, or whatever you’d like, and I will answer, reasonably soon, generally within thirty days. I will answer, to the best of my ability/memory/flashback honestly, though if I didn’t do a little obfuscation, what fun would that be?

You can leave your comments below. If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s OK; you should e-mail me at rogerogreen (AT) gmail (DOT) com, or end me an IM on Facebook (make sure it’s THIS Roger Green, the one with the duck) and note that you want to remain unmentioned; otherwise, I’ll assume you want to be cited.

Ask Roger Anything: the Ann Landers edition

Let me put on my Ann Landers wig.

Implicit in my requests that you Ask Roger Anything is the notion that it will help me, which undoubtedly is true.

But I was less than clear that this is ALSO an opportunity for you to get my opinion on topics that may be bothering YOU. After all, I’m on the Internet, and as such, am TOTALLY as qualified as any random stranger in solving your problems.

For those unfamiliar, Ann Landers was one of a pair of twin sisters, born on the 4th of July, 1918, who had competing advice columns, and for a long while, a bitter feud. When I was growing up in my hometown of Binghamton, NY, Ann was in the Sun-Bulletin, while Dear Abby/Abigail Van Buren was in the Evening Press, back in the day when there were thriving afternoon newspapers.

I preferred Ann because, particularly after her divorce in 1975, after 36 years of marriage, she seemed more understanding of the foibles of human existence. Dan Savage, the author of the relationship-and-sex advice column Savage Love, purchased her desk after her death.

Both the original columnists, Esther Pauline “Eppie” Lederer and Pauline Esther “Popo” Phillips, are deceased, though the Dear Abby column is continued by Pauline’s daughter Jeanne.

In any case, let me put on my Ann Landers wig, figuratively speaking. As always, if you ask it, I answer it. I get to obfuscate, but not to lie outright. You can ask your questions here or my email – rogerogreen(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or my Facebook (Roger Green, the one with the duck) or Twitter (ersie, the one with the duck). I’ll use your name UNLESS you indicate that I ought not.

The Right to Die and other topics

My mom was not the greatest cook, by her own admission.

More from Chris:

– what’s your take on right to die and why?

Literally, I could spend a week’s worth of posts on this topic. This is the very abbreviated version.

In 1998, I watched Dr. Jack Kevorkian make the case for assisted suicide for the terminally ill on 60 Minutes. “From 1990 to 1998, he claimed to have helped end the lives of some 130 willing subjects.” I thought he made a compelling case.

After he “videotaped himself injecting Thomas Youk, who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, with a dose of lethal drugs,” he ended up in jail and ended up serving eight years in prison. I’m convinced his gaunt look allowed the moniker Dr. Death to stick.

Meanwhile, there was that circus of the Terri Schiavo case (1998-2005), which I needn’t rehash, except to say that the grandstanding about protecting life from Jeb Bush and congressional Republicans I found repugnant because it was so clearly a quality of life issue, the nuance about which they clearly did not recognize. This 2015 TIME magazine article suggests that overreach has set the stage for the current right-to-die movement.

But I had been thinking about this for decades. Long before health care proxies became the norm, I had a pact with a friend of mine in college. We agreed that if either of us were seriously injured so that the quality of life had been severely diminished, the other would sneak into the hospital, if necessary, and literally pull the plug. Glad we never had to test this out.

Of course, we make right-to-die decisions all the time these days, such as Do Not Resuscitate in hospitals, applicable when my mom died nearly five years ago. I thought the whole characterization of the Obamacare “death panels” was fascinating because surely, there ARE limits of what services any medical system can/will provide.

Guess I’ll pass on the my general philosophy of the American way of death and how it is related to mummification, and the afterlife, and the rational evolution towards cremation.

– do you ever carry on elaborate imagined conversations with people? If you do, has Facebook changed these conversations, like picturing posting something and the imagining the responses?

To the first point, sure, now and then. This is usually some wish fulfillment. I wish I had said THIS rather than THAT.

To the second, not at all. FB is such artifice to me. I can have a decent “conversation” now and then, but I find too often certain tropes that for me are conversation enders, involving the false comparable designed to change the topic, or the “that’s unimportant”, designed to do the same.

About 10% of the time, maybe more, I write responses, and then delete them before publishing. I’m just not as invested as I am with a REAL, face-to-face chat most of the time UNLESS it’s someone I know in real life, or have gotten to know well enough from their previous online interactions.

-if you could pick any writer living or dead to tell your story, who would it be?

James Michener, who would turn my life into the epic that it is in my mind.

– what do you consider the most creative time in your life, when you were the best at imagining things?

I could make the case for right now. I’m writing a blog post seven days a week. Three or four or five of them might be substantial. Moreover, I see the whole arc of the blog as somewhat creative. If I write X and you’re not interested, hey, maybe you’ll be interested in Y, which I’ll tackle tomorrow.

And blogging helps my thought process.

Other times: the second through sixth years of the current job, when I had to find ways to interact with SBDC state directors when they had to be sold on the efficacy of that. Or some period at FantaCo, not the first year and surely not the last, when I was editing magazines, doing the mail order, balancing the checkbook, and managing the staff.

– what simple device would improve your life that isn’t on the market?

All my thoughts and dreams going right to the computer in comprehensible English.

– what were your favorite meals when you were a kid?

My mom was not the greatest cook, by her own admission. So I don’t have this great pool of favorites. I liked Kraft macaroni and cheese, chicken cooked any number of ways, corn on the cob. We used to go out most Fridays and get fish from W.T. Grant’s department store; I remember liking that.

My father spent hours making spaghetti sauce, and so that was good. He also had the capacity to throw leftovers into some delicious concoction he called gouly-goup; only later did I realize he stole the name from goulash. He also made waffles with such panache that it was always enjoyable.

We had eggs a lot. Fried, scrambled, deviled, omelet. We all became competent making those.