Category: Lefty Brown

Left-handed QUESTIONS

Communist, ’cause I’m left-handed.
That’s the hand I use, well, never mind!-Paul Simon.

Anyway, my wife is left-handed, my sister Leslie, whose birthday is next week, is left-handed, and it may be surprising to find out that Lefty Brown, whose birthday is today, is not only political left-of-center and from the left coast of the US, but also left-handed, as well. Since it’s the middle of summer, and since he’s stolen questions from me, I thought I’d return the favor:

1. (From March 10, 2006): What was your favorite fast food happy meal or movie tie-in product growing up? Bonus points if you still have the product. Extra bonus points if you didn’t purchase said product on eBay.

2. (From April 7, 2006): Who are your top five favorite dead rock stars/icons?

3. (From April 21, 2006): If there is intelligent life on other planets, do you think they would have similar social structures (i.e. governments, houses of worship, entertainment)? As a follow-up what do you think a popular alien name would be?

BONUS QUESTION: Apparently, something significant is happening today in Harry Potter land. Were you staked out at the bookstore at midnight or do you say, Hairy who? From About.com: “Seriously, I read an article yesterday about this couple that will be leaving their wedding reception and going straight to the bookstore to get their copy of Harry Potter. Now, I’m no expert or anything, but I’m pretty sure that this is not what you’re supposed to be doing on your wedding night.”

Which reminds me: last Saturday, these two young women, probably of South Asian ancestry (based on looks, dress, and language) were walking down my street. One had a T-shirt on with a man making a clay pot. The shirt read – and I swear to Rudy this is true – Hari Potter.
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Bush colonoscopy leaves Cheney in charge for a couple hours today. Anything I could add would be too obvious.
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If Barry Bonds hits his record-setting* homers this week, it’d be interesting if he hit #755 in Milwaukee this weekend, where Hank Aaron started (with the Braves) and ended (with the Brewers) his career, then hit #756 sometime between Monday and Thursday in San Francisco against the Atlanta Braves, Aaron’s team when he hit #715, breaking Babe Ruth’s record. Incidentally, Hank Aaron hit #755 and last on July 20, 1975.

Can Transformers do THIS?


ROG

ROG

Nicknames

Here’s something very weird. My bud Lefty does a Friday Three Questions almost every week. One week, he asked, among other things:
Do you have a nickname people call you? If so, what is it? Is there a story behind it you’d like to share?

I warned him I was going to steal that question, so here it is.

I always liked the name Roger. It doesn’t easily lend itself to nicknames, as do names such as William (Bill, Billy, Willy, Will) or Robert (Bob, Bobby, Rob, Robby). I think that was part of my father’s motivation in naming me. I mean people call me Rog, and that’s fine, but other people have tried to inflict nicknames on me, and often, I have actively rejected them.

Just last week, my mother said that people used to call me Mr. Encyclopedia when I was a kid, because, over a number of years, I pretty much read the entire Encyclopedia Americana, PLUS the yearbooks, that were in our house. People asked me questions, and either I had the answer or would seek it out. (And yet it took me until I was 37 before I decided to go to library school; what was up with THAT?)

My grandmother used to call me Roggie, and I refused to answer that, because it sounded so juvenile. Yet later, when one of my co-workers called me Raji, it didn’t bother me so much, maybe because it sounded slightly Asian Indian, and therefore exotic.

Or maybe it was because it reminded me of the bookish Raj on “What’s Happening”. I RELATED to Raj. The eldest, responsible, bookish, glasses, the eldest child, pesky little sister (actually I had two – love you both).

When I was in junior high, we were really into using our middle names as our monikers. I was Owen, Baby, dubbed by Sid, which was not his middle name, but a truncation of his last name, but that was a short-lived period.

The summer of 1975, when I worked in Binghamton City Hall as a janitor, I cleaned the cells, picked up the trash in the detectives’ offices, washed windows, and buffed the floor. (Note: if you ever turn on a 1975 vintage buffer, be sure to start it in the middle of the floor, lest you poke a hole in the baseboard. I know this because…I heard about it?)
Well, I worked with two guys who were impressed that I could finish my work in five or six hours in an eight-hour day. Generally, I ended up either speaking to the police captain, who was a great guy (unlike some of his subordinates), or go hide somewhere and read a book. These two guys started calling me Flash, because they thought I was so fast. I wasn’t that fast; it was that they had the wonderful ability of taking a six-hour job and stretching into eight. I patently rejected this nickname, and act as though I had not even heard them if they called me by that name. (One of these guys was more “flashy” – the first man I ever met with two children by two different women, neither of whom he was married to.)

Oh, there have been other nicknames in matters of the heart, but I’ll pass on those here, thank you.

So here’s the weird part; Lefty’s piece was July 7, 2006. I must have started working on it, saved it with a 2007 date somehow, and only discovered it recently. Or I did publish it before, but can’t find it, which would make it a summer rerun.
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And here’s a year-old cryptic Note to Lefty: Don’t succumb. Do what Mr. T would do: pity the fool. And hope for the best.

ROG

I Used To Sell Funny Books?

I don’t know why, but I’m almost always surprised when my old life dealing with comic books crosses over to my new (OK, decade and a half) life as a librarian. Case in point, someone on a library listserv I monitor wrote [personal reference deleted]:

“I have a question about graphic novels. I bought my son (2nd grade) a graphic novel – Pokemon – and it says that it reads from back to front. That we understand. But how do we read on the page? Is it from right to left, starting on the right hand side of the page at the top right? Or top left? We do not understand. Thank you.”

I was going to write back and say, “It depends.” That’s true in American comic books with irregular panels. But a couple folks wrote back with better responses:

This is a pretty good example of how it reads (thanks to Tokyopop).

Some volumes are more difficult than others (when bubbles extend from one panel DOWN to another panel, for instance). But I’d think Pokemon is probably pretty standard and easy to follow as far as manga goes. This one is thanks to Viz.
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As one commentator asked, will we see Spider-Ham and Mickey Mouse together again?
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I haven’t been to a comic book show in YEARS, but I was thinking about going to this one in July.
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A belated happy anniversary to Lefty and Kelly Brown out in Ca-li-for-ni-a. From About.com: “10th Anniversary Traditional Gift: Tin or aluminum. The pliability of tin and aluminum is a symbol of how a successful marriage needs to be flexible and durable and how it can be bent without being broken.”
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Sorry for the terse post. My wife has been getting up at 4 a.m. almost all week, doing this end of the year student evaluation stuff, thus cutting into the blogging time. And they say teachers have it easy.

I thought I’d have one more chance this morning, but the daughter needed cuddling at 4 a.m. And that’s just fine.
ROG

ROG

VOTING Questions

I was reading in Newsweek a couple weeks ago about some (Republican) politician complaining about ex-cons voting. I don’t see the problem. I think the ex-cons SHOULD vote. Perhaps:
1) They’ll feel more a part of the society as engaged citizens.
2) They’ll be able to better suss out the crooks who actually get elected, the Duke Cunninghams, the Bob Neys.

If anything, I’d think we would like to get MORE people to vote. Are people afraid that a bunch of former felons will get together and take over the town? If so, they should get out and register (and vote) themselves.

(Greg noted this story about the White House pursing legal efforts to limit voter turnout. This is not just unjust, it’s pathetic.)

I also was interested in the recent French election. Apparently, the top two vote getters, Nicolas Sarkozy, who got 31% in the first round, and Ségolène Royal (26%), will be in a runoff, but the candidate who is reportedly most acceptable (or least unacceptable) to the widest number of people, François Bayrou, came in third (19%), so won’t be in the runoff.

So I’m wondering:

1) What restrictions, beyond making sure somebody is of age and actually lives in the district, should there be on voters? I’m against too many restridctions.

2) What can be done to engage more people in the political process? Would Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) or other alternate voting methodologies work? How about voting over several days and/or online?
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For free IRV? stickers send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: voteIRV.org, 26 Glen Street, Malden, MA 02148. Spread the word and make it stick: IRV; for a better democracy!
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Dennis Kucinich, member of Congress and Presidential candidate, has introduced Articles of Impeachment Against Vice-President Richard Cheney. Kindly, Kucinich waited until the the Veep’s blood clot was under control to reintroduce the measure.
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Bush v. Bush.
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Erin Davies makes the best of a bad situation, letting the world see and contemplate the hate speech scrawled on her vehicle. The initial act of vandalism was especially disturbing to me since it happened in my city (Albany), but Erin’s reframing is quite intriguing.
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What the rains of last week did to the basement of the David Sarnoff Library last week.
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Last, but certainly not least, send some love to Kelly and Lefty.

ROG

ROG

Be Selfish


Someone (I thought it was Lefty, but I could be wrong) wrote down his or her personal mission statement, as it were, about who that person is. I’m thinking something along the lines of the famous What I Believe by Steve Martin, or maybe My Conviction from the Broadway musical Hair, a statement of beliefs. And since my birthday passed last month, now’s a good a time as any for mine.

Be selfish.
If you can’t find a good reason to do good, find a selfish one.
Don’t lie, not because it’s morally wrong, but because it’s just too inconvenient to keep track of.
Shovel your walk, clean up your property, not because it’s the neighborly thing to do, but you don’t want a summons from the city or a lawsuit.
Give blood for the free cookies.
Be a courteous driver because, if you end up in an accident, the paperwork alone will negate the time you saved running the red light.
Let people off the bus before you get on, because there will then be more room for you.
Be selfish. For everyone’s sake.

I need more, but that’s a first pass.
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BTW, the picture was inspired by someone – OK, Lefty’s wife – who takes a word, puts it in Google, and posts the image; the word here, of course, is selfish. The picture came from here. I don’t get it, but it’s so interesting that I couldn’t resist.
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Lefty reviews my Mixed CD. I think he liked it, but I’m not sure.
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Tosy accepts my mild tag.
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Spatula Formula, Nik’s “ramblings of an American expatriate in New Zealand”, turns three. Happy blogiversary.
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Did I mention I’m seeing Sean Lennon tonight? A review, eventually.

ROG
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