Ask Roger Anything Archives - Page 2 of 23

Do I prefer spam or Ask Roger Anything?

“your electric company”

Why are they wasting my time? Since I have used my cellphone more frequently, the number of spam calls has exploded. The only reason it hasn’t been worse is that I don’t always carry it around when I’m at home.

Because I’m old, a LOT of these calls are from “Medicare” – yeah, right – or even more hilariously, “your electric company.” National Grid is never going to call me up and say that. Most are purportedly from my area code, 518, and many are marked Scam Likely.

Sometimes, when I miss a call, I dial the number. “The number you have dialed is almost always not in service.”

Email

Every damn politician, it seems, wants money. As an old poli sci major, I know cash can be the lifeblood of campaigns. But I’m annoyed to get an email solicitation from someone I never even heard of.

Here’s one from a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2024 that I received last month. “Roger, have you been getting my emails recently? If not, let me explain why I’m reaching out. My campaign has established an August fundraising goal of $12,000…”

I opt out of these things, but they’re too prolific. Obviously, they have sold my info to the next candidate. And by the way, it’s not just the Democrats. Because I get a lot of conservative publications, I get the pleas for money to save the country from the godless, baby-killing, left-wing Antifa anarchists.

What I prefer

I’d much rather be getting messages from people such as yourselves. You all can be the antidote for my spamola inundation. All you need to do is Ask Roger Anything. Anything at all, especially if you have a music theme, which I might use some Saturday.

And I will most likely answer to the best of my ability in the next 30 days. Please make your requests in the comments section of this post, email me at rogerogreen (AT) Gmail (DOT) com, or contact me on Facebook. Always look for the duck.

Unexpected stuff, plus ARA

Deep Throat

One of the vagueries of blogging involves unexpected stuff, like this image from NASA.

I received this email on May 28: “As you may know, our Community Guidelines describe the boundaries for what we allow– and don’t allow– on Blogger. Your post titled “Antoinette” was flagged to us for review. This post was put behind a warning for readers because it contains sensitive content; the post is visible at
http://rogerowengreen.blogspot.com/2005/06/antoinette.html. Your blog
readers must acknowledge the warning before being able to read the
post/blog.” We apply warning messages to posts that contain sensitive content.

“If you are interested in having the status reviewed, please update the content to adhere to Blogger’s Community Guidelines. Once the content is updated, you may republish it at [URL]. This will trigger a review of the post.” For more information, please review the following resources: Terms of Service: https://www.blogger.com/go/terms
Blogger Community Guidelines: https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy

Sincerely,The Blogger Team”

So I looked at the article, which was about the Tony Awards. I assume the offending part is: “My buddy Fred Hembeck has been extolling the wonderfulness of one Mark Evanier for some time, and Mark has a lot to say about the Tonys that I found interesting… He also writes about medical marijuana (6/6) and Deep Throat (6/3), topics covered recently on this page, and how the rich get richer, and the myth of the “death tax” (6/6), which I would have written about had I had something cogent to say.”

Could it be a passing reference to Deep Throat, which was not about the 1972 movie but about the guy who fed information to Woodward and Bernstein about Watergate?

Resolution

After musing about this for three days, I decided to submit the piece for approval, unaltered. The response?

“Hello.

We have re-evaluated the post titled “Antoinette” against Community
Guidelines https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy. Upon review, the post has been reinstated. You may access the post at
http://rogerowengreen.blogspot.com/2005/06/antoinette.html.

Sincerely,The Blogger Team”

At some level, the situation is comical. There’s no THERE there. And it did not prevent you from seeing a blog post I wrote EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO.

Conversely, I’m troubled by the kneejerk reaction of some anonymous person, or bot, who decided that something I wrote was salacious/pornographic without even understanding the context of Deep Throat. It’s the dumbing down of America.

Another matter: A guy wrote, “I’m working on cleaning my website, and I need your help in removing a link from your site. Your site is probably perfectly legitimate, but I’m just trying to eliminate as many links as possible.

Here’s the page on your site with the link: https://www.rogerogreen.com/2022/04/27/april-rambling-shadow-docket/

“Once you’ve removed the link(s), please send me a quick note so I can create a record of it. Thanks in advance! I hope to hear from you soon.”

This was one of my linkage posts, so sure. Whatever. It’s good to know my blog is “probably legitimate.”

I almost forgot: Ask Roger Anything!

The initial motivation for this post was to get you to Ask Roger Anything. I’m particularly looking for musically thematic pieces to write.

Now when I say Anything, maybe you should make sure that the questions don’t use the words ass (an animal) or bitch (an animal) or Uranus (a planet). God knows, I mean Allah knows, not that, I mean heaven knows SOMEONE will misconstrue my intent.

I’ll answer your questions in the next month or so. And I have received a few questions already. Please pose your questions in the blog’s comments section, email me at rogerogreen (AT) Gmail (DOT) com, or contact me on Facebook. Always look for the duck.

Lydia the Tattooed Lady

Marx Brothers

Kelly from the Buffalo area wrote:

I hope her birthday was wonderful. Here’s an “Ask Me Anything” question: When she was a kid, did you ever make her listen to “Lydia the Tattooed Lady”?

Of course, her birthday was terrific. She has such wonderful parents.

Before I answer that, I should remind you of a post from ten years ago about naming the child.

No name in the top 10 in the Social Security list of most popular names for the most recent year available.

No naming after any family member, living or dead. I want her to have her own identity.

No unisex names: Terry, Madison, Lynn, e.g., This comes directly from the fact that my father AND my sister were both named Leslie.

It had to have two or more syllables, to balance off the shortness of Green.

It should have a recognizable spelling.

No names beginning and ending with A.

Lots of rules

That post was based on a post I wrote in my first month of blogging in May 2005.

“So, Lydia, it was, named in part after a woman in Acts who was rich even to put up the apostle Paul and his cohorts. Only later, a friend pointed out that the church I attended as a child, Trinity A.M.E. Zion, was on the corner of Lydia and Oak and that I walked down Lydia Street every day on my way to school. Obviously, I knew this to be factually true, but never crossed my consciousness.”

Then I wrote: “The only downside to her name has been those streams of choruses from Marx Brothers’ fans of “Lydia the Tattooed Lady,” a song that had TOTALLY slipped my mind.

“So, even with RULES, tattoos happen. But so do encyclo-pidias.”

When she was days old, my friend Walter observed that song, and I groaned. All my rules and planning, yet that song slipped by me. It’s not that I would have necessarily changed the name, but the information would have factored into the thought process.

To the actual question I asked my daughter since I couldn’t remember. She said that I told her about it. I might have even shown her a video clip, probably in 2013, since someone’s comment prompted that post.

Birthday present for me: Ask Roger Anything

carrot cake

I know you’ve been working on your perfect birthday present for me. You’re going to Ask Roger Anything.

I received some physical items for natal day #70. My wife got me the book The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1: 1969-73 by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair. She has also promised me a new office chair because my current one has become very uncomfortable.

The Amazon card I got from a friend was used to purchase five Warren Zevon albums for under twenty bucks. There are several packages of CDs for the Doobie Brothers, Roberta Flack, Randy Newman, and others.

My daughter painted the item above shortly after she was home for spring break. Her mother is the carrot on the left, and she’s the one on the right. Of course. The word Birthday is not misspelled; since she gave it to me after my natal day, it says, “Happy birth – hey!”

I need something more interactive now, which is where y’all come in. I’m sure there are things you always wanted to ask of me, but you were too shy. Now’s your opportunity!

I doubt there are any questions that you can ask that I will not answer. You can try to stump me. Perhaps you want to know how I’ve changed in specific areas over decades. And I certainly have changed over time in ways that I might not have noticed until and unless you ask the questions.

I’ll answer your queries in the next month or so. Indeed, I already have gotten a couple of questions. But I want more, MORE! Please pose your questions in the blog’s comments section, email me at rogerogreen (AT) Gmail (DOT) com, or contact me on Facebook. Always look for the duck.

Stormy weather (Roger answers)

Preppers

stormy weather.Buffalo The first question for Ask Roger Anything , about stormy weather, comes from Kelly Sedinger.

The storm will be past by the time you answer this, but when you hear about storms like this, what’s your level of anxiety? I waffle between “WE got this” and “OMG, we are SO screwed.”

I should note that Kelly is from western New York, near Buffalo. His area experienced Snowvember, so notable – snow taller than Kelly, it appears – that a YouTuber came to town to document the aftermath.

But the storm just before Christmas sounded much worse: high winds, plummeting temperatures, plus considerable snow. Now I took it seriously. I put the garbage cans on the porch, with the heavier recycle bin keeping the trash can in place. My wife went out in the car around 3 pm to deposit a check but after ten minutes, and the temperature drops ten degrees Fahrenheit (more than two degrees Celsius), she gave up.

Still, the Albany experience, aside from the cold temperatures, c. 14F/-10C, was not bad. A little black ice; the hilltowns always fare worse around here.

The Buffalo area, conversely, had what was described as a Category Two hurricane but with snow instead of rain, with blizzard conditions that killed over two dozen people in Erie County, NY, alone.

And the bad weather wasn’t confined to that area. A member of our church choir and their spouse, trying to fly on Southwest Airlines, were stuck in the Denver airport for days. The water system in Jackson, MS failed AGAIN.

The answer to the question is: 1) yes, I take it seriously, but 2) it was far worse in much of the country than I would have anticipated.

Preppers

On 60 Minutes in early November 2022, there was a segment on What prepping looks like in 2022: Stocking up and skilling up for extreme catastrophes. While one apparently has to be on Paramount+ to access the video, the text is here.

It begins: “If you hear the term ‘survivalist’ and it conjures images of militants and conspiracy theorists— residing on the fringes and on compounds, armed to the teeth—well, it’s time to reset your doomsday clock.

“A worldwide community of preppers – those who stockpile goods and skill-up for extreme catastrophes – is girding less for the end of days, than for a disaster that calls for taking cover. A climate emergency, civil unrest, the possibility of a dirty bomb, to say nothing of a global pandemic that suddenly shuts down the world. It was COVID that turned abstract apocalyptic scenarios into a reality.”

The story did have us inventory what water and ready-to-eat foods we had on hand. Should we get a backup generator? The Buffalo blizzard reignited the conversation, as did the folks who shot at the power grid in North Carolina this autumn, shutting it down for days.

I’m not freaking out. I won’t become a survivalist tomorrow. BUT SHTF takes place with increasing frequency. So over time, I’m inclined to want to become more prepared for… whatever.