Answering Anything! (Yet again)

Continuing with my answers to questions asked in Ask Me Anything! 2009, I have a set of queries posed by Dave in Rocha, one of the occasional posters at BfloBlog.com, Buffalo's premier sports blog.

Do you buy into the concept of Tor-Buf-Chester? Do you think it can ever be a viable, marketable entity due to the fact that it crosses an international border? Are there other cross-border metro regions like this?

A bit of explanation: there's a pundit out there named Richard Florida who has posited a notion that economic activity in the next, oh, hundred years or so and maybe beyond will be driven less by individual cities than by larger groups of cities -- megalopolises, if you will. This isn't a new concept, certainly; most people are, I assume, aware of the economic activity driven by the Boston-NYC-Philadelphia corridor in the Northeast, or the San Diego-LA-San Francisco corridor in the west. Florida also noted that Buffalo could itself be located in such a corridor, which he dubbed "Tor-Buf-Chester", linking Toronto, Buffalo, and Rochester together into one larger economic entity.

So, do I buy into the concept? I do, with certain caveats. The biggest caveats are these: the region crosses an international border, and a big chunk of it lies in New York State, which is not a place that is particularly geared toward making economic activity easier. But I can see an era emerging in which Buffalo, and Rochester by extension, reap the benefits of proximity to Canada's largest city and also its richest economic region, the "Golden Horseshoe" that extends from Niagara Falls all the way around the western end of Lake Ontario to Toronto, including St. Catherines and Hamilton. (In fact, Hamilton is itself a large city, so maybe the region should be named "Tor-Ham-Buff-Chester". And really, why not include Syracuse as well? "Tor-Ham-Buff-Chester-Cuse" probably doesn't roll of the tongue, but then, "Tor-Buf-Chester" sounds goofy as well.)

I've long believed that all the window-dressing Buffalo tries to do with regard to its image is just that: window dressing. Only the revival of Buffalo as an economic engine is going to really turn things around here, and there are a number of reasons -- some local, some located in Albany -- why that is currently unlikely to happen. Enacting policies that make a "Tor-Buf-Chester" type of entity a reality can only help, but as it stands right now, I don't think there's a whole lot of there there for people who want to talk about Tor-Buf-Chester as it is, right now.

Can you define the equation for the radiant exitance (aka emission) of a blackbody radiator as a function of wavelength? How, other than by taking the derivative, can you calculate the maximum point on that curve?

This question is in two parts, and so is my answer: "Yes", and "By using math".

Who is your favorite current Sabre?

Talking about "my favorite current Sabre" isn't likely to be all that illuminating, because when it comes to hockey, I'm like that girl down at the local bar on game nights. You know, that girl. She's the one who has never paid one single moment of attention to the sport that's on the teevee right now until she started dating the guy she's with right now, who happens to be a big fan of the sport on the teevee right now. She's the girl newly dating the New York Yankees fan who declares herself a huge A-Rod fan because A-Rod's kinda cute but can't actually name the position he plays, cite his current batting average or home run total, or pick him out on the field. She's the one who will nurse her drink all throughout the game and ask "When does A-Rod hit again?" when he's already on base after his last at-bat. You know, that girl.

I may sound like I'm making fun, but I'm really not. When it comes to hockey, I'm that girl. Seriously. I don't know much more about hockey than "Shoot the puck into the net." I don't know what "icing" is. I don't know a forward from a defenseman. When it comes to the Sabres, I know when they're winning and when they're losing, and that's about it. Put it this way: back in the 1990s, when the NHL was actually on teevee on a real network, that network -- whichever one it was -- thought it would help new hockey viewers to superimpose a blue dot over the puck, wherever it was, and then when the puck was shot, superimpose a red laser streak thing, theoretically to help solve the problem that on teevee, it's hard to see the puck unless you're an experienced hockey watcher and can thus infer the puck's location just by taking in what the players are doing. Well, I was the viewer helped out by the blue dot over the puck.

So yeah, me identifying my favorite Sabre doesn't mean much. But for the record, it's Ryan Miller, just because of that funny ad he did last year.

When will then be now?

It already was. You missed it.

There's only one question left, which will come...soon. Heh!

Providing Answers!

More answers to questions asked as part of Ask Me Anything! 2009. Roger's other queries are below:

What would fix the image of Buffalo?

Seeing as how national media and national discourse is so driven by narrative, and seeing as how Buffalo's place in the national narrative is that of the perennial sad sack, I think that the only thing that's really going to ever "fix" the image of this city is a major economic turnaround here. And when I say "major", I don't just mean "stopping the bleeding" or even "establishing consistent growth and an end to population decline". I think Buffalo's image only changes if this town becomes a boom town; then and only then will Buffalo be spoken of in terms that, say, Charlotte or Austin, TX are spoken of now.

Can this happen? I used to think it would; now I still think it could, although I'm doubtful it will because I just don't see anything ever leading to the kinds of changes that need to take place in New York's state government to make Buffalo and the rest of upstate move upward strongly as likely to happen. It's just the way things are. And that's the most frustrating thing: there's no unrepealable Law of Nature that says that Buffalo has to stay the poor Rust Belt doomtown forever, just as there was no unrepealable Law of Nature that said that Buffalo of 1900 had to stay the technological boomtown of the US forever.

It can happen. There are things that I think would help it to happen. (A significantly more business-friendly attitude in New York State, more freedom in cross-border business with Canada, infrastructure improvements to take advantage of Buffalo's location, et cetera.) I'm not banking on any of these things actually happening. Oh well.

Loss of sight or loss of hearing: which would be worse?

Loss of hearing. No question about it. I could figure out how to live a fine literary life if blind. It would be hard, but I'd figure out how to read.

But no more music? I want no part of that.

If the performer came to Buffalo, who would you, without real regard to cost, definitely see?

I'm taking this to mean, "Assume that you can get tickets affordably, no matter who it is." Hmmmmm. If Howard Shore ever comes by to conduct the BPO in any of his various Lord of the Rings concerts, I'd be there in a heartbeat.

What is the definition of taterti, the WV for today?

For those who may not understand, "WV" stands for "word verification", the string of characters you type into Blogger's comment box to show that you're a person and not a spambot. On Blogger these used to be literally strings of random characters, but lately they seem like actual words, or sometimes by luck turn out to be actual words, leading to a kinda-sorta blog game where people give definitions to the fake WV words. OK? OK!

Anyway, Roger's WV at the time he left this comment was "Taterti". This is an Italian word that means "potato-ish". This word doesn't get much use in Italian, but it is sporadically used in musical scores, when the composer wishes the low brass to produce a sound that resembles that of a potato farmer lumbering through the potato patch. Notable works that include such a direction are Brahms's Symphony No. 5 in B Sharp Minor, Franck's Quadruple Concerto and Requiem Mass, and Leroy Anderson's Elegy for the Death of the Spider in my Bathroom.

More answers to come!

Answers!!!

Finally getting back to the questions of Ask Me Anything! 2009, here are a few answers.

First up, reader and frequent commenter (especially when I give voice to my Inner Liberal!) DaveS asks:

As a movie guy Did you Like Siskel & Ebert? Which one did you prefer?

I loved Siskel and Ebert. Loved 'em. During the 90s, they were usually on where we lived on Sundays at 10:00 or maybe it was 11:00; I watched faithfully. Their main corporate sponsor at the time was, appropriately enough, Orville Reddenbacher Popcorn. As entertaining as it was to listen to them disagree, I got more out of it when they agreed on movies, because that almost always meant that it meant something good. I honestly don't recall ever seeing a movie that got "Two Thumbs Up!" that I personally didn't like. I also loved how they didn't just constrain themselves to the newest blockbusters and major releases; they'd frontload the show with those sorts of films, but toward the end they'd discuss the smaller films, the documentaries, the indie films, the foreign films, and that sort of thing. The show, for just its half hour a week, was never just about how good the newest Schwarzenegger flick was.

There was never anything cynical in the approach Siskel and Ebert took; each man showed a fierce love of film that always shone through, even when they disagreed. I recall one argument the two men had once that led to Ebert saying to Siskel, "I don't think you wanted to like the movie", to which a shocked Siskel replied, "How can you say that? I love to like movies!" Lots of critics write with a tone that implies that they are genuinely surprised every time they like a movie; Siskel and Ebert never seemed that way.

As to which man I liked more, I'd probably have to say Ebert, although that's not so much based on the show as the fact that Ebert has had significantly greater visibility over the years, between his prolific writings on film and the fact that Ebert is still alive. I honestly don't recall reading much of Siskel's work, so I have no idea what kind of writer he was. But he and Ebert had a wonderful chemistry that has obviously not been duplicated since, even if Ebert had a decent partnership with Richard Roeper.

There seems to be a consensus that Ebert's writing has improved substantially since his bouts with cancer rendered him unable to speak. I'm not sure if it has; Ebert's always been a fine writer. More likely the attention has been focused more on his writing, now that that is his only real avenue for expression.

But yeah: I liked Siskel and Ebert a great deal.

More answers to come!

Continuing my answers to questions posed in this year's edition of Ask Me Anything!, we have a set of queries from Mark.

1. Do you suppose that Trekkies will be further degraded or taken more seriously from now on because of this incident?

The incident in question is a robbery that took place in Colorado Springs, where someone held up a convenience store using a bat'leth as their weapon. And what, non-Trek fans, is a "bat'leth"? It's a Klingon double-bladed sword, like this:



Well, I suppose Trekkies (or Trekkers) can never really make up ground, even as comic book fare becomes more and more mainstream. But this will certainly help the bat'leth to be taken more seriously, won't it! I wouldn't mess with someone toting one of those around. Unless I had a phaser on me. Or a lightsaber. (Sorry to mix my franchises.)

2. Should the NFL expand to 40 teams in our lifetime? Will it?

It shouldn't, and I greatly doubt that it will, unless it starts going "International", and even then, some logistical problems would be created. If there were teams in Europe, those teams would probably have structural advantages owing to constantly facing teams with jet lag, right? And I'm just not sure there are enough cities in the US or even Canada who are willing to stomach the costs that come with the operation of an NFL team. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm thinking – or maybe hoping - that the current economic disaster will forever crush the ability of NFL teams and their owners to basically strong-arm municipalities into building and maintaining stadiums. I think the whole thing has just become completely insane: erecting billion-dollar palaces for sporting events that take place about a dozen times a year? The whole thing is just ludicrous.

The other argument against continual NFL expansion is that the talent pool for the teams would continue to become shallower and shallower. There are currently 32 teams in the NFL; the addition of another eight teams would add 424 players to the league, just on the active rosters. Are there really 424 players currently in the college ranks who are of NFL calibre? I doubt this.

I think the NFL is, frankly, big enough.

3. Have you listened to the Storied Northwest on iTunes yet?

No. I don't even have iTunes. But I'll look into them, in some way!

We'll do more answers...sometime soon!

Answering Anything!

More Ask Me Anything! 2009 answers ahead! Beware!

A reader dropped into my December 2008 post on working at Pizza Hut, and asks why the one that closed in Olean, the one near Wal-Mart, stopped its delivery business in the mid-90s. He wonders if this was because of prank orders placed by students at nearby St. Bonaventure University, but my recollection is that there weren't too many prank orders. In fact, we didn't get pranked too much at either location. There was one kid who would, for a while, faithfully call the other Pizza Hut in Olean, the one where I worked the bulk of my PH tenure, once every other week or so with an order for fifteen large pepperoni pizzas. I just played along, gave him a price, told him we'd be there in 45 minutes or whatever, and then delete the order and ignore the whole thing. Nobody ever called to complain, so I know I wasn't scotching a real order; I wonder if that kid really thought there was a PH driver wandering around town with his fifteen pizzas sent to a fake address. But who cared, really.

Another funny delivery story: I had a woman call once to order pizzas for the nurses at some department in Olean General Hospital. She made it sound like she was sending them pizza to thank them for their treatment of her, but I'm not so sure, because she was very insistent on the toppings: two larges, topped with black olives and achovies. I didn't know what to make of that, but her credit card payment went through, so we went with it.

We also had lots of entertaining discussions (read: annoying discussions) with customers who refused to understand the difference between the city limits that denoted the boundary of where we would deliver and the town limits. The refrain was automatic, every time: "My mail comes to Olean, NY! How can you tell me you won't deliver to me!" "Because you don't live within the city limits, sir." "But my mail comes to Olean, NY!" Lather, rinse, repeat.

But anyway, back to the original query. Delivery was stopped at the other Olean location (commonly called the Allegany location, even though it was located within the Olean town limits but not the Olean city limits – there we go again!) not because of prank orders but because there just weren't enough orders on a consistent basis to make delivery worth the effort. Now, it's hard for me to recall, since it's nearly fifteen years since I worked there and since even when I was there, it was just as a cook so I wasn't paying attention to numbers, but I do recall entire weekday evenings passing by where we might get two or three delivery orders total. That wasn't nearly enough delivery business to justify having those extra employees around. As far as St. Bonaventure went, orders for delivery to SBU constituted a small portion of our already-small delivery business. Our deliveries went more to the Village of Allegany than the University, by a significant margin. SBU was just not a business driver for that PH location.

Why was this? I don't know. I suspect that first of all, PH's prices tend to be higher than most college students are probably willing to pay for pizza. Second, in terms of location, that PH was farther from campus than a number of other local pizza joints, as well as the local Domino's outlet. More SBU students probably got pizza either from Domino's (which is literally across the street from SBU) or from the two or three pizza joints in the village of Allegany, which is where all the bars are. There weren't any bars near PH, so it wasn't really possible to include PH in one's plans if said plans involved college-student levels of drinking.

One night I very much remember was a night when our main delivery driver came bursting in from one of his delivery runs to inform us that OJ Simpson was on the run in a white Bronco, and the cops were chasing him on the LA freeways. He kept coming back with updates every time he went out with another run. That was pretty hilarious.

On the general subject of Olean and pizza, I always felt like something of an outsider because I never much liked either of the two beloved Olean pizza joints: Tasta Pizza and Renna's Pizza. Renna's is basically a local version of Sbarro, and Tasta was, as I recall, terribly lame. Their pizza was square (no big deal) but the pepperoni pizza came with one slice of pepperoni per slice. A slice of pepperoni pizza there was basically a square of cheese pizza with a single pepperoni slice in the exact middle. I don't know if that's still how they do it, but wow, was that lame. Our preferred pizza there was a place called A&J's.

In an odd postscript to all this, it turns out that now both Pizza Huts in Olean are now closed. After the Allegany one closed due to poor business, apparently an electrical fire did sufficient damage to the other one, the larger one I worked at for three-and-a-half years, to force its closing. I have not seen any indication that it has re-opened, so I assume it's still sitting there. Now, I have no real insight here, but I do recall that PH had a tendency to do things, shall we say, "on the cheap", so it wouldn't surprise me one whit if that fire was seen by the local PH brass as a blessing in disguise: another opportunity to save money by shuttering a location. This is just pure speculation on my part, mind you.

More answers!

Continuing to work through the queries that came in for Ask Me Anything! 2009, I figure I should handle this, from Roger:

What would fix the Buffalo Bills?

(Warning: boring football post ahead.)

OK. How to fix the Bills? Well, they have GOT to do something about their receiving corps! How many years of lackluster talent at receiver do we need to watch? How many years of Lee Evans and nobody else? WHAT does it TAKE to get an actual GOOD RECEIVER in Buffalo! Yeah, never mind that. Sorry. More on TO in a moment.

But in general, the "fix" here is simple, really, but like all simple answers, it's apparently very hard to do, because only a handful of teams have actually managed to do it lately. (Those teams are Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, New England, and the Giants.) The answer is to put in place a good football operation. What this means is (a) instituting a policy of primarily building through the draft, and (b) identifying good talent to be taken in the draft. The Bills, to their credit, over the last couple of years have done (a). They've been rather less successful at (b). The Bills don't do what the Redskins do -- toss money at every conceivable free agent who comes along because they're new and shiny and boy does Daniel Snyder like the shiny -- but while they focus heavily on the draft, they're not particularly good at identifying the talent they should be picking, and in addition to picking questionable talent, they also make picks that are contrary to what they probably should be picking, and to add insult to injury, they often make bizarre decisions about the very process of picking the wrong talent in the first place.

A good example came in Marv Levy's first draft as GM, back in 2006. The Bills had the eighth pick overall, and somehow, the draft's biggest name, quarterback Matt Leinart, was still on the board. The Bills didn't want Leinart, thinking at the time that they still had a good prospect in JP Losman, so they picked safety Donte Whitner instead. However, everybody under the sun knew that Whitner had originally been unlikely to be picked anywhere before the middle of the first round, so if the Bills really wanted him, they could have very likely traded down in that round with some team that wanted a shot at Leinart, grabbed an extra pick in the process, and almost certainly still have been able to get Whitner. Instead of doing that, they took Whitner at number eight, and then, instead of reaping the benefit of an extra pick to grab a couple of quality guys in the second round, they traded up to get back into the first round and grab a defensive lineman, John McCargo, who wasn't on anybody's list of top lineman prospects and who as yet has not come close to living up to his potential. In fact, the Bills tried trading McCargo away last year, only to have the trade nullified when McCargo failed a physical with his almost-new team.

That kind of thing happens to the Bills all the time. They are never able to identify guys who will develop into top-flight NFL playmakers, so the team is basically in a position where they're not without talent -- if they were, they wouldn't be 7-9 every year -- but where they're not able to really produce, either. The Bills are exclusively comprised of decent guys who work hard, but nobody who can really step it up and make some really impressive things happen on the field. Now, there are some younger guys who maybe are going to become those kinds of players and just aren't there yet -- Marshawn Lynch, Trent Edwards among them. But if you're a defensive coordinator facing the Bills, you know that all you basically need to do is double-team Lee Evans and play the other receivers as you normally would, and you've pretty much handcuffed the Bills' passing game. Likewise, if you're an offensive coordinator facing the Bills, you know you're not facing a "paper tiger" of a defense, but there's still nobody on defense whom you must have taken into account on every snap of the ball. All the really good teams, the ones that got good and have stayed good for a long time, have figured out how to find guys like that. The Bills haven't.

The Pittsburghs and New Englands of the world don't go out and sign everybody they can to big contracts; they develop new guys and plug in occasional free agents when they need to. (Now, I'm not sure that New England is doing quite as good a job at developing new talent as Pittsburgh is, which is one reason I believe New England's days as one the NFL's elite teams are closer to ending than most.) The Bills try to do this, but they do it wrong: instead of drafting offensive linemen every year and developing them, the Bills rarely draft OL's, instead signing free agents who then turn out to not be that good. (Derrick Dockery? Really?) One of the most damning facts about Bills' personnel management over the last ten years is the fact that when former GM Tom Donahoe was fired, the Bills' starting offensive line didn't feature a single player who had been drafted by the Bills. (At that time, Jason Peters was merely a prospect, and he'd been a free agent signee and not even drafted.) I had hoped that would end under Levy, but so far, no dice: few OLs drafted, and the one who was, Duke Preston, played center last year and has now been possibly replaced by a new free agent signee.

I have my issues with the Bills' coaching staff, but as long as the on-field talent is picked by guys who aren't really solid football guys, it won't matter.

Now. Terrell Owens.

I was shocked that the Bills signed him. Stunned. But not for the normal reasons. I've never understood the TO hate that's out there. Sure, he's a prima donna and can be a pain in the arse; at times he can be a downright distraction. But the stuff he does frankly always strikes me as "small potatoes" in a world where Pacman Jones can still have an NFL career and where you know somebody's going to give Mike Vick a training camp invite. And it can't be denied that where TO goes, better numbers in the win column follow. The 49ers were good with him; they've been crap since he left. (Not that he's the only factor there, but the correspondence can't be denied.) The Eagles lost the NFC title game three years in a row, and then they signed TO and reached the Super Bowl, which they might well have won if not for some sloppy play by Donovan McNabb and some weird coaching decisions by Andy Reid. Dallas got quite a lot better when TO arrived, and I wouldn't blame him for all the drama that's happened down there; Jerry Jones is quite good at creating drama all by himself. Remember the Cowboy dynasty teams of the 1990s? That was not a happy locker room, by any means, and it was only the fact that that was probably the most talented roster in the last fifteen years that made that team what it was, and it's been dramatic in Dallas ever since. Yes, TO brought in some extra baggage, but so what?

In terms of TO's ego, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Bills fans think -- not without justification -- that this team actually could use an infusion of good old football arrogance. He's not exactly moving into a situation where there are already a lot of high-octane personalities ready to clash with him. The Bills are a laid-back bunch -- too laid back, I suspect a lot of people might say. Why would TO sign here, instead of with someone closer to winning? Who knows -- but maybe he saw the atmosphere in that infamous Monday night game in 2007, when the Bills dominated the Cowboys all night only to blow the game in the final seconds in one of the most heart-breaking defeats in team history, and maybe TO said to himself at one point, "Wow, these people love their team in a way I haven't seen too much." Maybe. I'm no mind-reader, obviously, but I very much doubt the Bills were the only team interested in TO.

And besides, TO will help on the field. Teams won't be able to basically have their defensive gameplan against the Bills' passing game consist of nothing but "Double team Lee Evans", knowing that aside from Josh Reed, the other receivers on this team aren't going to do anything. He'll draw some attention and open things up for other players. Hopefully, his presence here, however long it lasts, helps last year's second-round pick, James Hardy, to learn the NFL ropes faster than he's been already. Hopefully he helps open up the running game a bit, since teams will actually have to respect the Bills as a passing threat more. I think he is very likely a good addition to the team, and if he does turn out to be a massive pain in the arse, he's only sitting on a one-year deal, so it's not like the Bills are wedded to him forever. If they like what he does here, they can re-sign him to another one-year deal next year. If not, they can say, "Thanks, we'll take it from here." This was, as far as I can see, the first genuinely shrewd personnel move the Bills have made since they brought in Drew Bledsoe in 2002. (Just because that move didn't work out for various reasons doesn't mean it was a bad move. That move didn't work out basically because the Bills made that their only move.)

What interests me is the resurgence since TO's signing of the new favorite word in Buffalo regarding the Bills: relevance. It's what everybody is saying: signing TO makes the Bills "relevant". I've never been terribly sure what "relevant" means; it seems to mean "winning", but it's more than that. It's the idea that the Bills generally aren't taken terribly seriously in the NFL these days. You play them, and you need to play well otherwise they might beat you, but they're not going to the playoffs anyway. You know you won't find yourself in a bidding war against the Bills for some player or coach because the Bills won't spend big on coaches and they will spend on players but not huge money and they won't go after the big names either, preferring to wait a few weeks into free agency and grab some guys who have been sitting out there teamless for a bit. That's "not being relevant", I suppose.

But it's more than that. It's not the Buffalo Bills franchise that's seen as not relevant; I think a lot of people around here fear that the NFL sees the entire Buffalo Bills fan base, the market here, as not being relevant. And if we're not relevant, then it will be that much easier for the NFL to let the team move when Ralph Wilson dies and the team is sold. This kind of move makes the Bills relevant again. This kind of move makes Buffalo a place that should be taken seriously, when it comes to talking about football.

Bills fans crave their team being a team that is actually talked about in football circles. Well, having TO on your team will certainly get you talked about, won't it?

More answers to follow!

Ask Me Anything! Answers, part one

It's time to start answering the questions from this year's iteration of Ask Me Anything! So here we go. (I'm not answering these in the order they were posed, by the way.)

First, Neddie Jingo throws this at me:

"'Who is Spain?' 'Why is Hitler?' 'Hi-ho beri-beri!' and 'Balls!' rang out in quick succession."

Ummm...moving on, then.

I had to Google this, and it turns out to come from Joseph Heller's Catch 22, which I have not read. Now I obviously have to read it. Curse you, Neddie Jingo! Stumped on my very first query.

Next up, Roger (who is, every year, consistently the best asker of questions for this feature), poses this:

From your vantage point, what do you think of the new senator Gillibrand and the process that selected her?

I don't have much opinion at all on Senator Gillibrand specifically. For those who haven't been paying attention (and why would you), Kirsten Gillibrand is the current junior Senator from New York, having been appointed to that post from the House of Representatives by Governor David Patterson, after that Senate seat was vacated by Hillary Clinton when she became Secretary of State. I don't know a whole lot about her political views; having just looked her up on Wikipedia, she seems generally around where I stand on a lot of things, and a bit far from me on others – no way I'd support George Bush's tax cuts, for example. She's apparently very strong on gun ownership rights; I generally don't have strong views on guns aside from my own personal dislike of them. So, Gillibrand seems vaguely acceptable to me. I'd have to get more familiar with her as a Senator, which will probably happen now that she represents me. I'd never heard of her before her Senate appointment.

As for the process: I was baffled by the whole Caroline Kennedy thing. That whole business just seemed weird from the get-go; Kennedy has never, to my knowledge, shown a whole lot of interest in being in electoral politics herself, and maybe she was influenced for a time by the availability of a seat and the fact that her uncle, Edward M. Kennedy, is clearly nearing the end of his days. I have no problem with her running for the seat, if she wants, but the flirtation-and-withdrawal seemed strange to me. And in general, I don't like that Governors in many states can directly appoint Senators in the event of a vacancy. Special elections should be the rule, for many reasons.

(I'm not enamored of David Patterson as governor, by the way.)

Roger also asks: who would you "go gay" for?

Ummmm...nobody. Certainly not Viggo Mortensen or Karl Urban from Lord of the Rings. And definitely not Daniel Craig as James Bond. And Ewan MacGregor as Obi Wan Kenobi? Never!!!

OK, I think that's a weird enough note to end on for the first set of answers. Hoo boy!

Final extension on Ask Me Anything! (Seriously, this time!)

I know, I've made the "final" extension announcement several times already, but I figure, what's one more? What I'll do is run it right up to the end of this month, and then start answering the questions next month, which starts on Saturday. Or Sunday. Whatever. One of those is the first, so next week, I'll start answering.

So, go ahead, folks, Ask Me Anything! Just put queries in comments to this post. (This is just so they're all in one place. Easier for me to keep track that way; two years ago I had Ask Me Anything! queries all over, in comments to three or four different posts, which resulted in me missing several questions until a month later.) As always, anonymous questions are fine, just as long as they're not mean.

Ask Me Anything! (Final call)

I know, I said that last week sometime was to be the final call, but I figured I'd extend things one more time. So anyone wishing to toss a question or a suggestion for a posting topic, toss it in comments here. For lurkers, anonymous queries are fine, as long as they're not too invasive or require me to go beyond this blog's PG-13 rating. This is basically your opportunity to make me write about something, so go ahead!

Ask Me Anything!

It's February, the shortest month, otherwise known as Anniversary Month here at Byzantium's Shores. And that means, among other things, the annual playing of the game Ask Me Anything!, in which you, the readers, get to, well, Ask Me Anything!. That's right, any question is fair game, and no question will go unanswered. Now, not all answers may be serious, but most will. Ask me something serious. Ask me something silly. Dare me to be different! Dare me to be unique!

I'm going to keep the Questioning period open until the 14th, so as to give myself enough time to get the answers done. I'll occasionally put up reminder posts, but all Questions should either be posted in comments on this post or e-mailed to me directly. So, start your engines, folks: Ask Me Anything!