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November 2, 2014

Derailed (Review)

t was a casual selection, this book on Maya’s dollar rack. I like trains so the title caught me. Read the flap, thought meh, then decided at the last second to pick it up. Just a buck, right? After that, it sat on the bottom of the bedroom stack for long dusty months, occasionally unearthed, pondered, and meh, back it went. Finally, a couple of weeks back, I cracked the cover. And wow. Wow! Here’s the deal – poor Charles Schine rides the 8:43 into New York every day, bemoaning his stalled (and increasingly depressing) life. Then one day, he […]
October 30, 2014

Passion (DOG EAR)

o, I’m not making a reference to my series on erotica – that’s done for now. I’m just writing about, well, writing. And the passion of doing it. It used to be that I wrote every workday at lunch. It worked well for me, it cleared my head, it made me see angels (and devils). Going back to the cube was so much easier after working the magic of writing, of seeing things first that later readers would marvel and delight over (even if it was only erotica) was a head-kick. There is an angle on writing that is pure […]
October 26, 2014

OpsLog – FEC – 10/25/2014

itting in the lounge before the session, taking jobs handed out by Ken Farnham, host for today’s run of the Florida East Coast. 940, an out and back turn. Nothing hard, I figure. “Remember,” Ken tells me. “You need to be back in twenty-nine minutes. I did the switching part in forty moves.” Forty? Another guy chimes in. “Did it in twenty-seven, myself.” What have I gotten myself into? Turns out I’m heading out of the yard the moment the clock goes hot, a single FEC bluebox with four hoppers of limestone and a boxcar. Destination – The Rinker plant […]
October 26, 2014

Cat Crimes I (review)

t’s the mark of a true reader when, one day between books, you browse your shelves and find a hardback you simply cannot remember buying. So it was when I spotted Cat Crimes I,II,and III down below the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Yeah, it’s that sort of bookshelf. These three books evidently reflect individually released collections, now sealed up together in one big hardback. All involve crimes. All involve cats. Overall, I find most of them to be very diabolically clever. I guess the only ones I can’t really “let my hair down” for are the stories where cats […]
October 24, 2014

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/29/2014

‘ve always known this was going to happen. A model railroad operations host’s worst nightmare. Came into the club parking lot today and there were only a small number of cars. Yeah, not enough operators. The club has been going through changes, namely painting the floors which took things down for over a month. Now interest has cooled. And for whatever reasons, a lot of our solid operators skipped the session. So, I managed to fill out the locals (myself, a member who’d never done it before, and a visitor with balls). The through freights I gave to new members, […]
October 23, 2014

Ad copy (DOG EAR)

‘ll admit to being a fan of Game of Thrones (please, the book, not the TV show). Been reading my way through it and enjoying its scope and depth (if you want to see what I’ve thought of each book, check out my booklist HERE for reviews). But this is something I’ve never seen before. I’ve seen ads for goods based on movies (James Bond, etc). Usually it’s open. In fact, in the 50’s, it would be much more obvious (with “See the thrilling new movie from MGM, in Technicolor” on the bottom of the ad). But advertisement is more […]
October 19, 2014

Great World Religions – Hinduism (review)

‘ll admit a curiosity towards Hinduism. I work in a modern American corporation’s software division, meaning I’ve got a lot of Indian coworkers. They flooded the market a couple of tech-booms ago and now over half the team is Indian (as well as other races – at one point, there were only two old white guys left). I’ll also admit that my curiosity got me to explore the Indian lifestyle. My wife and I watch a lot of Indian movies (hey, nothing tells you more than the movies a culture likes). We’ve visisted a local temple and been invited into […]
October 16, 2014

Pure Gold (DOG EAR)

felt jilted by one of my purest pleasures, reading. As you read in last week’s DOG EAR, I had just suffered a ham-strung horror of self-published nonsense, a book by a person who didn’t understand classic noir or basic English. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to read anything soon afterwards. Like a jilted lover, I wasn’t ready to start dating again., Then I stuck my nose in an old yellowed western and my blood flowed again. I’ll review City of Widows soon enough. It’s a great book. Why? Because it has characters who were dusty and trashy and archetypical […]
October 14, 2014

ShowLog – Deland – 10/4/2014

y dad, a late-in-life Rio Grande Railroad fan, used to tell me about the railroad’s problems with the AT&SF. Back in the day, apparently both railroads wanted access to a strategic pass (not having the pass meant miles of tunnels and impossible grades). I think D&RG got into the pass first, and actually built a fort staffed with men of ill-repute to defend their right of way. Shots were fired and all that. Capitalism at its best. This was sorta what we faced when we showed up for set up at the Deland Train Show this morning at 7:00am. Turns […]
October 13, 2014

OpsLog – SP Coast Route – 10/12/2014

sually I want to relate something that happened to me, usually if I’m brilliant, but pratfalls are posted as well. I’ve mentioned my mail train surprise (my fault) and my caboose-in-the-face (not my fault). But here’s one for someone else. Paul Lator hosts the great Southern Pacific Coast Line, a fun railroad with CTC but really tight aisles. I’ve run over there for years and always had a great time. I can mention that I’ve watched people crash and burn here. Relevant to this story is the San Luis Obispo yard, where someone (I’m talking about you, Greg Wells) delayed […]