robert.admin – Page 155 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

June 19, 2014

Handful of Eclectic (DOG EAR)

‘m walking out of the building a few days ago, crossing the breezeway to the parking garage. Most of the yuppies are zombie-walking with their phones up in front of their eyes, living their blunt little lives with their foreshortened minds. Me, I’m taking in the sun and air, and I’ve got a handful of goodies the likes of which they couldn’t imagine. I’ll break from the description to note that there are writers out there who read nothing but the area of their speciality. You can tell it in historical novels where the source information lists pages of books. […]

June 15, 2014

The Days Work (partial review)

haven’t read any Kipling – probably because I am a product of the American education system (nowadays, this latest generation, I’d be surprised if they read anything). But I always wanted to have a taste and found this freebie on my favorite place to get ebooks, Project Gutenberg, so I pulled it down and had a look during my gap between books in the Bible. So this review only follows the first three stories (The Bridge Builders, A Walking Delegate, and The Ship That Found Itself). Overall? Meh. I’ll start with The Bridge Builders and you’ll see why I’m saying […]

June 14, 2014

OpsLog – FEC – 6/14/2014

hat’s four feet long, has dozens of lights and even more switches, and looks like the engineer station on a Russian bomber? Answer: The dispatcher panel for Ken Farnham’s Florida East Coast Railroad. Positions are always random (i.e. crew call is based on Ken’s whim) and today I got to be dispatcher. Haven’t run his massive CTC board for over a year (on the previous incarnation of the FEC, back when it was house-side). So today, I got the tag for the panel. Now, I know how these things work – I’ve run them before at the Silverstar club and […]

June 12, 2014

Sitting Pretty (DOG EAR)

t’s pretty tough to keep up the blogs I do. Not only do I need to write something about writing (DOG EAR), but then I have a weekly book review. Dog Ear is generally doable – I just catch whatever is passing through my mind, examine it during a walk and write about its angles. But for book reviews, I need a book. A week. Now, I’ve read literally thousands of books in my life. I’ve got them all over the house and boxes of them in the attic and the storage vault. However, about 95% if them I don’t […]

June 8, 2014

Murat (Celebrated Crimes) (Review)

his was an odd one, a short story from a series from Alexandre Dumas focused on Celebrated Crimes. I don’t know what the context of this was – unfair crimes against people? Crimes that took place and his detailed storytelling of them? Not sure. Anyway, for this one, we start high in the windswept expanse of the Gorge of Olliulles where a ragged traveler looks over the endless vista. It is June 18th, 1815, and on the other side of France Napoleon (that very day) is getting crushed at Waterloo. Two men ride up, marshals of France, and accost the […]

June 5, 2014

House of Cards (DOG EAR)

remember the rank, horrible smell of shitty writing way back when I was in my twenties, watching Blade Runner in the theater. Here’s a movie that focuses on man’s mortality, the close proximity to death, and just how fragile life really is. And in the end, when the point is made and we’re rocking back in our seats, it’s un-made with a stupid final scene with the hero and his girl driving off, explaining how nobody was really going to die, how everything would be happy, and how tomorrow was going to be a better day. Even then, I thought […]

June 1, 2014

Book of Daniel (Review)

hen I commented to some of my Christian friends that I might be willing to read some of the chapters of the Bible and comment about what I thought of them, they all, as one, blanched. I think they thought I was going to act like River Tam from Firefly, in that I’d tell the Shepherd his Bible was broken and write all over it, trying to decode it. No, I’m just reading it. So, at a friend’s suggestion, I started with Daniel (which is odd, since a workplace Bible studies group who invited me to attend because they were […]

May 29, 2014

Protecting one’s sources (DOG EAR)

his Dog Ear comes on the end of a bit of a dilemma. Had an interesting thing happen to me (maybe today, maybe a couple of days ago, and remember these blogs are posted well off the actual dates of occurrence). Anyway, the short of it – someone flirted with me, to the point of hitting me up. I won’t say I didn’t like it. She was just nice, about my age, and we had a lot of common. Turns out we had youthful shared experiences. So next thing I know, I getting that gentle touch as she made her […]

May 25, 2014

Louise de la Valliere (Review)

o we’re into the third book of the Ten Years After saga. We’ve seen the corruption of Louise in Court (a corruption that she, I have to say, willingly embraced – after all, it was her incessant babbling of how sexy the king was that brought his attentions around to focus on her). And then there’s Raoul, youthfully proud and making pretty much the same mistakes I, myself, made at that age. And through it all, the Musketeers (all advancing in age and power) flit about in the background (and occasionally get to make impacts to our story). Overall, I […]

May 22, 2014

Miss Understood (DOG EAR)

ne thing about writing – people can sure misunderstand what you say. Perhaps you didn’t word it correctly. Or perhaps the reader came to your piece with emotions clouding his reception. Who knows? It doesn’t matter what the reason is – just know that it happens. Recently, I wrote about a coworker playing a pretty good prank on me (HERE). It was really funny when I related it to my buddy Greg, laughing in recollection as I spooled it out. A little later, I decided to blog it up, describing it in terms of the interruption it caused to a […]