robert.admin – Page 185 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 23, 2012

Pull the other one…

Car’s in the shop after being rammed. Thought I could be urbane and hip by riding in all four days when I wouldn’t have it, a show of reliance and such. Was at the intersection of 1792 and Orange, waiting the light on my way to work. It changed, I went onto the right pedal and suddenly pain shot through my leg. It felt like the ratlines of a ship giving way, right before the mast topples, a physical thrum. I remember making a “Yip” noise and wobbling across the intersection, which was suddenly a borderless realm of concrete. Thought […]

August 21, 2012

Fans from Hell (DOG EAR)

I’ve heard tell that one of the drives for Steven King’s novel Misery came from his reaction to fans stealing bat statues off the tops of his gateposts. I don’t know if it’s true, but it should be. We all dream of adoring fans popping up at opportune moments to gush about how great we are. I’ve had that happen exactly once (when a person at a train event, realizing who I was, went delightfully ga-ga about Fire and Bronze). Very, very nice. But what we don’t think about are the over-cooked fans, the ones who haunt us, pester us, […]

August 18, 2012

Embedded (Review)

I hate Embedded. I hate Dan Abnett. This is writer’s hate, you see. It happens when a writer reads a book that’s really, really good. I just sit here hating the book, the author, all while I’m really, really marveling at it. Think I’m alone? Hemingway felt that way… Gil: I would like you to read my novel and get your opinion. Ernest Hemingway: I hate it. Gil: You haven’t even read it yet. Ernest Hemingway: If it’s bad, I’ll hate it. If it’s good, then I’ll be envious and hate it even more. You don’t want the opinion of […]

August 14, 2012

Watership What? (DOG EAR)

Just had an eye-opening (and speech-busting) moment in my Dale Carnegie course this week. The speech was to be done with enthusiasm, addressing an earlier goal. Well, MY goal for this task was redoing my agency-pitch cover letter. See, I had the idea that I needed a cover letter for every occasion, an actual stable of them on hand, maintained and ready (see Augean stables). And it worked well. So now I had to report. Enthusiastically. About cover letters. Tricky. So I figured that, rather than describe the monotone tasks actually associated with this effort, I’d give them a slam-bang […]

August 12, 2012

Back in the Star Wars saddle

Last week the nieces asked if I’d like to role play again. We’d had a fun (but confusing) session (HERE) about a year ago. Everyone wanted to play again. While it wasn’t the usual weekly session I was used to, sure, I’d ref. From my side of the shield, the story was pretty twisted. The action took place on the Imperial space station Tarkin, a trade-routes-straddling drum that used centrifugal force to keep things glued down. The spaceport and slums were on the inside (deck three), the poor huddled beneath a vault of greasy smog, the outer deck for the […]

August 12, 2012

OpsLog – Longwood & Sweetwater – 8/12/2012

I was pretty beat – I’ve been going full bore all weekend. And now it was ops in a warn garage and I was waiting for my train to be built in Orlando Yard. The two kids running the yard (ordinarily competent on their own) were bickering and scuffling, both working counterpoint to each other. Three adults were waiting for trains to be built. I was out of patience. I walked in, tried to reason, got nowhere, and went edge-on – told them these trains and throttles weren’t their’s, that they needed to treat the layout with care and respect […]

August 9, 2012

The Odyssey (Review)

Odysseus’ household is in trouble, worse than an upside down mortgage. See, this King of Ithaca has been away in the Trojan war for nine years, then missing for another decade. Convinced that he is dead, a hundred suitors for his wife Penelope’s hand have flooded his hall, working through the larder like cockroaches, threatening his son Telemacus. They are insistent to wed Penelope (not for her beauty, which appears to have held up well into her mid-thirties (if not later), but for Odysseus’ riches). She’s already started one gambit, claiming that she needs to finish sewing a funeral pall […]

August 7, 2012

A copyright of passage (DOG EAR)

I told this story a while ago, but for those who came in late, here’s the short version. Was at a book club speaking about Early ReTyrement. The questions were fun; how come I was so clever? How come I was so smart? And then came the question: Isn’t Dion’s The Wanderer a copyrighted musical work? How my heart chilled at that. Was it? I didn’t know. You can see how I used it HERE – it’s rather a critical component of my first chapter, the moment that tells us that this is a time travel book and a humorous […]

August 7, 2012

The Riddle of the Sands (Review)

I‘d always wanted to read this book, the 1903 grandfather of the espionage genre. Found it at Slightly Foxed on Gloucester Road. So excited. Saved it for the perfect time, cracked it open, read it slow to savor it. It was undercooked. Look, I’ve read all sorts of books out of history, books hundreds of years old. I absolutely love everything H.G. Wells ever wrote. And the book starts off well, with lonely Carruthers kicking about London during the summer vacation month. He gets a strange invitation to help pilot a small yacht around the Baltic from a one-time friend, […]

August 5, 2012

Perdido Street Station (Review)

So you’re sitting around one night, poised in that indecisiveness readers occasionally flounder into. What next? Science Fiction? Steam Punk? Magic? Fantasy? Why not all of them, wrapped together in a plot which chafes so delightfully? China Miéville is a London author – it shows. His city of New Crobuzon is a sprawling, dangerous, vibrant, cruel place, a fun-house mirror image of London. Steam-technologies work. Magic (in a limited yet practical form) works. The city is a melting pot of story types and urban fears. Presumably New Crobuzon has a positive side, a side of decent people, quiet suburbs, theaters […]