robert.admin – Page 223 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

May 20, 2012

God Bless America (Review)

Everyone remembers Deathwish, the suburban revenge-fantasy flick out of the last century where an angered father takes on street crime, doing that vigilante stuff that seemed so cool until the real world implications (i.e. Zimmermann/Martin) intruded. So much for escapism revenge fantasies. But now we have Deathwish for the new generation. God Bless America was assembled by Bobcat Goldthwait (yeah, that guy). Basically, its about middle-aged loser Frank, tuffed out of his job because he made a nice gesture of sending flowers to a receptionist (yet violated company policy in using her personal information (i.e. address) do do this nice […]

May 20, 2012

Echos of my speech

Saturday was the day of my speech at the local downtown library. I’ll admit that I’m a horrible speaker. That I hadn’t done a public speech since college and was not looking forward to this. But I took my speech and focused on it like it was a hard-punching chapter of a book, adding wit and twists and all that. And at a friend’s recomendation, I worked on a delievery more atuned to role-playing reffing (as I once did). And I practiced it, tuning it tight. I even stood on the back porch while the rain came down, giving it […]

May 20, 2012

Pandemonium: Smoke (Review)

I’ll remind you that while I was in London a few months ago, we visited the Tate Modern with its display of John Martin Paintings. I also picked up a hard back from the gift shop, Pandemonium, a series of short stories based on the paintings reviewed. I loved the paintings and really loved the book (limited edition – I snagged number 7 out of 100). I reviewed it HERE. With great expectations, I ordered Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke, a book purportedly focused on London, mostly Dickens’ London, but London all the same. Got it and read it in […]

May 18, 2012

Bike to Work Day 2012

“The courage of a soldier is heightened by his knowledge of his profession.” -Vegetius, Roman writer I’d agree with that, given that I bicycle to work two to three times a week. Knowing what you are facing, taking the precautions, learning from your mistakes, all this breeds courage (otherwise, I’d piss in my bike shorts – you guys drive so… very… badly). Anyway, was counting the number of cyclists I spotted on my ride today. Lets see, three, eight, twelve, twenty… so, that totals to zero! For most of my ride, I didn’t see a single bike. Couple of hummers, […]

May 17, 2012

AdSpace (DOG EAR)

Even at the time of my second book (Fire and Bronze), I still had this idyllic vision of writers doing nothing more than writing their carefree novels in vine-covered cottages, and perhaps answering a fan letter or two following their afternoon walk. Recent experiences have put paid to that. Now that I have to do everything myself, I’m learning what my sister knows about self-promotion, self-marketing and personal shilling. It’s hard. Humans are by-in-large modest; our culture wires us that way. Villains brag, heroes don’t. And now that I’ve had to set up my appearances, to gussy myself up and […]

May 14, 2012

OpsLog – Longwood & Sweetwater – 5/14/2012

On the radio today, there was a program about loneliness, and how in this Facebook/blogosphere age more people are lonelier than ever. Something like 30% of the adults out there report feeling lonely most of the time, and how they have no close friends at all. This was in the back of my mind as the train club met for pre-ops dinner (and board meeting) (and general kvetch session) at an Oriental dive. After far too much food, we headed over to the Longwood & Sweetwater to tag local jobs out of the yard and work around the layout. After […]

May 13, 2012

Quicksilver (Review)

Quicksilver – what can I possibly say about this thing? Well, it’s massive (916 pages). And it’s historical (spanning various settings between 1655 to 1689). And it’s confusing. Reading this book was like a car chase through history, with Neal Stephenson leading us through dark historic alleys, down temporal streets the wrong way, back-tracking, and often stopping to discharge characters and pick up a few more. In the end, I’m confused, exhausted, and frustrated. Yeah, it was that good! The thing is, even though I didn’t catch everything the book had to offer, even though I didn’t understand several of […]

May 6, 2012

The Wrecker (Review)

Cussler is a lot like Pizza – very tasty, very fun, very casual, but not much in the way of substance. Now that I’ve gotten my high-brow snarkiness out of the way, lets get down to brass tacks – The Wrecker is a thriller set in 1907 or so by a writer from Cussler’s stable, an effort to export the high-level, fast-paced political-action thriller back into a world we think of as kinder and gentler (don’t be fooled – a decade later, men hung up on barbed wire would be machined-gunned). Interestingly, many of the causal reviewers were impressed with […]

May 6, 2012

OpsLog – San Diego & Eastern Az – 5/6/2012

The plight of the blogger – what to say if the session goes so smooth, there is nothing to comment on? Oh, I don’t know if there were any catastrophes in the other room. I heard about soldering a wire around a dead section, one of those crummy track gang repairs. And I know that one of the railroad’s cheap seats gave way in the crew lounge, spilling an operator to the floor (a fine way to treat guests). But from the dispatcher’s panel, no big deal. Trains moved across the division, I referred to the timetable and made their […]

May 5, 2012

Fuckitnügen II

Here we go again. Wednesday at the club, I noticed that the car seemed sluggish to start. Today, when we wanted to go to lunch, it seemed inert. Dead battery. So we jumped it (what a circus that was – I had to push the car, the wife steered, and she put it into the hedge). Anyway, got it running, went out to lunch at a nearby Wendy’s. Came out and found it dead again. So home we walked, 100 degrees but lots of shade, so not bad. Brought the wife’s car out with the jumpers and started it again. […]