robert.admin – Page 233 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

June 17, 2011

Omega Bike

Came out of the driveway a week ago for the ride in – as I swung onto the work route, I looked back to see a flamingo (i.e. a road biker with colorful plumage) coming up the street. Quick calculations – the only reason someone would come that way is if they were running my route. Sure enough, when I got to the bottom of the hill at Merritt and slowed for the stop (it’s a blind intersection), I could see the guy leaning into the turn behind me, not even looking. When I got to the spot where the […]

June 13, 2011

Opslog – Saluda Grade – 6/13/2011

Observations from running ahead of a young fella with a short attention span. In Knoxville, I climb aboard Train 172, which will hang down the W line to Spartanburg after car swapping in Asheville. A couple of tracks over, this young man is fumbling radio, cards and whatnot, trying to get train 162 onto the line. He’s crestfallen when the dispatcher tells him to hold. “Train 172, clear to enter the main,” the dispatcher responds to my initial call. “Cross over to track 2 and call clear into Asheville Yard.” “Don’t take it personally,” I tell him. “I’m running an […]

June 7, 2011

That’s my girl!

Yesterday we attended niece Kirstin’s graduation. We got to their house early and lounged around with family for a bit (I think I snoozed). Went to UCF for the ceremony (I’d gotten a degree from that joint but not much else). If anything, it’s sprawled out since I was there. How sad to see little on-campus rows of fake shops, Subway and Dominoes and the like – I remember Blacksburg and the dingy (yet real) downtown street. At least I didn’t ever go to this… Stepford. Anyway, this isn’t about me, its about her. Kirstin graduated Summa Cum Laude from […]

June 6, 2011

Hobo with a shotgun (review)

I first became aware of Rutger Hauer in a Miami movie theater in 1982, watching Blade Runner. When Roy (Hauer), an android with a very limited life-span remaining, glides like a leather-clad punk cloud towards his manufacturer, Tyrell, and says, “I want more life, fucker”, it was a “frankly, Scarlett” moment for me. And later, when he slowly pushes his thumbs into Tyrell’s eye-sockets, releasing a horrific ooze of blood, I was sinking into my seat while the camera cut away to an imperial owl, its eyes reflecting the light while the screams went on. Hobo with a Shotgun is […]

June 5, 2011

Thinker

So this isn’t only once or twice. Every time I go to the bathroom at work (not the touch and go numbah one, but the big brown effort), one of the two stalls is closed. I’ll sit on my own little seat and there will be a set of shoes under the wall, as motionless as an Afghan rifleman in the rocks. Worse, bathrooms are tiled, perfect for magnifying sounds. Knowing there will always be a certain… um… outburst… (in the words of HG Wells, “He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of […]

June 1, 2011

The morning after

It’s a misty morning, the film of dew drifting over silent fields. In King City, things are waking up. The helper engine pops and hisses on the siding, its steam confusing the mists. The Coast Mail, Train 72, has just made its long stop at the nearby platform, the station help yawning as they heaved the bags up. Now it’s gone, the wig-wags motionless now that their guarded rails are empty. Over to the left, you can see the head end of the beet string I’d left on the sugar refinery spur the evening before. They’ve been unloading through the […]

May 29, 2011

OpsLog – SP Coast Line – 5/29/2011

I’m at the throttle of GP-9 5417, a brute of an engine in the early fifties, big and black and boxy, nothing like those bullet-like F units still working about the railroad. This is the shape of things to come, utility over form, but I’m glad for that. These monsters are blowing heat and smoke like a river boat, their dynamic brakes howling as I come down out of the Lucita Range with tons of beets bulging over to tops of their open hoppers. The pressure is on – I departed San Luis Obispo with train 923 assembling in my […]

May 29, 2011

Posting for art

Well, I’ve taken the first big step in getting Early ReTyrement ready for publication – I’ve contacted an Indian firm named “Animation Saints” to do my cover. It’s not the price so much as their animation style that caught me. It’s just what I was looking for (well, what I was really looking for was a well-known comic/historical artist to do it, be he declined after the pitch). So we’ll see. This is the first cash outlay to get this thing to market – big step. I’ll post our progress. I’m really hoping I’ll get these guys. (oh, and I’m […]

May 28, 2011

Incendies (review)

Incendies plays out like a book. It starts on the perfect hook and slowly the mystery is unwrapped, allowing the audience to suddenly realize (at their own pace and perception) the core of the story. In this sense, the hook is masterful. A daughter and son are meeting with the attorney of their Lebanese mother’s estate – she’s passed away after suffering a seizure at the local pool in present-day Canada. So first the kids are surprised when mom’s burial instructions are a tad… unconventional. But then the hammer blow – each is given a letter. The daughter is to […]

May 27, 2011

Ugh

Woke up on my free Friday with a sense of dread. I could only lay there hating today, wishing I’d gone to work. It’s like I’m facing the gallows. I guess it goes without saying that I hate hosting ops. I’m like an actor who has performed King Lear hundreds of times but still gets hysterical before the curtain goes up. I read of model railroader hosts who do a little set up, a little tinkering, and eagerly await their operators. Me? I just sit and slowly freak out. And it’s such a tempest in a teacup. After my shower, I started working […]