robert.admin – Page 88 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

November 8, 2020

A Hundred Years Hence (Review)

was sitting outside in a restaurant, waiting to place an order, my plague mask seated from nine months of experience, watchful for a don’t-give-a-shitter to come too close and breath all over me. Beyond my table and my Ipad, Corrine Drive flows with its morning hostility. Even though it’s a school zone, half the motorists are blasting through, and the other half have their phones balanced on their steering wheel. It’s voting day, and I’m waiting for reports of armed militia taking over the poles. And on my kindle, A Hundred Years Hence, The Expectations of an Optimist. Written in […]

November 5, 2020

Blind Eye (DOG EAR)

Here’s one: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana And here’s another: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” -Joseph Goebbels nd that’s what pisses me off these days. Things that are known facts are distorted by lies. History that should NEVER be repeated, such as the Holocaust (Goebbels had his fingers all over this one) and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (where Mao and his communist cronies waged full ideological war on political rivals, intellectuals and scientists) suddenly are distinct possibilities. And that’s […]

November 1, 2020

Interesting Facts (Review)

came across this short story in the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016 collection; was digging for a filler review today since I’m not quite done with a philosophical book from 1905 – it’s a bit of a grind with all the flowery language. And Interesting Facts was a thankful discovery – the first story of this collection really didn’t do it for me and the second one was too clever by half – gave it up after a page or so. This was a weird tale – not science fiction by any stretch, and only kinda fantasy. […]

October 29, 2020

Writing Length (DOG EAR)

his hit me while writing a blog for the morrow (as they say in Treasure Island, which I was enjoying) – the length of a written effort. I’ve written (professionally) in a number of formats. When I write fictional novels, my chapter lengths are always four to six pages long. Same when I post anonymous erotica online (hey, it’s a hobby). In my sister’s medical book, Don’t Jettison Medicine, the chapters were all two pages long – consisting of short paragraphs. In the radio scripts I wrote, everything was maybe two-three paragraphs (the issue, the discussion, the recommendation). Blogs, as […]

October 29, 2020

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/28/2020

utside of one mini-ops we tried, the last time we ran the club layout was back in February, back before the Covid storm swept over us. For a while the building stood empty. Then we reopened and did a lot of work. So for the past week, we’ve been trying to resuscitate our pike, getting those corroded rails clean, sweeping out the dust and cobwebs and trying to get something like operations going again. For the record, it was full masks, full sanitizers, and to keep the germs down, no phones – as dispatcher I sat at a table in […]

October 25, 2020

Pilgrim (Review)

t’s a tale as old as time, even in the literary branch of fantasy. The experienced assassin wants out. Last job. And after he pulls it off (granted, it doesn’t go so well, what with him getting cut and his inner demons (literally!) releasing), he managed to kill the target, all the released monsters, all that. And then he finds out his guild wants him dead. So, no retirement party, I guess. Danzen Ravja is now a man (or some sort of superman, maybe) on the run. Two years later, he fetches up in a little collection of villages in […]

October 22, 2020

Are you Robert Raymond? (DOG EAR)

ould you possibly hope to be the world-adventurer, man about town, writer, game designer, rocket engineer? Review the list below and score your points (1 for each thing you’ve done). Then look to the bottom to see if you are Robert Raymond. 1) Flown an airship? 2) Ridden a bike 60 miles in one go? 3) Lived in foreign country for several years? 4) Written a novel picked up by an agent and publisher, and placed on bookstore shelves? 5) Read thousands of books? (The list for the last decade is HERE) 6) Dispatched a complex model railroad? 7) Written […]

October 18, 2020

Wild Time (Review)

or you folks who want your Shakespeare more accessible, I give you Wild Time, a twist on A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Rose Biggin (who wrote a short story I particularly enjoyed) and Keir Cooper. So, as Bard Bill wrote it, the Duke of Athens and the Amazon Queen are getting married and the fairies of the forest are all abuzz (you can actually imagine that, right?). They want to give the newlyweds something they can really use, not just a toaster but a stud. The problem is that the king of the fairies gets his knob bent about how […]

October 18, 2020

OpsLog – 10/17/2020

nother op session at the club today, with AJ running his coal and Ben as the switch crew. In the logistics side, Greg ran the DS panel and I worked the nonlocking interlocking. And, as Greg put it, I also worked as the superintendent (and an auxiliary brakeman). First off, this little beauty was in place, my very first structure, the Tuscarora Station. You’ll notice that it’s been out of service for twenty years, that the paint is cracked and peeling. Not added yet are the boards over the windows and doors (or the roof weathering). And station signs. So […]

October 15, 2020

Fake News (DOG EAR)

ossibly I missed the critical news of the year – Covid-19 has an effective vaccine now? No? Nothing changed? Then why are we opening bars, tossing off our masks and acting like it’s VC day? Today I went into an Ace Hardware and there in the paint aisle was a guy standing there, deciding if he wanted Cherry Red of Valentines Pink, breathing unfiltered, unmasked air, too proud to respect a store full of others, assuming that his risks should be run by all of us. Needless to say, I loitered outside the aisle until he’d fumed his way up […]