Dog Ear

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 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 […]
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 12, 2020

Cancelled (DOG EAR)

o Will is locked in an alien pod, being prepped to be inserted into an alien ground war. And Katie watches as a planet bomb levels part of unshielded Seattle. Their kids are sleeping in the house of a slimy traitor (and they don’t know it). And, of course, Alan Snyder is rampaging about the halls of power, corrupting everything he touches. And that was it. The series ended. This is the new danger of investing in a streaming series on one of the services. Unlike the old days when sitcoms were locked in time, the episodes interchangeable, it wasn’t […]
November 19, 2020

Pissed off (DOG EAR)

‘m in a really, really, really, really bad mood. So what happened? You know how much I hate cell phones. We’ll, I’ve gotten to hate mine even worse – a week or so back it was unable to call out – totally cut off. Finally I had to go to the AT&T store and ask. Turns out I had to turn it off and on again. Yeah, that old IT Crowd joke. Yes, I thanked them but I was a little pissed that I had to dick around with it to make it work. My old cellphone never had these […]
November 26, 2020

Imagination on tap (DOG EAR)

t all started with a threat of riskware. Since I’ve started roleplaying again, pretty much every week involves me trying to come up with a continuing storyline for players who might reject a carefully constructed plotline and go helling off across our imaginary landscape. After all, our Solaris game is science fiction and a new change of scenery is only as far as the nearest docking port. So I found this website that generated all sorts of things: names, taverns, spaceships, gangs, a massive collection of randomness. Some of the names (based off nationalities, which is a big part of […]
December 3, 2020

Volleyball (DOG EAR)

like anime – Japanese animated series, for those of you in the dark. It’s weird and strange and oddly informative. Sometimes you can see that slice of life, a part of what it means to be human. Other times, it’s just giant robots. When my niece Kirstin suggested Haikkyu!!, I was a little dubious – it’s a volleyball epic, a story about a short Japanese student who loves volleyball and wants his high school team to be successful. The thing is, he’s short, but he’s light, so he’s got this killer jump and this crazy spike. It’s fun to watch […]
December 10, 2020

Stories (DOG EAR)

as out cycling today and saw a big pickup rounding a corner into Baldwin Park, a snobby upper-class neighborhood  just up the road. And I had to think – why would a rich bastard who probably couldn’t lift a bag of mulch himself (as if he didn’t have gardeners for that) need a pickup truck? It’s got to be his story about himself. Down to earth practical, right? My own cars tell stories about me, sporty, economical, fun and nostalgic. Yes, those are the stories I want surrounding me. In ancient times (like those in the books I’ll be plugging […]
December 17, 2020

Are we having fun yet? (DOG EAR)

t always surprises me what criminals (scammers, embezzlers, politicians) do with their ill-gotten gains. Generally they are arrested and the monies they so desperately stole has gone to “jewelry and lavish vacations”. And even that doesn’t cover it, since the vacation is usually to some place that is a vacation destination amongst beach idlers and discotheque-goers. I mean, really, what the hell? I think this is true of more than just criminals. People who know me know how much I scoff at the upper-middle class (I see your hand up, Denise). Like these ill-considered criminals, these are people who don’t […]
December 24, 2020

Three on Three (Dog Ear)

was doing my last-minute Christmas shopping the other day (which was good since someone in my train club called while I was and said he’d maybe had contact with a Covid case and I had hung out with him Saturday). But I was already mulling over something I’d just seen. Of course, I’m a Mange/Anime guy. I love the stuff, the raw power and beauty of a well-told story (even though they have a lot of clunkers, too). So I’d wandered over to where the Manga was, the outer three walls of a U-shape of shelves. All three outer faces […]