Blog – Page 164 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

June 6, 2021

The Virginia Creeper (Review)

kay, so some of you are thinking that this is pretty strange, that I’m reviewing something that sounds like a gothic horror story. Nah, it’s just railroading, so it does make sense. See, my sister provoked my mom and I to ride the bike trail that follows the old roadbed of the Virginia-Carolina (or VC, hence the nickname “Virginia Creeper”) a couple of weeks back. The ride is a thrilling one, coming down from Whitetop, flying down a 3% grade across some significant bridges, following the river through thick woods and lush valleys, all the way down to the town […]

June 10, 2021

Facebook Jail (DOG EAR)

ell, I landed in the cyber-slammer. I’m making bytes into bits in the rock-hocky ring. And all because I tripped an AI. Okay, technically I agree with the Facebook policy. It can be said that Facebook, in part, swayed the election of 2016 (and possibly 2020). It’s fine if it’s done with valid truths. But not if it’s done with lies. And there is still a sizable portion of the population who believe “The Big Lie”. Social media has been weaponized, but your author got caught in the crossfire. What happened was this: I referee a role-playing game on Sunday […]

June 13, 2021

OpsLog – WVN – 6/13/2021

he soot-black tunnel roils with fire and smoke, the den of a dragon. I’ll admit I don’t like this final tunnel into Elkview at all, a long slow curving decent. The left bend of the track makes me all but blind with our long boiler. Fortunately my fireman is in his left seat keeping watch, his shovel across his lap, empty coal cars ringing and banging behind us. Even unloaded, I’m having to apply pressure on this stiff downgrade to keep our speed in check. Suddenly I hear something detonate under our driver, a second, third. Torpedoes. Some brave soul […]

June 13, 2021

Demon (Review)

nd now we are at the third and final book of the Gaea Trilogy, Demon, the last of John Varley’s famous scifi work from the late seventies/early eighties. I’ve brought you Titan and Wizard, and now this. So Cirocco Jones, one time space captain, one time wizard for the floating bio-wheel Gaea, has finally gotten herself cleaned up and back on the rails. And Gaea, living goddess, she is descending into madness, now taking on the role of a fifty-foot tall model of Marilyn Monroe. Yes, it’s come down to this. Gaea now lives in a fortified film lot, Pandemonium, […]

June 17, 2021

Berlin (DOG EAR)

have strange one-minute conversations with a SunRail ambassador (another word for the station agent who helps clueless commuters find their ways on and off the trains). I knew her before I retired. And now that I am, I still ride up to my happy bicycling grounds on the north side of town by train. When my train pulls into her station, I pop my head out the door and there she is – we have a minute to chat about books we are reading and then slam goes the doors and off I’m transported. Heard an interesting one from her […]

June 20, 2021

The Glass Teat (Review)

nother one of those lucky finds in a curb-side library, both books of Harland Ellison’s TV reviews that he wrote while on the staff of the Los Angles Free Press in 1968. It was meant to be a review of what was on the tube each week in the LA area. What it became was a radical criticism in the age leading up to the fall of Nixon. I lived though that time (I was ten) and living (I believe) somewhere in California. Life was nice with brown hills and humming power lines. The sounds from my parent’s TV during […]

June 24, 2021

OpsLog – LM&O – 06/23/2021

t was a dark and stormy night… Most penny dreadfuls start this way. And our session on the LM&O felt that way. Lots of guests so lots of people jammed everywhere. Turnout failures. Brain failures. Near misses. Arguments. What didn’t happen on the road tonight? My moment of grace was the Shelfton Local. Even under reduced yard limits and warrants, it was a single slip out and another back. I just had an enjoyable time down that branch, switching cars and staying out of everyone’s banana dramas. And, because good things come to good engineers, when I shuffled my cars […]

June 24, 2021

Gas Pump (DOG EAR)

first saw this very intrusive and face-filling stupidity in San Diego a couple of years ago. It was a long, long session of running model trains all weekend with the La Mesa club. While the rest of the boys hung out at the hotel, I went out into the night to find a gas station so we could return the rental full the next morning. Found a place, got out, activated the pump, and stood in shock when its screen started playing commercials at me. I hate this sort of fuckery when it’s done in airports. It’s bad enough to […]

June 27, 2021

OpsLog – FEC – 6/26/2021

f you wanted to find the last OpsLog on the Florida East Coast, you’d have to go back over a year ago. That’s how long it’s been, the entire span of the pandemic. Still, the session was one of the strictest I’ve seen. Temperature checks. Vaccination records. Full masks. And I respect that (with the new variant filling ICUs again). In fact, on the way to the session we stopped at Wendy’s for lunch. Wore our masks in the line. Sat down in the corner. But then an extended family of unmasked tire-biters sat a table away and we finished […]

June 27, 2021

The Librarian of Auschwitz (Review)

‘ll admit I watch Handmaidens Tale and The Man in the High Castle, stories of fascism and purging that comes to our own United States. And always, as I see the political hero worshiping and the insurrection of January 6th, I think Yes, it could happen here. But that’s still only a possibility, of course, a worst-case fantasy. But if you really want to know what it’s like, and what this powder keg near which our own monkeys play with their matches, The Librarian of Auschwitz gives you a full, total accounting of a state gone mad. This is the […]