Blog – Page 72 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 25, 2015

The Ashtabula Diaster (Review)

eing a railroad guy, you’d have think I’d have heard of this one. But no, I was casting about on Project Gutenberg and fell over it (HERE). And so now I know a little more about the world. That is, a little more of its bad and terrible history. It was December 29, 1876 and a pair of locomotives were lugging eleven passenger cars of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway towards Ashtabula, Ohio. One hundred and fifty nine passengers were aboard. As they crossed the bridge just short of the station, it gave way, throwing everything (save that […]

January 28, 2015

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/28/2015

ne of the recurring plot lines in my own life is getting hyper-nervous about things – presentations, operations, all that stuff. All day today, I moved through my work efforts with a leaden stomach, worrying about ops. All my friends always give me a hard time, saying I worry about nothing. Oh no? Tonight was a rough night at the club. I dispatched, and we had some returning members and potential new members in the squad. I wanted it to go well. But traffic was absolutely horrible getting out there (is it wrong for me to hope that whoever caused […]

January 29, 2015

Payoff (DOG EAR)

iscally I’ve done okay as a writer. I didn’t make any money off Fire and Bronze (the publisher folded after the sudden death of it’s president). Early ReTyrement broke even. Made a lot of money off Don’t Jettison Medicine and the subsequent followup short article/radio scripts. And then there was the erotica – that’s like a fun little hobby that pays for itself. I couldn’t live off this (unless I lived in a cardboard box under the freeway) but I do get a trickle of cash for all my efforts. But not everything is money. Went over to the house […]

February 1, 2015

Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas (Review)

short one this time, a little tale I found on Project Gutenberg’s western section (though it was originally published in a sci-fi mag back in the early sixties). It’s a funny little piece of a district in Texas which is trying to drive it’s census numbers up, and calls upon a lazy local named Manuel to wander the simmering lavaflows (Sodom, don’t you know) and count as many people as he can. “Even the little ones?” he asks with shaky English. The supervisor tells him that, yes, children are to be included. But we, the reader, get an impression that […]

February 5, 2015

Your ad here (DOG EAR)

remember reading old paperbacks in the 70s, and how some of them would have a colored insert (on cardstock paper), ads for cigarettes or books or whatever. It was a little bit of advertising that only lasted as long as it took to toss it aside and get back to the story. Of course, those were those funny pre-market days. This latest bit I came across while reading What Money Can’t Buy (which will be reviewed in a couple of weeks). This is a book that looks at all the places the market has nosed into over the last thirty […]

February 5, 2015

Good Omens (Review)

The first admission is that I’ve bought just about every Pratchett book out there – loved the Diskworld series. And Gaiman, I’ve also read one or two of his and generally liked them. So when a work acquaintance mentioned Good Omens, I had to have a look. I’ve got to say that I really enjoyed it; the opener is perfect with the Angel of God (Aziraphale) and of the Devil (Crowley) distantly looking down at the ejection of Adam and Eve from Eden, both with strong misgivings (Crowley is miffed that the apple thing was very unfair, even though he, […]

February 8, 2015

Two short scifis (Review)

his week, I scratched through Project Gutenberg and came up with two short scifi stories, both out of pulp magazines. I didn’t want to spend that much time on them but they deserved some sort of mention (and me? I deserve some sort of weekly blog entry out of them). A Spaceship Named McGuire – this was a shortie written in 1960, just about when Harry Harrison was coming up with the Stainless Steel Rat. It was when humanism was making a push back into the industry, when bold wisecracking heroes were popular. In this story, a clever space detective […]

February 9, 2015

I hate: Jeeps

hate Jeeps. You can tell a lot about people by what they drive. I generally thought VW owners such as myself were eco-conscious hippy-throwbacks (or people who embraced that life-look). Generally I was right. Beetle drivers tended to run smooth. I remember the day I saw one driving with a cellphone and not signaling, I felt betrayed. BMW owners and Cadillac Escalade owners, I got ya. I know that it’s that pushy channeled-textile-mill-owner stuff coming up, the wealth-makes-right stuff, that makes you that way. As Douglas Coupland said, BMW drivers drive so horribly because they believe their car’s ad copy. […]

February 12, 2015

Reader (DOG EAR)

’ve heard of people who occasionally imagine their own obituaries. It is, I suppose, a morbid accounting of one’s life, to consider what one has achieved and how far one has climbed. For me, it’s the occasional imagined writing of my final Dog Ear piece. “It’s been a long road, but one that’s come to an end…” Sometimes, when I write about writing, I realize how little I know about this strange thing publishing has turned into. The idea of harvesting hits and reciprocal reviews and playing the Amazon rankings leaves me cold. As I see people hit big time […]

February 14, 2015

Looking up (week of 2/9/2015)

o here we go again. For my fifteen year anniversary with FedEx, I was awarded a x35 Bushnell tripod telescope. In the back of my mind, I think I knew I wanted it to sweep the stars with it. I had many happy memories looking up with my dad’s old Navy binoculars, watching the moon. As if on perfect cue, the moon rose the night I got it, clearing the trees by about 11pm. It was a perfect moon, wide and full with just a hint of terminator (all the better to peer into those silent craters). And there I […]