Dog Ear
February 5, 2026
‘m a little grumpy about this one. It will probably show. See, I’m coming to realize that nobody gives a floppy fuck about books (and movies) you really care about. People are too busy and too self-involved to really honor (or even consider) any recommendations you might offer. This came to me at Christmas at a family gathering. The night before, I’d just finished a short anime series, Odd Taxi. It came from a YouTube video by a Anime expert who listed the ten most overlooked animes, this being one of them. It’s got childish art (everyone in modern Tokyo are […]
January 30, 2026
t used to be that you needed a very bad actor to get the scenery-crewing over-emotions that old vaudevillians used to throw their emotions into the back rows. But now, with AI-creations trailblazed by firms such as Pixar, you can have it easy and cheap, even if you are sitting right in front of a mega-screen and don’t need this ham-fisted CGI playacting. I’m talking about modern Western animation, though I’ve seen it in foreign productions like Kpop Demon Hunters. In this case I was trapped in a car dealership waiting on slow repairs (do the mechanics share one set […]
January 1, 2026
ime again for my review of books I really enjoyed for 2025. Of course, these aren’t all published this year – there is no statue of limitations on books you might discover. For example, The War of the Wenuses was a random discovered off a YouTube video which was published some century and a quarter ago. It was a lampoon of War of the Worlds and really made me laugh. However, most of you (not being addicts of the original) would not understand the lampooning that takes place in it – since it was right on the edge of getting the nomination, I […]
December 18, 2025
veryone knows (should know) Plato’s allegory of The Cave. People are in a cave, never having been outside it. They are chained so they can only see the far wall. Behind them, other people with torches make shadows and sounds, defining the limited reality of those so placed. Their only reality is what they experience directly. Their thinking is stunted. This came to me while reading Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche, the first few chapters. See, I’d bought an Audible copy of a friend who is rather well read but hasn’t tried this one. Also, his life is so hectic that he can […]
October 8, 2025
o I’m sitting on the porch of the one-time Union Park Community Center / current Orlando N-Trak Train Club. Two acres of probably-needs-to-be-mowed grass stretches out before me, the sun turning it into waving emerald. And I’m thinking, Why do I do this? This week I’ve been out to this club, thirty minutes and $2.35 in tolls each way, too many times. Monday for Maintenance. Tuesday for a board meeting. Wednesday for the club night. And now it’s Friday, and I’m here to load the trailer when it arrives so we can take our portable layout to a weekend show. […]
August 21, 2025
as talking to a friend the other night about storytelling and literature and anime and everything, and a thought hit me. What sort of villain do you prefer? Essentially, there are two types. The Mad Dog: This is the villain you love to hate. His first trait is that he usually offs an underling (often for being the bearer of bad news, but sometimes simply as a character establishment (and what the hell do the other underlings think about this?). Usually he’s charismatic and fun to watch, but he’s made to hate. He boasts and brags, he kicks the dog, […]
August 7, 2025
e was a good friend. We knew each other for decades. But in the final few years of our friendship, he got… difficult. He’d call and talk AT me for hours. In person, he was loud. At restaurants, he’d talk politics in a booming voice, gathering angry stares. It got to where I’d flinch when I saw his name pop up on my phone — there would go another hour. A friend and I tried to stage an intervention but he turned us down – he had other little things to do. And then at a mutual event where I was supposed […]
July 31, 2025
y dad was an only child with older parents, and I think that might have caused his anger issues. Limited social interactions, you know? So, to me, my dad was a gruff Navy captain. We got along well enough – we both loved trains. But no, you didn’t want to get him angry. He’d go volcanic. So that’s my excuse (which really isn’t an excuse) – learned behavior. My anger has cost me three jobs in the past. Someone in authority would order up a big plate of stupid. We’d argue. I’d lose my temper. And there’s the door. As […]
July 24, 2025
mid the rolling green hills with their scattering of humans, the vast giants meet in council. So the setup here is my model train club (Orlando N-Trak, or ONT). We’ve been doing this all my adult life, since 1987. I’ve helped build it, I help run it, I help promote it. And tonight, I had to set up the waybills so engineers know where their freight cars are going. With six mainline freights and seven local trains, we’re moving something like fifty to seventy cars. We need to doublecheck to ensure they all start where they are papered to start, […]
July 17, 2025
‘ve always had a grimace in my heart for the word Lifestyles. Your life, your one time through this passage of existence, is really what you make of it. We all have different opportunists and situations. A person born of majority race and wealth has a bit of a leg up over a poor minority child saddled with leukemia (especially in times when tax cuts for the wealthy and open beatings for the downtrodden are a popularity political stance (fucking fascists)). It’s what it is. You play your hand as best you can. Which is why I dislike the idea […]