What's Annoying?

Not everyone finds Barney the Dinosaur or Mr Rogers' Neighborhood annoying. Many do. I tend to lean toward those who do.

In the model railroad hobby, for example, there's controversy over Malcolm Furlow and Lionel Strang, prominent authors in Model Railroader magazine during its decades of doldrums (now, in my view, receding into history). On one hand, many found both Furlow and Strang annoying, and there was a general sense that when MR finally discontinued Strang's "Workin' on the Railroad" column in 2005, things might be about to get better there. In fact, they were, and they did.

On the other hand, every now and then someone posts on a forum something like "Gee, I miss Lionel Strang and Malcolm Furlow. Whatever happened to them?" Controversy, and eventually invective, ensue. (Strang, I fear, is still around. More about this down the road.

To make things easy for first-time visitors, let me be as clear as I can: if you miss Lionel Strang and Malcolm Furlow, you will not enjoy reading this blog. I'm on the other side of that controversy, and probably many others.

In fact, I've created controversy myself. Some people have read my essay "The Sociology of Model Railroading" (available on my linklist) and found it, as one guy said on a forum recently, "spot on". Other people don't like it at all. As above, if you liked the essay, you may well like this blog. If you didn't like the essay, you probably also miss Lionel and Malcolm, and you're probably not going to enjoy any time you spend here. It goes without saying that if you don't like the opinions you see here, your best option is not to visit, and while I'll permit comments, I'll moderate angry or abusive visitors.

I wish everyone well and don't mean to offend private individuals. In fact, I mean to keep private individuals out of it. I will, though, say what's on my mind about public figures in the hobby, hobby magazines and their editorial policies past and present, hobby web sites, hobby forums, hobby organizations, hobby commercial efforts, hobby fundraising campaigns, published hobby authors, and other hobby new-media figures, good and bad. I will probably also post from time to time about my own hobby interests.