And the Angels wept_

1964 Corona Sterling, in turquoise. Types like a charm, though it needs a good coat of lube on the striker works. I wonder what I should use? Regular machine oil or wd40?

I'm a Corona fiend, and this matches AnneMarie, my 1935 Sterling in black.

WEll I finally Own a typewriter. Payed a cool 40 dollars for it...there's a catch though, it's not just a typewriter, it's a Smith Corona "Word Processor". Try to think of a Apple Computer or an early IBM Computer having sex with a typewriter, this my friends would be the bizarre love child of that union. I myself am only using it in typewriter mode because I find "word processing to be just silly.

Now down to my problem. What to name it. Since this is not a straight typewriter (I mean hey you can stick 3/5 disks in this thing *shudder*) I thought about calling it HAL but decided against it.

so if any one has any ideas for a name for this thing that would be cool. Some might say what's the point of naming it, but I say it's very important.

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It's nice to know that in this vastly digital and technical age there are still some people out there who prefer the good old, low-tech, soul filled, typewriter. I myself am a somewhat recent convert to the typewriter, but in a sense I think I've come home. At have fond memories of when I was 5 my mother had given me a antique ( I think it was antique) typewriter to use and to play with. I would spend hours typing little simple stories on it. I loved the sound the keys made, that wonderful Click-Clack.
I didn't come back to using the typewriter until January of this year. Over Christmas break I had read Jack Kerouacs "On the Road" and that just put me in a typewriter frame of mind.I came back from break and I had this urge to use a typewriter, a maddening ich that wouldn't go away. I dug up a stack of letter head that belonged to the College president from 1957 ( I rescued them from the campus archives, they were going to be tossed) and began my campus wide search for an available typewriter.

Well there only two on campus. The first didn't work, yes it was plugged in and had power, but the company no longer made ribbons for it, and no discount or surplus suppliers carried ribbons for that particular model. So it just sits in a corner of an office like a sade rusting peace of farm equipment. I got lucky with the second typewriter. I work in the campus library, the last bastion of the printed word on campus. They still have a working typewriter which they keep in case they need to type up official reports. In truth no one had used it for quite some time when I inquired about using it to type letters. Since I am an employee, and everyone in the library likes me they really didn't have a problem. So at the moment that is my situation, typing out letters on the last typewriter on a college campus.

I have a friend that goes to the university of Iowa, apparently his grandparents attic is full of old antique typewriters that still have working ink and ribbons. He's told me that we can probably stop by and pick one up whenever we both are in town. Having a non-electric typewriter of my own, man that would be great. when you get those keys moving and in your into your rhythem, it's almost a zen thing.

Last month for my birthday I bought myself an mid-thirties Smith-Corona portable. It is black and heavy and beautiful. My friend salaciousdrift and I had been talking about the limitations of the word processor, computers and all of that. The ability for the computer to distract while you are trying to work, the sprawling mess word processors make of stories because of the 'edit in post' mentality.

I had bought a long time ago one of those big, corporate sized boxes of inkjet paper from Office Depot. I started pushing that through the Corona and the strikers would punch through the paper like it were a wet paper towel. I decided to buy some decent paper. I got some 24 pound, %25 cotton stock. Punching through the paper isn't a problem anymore.

I named it Anne-Marie.

( ode to my typewriterCollapse )

( prompt: the rain would not stopCollapse )

I had a dream wherein there was an entire country of philosophers. It was a rather small country with only a few towns; so, in deference to the Greeks (arguably the first philosophers), they named their towns after Greek letters. Naturally, there were philosophers that agreed with each other and disagreed with each other. Eventually, they split up into seperate towns according to what they believed - more a matter of course than an order by anyone. It just worked nicer that way. Those that lived in Theta City were strong Nietzsche fans. Those in Phiton, Sartre. They even had named their groups: the Nietsche Menschen, for example. Well, there was a particular group that was quite interesting. They made there home in Alphaville. They were Forever Jung.





OH ZING.

in discussing it later:
dave_the_turnip: hehehe, what you failed to mention is that sometimes the corperations in these towns get nailed by the law for Fruedulent business practises
crazykiltman: and i'll tell you just what it was
crazykiltman: one company was trying to form a new sport under the name of an existing trademarked name. they were trying to combine football and golf. it was called Socratees

is anyone here?

Upon the eve of his death, A broken man sat. Bullets sang tunes against the wood and the fires of Hades called out for his blood. For all his work, for all his planning, for all his manipulation, there was nothing to be shown. He stared deeply into his hands, those withered and worried hands. Those hands that had killed a king and brought a nation to it's knees, if ever so temporarily. It was in those hands he saw the meaning of it all, and into those hands he confided. "Useless.", he admitted. "Useless.", he muttered as he died.