So my new (old) typewriter is down, ribbon broke. I am actually pretty sad about this, because I have really come to enjoy the process of writing on the beast. I usually write directly into the computer or into notebooks. When writing on the computer things like spell check, the internet, games, compiling some program I downloaded last week, tend to distract me. While writing in notebooks is an exercise in frustration. I am gifted with an illegible chicken-scratch for handwriting and most of the pages I write down are worthless. (Ever wish you were British so you could pull off using rubbish in a sentence without sounding like a poser? I do.)
And after an argument with one of my classmates in my last class about the value of a typewriter, and if it really is that different than computer or app on the phone writing, the bug got into my head, I really wanted a typewriter. My wife mocked me all fall about this, and I kept putting off looking into getting one. And then just after my birthday, low and behold my wife got me a typewriter, she said it was a started and we could look at upgrading if I ended up liking it. This might not happen, for two reasons, I like the typewriter and it has a cute little quirk, rather than a normal Courier style serif font (e.g. Like this example) it has a geometric sans serif font (e.g. Like this, note the ‘a’), which being a closet font fetishist I have always loved a good geometric sans serif font. So, I believe a trip down to the local typewriter shop (yes, there actually is one, I love Arlington) is in order to get my Hermes 3000 all fixed up. And maybe someday I will talk the wife into getting another one (I am thinking a portable, they have a Hermes model called the baby…)
Luke W. McCullough
lukaswm at gmail dot com
House of Chaos, Arlington, MA
no music playing other than the sounds of rain and garbage men clanging cans