Subscribing to print magazines is a political act

Ryan (Ryan, what happened to your Twitter account?) mentioned that there was an article in a recent Poets & Writers magazine about typewriters. Well, here it is. I'd like to add that there is a lot of good stuff in Poets & Writers magazine, and darn it, I am going to subscribe. Subscribing to print magazines is a political act.

Matthew Solan has great things to say about how writing with a typewriter is not something digital tools can replace: "Typewriters make me a more focused and disciplined writer. They don't forgive. It's like firing a gun with every stroke."





I realize this post is hypocritical, BTW.

It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel blind)

Christine Berrie's art is retrotastically awesome

So retrotechians, run, don't walk, to Christine Berrie's Etsy shop or Web site to view her heavenly illustrations of vintage cameras (and one Royal Futura).

Here is an interview with her. She is brilliant.

Gelaskins, Alphasmarts, the aesthetics of creative machines

So, a professor and a student in my grad program both have Gelaskins on their laptops; in one case, a boom box, and in another, a typewriter. What kind of statement does this make, do you think? The husband calls it irony. Of course I am thinking more along the lines of it being an homage to the vanished aesthetic value of creative machines. But then, what statement does a motherboard make? Or the steampunk? (I'll come out and say it-- I don't understand steampunk. It seems a natural extension of retromechanical admiration, and yet, I can make no sense of it.) Thoughts?

Ooh, look at this one for iPhones.

No, you silly FTC goons, Gelaskins did not compensate me to endorse the product. Schtickers is the same kind of concept, but they don't seem to have much to offer in the scribeomechanical aesthetic. (Schtickers! Throw us a Lettera 22!)

You know what would be wonderfully ironic? An Alphasmart laptop skin. And while I'm shamelessly endorsing whimsical expenditures amidst a collapsing global economy, there's just something I love about the Alphasmart. I think there's a wider future in this concept of self-limiting tech, a sort of digital Nicorette for people trying to escape CNN updates about balloonboy while they craft their written works. I don't use the Alphasmart as often as I should, but on the eve of Nanowrimo I'll assert that there is no better/easier way to write 50,000 words, anywhere, in 30 days. Computers can't do it better. In fact, they do it worse. And you can take that to the bank. (What does that expression mean exactly?)

One last promotional push: Ace Typewriter of Portland, OR is rolling out t-shirts with their new design (which kind of brings to mind the old Kidd Valley* logo that was politically corrected into a sort of Formica 50's boomerang to assuage Northwestern feminists.**)

That is all.

* A Seattle-area hamburger chain
** I am a feminist, actually. But you can bet I'd wear the Ace shirt.

Return of the Polaroid?

A new low: I am writing this post with a mobile device. One with a virtual keypad, no less. Least retrotech post in history of typosphere. I dare you to stoop lower. If it's even possible.

So I hear Polaroid cameras are coming back. Hoax? You decide.

Graduate school is kicking my ass. That is all.

Update. I see I am late to the party with this information. So then I had better come up with something else.... crickets chirping... stay tuned.

Interweb 1, attention span 0

Here is a strangely comforting forum discussion about the scourge of the dwindling attention span.