At heart, we typecasters like to shop. Oh, not for the latest clothes, or big-ass crystal display bowls for our dining room tables, but for office supplies and writing machines. Rows of Parker Jotters at Rite Aid, dusty old typewriter cases with undiscovered contents at Goodwill, stacks of spiral bound graph paper notebooks at the art supply shop, you're going to find a typecaster poking around that kind of stuff nine times out of ten.
Yesterday I had a rather lousy day in which I botched a presentation at school. I stood up there in front of the class, nervously revealing before a live and dubious audience that my final project was shaping up to be a train wreck. At one point I was asked a question by the instructor, a rather reasonable question at that, when my mind emptied of all thought. I could not think of one thing to say, and I just stood there. Not a good feeling, that. And so I did the only reasonable thing. I went to Rite Aid the next day and bought a Dymo Label Buddy.
Now you may ask, don't I already have one? And the answer is, yes, but. I come down firmly in the camp of non-retro punch-label makers, if I must choose sides. While the vintage metal Dymo Mite that I bought from eBay a few years back may have more retrotechnical cred, you will snap the tendons in your wrist trying to lift it, turn the wheel, and punch the letters, and its label cutting device could verily be used as a guillotine in an animal experimentation laboratory. Let us not forget the miles of gnarled tape you'll waste trying to get results from the thing, since the letters don't depress well, and the tape gets jammed into a sticky ball of typos faster than you can say *Dymo Mite*!
The Label Buddy, on the other hand, weighs mere ounces, loads tape quickly, and clicks out flawless labels with little effort. It's a clear improvement of technology, offering up the same retro results. Dymo corporation, I salute you for offering a low-priced, easy-to-use old school label maker in the year 2010. Can you redesign my brain so I don't flunk grad school?
It's true that I have yet to think of a way to salvage my grad school project (and ego), but at least I can punch out some labels to stick on it. And that kind of thing is all we typecasters really ask from life.
Oh, I almost forgot: there is such a thing as Dymo art! Here is a valentine for the #typosphere.
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Zine World, A reader's guide to the underground press, has reviewed Silent Type #1 in Zine World issue #28. 
