Silent Type II production

Finally finished cataloging and scanning all of the Silent Type II contributions, and have placed them into an InDesign file (thanks again to Brandon, unsung hero of Silent Type, without whom none of this would likely ever get done). There's still quite a bit of work to be done, since I need to create title pages, contents pages, credits pages, some collages, that sort of thing, but I am feeling encouraged that much of the content is already in a digital file. This can only mean one thing: it will get done.

I am impressed by the quality of the poems and especially the effort some people made to format/design the page their poem appears on-- these particular poems will make the finished product a joy to look through. (Also thanks to those folks who have sent me vintage letterhead and other items which will find their way into collages for the issue.) My sincere thanks to everyone who contributed a poem, and I want to apologize for the generally long time it takes to get the finished product out. You can trust me when I say, you will have a finished zine in your hands this summer.

Winners, silly typewriter hacks, haters, typewriters around the world, and Silent Type

I dearly wish I could pin a button on every one of you beautiful people, but it just so happens that we have a lone victor in the Random Drawing for Prizes... Christina C! Chosen by the Random Number Generator (I really must come up with a more analog way of picking winners). Christina, please contact me via e-mail by June 25th (send me your mailing address). If I don't hear from you, the Random Number Generator will crank itself up for another calculation.

Thinking that if I happen across another set of buttons in the future, I may bust the package and have six winners of one button each. Just so things could go a little more like this.

Have you already seen this bit about the silly iPad typewriter hack?

Let it be known that fellow typecaster Frank DeFreitas of Antiquarian Holographica has started a new site, Typewriters Around the World, in which he is posting just that: letters from typewriters around the world. Time for you to represent! Get out your Smith-Corona and send him a letter for everyone to enjoy.

I encountered weirdness the other day upon a certain social networking web site, in which an artist known for creating reclining nudes out of typewriter parts penned a screed somewhat tilted in my direction, ascribing a number of unflattering characteristics to those who prefer their typewriters whole. I shant go into detail, but it repeated general themes seen in the comments of the Daily News item about Skye Ferrante being booted from the Writers Room in NYC: that people who use typewriters are terrible, terrible people indeed, pretentiously clattering away on their horrid anvils of the industrial age only as an affectation designed to irritate the clever and righteous masses of virtual iPhone keyboardists and ardent thumb-typers o'er the land.

Let us continue doing our part to irritate such persons well into the 21st century.

PS: Silent Type 2: Working on it. Oh! And Silent Type #1 is now available for purchase at the Microcosm Publishing Web site.