Transmission from 57 Leonis

Strange things happen when you enter the Sandia Mountain wilderness east of Albuquerque.  Rumors have circulated for centuries amongst the indigenous, the Spanish, the anglo, and yet they remain.  Today we picnicked with friends, a celebration of my birthday, at our favorite spot, at about a 9000 foot altitude. Closer to the stars, they say.

I had just sat down at my typewriter, drink in hand, and was gifted with this seemingly extraterrestrial missive, hand-wrought, containing cryptic verse and imagery obviously intercepted by some mysterious radio receiver that watches our every move from outer space.

What is this mysterious symbol enclosing the transmission, a resin-like substance of some nonhuman origin perhaps? Dare I break the seal and glimpse what should remain unseen?

The message contained within started with this woodcut print, signed with the chop of Gustave Baumann, another longtime New Mexico resident. Mere decor, or a harbinger of more to come?

I was astounded by the origin story contained within. Almost as if my every moment were surveilled and recorded by something not of this world.

Details of the saga unfolded before me.

How could they have known?

My cover has been blown!

Are there still remnants to be uncovered?

A map back to my home planet perhaps?

It looks extraterrestrial to me!

At last the mystery was revealed, in all its typewritten glory:

If you see this man, be very cautious!

 

Thank you Kevin for the very creative card!

The Blue Mechanical AI

Help! I am being held captive by a blue mechanical AI. No, it's not some advanced artificial intelligence of the kind being developed by leading tech industry titans, but was something evidently created decades earlier, and made of all mechanical parts, like some steampunk automaton.

I know what you're thinking, that there's not enough complexity in a typewriter to account for its abilities I've observed this afternoon, while engaged in an extended typing session with the roll of teletype paper threaded up, to keep me chained to my chair, banging the keys and slinging the carriage back, a roll of intelligent prose (or nearly so) falling back behind onto the floor. But I have no better explanation to offer.

This Brother-made Webster XL-747 has even offered me a meaning to its name: Writing Enjoyment By Simply Typing Endless Randomness. At least, that's what came out on the paper roll. Who am I to argue?




Now, there's something else it revealed to me: a way to organize these diverse scrolls of random writing by using the margin release button and red ribbon to make marginal notes along the lefthand edge, so that once filed away I can still easily locate individual topics.

I've been using Smitty, the Smith-Corona Silent Super, for a few weeks and, while it has a softer touch than this Brother, I've found I can type at least as fast, maybe faster. Yes, the touch of the keys is heavier, and it's carriage shift, but with my weird typing technique and my right elbow supported on the armchair I can accurately hit the keys harder, with great accuracy.

This little blue AI also is smaller, lighter, has the repeat spacer and a nice carrying case. This is one of those things about typewriter collecting that I hoped to achieve, to narrow down the collection to just those machines I really enjoy using. While at the Phoenix Type-In last month I sold both Olivetti Lettera 22s, which were both similar enough to this Brother in size and color but weren't as pleasing to use. I think I made a good choice, as this machine has essentially no mechanical issues whatsoever. It's a joy to type with despite its heavier touch because I don't have to pause for corrections like with other, more trouble-prone typers.

Now that this blue AI has used me for its own purposes of announcing itself to the world, I'm hoping it will have the kindness to permit me a good nights sleep before I return to work early tomorrow morning. But they're sneaky, these AIs are, so I must be on my toes.

Weird Typing

Post-Script: I think this weird typing discovery came out of some intensive typing sessions this last week, during which I was purposefully touch-typing a lot on my newly acquired Corona Standard, whose ergonomics are wonderful and exhibit none of the issues the Hermes 3K showed. Wanting also to rapidly type on the Nekkid-Riter led to my discovering these subtle problems needing fixing, which in turn led to the fact that, at least for mechanical typewriters, I'm now weird typing. Interestingly enough, when I try this same weird typing technique on my PC keyboard I get none of the good effects. It's certainly a mechanical issue between my hands and the machine; something I've come to term "cybernetic," since manual typewriters are one of those few devices that truly operate as an intimately connected system of body and machine.

Regarding the last blog article, about Type-Texting, I haven't yet taken the time to practice, as I've been consumed in my spare time with YouTube videos and some film photography. But I've finished the book "Track Changes," an authoritative history of the word processor, and I garnered lots of thoughts along the way about typewriters and their place in the modern writer's work-flow; which I might write about in the coming weeks. Some of those touch-typing session, alluded to earlier, involved brainstorming some of my thoughts on this subject.

Inspired by the book on word processors, I dug out an old MSI Wind netbook computer that's been sitting in a cabinet for the last five or six years. Its WiFi is essentially nonfunctional, but it does have installed a version of Open Office, so it's essentially a non-Internet connected word processor. I did a bit of writing with it too, fleshing out some of those manually-typed pieces done on the Corona, and so I've used this as an opportunity to experiment with combining typescript into an otherwise all-digital writing process.