royal_quiet_deluxe raze the anticipation is difficult to contend with, so i keep it at a slow, steady hum. soon. 080105 ... jane you're kidding. i have one with emerald green keys. yellow case. 080106 ... raze they're mighty cool machines, they is. i used to have an old manual typewriter, back when i was about ten years old. it was sort of a pale green/grey colour, with a red ribbon in addition to the standard black one. i can't remember what the make was, but i typed up countless stories and lyrics on that thing when i was a kid, and i still have practically every piece of paper that ever passed through the roller. at some point it was sold at a garage sale, and i didn't think anything of it for a number of years. after that i had a few electric typewriters, which did the job but were nowhere near as inspiring, and after a few years of moderate use they crapped out, so apparently they weren't made very well. then came the convenience of computers, though i didn't finally have one to call my own that i could work on at home until i was about eighteen. lately i've found myself missing having an old manual typweriter, though. there's something about digging into a piece of writing with one of those machines...feeding the paper through the roller, lining it up, the clacking of the keys, the sound of the bell, the way the letters look on the page...i even miss the smell, and the fact that you can't erase anything unless you want to cross words out with x's. i used to try using whiteout, but that turned out not to be very wise, especially when i backspaced and typed in the proper letters before waiting for the whiteout to actually dry. anyway, to make a long story short, i've ordered a 1947 royal two-tone quiet deluxe and hopefully it won't take too long to get here. just thinking about typing on that thing gets me inspired. 080106 ... raze "typewriter" is the one word my brain never wants to let me spell properly. damn you, brain. damn you to arkansas. 080106 ... jane just wrote you a letter on mine, actually. it goes out soon. 090106 ... raze i've been neglecting the old beast. i should remedy that. 130306 ... raze not that i ever did get the deluxe; the money order i sent mysteriously vanished. three times. which wasn't the least bit suspicious. ended up with a remington rand instead (they made electric razors and pistols too, you know). not quite as pretty, but it does the job. and i've grown so accustomed to typing in all lowercase letters, the few times i've forced myself to type a letter with proper capitalization, it's felt very strange. 130306 ... raze typewriter neglect is a sad thing. i need to do something about it. i've been owing a few people some mail for a while now. maybe i should make good on what i owe, and maybe they should get letters that are typewritten instead of letters that are written by hand. 140104 ... raze i think i need a new one. a new-old one. the remington was always a bit of a pain in the ass, but i was able to make it work. now, not so much. and some letters are just too long to write by hand. 151125 ... unhinged i like handwritten letters better 151125 ... raze i'll write you one. should have something to send you in the mail in a few weeks that could use a letter to keep it company. 151125 ... raze (and a little bit of crude surgery got that typewriter up and running again. never underestimate the power of frustrated persistence.) 151126 ... unhinged i miss your gift laden missives. i can wait awhile if there is music too. i was listening to medium-fi music for...unstable lovers? while i cooked thanksgiving (which turned out bomb) my frustrated persistence usually breaks things 151127 ... raze i have three wizened typewriters now: - a remington noiseless that doesn't work - a remington rand that does - a smith corona coronet super 12 still no royal quiet deluxe, though. the coronet is almost identical to the typewriter i had when i was a kid — the one that used to belong to my dad's stepfather until he had an asthma attack that killed him on april_fools day. the colour is different, and it doesn't use a twin spool ribbon, but there's the same low hum when i turn the power on. the keys feel the same beneath my fingers. this machine even has the same smell that one did. it's sort of like what you'd get if a robot grew a garden of mechanical flowers that had to synthesize their own scents based on math instead of molecules. and if the person who sold it to me on ebay didn't lie about it coming with a cartridge that still had some ink in it, i'd be golden. 210819 what's it to you? who go blather from