Olivetti vs. Princess

Update: A short film of the Princess 300 in action is available here.

Some nonsense comparing Italian and German made mini-typewriters from a long time ago – and probably in a manufacturing galaxy far, far away.

Here and here (a) post(s) about (worst)writing with manual typewriters.

Trying to locate an in-great-condition, very cheap, vintage traveler typewriter is fun.  Seriously. According to that silly auction web-page – yeah, that one – there are still millions if not gazillions of manual typewriters around the world. I’m almost sure that there is a (slight) connection between the manufacture of firearms and the existence of antique typewriters. The “connection” lies in the fact that… For some this might be painful to hear/read. The reason that there are so many old typewriters and even more guns (which way back when were usually made on the same machining tools) is that the sword is not mightier than the gun. In other words: the pen has lost the battle. Anywho.

The Sound.

I mean, it’s really a good thing that I don’t have a compulsive (or impulsive) personality that would/could lead to addiction. Otherwise I would be searching that silly auction web-page everyday to find the perfect vintage manual traveler typewriter for less than five bucks. As of now (see date of this post) I have a small collection of manual typewriters. Why I collect them? Well, I feel as though I have also lost a/the battle. Of course, I’m referring to the battle of have and have-not. But that old chestnut is included in many a post on this sight. In short, I am strangely attracted to the sound of manual typing. So I buy these things to work on and since most of them are older than I am, well, they break a lot. Boy, I especially enjoy the sound of my own typing.

The other day I finally received the typewriter pictured above. I paid 23,- Euros for it, including shipping. A bit pricey but worth it. I won the auction from fifteen other bidders. Whoopee. It’s an Olivetti Lettera 22. I’ve heard that this machine is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (although I can’t find it on their website) – but that’s not the reason I bought it. I’ve always wanted an Olivetti because I’ve heard that they have mystical powers - which could certainly help any unpublishable (worst)writer like me – and you can lube them with Olive Oil.

A little side note.

I had to give the seller of Lettera 22 a neutral rating because, contrary to his/her description, upon receiving it, it was not fully functional. I know that actually deserves a negative rating – but hey, that’s the type of idiot/loser/nice-guy I am. The keys stuck, the carriage didn’t move freely, the motor wire was broken and the automated ink-tape reversal mechanism didn’t work. Probably made sometime in the late nineteen fifties, even with the flaws of age, it’s still a great typewriter. It’s very light (4kg) – made mostly out of Aluminum – and has a great flexible yet sturdy case. It has a very soft and somewhat negative and vague typing mechanic which is very unlike my other favorite traveler machine the Princess 300.

After numerous hours of tinkering and figuring I was able to fix the Olivetti using very expensive olive oil and it works pretty good now.

The Princess 300 pictured above was made by whacky Germans in Bavaria. I paid 7,50 Euros for it. The design is from the sixties and this is probably the smallest full-size machine out there. It really does (attempt to) close the gap between being a “portable” and a “travel” machine. (This post contains a brief description of the difference between “portable” and “travel” typewriters.) It really mimics a full desktop typing machine – instead of actually being a small traveler machine. The type mechanism is the exact opposite of the Lettera. Where the Lettera is soft and vague, the Princess is hard and precise. There’s no fluctuation of alignment of letters, which is great, but you just can’t get any feeling between the keys and the hammers. The hammers, or the part that prints the letter to the page when it hits the platen, does so with almost uncontrollable force. Add to that the platen has lost its rubber effect… This is the loudest, smallest typewriter around!

Would you believe that I found an office supply store in Wiesbaden that said they could replace the platen rubber? Wow!

Also, a design error of the Princess is its weight which puts a lot of pressure on the carriage – especially when typing upper case. The Lettera has a ‘basket’ design which actually lowers the hammers to print upper case. (Which is brilliant, btw!). The Princess is more conventional where the carriage has to be pushed upwards so the hammers can produce upper-case letters. When I type fast on the Princess it just can’t keep up with the combination of my speed, the weight of the carriage and the fairly weak motor. (The ‘motor’ is nothing more than a coiled-spring and fishing line that pulls the carriage to the right margin of the page). So I have to type slow on the Princess. And that effects the music – you digg! I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to modify the Princess carriage, including making the motor stronger but I don’t think that’s possible due to the key/hammer mechanic. It’s a shame really because I kind of like the ruggedness of the Princess. It really could have been a great machine but the problem lies in something that is typically German: over engineering.

For real typing I’d go with the Lettera 22 and for a break every once-a-once, and maybe to have a bit of fun with a letter or short story, I might use the Princess. The Princess bleeds engineering – it will last forever – but the Lettera is the machine that you can always just type on even though it’s not as precise. In fact, the Lettera is a bit like typing on a toy – but a toy that actually works in the real world. The Princess is mounted to the bottom of it’s case and the case is not as flexible as the Lettera where you can remove the machine and place it gently on your lap. Also, the Princess probably weighs twice as much as the Lettera. Both machines required a bit more “elbow grease” than I expected since they both were sold as ‘functional’. Nonetheless, these well crafted examples of another manufacturing era have been worth the effort. I’m probably going to purchase both of these machines a second time. I’m hoping to get a Princess 300 with a bit less use and will graduate to a Lettera 32 which was made as a follow-up and upgrade to the 22.

Oh. How could I forget this part? The sound, how do they sound…

The sound of the Princess I would compare to listening to Rock music. The sound of the Olivetti is a bit more like listening to jazz. And that’s cool. I guess.

For those interested, here’s a great source of information on portable typewriters.

-tgs-

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Indifference

Trying, failing. Now that’s a motto.

Never wanting to give up but then you reach a point where you can only ask: am I really that bad? Is there no room in this rampant world of doing nothing that I can’t find a place to call my own? Are all the words that come out of me, misspelled and cajoled with bad grammar, really so bad that no one wants to publish them? “Freedom” now equates – for me – with being able to do what I want to do and then being able to live from it. There is no freedom anymore.

Well, actually, Tom, you are a pretty bad writer (obviously) and you don’t know anyone who could help you make in the publishing world because – well – publishing ain’t about writing – it’s about publishing. I guess.

But I still don’t care. I’ll keep trying. I’ll keep failing. Life is almost over.

Then again…

Listening to some tunes this morning I was reminded of why Eddie Vedder is one of my favorite poets.

Indifference

by Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam

I will light the match this morning, so I wont be alone
Watch as she lies silent, for soon night will be gone
Oh, I will stand arms outstretched, pretend I’m free to roam
Oh, I will make my way, through, one more day in hell…
How much difference does it make
How much difference does it make, yeah…

I will hold the candle till it burns up my arm
Oh, I’ll keep taking punches until their will grows tired
Oh, I will stare the sun down until my eyes go blind hey,
I wont change direction, and I wont change my mind
How much difference does it make
Mmm, how much difference does it make…how much difference…

Ill swallow poison, until I grow immune
I will scream my lungs out till it fills this room
How much difference (2x)
How much difference does it make (2x)

Wish I could write like that.

-tgs-

Technorati Tags: writing, failing, trying, pearl jam, eddie vedder

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A Way Out

Note/Disclaimer about this post: This is yet another of my irrational posts. I suppose it’s a rant, too, but I’d like it not to be. This is a post that tries to transcend entertainment – not so much for the reader but for (worst)writing. So please… Indulge me – or not. Keep in mind before you continue that negative things will be said about religion in this post. If that offends anyone then please go elsewhere in the blogosphere. Negative things will also be said about rational stuff, too. But I don’t do that to equal things out. I guess.

There’s been a few negative things happening (to me) lately. This causes a few thoughts here and there, takes me away from work (or (worst)writing), and puts me in a state of nastiness. Combine that with the general negativity going on in the world… I would like to address the negativity for a moment so that I can utilize a small speck of all this technology that is ruining our lives and give the impression that I have something useful to say and/or vent.

First. Thank you for coming. Whoopee!

Been thinking a lot about that the old hippie adage everything is connected and that such a saying might actually have some truth to it. Of course, everything in this context means life and consciousness combined with matter and energy and that includes time and gravity being particle-like in the universe. I’m not much for mysticism or any belief in a higher celestial power so fuck religion in the context of everything. On top of that, what I do know about science or rational thinking tells me that there is something very mysterious about life and I can’t help but conclude that the mystery, if ever solved, is gonna be about something that is either connected or disconnected – and not about everything.

Does that make any sense? No? Oh come on…

Having said that (and because I love the use of parenthetical language), when I mention “higher celestial power” I am referring, naturally, to religion – which basically, for me, has nothing useful to say about life and the universe. Yet if one looks at the world today, obviously, religion should be ridiculed and spit-on as much as science – and let’s not forget that “science” is supposed to be the ultimate in so-called “rational thinking”. In my humble and irrational opinion, neither of the two have really given anything back to life but seem to do a lot more taking of life.

Please, no comments about all the krapp charity work being done around the world today.

But maybe, just maybe, to give-in to the fact that I’m a bit biased, science is more fun than religion – unless one considers the rational thinking of Catholic girls – at least the ones with which I’ve had the pleasure…

Some scientist (rational thinkers) today truly believe in dimensions beyond the ones that we (humans) can perceive. Megabillions of monies are being spent on trying to figure out things like dimensions. So-called String Theory and perhaps M-theory, non of which can be verified, dabble well in these idears. Who knows, maybe the LHC will find some proof. On the other hand we have the religious nut-cracks that believe when you die you go somewhere that the head nut-crack has deemed worthy which is at some higher level (consciousness?, dimension?) which we also can’t understand (enough witches there?). And so, we all dabble in this mortal coil in the name of religion or science continuing on with the status quo of nothingness, meaningless, anti-humanism, anti-nature, krapp and bullshit.

I guess, in a way, what I’m getting at here is that, intellectually, I’m fed up of the two options of dealing with the world and all this turmoil, misery and utter negativity. A way out is to end it all but I have this thing about wanting to fail better. So I go on. To deal with it all – I’ve managed to leave my home country and so I don’t have to face the nuts that think there is a God – which wouldn’t be half-bad if they all would leave God and religion where it belongs: in the church or in the bedroom. Now I live in Europe where I’ve learned to hate scientists (overly rational thinkers) who have made the world so miserable with the inability to rationalize economics or all-things-considered but instead support the sell-off of free-will to the queer dictates of three dollar (euro) bill materialism.

Sorry about the two-sided-ness of all this. Seriously. I simply have little respect for academic elitists (scientists) who created and give-in to the so-called fiction of globalization and the numb-nuts of religion who fear their own cocks so much that, as an ersatz to the things they buy on the backs of those underneath them, they have the gal to deprive women of privacy (which is, to me, the whole abortion issue!)

So I got to thinking: there’s got to be an alternative or some kind of ersatz from science and religion. With a few late night, wine-bestowed clicks of the mouse and entries into various search tools, I think I might have found that ersatz. Perhaps, ironically, I might have also found the “positive” to my “negative”. Just check out the pic below. There ya go. The answer.

Drug smuggling.

Other than the standard, accepted ones, I don’t use “drugs”. But you have to admire how runners of any illicit substance can be so creative in dealing with their situation. Seriously. The only thing that makes a drug runner a drug runner is the evidence. Right? So all you have to do is see to it that the evidence is in a perpetual state of never being found. I mean it’s like an escape before you’re even being chased. Or, it’s like being able to get away from the false-priests and the scientists before they catch you and throw you into one of the two prisons that we all face today.

I know… it’s confusing to me, as well. But I can almost feel a connection to hiding the evidence and getting away from the religious and scientific elitists and the cause and effect of illicit substances that humans ingest to deal and cope with this life. I guess.

Now, I just have to figure out how to make this very creative way of getting away with things, whether it’s failure, being lazy, procrastinating, spelling poorly, hating so much, anger, fear, drunkenness, etc., etc., and make it work for me. Wow. Ain’t it interesting how negativity leads to this kind of creativity?

And there you have it. The answer to finding the place between the positive and the negative, the science (rational thought) and religion (irrational thought), is to be creative. And then, of course, fit yourself into a rocket that is automatically controlled by a switch under your dashboard that, once under duress, the electricity from a car-stereo system can be re-routed to an electrode that ignites the combustion chamber of a rocket motor and shoots the evidence of your life to a place where it can’t be found – at least not before your court appearance.

I guess.

Pic credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Methrocket.jpg

-tgs-

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Final Phase

Not a lot of posts recently. I guess it’s break-time. But not from writing.

Doing a lot of writing. Yesterday I reached that final phase of my newest project. Something like a break-through. It was supposed to be a short story but after thirty or so pages it kept going and going. The final phase I’m at now has to do with being able to close the story-line. After all the feeding, threading, quilting of ideas, characters and scenes – and don’t forget re-writing – and then matching that with the map or layout that I planned during story conception, now it’s time to end it – to write the end. Was so over-joyed to reach this phase – because I haven’t experienced it more than three years – that I got depressed-drunk and had a nasty spat with my lovely girlfriend.

Shame on me.

Around the end of March (‘07) I grabbed on to one of the many ideas that constantly traverse my thoughts and notebooks and convinced myself to start writing it. Something like that has to happen – the convincing, I mean – because, well, being the/a (worst)writer with nothing but a rejections after writing four novels (and now I have a fifth!), well… So I just started typing but this time I typed with a bit more purpose, than, say, the gibberish here. Now, almost two months later, it’s a relatively short novel. More than 150 typed A4 pages at this phase, I suspect when I finish it, it’ll be about 180 pages. Then real re-writing begins and then the process of being rejected by publishers and/or lit agents. Of course. Whoopee!

I’m trying not to jinx it here by saying too much about it. But if you want here’s a text example of what’s been keeping me busy lately.

-tgs-

Technorati Tags: writing, novel, fiction

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Complaint #126

For more “complaints” go here, here, here and here.

Probably won’t be posting much in the coming months. I’m going through a what’s the point of it all kind of thing. Which leads me to complain.

Wait. I complain all the time, anywho!

Can’t find any place – anything to connect to. But I still claim and believe that “writer’s block” is bullshit. But then again, if one were to actually look – goodness forbid that someone in their right mind actually would – at all the shit I’ve written over the years then it might be obvious that everything I’ve produced has been nothing but the product of “writer’s block“. I mean, “writer’s block” must mean (equate with) zero productivity and utter meaninglessness. And since we’ve all grown up in a world of so much productivity then the work posted here and the work NOT posted here must be, well, blocked writing.

I guess.

I suppose it’s time to admit that, although I’ve tried to spend my adult life avoiding it, I’m really nothing more than that which I’ve tried to avoid: (being a) compulsive behaviorist. My compulsion? Just typing for typing sake.

When I’m not actually working on something that will ultimately (and obviously) fail then I’m just typing. Here, for your (worst)writer pleasure, is yet another example of that typing.

Good rantin’.

-tgs-

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