Will you be my Valentine letter, you filthy googling pervert?

Cast your mind back a year, oh typosphere, and remember what happened on my blog on Valentine's day 12 months ago.

Actually, don't strain your memory cells too hard... Here's a recap: 

Last year, my tortured letter to the Valentine typewriter that I had repaired became item number 4 on google's image search. As such, many love-lorn boys and girls came to read my blog looking for inspiration for romantic prose - only to find a blog entry on how I wished to smash my Valentine to pieces lady McBeth style.

Well, haven't things changed in the past year!

This year..... Guess where I am.

That's right.... I'm at number 3! I'm even beating Oprah's love quotes. Again I seem to be torturing lovers everywhere, and deflating their libido with my post-repair angst. 

In the last 24 hours my Groma was almost about to be pipped by my Valentine for popularity. 

Well.... I can't be deflating their libido that much. There has been a worrying trend in the search terms that have brought readers other than the typosphere members to my blog. Here's a little screen grab:

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a very open minded man, and I like to think I'm rather worldly. Heck, I'm all for trying something at least once. Well, mostly... I'll have to rule out keychopping.

But.... what the ****.... is 'Platen Sex'? 

This is a serious entry. I see this in my search terms surprisingly frequently, so naturally I googled it myself and braced for the potential risk of seeing people doing things with platens that may be pretty much illegal in almost all American states. 

Oddly enough my blog about Ikea and their un-sexiness comes up as the second entry on google when you search for that term. But otherwise there's pretty much nothing to tell me what on earth 'platen sex' is. 

I have a theory. And the theory is that certain pepped up and excited men have been trying to google 'planet sex', but have been so jittery with enthusiasm, or so illiterate that they have mis-spelled it with comical and unfortunate results. 

Either way, like the lovelorn that unfortunately have become trapped in the pitfall that is my blog when they've been looking for something else, welcome! If you're going to put your feet up on the furniture, please take your shoes off first. And for those of you who are thinking of making yourselves a little too comfortable... keep your damn pants on. 

I'm back and swinging....

I've done a fair bit of blogging lately, but I've not done a lot of actual writing. It's really easy to find the inspiration to blog, but often it is harder to find the personal fortitude to throw a piece of yourself down on paper, and then send it to someone for their personal edification. It is a connection between you and that person that is different to the mass audience of a blog.

So I've set about about rectifying this problem. I've not written many letters lately, and I feel that this situation needs to be rectified.

So... out come the keyboards.

Fear my keyboarding wrath! 

Oh? What's that.... Is that..... 

Yes. I have an Oliver now... I haven't written about the Oliver yet, but there's a tale to be told. 

But that's not all. Oh no. There is another typer that I have used this evening that is quite unique, and I had sought after for quite some time. There's a letter from it that is now on its way to a rural setting in California. 

You know who you are...

And I don't think I will reveal this special typer until I've written to a few other people yet. 

Anybody wanting to correspond? 

So again, the type bars are swinging, and I'm feeling pretty good about myself again. Writing is pleasurable and enjoyable. 

What do you mean, you thought I might have been talking about a different kind of swinging? What kind of other swinging is there? 

...... oh. I think I need more wine. 

A hate letter to my Valentine.

Seem like strong words? 

It seemed such a simple thing - putting the bearings back into a typewriter carriage. I saw Retro-tech Geneva's Valentine shooting bearings, and I felt pretty confident that this was a problem that I could manage. 

And when I say manage, I mean... mange with a bit of effort. I wasn't expecting this to be a walk in the park. 

The day after I read about the bearing shooting typer, I came across one on Ebay Australia that was doing the same thing. It had a few dings and issues, and no one else on Ebay wanted to go near the thing. So it was going pretty cheaply. The man who owned it had attempted to repair it too, but had only gotten as far as Retro-tech had. After the sale was completed, he asked me to keep him informed as to how my repairs went. 

The Valentine doesn't suit my collection, but the style and design are just so - iconic - that I felt that it would be nice to have one there. If anything, just as a poser piece. 

But that was the theory. In practice, I really don't like hanging onto a typewriter that I am not actually going to use. So, I set about repairing this typewriter. I had a heap of time on my hands today while I waited for my car to be serviced, so I thought I'd spend some quality time with this machine. 

But I was too eager. I sat down and watched a movie last night, and found myself felling far from tired. I thought to myself 'Just make a start', and before long I had the Valentine partially disassembled on my desk. 

The hours passed by quickly, and I soon found myself filling my glasses with perspiration. Nothing was working. Nothing seemed to work logically. By about 11pm I found myself very tired. My patience was failing, my sanity was slipping, and I knew I wouldn't achieve anything this evening. 

I put out a plea to the portable typewriter forum for help. I was so tired that I asked for help with an Olivetti Lettera 32 (I'm not even sure I wrote the whole thing) instead of a Valentine.

I ended up laying in bed with my iPad. I read through Retro-tech's site and comments, and I came across a link to an older blog entry by another typosphere blogger on this subject. I clicked on the link and read through the bloggers suggestions (in his case, an actual lettera 32 was being used) but I just couldn't understand them. Nothing seemed to make sense as I was too tried. 

I put the iPad down, and ran through some thoughts about the Valentine problem. But I was lucid, and I started to think about how much of a complete wast of time it was. My mind I crossed between waking and dreaming, and I soon found myself being teased by a young girl about how 'boring' this all was, and how I just apparently didn't know what fun was. She giggled, and played 'Girls just wanna have fun' on a record player in her pink bedroom. 

I awoke a little later, but I couldn't accept at the time I had been dreaming. It didn't make sense, but it had to have come from somewhere, right? 

I crawled this morning with a heck of a headache. I spilled my tea everywhere, and made a mess of just about everything. I took my car to the service centre, and then walked home. My head felt dull, and I just couldn't think. I decided I just didn't have the mental capacity to deal with the Valentine, so I busted open my coin box and counted it.

$250? Not bad.... Now... how do I deposit all this coin when there's not a single branch of any bank still open near by? 

After I while I re-read the blog site. I could picture what they were saying in my head, but I wasn't sure it would work. But I gave it a try. I slipped one side of the bearing retainer into the carriage without a problem, and then tried putting the other in. The site suggested that I 'shimmy' the second side in. 

I tried and I tried. And nothing seemed to work. After about 30 minutes of trying to 'shimmy' I more or less gave up. 

As I lowered the carriage gently back into its bed something happened. The retainer slipped... every so slightly. It slid between the rails, and past where it had previously been blocked. 

I stopped and drew a breath. This was progress... REAL progress. It may only be about a millimetre, but it showed it could get in there. The bloggers suggestions really could work! 

And work they did. Before long I had slid the entire retainer tightly in between the rails, popped a couple of bearings in as instructed, and began to slide the carriage. Things were looking good! 

The bearings popped out again, but this was expected. I slotted all 4 in this time, slid the carriage back onto the rails and locked the carriage. I reassembled everything and.... It all seemed to be working. At least until I shot out one of the bearings again when I slid the carriage back to inspect the operation. 

Not a problem. The rear retainer was about a mm out of line with the front retainer, and this caused it to poke just a tiny bit out the side. I shimmied it back a bit, and it all lined up nicely. *Note to anyone else attempting this. You have to be dead accurate with your positioning*. 

I bolted everything back together, let out a deep breath, and just looked at my handiwork. I had done it. I had reassembled the Valentine. I had a Valentine that worked! Now, it was time for a ribbon. 

After the fight with the carriage, what came next just felt like a cruel joke. Slotting the ribbon into the Valentine is anything but graceful. It wasn't enough that lining up the ribbon into the unit was far more awkward than seemed logically possible, but the spool caps refused to screw on. This turned out to be largely the fault of the spools I had been using. But not entirely their fault. I quickly swapped over to another ribbon I had that had universal spools with a lot of clearance around the centre hole opening. 

The caps screwed on, but I still needed to hold down the spool with some pressure to stop the centre shaft from spinning while I tightened the caps. The whole thing was clearly designed to allow for maximum use of space available, instead of considering the needs of the poor typist that would be using this machine. 

I cleared off the ink I had smeared all over the typewriter and fed some paper in. The repair was done, and with all the frustration and anger that I still had coursing in my veins from the repair, I tapped out the above letter to my Valentine typewriter. It was the first time I ever typed on a Valentine, and I have to say, I'm far from impressed. But at least that... was something that I expected. 

It even skipped the escapement while I tried to type 'fragmenter', driving home how much effort I put into something that really wasn't worth the time.

And to you, Mr Typebarhead.... Your instructions saved the day. They need a but of tweaking, but for the most part your directions are excellent. If you ever are in Brisbane, sir... I owe you a beer. 

10:15 on a friday night.

(Pardon the over use of the term: 'Before long' up there, I wasn't quite paying attention as I typed). 

The Quiet-riter is perfect for small hands the love smashing keys as hard as possible. 

Pardon my dishevelled appearance, I'd not seen a comb in 12 hours, bed in 20 and a razor in 2 days. For some reason I was so tired that I'd forgotten to put my glasses on. Oh, and that's my PJs shirt. 

These two sit on the shelf next to my desk - ready to be grabbed and typed with at any time. 

"Come on kids... I haven't even had breakfast yet"! 

$30? Nice and clean... but no thanks. I couldn't even be bothered bargaining. 

Fear and Loathing in my office

Causality in the best way.

I slipped my glasses on this evening, and then clicked my way into Facebook. It's just one of those things I do a few times a day to feed my addiction to my current casual social contact tool.

There was a short two line message from a friend on there.

A friend of mine, that is part of a small activism group I am part of, received a typed letter from me last friday. I guess she held it off till later in the weekend to read it, and afterwards left a little message to me in reply.

"I was in tears after I read your letter" She wrote. She also spoke about how it reminder her about how her grandfather used to write to her with his typewriter in much the same way. He was a political activist and social-worker in New Zealand.

Every letter I have written so far seems to have had a small but powerful effect. I haven't received many letters in reply, but I have had quite a few social network reply notes and postings.

The art of the letter - in the mail - isn't lost. Even when letters were commonplace they were still powerful things to receive when they were personal. As was highlighted by my friends response.

The letters from their grandfather, written back some time ago were treasured just as much back then. If they weren't, the letter from me wouldn't have had such an impact on her. Emails today don't have the same effect. Email has changed the way that we use writing to communicate, as has SMS pushed that even further.

Email and SMS's easy access has allowed us to communicate faster than ever before. However there is no intimacy in SMS, and Email has become more function than form. The intimacy has fallen from a communication form that has become limited to emails along the lines of "RE: Issue with water-release device" and "Attached: colour swatch ideas for new kitchen paint".

Because of how these Emails have become so... mundane and functional, a written letter can be so much more. Particularly when every day we still receive in the mail that has been created on a computer, with out name and address 'mail merged' in.

Even when the Emails are personal,  there's no surprise, and no passion. And we have largely lost the ability to use this communication to do so. Further more we use Facebook and suchlike pages to compensate. As such we see an almost endless stream of our lives thrown up for all to see. But although our lives have been recorded 'in the moment' and replayed for social value, the connections between the people on these pages are lost as there is little, and token interaction with the audience.

My letter had nothing breathtaking or unexpected in it, but was of me, and about me. And that always seems to matter.

Away for storage till another day. 

I spent the evening with getting close and personal to my Remington Quiet-riter, some paper scored from the recycling bin at work, and some pre-stamped envelopes.

I'd bought this typewriter just before I moved house, and I hadn't had any time so far to spend some quality time with it.

When I first got it, it felt stiff and unwieldily. A morning spent with a scrubbing brush to clean up the shell, and a few dabs of oil and this beastly typewriter from the 1950's came alive.

I showed a photo to a friend of mine at work, and her response was 'Ugh! It looks mean. If it could talk I'm sure it'd growl'.

Anyway, I really just wanted to write. So I did. I dropped the typewriter on the back deck of the house, and listened to the trains in the distance while I tapped out a letter to my 1 year old Nephew.

Sure, he can't read, but that's not the point. It's really a latter to his family, about his family. It's short, brief and a little hello from the clan. And I hope my sister isn't too upset by it! I can only wait and see I guess.

Till next time, have a great day.
Scott K.