Inanities, Part 4

Things I've written on my typewriter:

I saw this movie once with Ronald Reagan. But the thing was, he wasn’t president yet. So I kept watching this thing going "Man, that guy’s going to be president someday." It was nuts. You can now do two things you couldn't do before you read the preceding:

1. I've been in movies, too, just like Ronald Regan. So now you can watch me in a movie and think "Man, that guy's going to be president someday."

2. This Ronald Regan movie I mentioned, I forgot the title, Patricia Neal was in it, too. I think it was her first movie, as a matter of fact. So if that helps you any, now you can go watch that movie and sit there thinking the same thing I did (Ronald Regan + President = One Day). Then, if you ever read in the news about me doing something really awful and somebody tells you that you shouldn’t judge somebody until you’ve walked in their shoes or known what it was like to be them, you can say: ‘I know. But I have, and that guy's nuts."

Inanities, Part 3

Things I've written on my typewriter:

1. "Something happens to me when I drink caffeine."
"You get the shakes?"
"No. I lose my segues."

2. A while ago, there was this guy that I was all chummy with. He looked at me one time with nothing but porridge in his eye and said: "Chum…" I brightened up at this. "I’m glad I never ate any of that." He was right to be glad, too. Chum’s not fit for human consumption. It does a hell of a job catching sharks, though. Everything in its right place.

3. If you have a common name, you should try searching online for obituaries of people with the same name as you. It would be like jumping in a time machine.

Inanities, Part 2

Things I've written on my typewriter:

1. Logical conclusions are a thing of the past!

2. Failure is a near certainty!

3. Words! They're silly!

Inanities, Part 1

Several Christmases ago, I got a pork pie hat as a gift. Then, a few birthdays later, I got several very nice silk handkerchiefs. I felt bad, staring at those things just sitting in my closet after a while, so I went out and bought a three-piece suit, and then put everything together. I looked good. I looked like Tom Waits. But then I didn't have many occasions to get all dudded up, and I felt bad about the three-piece suit purchase. So I went and bought an old Remington upright typewriter from the 1930s. I got re-dudded up, sat down at the old word grinder, and I kid you not, this came out:

"And so beauty disappeared, and color followed with it. And the ocean lost its wonder while retaining its scale, transmogrified from the captivating, flowing silk of a rippling parachute into the midnight, gaping wound of a 1940s detective movie. And trees were stripped of their power to lend life to a sidewalk, a courtyard, a public square, becoming nothing but explosions of steel wool atop light poles. All was lost, and the world retreated to gray."

And I thought "HOLY CRAP!! THIS TYPEWRITER'S MAGIC!!" But then this came out next:

"‘I would like some pie,’ is what the circle told the rhomboid, or so the story goes. Just like a circle, never wants to share with anybody. It already had pi."

And I knew that I'd broken the magic typewriter.

However, since I'd sunk all this money into my suit, this antique typewriter, and a roll-top desk (yeah, I got a little carried away), I figured I should keep using the stuff. So now, every Thursday, you can catch me at an old roll-top desk in my three-piece suit, my pork pie, with a silk hankie in my pocket, banging away at a typewriter of the approximate vitage of Surrealism itself. And I've got nothing to do with the stuff that comes out of that thing but post it here.

Lucky you!