Jun 2019
We read that all functionaries in the Moscow Kremlin use typewriters and messengers for in-house communications.
Typewriters cannot be hacked. The cleverest listening devices aboard lurking submarines and in space spy craft can pick up the tap-tap-tap of a typewriter, but cannot interpret an e-tap from a g-tap.
Better still, typewriters break down only every twenty years or so. No typewriter sends you a message that the Microsoft Word lifetime package you bought has no existence, and that you must buy it again, nor does it give you a blue screen because it has no screen at all. A typewriter tells you nothing; you tell the typewriter with the nimbleness of your mind and fingers, and it obeys.
Beyond that, one does not imagine Vladimir Putin passing idle evenings playing Candy Crush. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia crush, maybe.
A computer, any computer, unlike the manly typewriter, often suffers the Aunt Pittypat vapors and falls into a faint, calling weakly for smelling salts.
Thus the brevity of this column.
Y'r 'umble scrivener has spent much of a beautiful spring day attempting to coax Aunt Pittypat into waking up and doing a little work:
But all Microsoft's horses (I was thinking of another quadruped, but the name is not appropriate for a family newspaper)
And all Microsoft's persons
Could not make Aunt Pittypat anything but worsens. (That's not a real word)
A personal computer is outdated before you get it home from the Godzilla Box Store, and this moribund machine is some four years old. In dog years that is...something; I forget what.
Tomorrow morning I am off to buy the cheapest machine I can find, for personal computers are as disposable as toilet paper.
I will pass another beautiful spring day re-installing programs and apps (because I am good about backing up all my files) and addresses and all the tiny little dragons that speed along its circuits, and by next week should have a brilliant and well-crafted story to tell you.
May your electrons never fail.
-30-
Typewriters cannot be hacked. The cleverest listening devices aboard lurking submarines and in space spy craft can pick up the tap-tap-tap of a typewriter, but cannot interpret an e-tap from a g-tap.
Better still, typewriters break down only every twenty years or so. No typewriter sends you a message that the Microsoft Word lifetime package you bought has no existence, and that you must buy it again, nor does it give you a blue screen because it has no screen at all. A typewriter tells you nothing; you tell the typewriter with the nimbleness of your mind and fingers, and it obeys.
Beyond that, one does not imagine Vladimir Putin passing idle evenings playing Candy Crush. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia crush, maybe.
A computer, any computer, unlike the manly typewriter, often suffers the Aunt Pittypat vapors and falls into a faint, calling weakly for smelling salts.
Thus the brevity of this column.
Y'r 'umble scrivener has spent much of a beautiful spring day attempting to coax Aunt Pittypat into waking up and doing a little work:
But all Microsoft's horses (I was thinking of another quadruped, but the name is not appropriate for a family newspaper)
And all Microsoft's persons
Could not make Aunt Pittypat anything but worsens. (That's not a real word)
A personal computer is outdated before you get it home from the Godzilla Box Store, and this moribund machine is some four years old. In dog years that is...something; I forget what.
Tomorrow morning I am off to buy the cheapest machine I can find, for personal computers are as disposable as toilet paper.
I will pass another beautiful spring day re-installing programs and apps (because I am good about backing up all my files) and addresses and all the tiny little dragons that speed along its circuits, and by next week should have a brilliant and well-crafted story to tell you.
May your electrons never fail.
-30-
