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L.T. Hanlon

Month: May 2019

When retailers look like jerks

May 29, 2019May 29, 2019 L.T. Hanlon3 Comments

Photo of a typewritten page that contains the following text. Wednesday, May 29, 2019. Chicago, USA. Enough with the mercantile patriotism. I’m glad the holiday weekend is over. I can't begin to tell you how annoyed I get when a retailer declares it will donate X percent of my purchase to (fill in the blank)  This past weekend it was to some Memorial Day—related cause. For crying out, loud, if you really care, don’t place conditions on your philanthropy. If you must, by all means make a public spectacle of your donation, but don't dangle strings. It's in poor taste. Even worse are the retailers whose cashiers are forced to pimp for contributions and won't allow customers to complete a transaction until they select YES or NO on the touchscreen. This always brings up memories of the United Way campaigns at work that required employees to sign and return a form even if they elected not to participate. If the odor of all this smells familiar, it's almost as bad as what's lingering in the opposite armpit: cause—related marketing. To conclude: Lead by example, not by cynically incorporating customer kindness into your fucking marketing plan.

 

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Infected by E-6 color sensibilities

May 24, 2019May 24, 2019 L.T. HanlonLeave a comment

Friday, May 24, 2019. Chicago, USA. Smith-Corona Silent-Super Elite 1954. Ektachrome and espionage. I’ve always wondered why back in the early to mid—1970s I made the switch from Kodachrome to Ektachrome. This affected my 35mm slides shot with my Pentax Spotmatic as well as 3—D images created with my Wirgin (Edixa) stereo camera. Switching was a big mistake, of course, since Kodachrome offered not only a truer representation of reality but also a much more archival medium. National Geographic photographers favored Kodachrome, switching only to Ektachrome when a faster emulsion was necessary. But why specifically did I switch? While watching Three Days of the Condor tonight, the reason finally hit me: movies. With a few exceptions like 1973’s Westworld, nearly every movie I saw in the ’70s looked blue. That's what infected me. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that I realized the error of my ways and returned to Kodachrome. As for the 1975 film Three Days of the Condor, it holds up exceptionally well and is clearly the spiritual mentor of many recent movies, including the Jason Bourne franchise. It also serves as a wonderful glimpse into world of 1975. Flared jeans, the Bell System, newfangled things like eyewitness news, big—ass land yachts, and even the 2—year—o1d Twin Towers all co—star in this Manhattan spy drama.

 

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I love a rainy night

May 23, 2019May 23, 2019 L.T. HanlonLeave a comment

Photo of a typewritten page with the following text. Thursday, May 23, 2019. Chicago, USA. Smith—Corona Silent-Super (pica). I’m not here for the destruction. I’ve posted several times before about how I enjoy monitoring the live video feeds of stormchasers. But I ought to make it clear why I watch this stuff. Like the majority of folks who are fans of NASCAR, I have no desire to see the tragedy. Far from it. I like seeing how stormchasers track bad weather, decide where to go, and how they coordinate with other chasers and with the media. Last night, one of the best feeds showed some chasers stop at a Sinclair service station in Oklahoma and get gas and food. Or food and then gas, as we'd joke in junior high. As the chasers tended to their vehicle, one pointed out the green concrete Dino out front. I hoped someone would go ride Sinclair's mascot, but nobody did. This venerable Smith—Corona I’m typing on probably has seen its share of storms. It still bears the business decal of the outfit that sold it: Windward Office of Kaneohe, Hawaii a Honolulu suburb.

 

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Kingdom of the Spiders

May 22, 2019May 22, 2019 L.T. HanlonLeave a comment
Silhouette photo of the scary-looking but harmless bridge spider.
L. sclopetarius silhouetted against a highrise window. (Photo by L.T. Hanlon)

Photo is of a typewritten page with the following text. Wednesday, May 22, 2019. Chicago, USA. Smith-Corona Silent-Super. Welcome, my 8-legged friends! As May draws to a close and summer readies its reign, my 54th floor windows once again play host to Larinioides sclopetarius, the common bridge spider that spins webs across Chicago's skyline. These spiders look impressively large as the season grinds on, but they're harmless to humans. In their native habitats, they live on barren cliffs. As man made his mark upon the land, L. sclopetarius took advantage of bridges and other metallic spans and then found comfortable niches in highrise buildings. Bridge spiders mostly keep to themselves. Just once in the two years I’ve been a cliff-dweller has one ventured inside my sky terrace. I used a broom to persuade it to return to the Kingdom of the Spiders. When I read more about these spiders and their ways, however, I felt bad about having done so. The specimen that sought refuge In my apartment was a small one and the species is known to be cannibalistic if sources of its usual prey are unavailable. Most of the time prey is plentiful, so much so that L. sclopetarius can be choosy diners. Often, most of the victims in its webs are still alive, sort of like how lobsters and crabs greet customers of seafood restaurants. Hey, everybody enjoys fresh food.

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Analog breadfruit comin’ at ya!

May 20, 2019May 20, 2019 L.T. Hanlon1 Comment

Frank Zappa pedals his talent to Steve Allen.

This is a photo of a typewritten page that contains the following text. Monday, May 20, 2019. Chicago, USA. Hermes 3000 (1968). Like breadfruit off the HMS Bounty. The much-overrated but nonetheless witty Frank Zappa said that it isn' t necessary for the world to end in fire or ice — it could just as easily be done in by paperwork or nostalgia. I’m convinced that nostalgia is what fuels most eBay transactions. We finally acquire what we coveted in our youth.	In my case, that's mostly been film cameras and lenses whose prices were hopelessly stratospheric in my teens and 20s. And now that I own a Widelux, an f/ 2.8 Stereo Realist or a near—complete set of Super Takumar lenses with their gloriously yellow radioactive thorium tint, I t m left trying to decide what to do with it all. I've just stumbled into semiretirement and the sad reality has dawned on me that photo equipment is of no use unless you use it. And I 'm not just talking about taking random shots of streets, buildings, power lines, trees, and fields, I 'm talking about people. Unless you' re photographing people, cameras are worthless. I’m by no means a hermit, but these days I’m seldom in situations where people need or want to be photographed. So I 'm going to unload just about all of my analog equipment.	Nostalgia has a way of taking up space, both in closets and in your brain. Note: Unedited. Typos are Easter eggs.

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How valuable is this typewriter?

May 20, 2019 L.T. Hanlon3 Comments
Screenshot of the results of a search for typewriters in Facebook Marketplace show two typewriters and one opened waffle iron. The waffle iron looks sort of like a typewriter.
Facebook Marketplace finds a rare typewriter for me.

The following text appears in a photo of a typewritten page. Sunday, May 19, 2019. Chicago, USA. Canon Typestar 5. One of these things is not like the other. Foreword — I had planned on writing this earlier today but got distracted. So now, at around 11:15 p.m. I can't haul out a mechanical typewriter and pound away. Well, I could ... but that  wouldn't make me a very considerate neighbor. So ... Canon Typestar 5 to the rescue! The quiet, electronic Typestar uses a thermal element to transfer type to paper. When these portable wonders were in production, Canon sold ink-ribbon cartridges about the size of a mini DV cartridge. Those ink cartridges haven't been manufactured for many years. I have a few NOS  ribbons I bought off eBay but I use them sparingly when I need to type on traditional paper. The rest of time, I remove the ribbon cart and load the Typestar with thermal fax paper. That l s what I'm using for this typecast. You’re probably familiar with thermal paper already; it's that lightweight  paper used for store receipts. The main part This is going to be much shorter  than the foreword. It's just a funny little incident from earlier today. While wasting time on Facebook, I searched for typewriters in Facebook Marketplace and among the illustrated results was a WAFFLE IRON. I guess it wound up in the results because to an Al program it looks like of like a typewriter; sort of how the openings in automobile wheel covers look enough like faces to Google Street View's  algorithms that they're always blurred. Well, that's it. Note: Unedited. Typos are Easter eggs!

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Typewriters and flying saucers

May 18, 2019May 20, 2019 L.T. Hanlon5 Comments

At least for now, you can watch the TV movie “Roswell” on YouTube. There are excellent performances by Kyle MacLachlan, Dwight Yoakam, and Martin Sheen. The music in this production is incredibly creepy and adds a lot. 

This photo of a typewritten page contains the following text. Saturday, May 18, 2019. Chicago, USA. Hermes 3000 made in 1970. Smith-corona and the thing from another world. Ever since fifth grade I've been fascinated by UFOs. In junior high, my best friend and I even went to a meeting of the Denver UFO Society. And then I became obsessed with cattle mutilations mystery that still not been fully explained to this day. In the 1 980s, the so-called Majestic-12 documents came to my attention. Skeptic that I am, my inclination is these are a hoax.  The papers purport to prove that in the late 1 940s, President Truman authorized the creation of a secret committee to deal with, among other unworldly things, the spacecraft and extraterrestrials allegedly recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. Supposedly, one damning detail that examiners found is that at least one of the documents was typed using a Smith-Corona machine not produced until many years later. According to Curt Sutherly in his UFO mysteries: A Reporter Seeks the Truth (Llewellen Worldwide, 2001) , an expert concluded that the MJ-12 Truman memo was typed with a Smith Corona cartridge machine introduced no earlier than 1963. Clues to determining the typewriter year and model were the capital letters A and W, both of which, (skeptic Phil) Klass, said, tended to. tear the old-style carbon ribbon. This defect was corrected by Smith Corona in the model introduced in 1963. The mystery for me — and perhaps someone more familiar with Smith-Corona product offerings than I am can shed some light here — is that as far as I know, Smith-Corona  didn't introduce its Coronamatic cartridge ribbon system until many years later in 1973. So either the company did make a cartridge typewriter in 1963 or someone made a typo and changed 1973 to 1963. A third explanation, of course, is that the same team investigating the Roswell Incident also worked on the Philadelphia Experiment and a 1973 Smith-Corona Coronamatic typewriter somehow timeslipped back into the late 1940s. Hey! Can you prove it didn’t happen?Note: Unedited. Typos are Easter eggs.

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Stormy weather is portable

May 17, 2019May 17, 2019 L.T. Hanlon4 Comments
Screen capture of MyRadar Pro app shows a map of the Midwestern United States on which icons representing live stormchaser feeds are superimposed.
MyRadar Pro shows video feeds from stormchasers.

This photo is of a typewritten page with the following text. Friday, May 17, 2019. Chicago, USA. Hermes 3000. All the weather — right in your hand. Last night a hundred lightning flashes or more shined through my living room window. And I knew how many of those bolts struck near me, and I knew how long the storm would last. I can also see another storm on its way to— night — and when it will arrive. And out in tornado country I can the stormchasers closing in on deadly weather. And if I really want to, I can watch the live video feeds of mobile meteorologists. I’m able to do all of this on my iPhone, which also lets me compose email, instant messages and even the next bad novel using its QWERTY display. I can switch it to a Dvorak or a QWERTZ display if want. But how am I telling you this? I’m using a manual typewriter manufactured the year before we landed on the Moon. Note: This typecast is unedited. Typos are Easter eggs.

Weather linkage

MyRadar Pro

Live Storm Chasing

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Yes, you can type in hieroglyphs

May 17, 2019May 16, 2019 L.T. HanlonLeave a comment

Photo of typewritten page with the following text. Friday, May 17, 2019. Chicago, USA. Hermes 3000 (1968). King Tut had a typewriter ... well, sort of. Last week, I speculated about whether anybody ever created a hieroglyphic typewriter. Well, it turns out that at least one was made. Such a magnificent machine was crafted by Martin Tytell, a man of many, many talents — one of which included typewriters. According to Typewriter Man, an article by Ian Frazier in the November 1997 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Mr. Tytell did indeed retrofit hieroglyphic typeslugs to a typewriter owned by a Brooklyn Museum curator. That's not the only cool stuff we learn about Mr. Tytell. The man's typewriter expertise leads him to play a vital role in World War Two and beyond. Please read about Mr. Tytell. He led an amazing life and it would make a great movie. Note: This typecast has not been edited. Also: Off to the right side of this photo is an old, public domain sketch of Pharaoh Akhenaten in profile. He has a slender head, aquiline nose and a regal bearing.

Read “Typewriter Man,” Ian Frazier’s story about Martin Tytell.
Read Mr. Tytell’s New York Times obituary.
Learn about Akhenaten, a pharaoh who might have embraced monotheism.

 

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Ixnay on that bench-seat slide

May 15, 2019May 15, 2019 L.T. Hanlon4 Comments

The hood slide (see above) is another story entirely. It’s A-OK!TC_051519_1000

 

 

 

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