Circle Those Wagons

• Pre-NaNo anxiety is setting in: what if this year's draft is as bad as last year's, what if I never finish editing last year's, what if I suddenly die of H1N1 and last year's draft is read aloud before family and friends at my funeral, etc.. I'm still trying to rope in more newbie suckers participants, because I'm highly competitive about word count, and me and the typewriters want to crush them.
• Deep breathing... deeeeep breathing... I am the typewriter buddha... ooommmmmm...
  
• Could not resist a Sperry-Rand Remington Premiere for $5 today, though it's anything but "Premiere." No tabs, no ribbon color select, no touch control, no auto ribbon reverse (pop the cover, flip the switch, replace the cover -- there's your reverse, wimps.) Still love it, though hating the caked on brown scuzziness on the surface. Tomacco stains, perhaps? Foul. Only Goo Gone and a lot of buffing is handling it.
  
• I consider it kismet for passing up the similarly anti-featured 1950's Underwood Leader that seemed to hang around forever at the same price. Tip: the Remington typing experience is not like chewing on tinfoil while someone hits your hands with a meat tenderizer. This may be the NaNo-distraction-typer for my two year old to help her keep her hands off of The Beast while Daddy's working.
• So far I've heard synposes of Olivander and Speegle's novels, and I want to be a reader for both (once they've pass a first-draft sanity check.) Want to start a typosphere reading circle of sorts? Anxiety aside, I might actually be able to share this year's novel, and would gladly read and critique others. Gotta pass the time 'til next November, after all.
• The Typewriter Brigade topic is completely insane. Two hundred seventy-two posts at this point (yes, mostly mine, har har har.) Duffy, what foul Hell-spawn have you unleashed? I love it.
• Hurry
• Up
• November
  

Tabula Rasa

Squeeeee!

Sorry, I have to get all fanboy for a moment here:

• Preview of The Prisoner on AMC's web site

Oh, please don't suck please don't suck pleasepleaseplease...

The Big Wind Up

I'm a little tightly wound right now. Our parish is gearing up for their annual festival/carnival/fete/what-have-you and my home is overtaken with decorations for it. School is drawing to a close, and my young'uns are getting progressively more animated and anxious, especially as that means that the vacation is now only a month away. Everyone's quite busy at work, heading for our twice-a-year project deadlines. Everything is my life is in motion now, like an armload of ping-pong balls tossed down a stairwell.

I know I've been talking about it for a while here, but I'm also finally getting back into film, slowing acquiring the necessary bits to hang on to this particular bit of outdated knowledge. And of course the camera-acquisitions have been going on unabated, though like my typewriter bender of last year, I think I'm just about sated, having more toys than time right now. I say this now, still basking in the post wind-up excitement of a long-awaited delivery, pictured above. You can look up the particulars yourself but the short version is: it's another half-frame, squeezing two photos into the space of a typical 35mm negative, and for the true retro-geek, it's got a clockwork film advance. About as useful as the "Power Space" key on a certain typewriter line (and twice as noisy) but really... could I resist it? On the bottom of the winding knob/handle is the legend "Wind Up." Very Alice in Wonderland. I've wanted to find out about this camera since about 1992, when I first saw it in use on a repeat of The Prisoner (see Many Happy Returns, at the 9:00 mark.) I've already confessed my love of all things Cold War-spy-era, and the camera lust goes back well before that. Luckily for me the Intertubes finally caught up with my random obsessions. Curse you, system of networked computers that makes every impulsive wish come true!

And speaking of impulsiveness, I have 2/3 of the ingredients for Caffenol, thanks to the coffee and pool supply sections of Safeway (sodium carbonate = "pH Up" for those of you playing along at home in swimming pool-friendly areas.) I'm in for a penny now, so I'll be ordering some fixer and film, and yes, probably some real developer as well from that selfsame place that got me into this mess in the first place and maybe the only place that will survice the Econolypse: the accursed/beloved 'Net. While I'm agressively refreshing that "shipment status" page I can get myself all worked up about The Prisoner remake that's in post-production now.