purejuice

I've been trying to read this book recommended by Kate Davies, the Intelligent Craftafarian, since I left ground zero for Macondo. Still trying. It is where Marx and material culture and crafting and much else meet.

I'm on a jag with these LRB review posts because I finally fucking solved my pwd problem with the Luddites who run their site. Which is powered by Keebleroes on exercycles.

But the content, which is all I care about, is lush. Muddy Man, a barista at the local greasy, is a good and talented young reporter and political blogger. He can't afford a subscription to the NYT (who can? I'm thinking of losing my $100 a month Direct TV subscription instead since RuPaul is the only thing I care about on TV anymore; all my other vid info comes from the BBC, villagecharm, Netflix and Youtube) so when I breakfast at the greasy, which I tend to do in moments of spiritual trauma, I give him my NYT after having covered it well with buttery crumbs. After one particularly meaty Wednesday ish, MM, who is basically a desert rat reared far away from news of Manhattoes, said, in tones of wonder, It's so rich. 'Tis.

Yesterday I gave him the LRB, which I'd told him was a Communist rag, after perusing Judith Butler on who owns Kafka and Eagleton on Hobsbawm. It totally is a Communist rag, and long may it wave.

Herewith more godlessness.

( LRB review of A Sense of Things, American materialism )

In the mid-eighties, I saw a girl at the Griffin Market stylin' in the exact same psychedelic neon paisley turtleneck and matching stockings that I had given to the Good Will ca. 1967.

I feel sort of the same way about restoring my old manual typewriter.

The intarnets are full of toolies who think it's the kewelest Gutenbergian pseudo eccentric thing to do, to resurrect the dinosaurs. It's akin, from a cult studs angle, to the revival, in digital font design, of everything handstamped and calligraphic and gesturally spattered/spray-painted. The thing about my dinosaur is that I actually did write a whole novel on this thing, and restoring it reminds me of those days, both good and bad. A lot about the Old Husband in there, the old shreds of pink rubber eraser and cigarette spume. That's the reason the typewriter was on the charity pile until I decided to make the wishing tree tags.

But the toolies who think of typewriters as lovely antiques are all about repurposing contemporary fluids and media for cleaning and restoring the dinoes. There was a time, around the first go-round of the neon paisley turtleneck and stockings, where you could buy oil and cleaning fluid specially for typewriters and all us aspiring novelists all did.

Now the toolies are on the case to reinvent these long-lost fluids. The typewriter repair site recommends this:



And this:



The gun oil, unlike 3-in-1, is guaranteed never to coagulate and entomb fine dust particles in sclerotic scum impossible to scrape out of old typewtiers.

Having never oiled the old grey mare in the 35 years I have ridden her, this will not be a cleanup problem for me.

Eager to make amends for generations of neglect, I Googled gun shops in ABQ -- this is the west, people -- and found this review of Charlie's:

Recently, I was in the market for a new handgun and a couple buddy's of mine recommended that I go to Charlie's. They were very insistent that it was the best gun store in Albuquerque with a knowledgeable and friendly staff, so being a sucker, I took their advice. At the time I didn't know too much about firearms, I did some research on some pistols and found one that would fit my budget; to my 'luck' Charlie's had one in stock and it was 'new'. After I had made the purchase and and already taken in home, my father was inspecting the gun and asked why I bought a used firearm as he pointed out to me that the gun hadn't even been cleaned since it was last fired. This was a surprise to me. I had be told that I was in fact buying a NEW firearm; instead, I was charged FULL price for a USED gun. I will never do business with Charlie's sporting goods ever again. Had I gone to another store and bought the same gun used, I would have saved over 300$. Don't waste your time with this store.
Click here for the monster link to the source for this quote that was creating a wide load.

I decided to order my gun oil, people, the typewriter is mighter than the gat, from the intarnets and still had to by pass the CONTRIBUTE TO THE NRA page inserted after the address and credit card info page and before the submit order page on the totally legal interstate shipping firearms site, and also decheck several radio boxes in which the offer to send my name and stats to the antiChrist was also firmly made. But this is better than going to any one of the scores of gun shops in the Burque, I suppose. I should do profiles of them when I get my TV gig up and running.

Today I'm going to go to the auto store for the aluminum polish, which the toolies say is the perfect deruster for the old typewriter.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/purejuice/tags/restoringtypewriter/

Maybe I can rustle me up some pistol-packin' lowriders and go to bad boy heaven.

Perhaps I should oil up the typewriter first.