For the collector of objects related to the mechanical and electronic arts, The IntarWebs is a fantastic tool; it can provide in a few minutes information that used to take hours, or even weeks and years, to find.  Others have done the work, and they willingly share it with the world on The IntarWebs.

Take, for example, this Alan Seaver guy from Rochester, MN.  Seaver has taken the time to organize his typewriter collection on The IntarWebs, making it an instant (and FREE) reference site for other collectors. 

As a collector, The IP is a generalist, meaning that he likes to collect examples of lots of things; which is why he only has two typewriters.  But they’re nice typewriters.  With a special THANK YOU to Mr. Seaver, here’s a quick typewriter tour featuring The IP’s two typewriters, plus one that is now on his hope-to-find list.

Royal Safari c.1965. Serial # SA5390535 $6.00 at Goodwill

You never know what you’re gonna find when you open up one of those plastic portable typewriter cases; the latter are so non-descript that they often go overlooked.  When The IP opened the case to a Royal Safari, his jaw dropped.  What can one say?  Beautiful blue.  One of the most beautiful blues The IP’s ever seen.  And the body and keys and everything, really, just all work together visually.  It’s very “mod” looking, if you know what The IP means.

Mr. Seaver has a whole bunch of Royal typewriters in his collection, including a Royal Safari.  He also has this beauty:

Whoa!!!  The IP would love to have a mint Eldorado.  Look at that thing. 

The other typewriter in The IP’s “collection” is a cool little Adler portable he also picked up at a local Goodwill:

It may not be as sexy as the Safari or Eldorado, but the Adler Tippa made in West Germany has an attractive and “clean” appearence.  It also has an exceptional build quality.  Typing on it makes one realize that, just like that Vince guy says about those Shamwow towels, “You know the Germans always make good stuff.”

 The IP found a nice home for his Tippa on one of the cubicles of the cool shelving unit he purchased last weekend at a strange sale of furniture once used in model homes…the latter are not really getting much visitation lately, hence the sale of this business’ stock of furniture.

When The IP’s little Tippa is in its case it’s hard to believe a typewriter is inside.  It’s so compact, but it types with a “feel” of a larger machine.  Amazing.  Well- designed, too.  The IP agrees with Vince, the Germans really do make good stuff; especially those “West” Germans from the 1950s.  But is that little Tippa really worth that much?  The IP doesn’t think so.

The IP recommends that you peruse that Alan Seaver guy’s site and check out his blog as well.  The guy has an interesting take on technology and writing with typewriters instead of “touch-type” keyboards and writing software.  He also has an awesome tour of Sears, Roebuck, & Company.    

The IP is actually glad that his landlord is a complete asstard in regards to his inability to do ANY yard work or maintenance; it means The IP can enjoy a more hoary and interesting viewshed filled with weird plants, tall grasses, and a myriad of insects, birds, bats, and even some reptiles now and again.

Not that The IP doesn’t understand the zen of lawn mowing, or the aesthetics of the classic American lawn.  He certainly “understands” those things, but he still is an advocate of letting nature take its course when it’s not really bothering anybody.

You can see why the above is called onion grass…and you CAN eat it!

Take imported fire ants, for example. 

Most Southerners consider fire ants a scourge that should be killed at all costs; huge billboards declare “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight” in their advertising of pesticide products made just for killing fire ants.  WTF? 

Fire ants actually prey upon and eat all sorts of insects and insect-related protein that most people hate, like ticks, chiggers, flea larvae, chinch bugs, cockroach eggs, and even small snakes if they are lucky.  They aerate the soil, too.  The IP must have a bit of E.O. Wilson in him because when he comes upon a fire ant mound, the idea of destroying it or pouring nasty chemicals upon its relatively peaceful and unsuspecting inhabitants is anathema.  He’d rather study it and marvel at how organized are the little buggers.  The only slightly assholic and selfish thing The IP will do is to rake a small stick acrost the top of the mound and watch the fire ants answer the alarm.  Holy crap and WTF?  Everyone should do this at least once; it makes you realize that ants represent some of the best attributes of humans, that is, when the latter actually decide to work together.

The IP has a few night/day pics he took of “his” fire ant colonies.  Even though his 6-year-old, digital camera is pretty lame when compared to today’s, you still can get interesting results if you just get right into the grills of these cool little buggers:  

This is the night photo with the flash.  You can see

The latter’s reflection in each little shiny ant abdomen.

This is the daytime pic.  Sunlight provides a better

idea of the colours that mark the imported fire ant.

The one big caveat with fire ants, however, is that they do bite.  In fact, they can bite, and bite, and bite, and if you are stupid or not paying attention when you are walking around out in the otherwise elysian fields, you could end up with an experience you’ll not soon forget:

The IP recommends that you do what he does.  Poke your index finger into the top of a fire ant mound and let a few of the little buggers get on it.  Blow on your finger and let yourself get a few fire ant bites, just enough to feel the burn, then brush them off and continue to watch the ants frantically repair the breach in their fortress.  The skin on your index finger is pretty tough, and you shouldn’t end up looking like that gross photo above; and you’ll be building up fire ant antibodies (ant-ibodies!!  Ha ha) for that time you decide to play Frisbee in bare feet at that office picnic and unwittingly plunge your un-shod foot into a fire ant mound while trying to catch that lame toss by Jay Womack.  Even with all his experience playing “Ultimate,” Womack still can’t understand how to play Frisbee without both looking and throwing like a girl.  Rob Clevelander is cut from the same mold.   

The above is why you should annually let yourself get stung on your

Finger a few times; you’ll probably not end up covered in pustules.

To maintain majority control, Republican leaders must maintain their hate-Atlanta façade. Despising Atlanta kept elected Democrats in power for generations. Ironically, that same brand of demagoguery is keeping Republicans afloat now.

Many Georgians that live outside of Atlanta (and there is a big lot of them) have historically had not just a simple antipathy toward the city, but a real HATE of the city.  Our Governor Sonny Purdue (no, he’s not the owner of a barbeque restaurant chain; though he could be), a Republitard covered in a mustard sauce of Christoruralism, continues to rally his anti-Atlanta constituency.  Today he got all up in the grill of MARTA, Atlanta’s ONLY public transportation option in a metro CSA of nearly 6-million people.  In fact, given the way so many people in Georgia HATE Atlanta, the fact that there is ANY public transportation in the city should be seen as a miracle (not the kind Sonny invoked us to create when he asked us to pray for rain; and we just got a lot a rain, so I guess that worked!).  It’s kinda easy to pray for rain, actually.  It’s a lot harder for our Governor, it seems, to understand the needs of the largest and most economically important metropolitan area in the entire Southeast.  People say that some Republitards want Obama to fail, if you lived here in Atlanta, you get the feeling Georgia’s Republitards want that city to fail too.  WTF?

And HEY!!  Segway dude. are you tryin’ to tell The IP that THIS is all with which you can come up…with:

Uhhhh.  This is a lot like the original Segway…good for nothing.  WTF?  How about something more public like a circumferential rail route through the heart of a city?

It’s funny how things connect.  You hear about the death of some notable person and you recognize the name, but it’s not the same exact name, yet you sense there is probably a connection, somehow.   

This happened the other morning when The IP heard on The BBC of the death of Maurice Jarre, the French composer of some notable movie music.  Maurice Jarre wrote the score to Lawrence of Arabia, for example.  There was a nice NYT editorial about him the other day.

Now here’s the connection.  Maurice Jarre’s son is Jean Michel Jarre, the composer of a fairly popular 1970s synthesizer piece entitled Oxygene.  Let’s say that during its time, Oxygene was a weak second place to Kraftwerk’s Autobahn; it was cool, but unlike Kraftwerk’s output, it sounds really lame and dated (at least to The IP) upon a second listening; not to mention that it had spawns of later Oxegenes numbered simply Oxegene # 2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 etc.  Autobahn always sounds good as is.  It remained simply Autobahn, not Autobahn # 2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 etc.  So it was with a bit of chagrin when The IP realized that he knew more about Jarre Jr. than his father.

But The IP started thinking about it.  He did “know” of Jarre’s father without really “knowing” about him.  He remembered the time when he saw a restored, 70mm version of Lawrence of Arabia at the Coolidge Corner Theater.  That is a film that proves how cool the “real” movie experience can be.  A Netflix DVD on a TV or computer screen could never compare to that.  And The IP remembers how perfectly the music to that movie melded with the cinematography.  That almost-subliminal absorption of Jarre’s score is what the NYT editorial noted.  Hey, it’s movie music, but it’s pretty good movie music.

To make things even more curious, The IP picked up a jazz LP at a thrift a couple of  years ago that blew him away.  It was a hard-to-categorize interpretation of the score of Lawrence of Arabia by The Walt Dickerson Quartet.

“WTF?” The IP said when he looked at it in the store.  He had absolutely no clue that it would become one of his favorite LPs; and The IP thinks that one of the reasons it now is, is because it has Maurice Jarre’s compositions at its heart; although Dickerson’s quartet deserve equal accolades for their ability to pull off something like translating Jarre’s score into hepcat jazz.

Jazz Impressions of Lawrence of Arabia (30:47)

Dauntless DS 6313

Recorded March 21, 1963; March 25, 1963

Gotham Studios, NYC

Walt Dickerson (vb); Austin Crowe (p); Ahmed Abdul-Malik (b); Henry Grimes (b); Andrew Cyrille (d)

Theme from Lawrence of Arabia (M. Jarré) 2:49

That is the Desert (M. Jarré) 5:13

Motif from Overture (M. Jarré) [Part 1] 4:01

Motif from Overture (M. Jarré) [Part 2] 3:48

Arrival at Auda’s Camp (M. Jarré) 2:24

Nefud Mirage (M. Jarré) [Part 1] 4:39

Nefud Mirage (M. Jarré) [Part 2] 4:23

The Voice of the Guns (K. Alford) 3:30

Also issued as a monaural LP, Dauntless DM 4313. Reviewed by Harvey Pekar in the July 4, 1963 issue of Down Beat. Henry Grimes is the only bassist mentioned in the notes, but Ahmed Abdul-Malik plays in the March 21 session at which “Theme from Lawrence of Arabia” and “That is the Desert” were recorded. The remaining tunes were recorded on March 25, and Grimes replaces Abdul-Malik.