it would mellifluous. Unless it has some kind of correct-spelling program in it, in which case it would probably refuse to process tbldgk on the grounds that there is no such entity that fits between spaces. So you see, this essay could not have been written on that thing.
But I realize that is not your, the reader’s, problem. So let me ask you this. You have a VCR in your home? You have any children in your home that drink Kool-Aid?
In our case, by all firsthand accounts, no particular child was involved. It was one of those spontaneous Kool-Aid spills that happen. But only children were present. It cost S270 to fix.
One jelly glass of Kool-Aid tips itself over into the VCR, and there goes $270. You know why? Because when it comes to these electronic things, there are too many angels in there dancing on the head of a pin. If man had been meant to compress so many angels that he could drown $270 worth of them with one glass of Kool-Aid, he would have been given children who might be pinned down and held liable for such sums.
Had the VCR been a Stradivarius, the Kool-Aid could have been wiped off with a sponge. If it had been my Royal standard manual typewriter, bought used nineteen years ago, nobody would ever have noticed. You’d have to spill a pot of chili into my typewriter to make it operate any worse than it does already. Can you imagine what it probably costs to spill a spoonful of chili into a word processor? I don’t even want to think about it. Forget I mentioned it. And I like to eat while I’m working.
My wife, Joan Ackermann-Blount, and I both write. At home. A cottage industry. Our 115-year-old house in the Berkshires used to be a parsonage. It had too many angels dancing in it already, before electronic wizardry started crowding in. But I had some faint idea of how to deal with those angels. I could imagine why the house creaked where it creaked (someday, unless I am just saying this, I intend to shim up the old floorboards), and why it leaked where it leaked (because New England pipes get a kick out of freezing when they are owned by someone from Georgia), and what made that skittering sound within the walls (an escaped hamster named Sherry, or her ghost).
The more electronic our home becomes, however, the more it becomes the department of the electronicians. If an electronician tells me it costs, say, $1,140 to fix a word processor that has had Kool-Aid spilled into it, how am I going to argue? It’s like being kidnapped by savages and told I’m going to have to paint my head blue. What am I going to say? “That doesn’t sound right to me”?
I’ll tell you what doesn’t sound right to me. That word processor we’ve got now. When you type on it you have to be gentle, and it makes a little twiddly noise. (I don’t want to twiddle out a story, I want to bang one out. I want to be saying to my typewriter, “Take that! Take that!” Because I know my typewriter is going to be saying back, “Yeah, right.”) And when the printer prints, it makes the sound of someone doggedly running a fingernail back and forth over the teeth of a comb.
So how did it get into our house?
Well, I’ll admit, I have gone back and forth on this word processor question. For years I said, firmly, “Nope. Not me. Just give me a stub pencil, an eyeshade, and a wet whistle, and I can turn out as much copy as anybody else can on one of these futuristic deals that require eighty books of instructions and a backup generator.”
People would say, “I actually find I write better on a word processor.” I’d say, “Uh-huh. Isn’t it a shame Flaubert didn’t have one?”
But then all the newspapers in the land and half my friends converted, and I started saying, “Well, I guess it’s coming. We might as well face it. We are all going to be using one of those gadgets someday.”
Then someone said, “Yep. They say it more closely approximates the workings of the human mind.”
And it occurred to me: who wants to
But I realize that is not your, the reader’s, problem. So let me ask you this. You have a VCR in your home? You have any children in your home that drink Kool-Aid?
In our case, by all firsthand accounts, no particular child was involved. It was one of those spontaneous Kool-Aid spills that happen. But only children were present. It cost S270 to fix.
One jelly glass of Kool-Aid tips itself over into the VCR, and there goes $270. You know why? Because when it comes to these electronic things, there are too many angels in there dancing on the head of a pin. If man had been meant to compress so many angels that he could drown $270 worth of them with one glass of Kool-Aid, he would have been given children who might be pinned down and held liable for such sums.
Had the VCR been a Stradivarius, the Kool-Aid could have been wiped off with a sponge. If it had been my Royal standard manual typewriter, bought used nineteen years ago, nobody would ever have noticed. You’d have to spill a pot of chili into my typewriter to make it operate any worse than it does already. Can you imagine what it probably costs to spill a spoonful of chili into a word processor? I don’t even want to think about it. Forget I mentioned it. And I like to eat while I’m working.
My wife, Joan Ackermann-Blount, and I both write. At home. A cottage industry. Our 115-year-old house in the Berkshires used to be a parsonage. It had too many angels dancing in it already, before electronic wizardry started crowding in. But I had some faint idea of how to deal with those angels. I could imagine why the house creaked where it creaked (someday, unless I am just saying this, I intend to shim up the old floorboards), and why it leaked where it leaked (because New England pipes get a kick out of freezing when they are owned by someone from Georgia), and what made that skittering sound within the walls (an escaped hamster named Sherry, or her ghost).
The more electronic our home becomes, however, the more it becomes the department of the electronicians. If an electronician tells me it costs, say, $1,140 to fix a word processor that has had Kool-Aid spilled into it, how am I going to argue? It’s like being kidnapped by savages and told I’m going to have to paint my head blue. What am I going to say? “That doesn’t sound right to me”?
I’ll tell you what doesn’t sound right to me. That word processor we’ve got now. When you type on it you have to be gentle, and it makes a little twiddly noise. (I don’t want to twiddle out a story, I want to bang one out. I want to be saying to my typewriter, “Take that! Take that!” Because I know my typewriter is going to be saying back, “Yeah, right.”) And when the printer prints, it makes the sound of someone doggedly running a fingernail back and forth over the teeth of a comb.
So how did it get into our house?
Well, I’ll admit, I have gone back and forth on this word processor question. For years I said, firmly, “Nope. Not me. Just give me a stub pencil, an eyeshade, and a wet whistle, and I can turn out as much copy as anybody else can on one of these futuristic deals that require eighty books of instructions and a backup generator.”
People would say, “I actually find I write better on a word processor.” I’d say, “Uh-huh. Isn’t it a shame Flaubert didn’t have one?”
But then all the newspapers in the land and half my friends converted, and I started saying, “Well, I guess it’s coming. We might as well face it. We are all going to be using one of those gadgets someday.”
Then someone said, “Yep. They say it more closely approximates the workings of the human mind.”
And it occurred to me: who wants to
Similar Books
