There's no app for that

"There's something I want you to try," Tiina said. 

"When you pull the bellows open, don't change anything. But when you push them in again, do it with your upper arm instead of your hand."

"Huh," I said.

"Or, you know what, don't even do that. Just think about doing it with your upper arm."

"Okay."

We both watched as my arm moved out, out, out. It showed no inclination to return. We squinted after it as it disappeared over the horizon.

"So," Tiina said presently. "Your solution is never to bring your bellows in again, right?"

That is pretty much the plan, yes.

***********

On CBC radio today Jian Ghomeshi interviewed a young 'un from New York who has conceived an unlikely passion for the manual typewriter. It's 16-year-old Matt Cidoni, whose website Adventures in Typewriterdom is just one of a number of blogs celebrating this artefact of the predigital age. 

No one is blind to the irony of this. For all latter-day Luddites, the first thing is to start a blog. But the typosphere, it's a real thing. You know it's a thing when the New York Times devotes an article to it: 

EVEN by Brooklyn standards, it was a curious spectacle: a dozen mechanical contraptions sat on a white tablecloth, emitting occasional clacks and dings. Shoppers peered at the display, excited but hesitant, as if they’d stumbled upon a trove of strange inventions from a Jules Verne fantasy. Some snapped pictures with their iPhones.

“Can I touch it?” a young woman asked. Permission granted, she poked two buttons at once. The machine jammed. She recoiled as if it had bitten her.

Jessica Bruder

Wait till they hear about Wite-Out and other horrors of the real typosphere! I don't want to scare the kiddies, but once there was this thing called carbon paper ...

Just remember, folks -- be responsible in your use of non-virtual technologies. As Jane Wagner said:

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. 

 Those typewriter keys, they can break your heart.