Does anyone know of an inexpensive or free forum app? I like vBulletin, but I simply can’t justify the $180 price (plus $60 annual maintenance fee) for the extremely small utilization this would have.

I tried WP-Forum, which I like the looks of, but I can’t get it to work.

I needed a small calendar for here at work, and I just couldn’t find one that I liked at B&N or the kiosk a the mall. So I decided to make my own, with typewriters in mind, of course. And once that was done, I thought I’d share it with y’all in case you, too, would like some nifty writing machines to look at while you’re trying to remember whether it’s Thursday or only Tuesday. Click the image to download the .pdf.

It’s not fancy. Just a series of 8.5″x11″ sheets that you can staple together. I included Jan, 2010, because if you’re like me you wait until after the new year so you don’t have to pay full price.

(I want folks to know that you can always purchase a high-quality typewriter-themed calendar from either The Classic Typewriter Page Store or Portable Typewriter Forum Store. I don’t want to step on anyone’s legitimate money-making turf.)

Maybe next year I’ll do vintage cameras.

Hey, kids, fun fact! Did you know that when you remove a Royal Eldorado’s lefthand platen knob to replace it, the entire line spacing mechanism falls out? I’ll bet you didn’t. It’ll turn your two-minute repair into hours of agonizing frustration as you attempt to reconstruct which little whatzit goes where.

Happy Armistice Day, Dad.

• Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has an interesting analysis of Al Franken’s odds of pulling off a win in the Minnesota senate race recount. Okay, interesting if you’re into statistical analysis. Nate’s day job is as a professional baseball statistician. He applies the same calculating principals to election outcomes, and he tends to be fairly spot-on in his projections. Nonetheless, grain of salt and all that.
• Barack Obama meets with Prez Bush today. Geez, he isn’t even in office yet and he’s already sitting down with unpopular and aggressive world leaders without preconditions*.
• A sign of adulthood is when you one day realize that your recycling bin is full of baby food jars instead of beer and vodka bottles.
• I probably have better things to do (like working on my NaNoWriMo novel) than trying to track down what typeface was used to print the first edition of The Great Gatsby**–but I’m a typographical nerd that way. (I can launch a conversation with a graphics designer friend of mine with something like, “I need Dakota for PC. Do you have Fulton’s Hand?” and they will not only know exactly what I’m talking about, within five minutes they will locate it six subfolders deep in their font archives and send it as an attachment.) Does this win me a Procrastination merit badge?
• Yesterday, I attended a friend’s community theater recreation of old radio shows. It was keen to be able to wear my 1940s short tie, fedora, and ’40s bomber jacket without getting strange looks. Now I’m buzzed to create a podcast in the style of a Golden Age radio station–yet another diversion that I don’t need to loop myself into. Besides, I do a lousy imitation of Symphony Sid.

*confession: I saw a version of that statement somewhere else. it was too good to not repeat

**Scotch Roman

And by “best”, I mean “worst”.

Lifted from LP Cover Lover. Be sure to visit the link and read the comments.

We wrap up our look at questionable products from the 1906 Sears catalog with a trio of products designed to make small things appear larger.

So realistic, your friends will never notice! The first look like some sort of deformed ice skates, but the latter two look a lot like shoes that you can buy today at Hot Topic.

The mental images that the phrase “bust food” brings to mind are just…indescribable.

And if the Bust Food didn’t work, a lady could resort to…

Made in Sweden, no doubt.

More dubious Sears Roebuck offerings as they come my way.

We continue our trip back in time to visit some of the more curious products you could order from the Sears catalog in 1906. Today, we take a look at selections from the Drugs Department, starting with possibly the grossest ad copy ever printed.

“We’re the Cadillac of worm syrup!”

Beer: it does a body good!

There are so many things wrong with this. But standing out above it all is the phrase, “derangement of the female organism”. (Fellas, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave that one alone. I’m slowly backing away from it myself.)

My research on Conley cameras takes me through a lot of early 20th-Century Sears catalogs. Tens of thousands of mail-order items could be had from their sprawling Chicago warehouses. A person could literally buy a pre-fabricated house, furnish it, stock the pantry, fill the medicine cabinet, line the library shelves, clothe the family, and put a car in the garage–all from one catalog. In the days before the Internet, the Sears catalog was the Internet; you didn’t need anything more. Their series of international stereoviews–65¢ per 100–was the armchair traveler’s Wikipedia.

Looking at them today, some of the products on the market at the time range from the quaintly amusing to the downright bizarre. In sprite of their respectable reputation, Sears, Roebuck, & Co were not above peddling snake oil. For your entertainment, here are a few products from the 1906 Sears catalog that are dubious at best:

This is a mix of weird and sad. One can’t help but wonder how many of these things were sold before people figured out that they were bogus. One also has to wonder at what point the device began to strangle the poor little kids.

Edit: holy shit, you can still buy them.

I can actually see the practical purpose of this. Hot water tanks were a luxury, and didn’t hold much water. At the same time, you can’t imagine yourself actually using one of these, can you?

Hope your feet aren’t sweaty. Bzzzt!

“Legs half-off for legs half-off!” Man, what I wouldn’t give to come across a Sears Artificial Leg Pamplet on eBay.

Tomorrow, we’ll explore some of the medicinal products you could ingest for your, um, health.

I bought a set of typewriter keys today. Just the keys. From a…a…keychopper. I feel so dirty. This must be how Republicans feel when they get caught by vice cops in airport bathroom stalls. Is it wrong to patronize one of the denizens of typewriting’s sleazy underbelly if the goal is to restore another typewriter? It wasn’t a collectible or particularly old typewriter. A late-’60s Montgomery Ward model whose keys happen to be identical matches for an Olivetti Valentine’s.

Afterward, I saw all the other sets of keys the person was selling. Perfect, round, chromed keys, looking at me like puppies in a mill as I walk away with one of their siblings inside my coat.

I’m going to hell for sure.