Mayonaise for Susan

Filed under: Finds, typewriters — olivander July 28, 2009 @ 9:52 am

Found imprinted in the red portion of an old ribbon:

“BIG RED for the girls. Mayonaise for Susan. And a surprise for Paul.”

I’m pretty sure there’s a story in that somewhere.

7 Comments »

  1. All three of those items are ominous.

    Comment by Mike.Speegle — July 28, 2009 @ 1:04 pm

  2. Interesting. New typosphere trend: trying to decipher messages on old ribbons. I can feed ribbon through my Kodaslide for a better view….

    Comment by Strikethru — July 28, 2009 @ 2:02 pm

  3. Speegle sees this as being ominous, but I have a more… interesting take on it.

    Perhaps the Surprise for Paul involves Susan and “mayonaise” (though I don’t know what the girls will do with all that GUM.)

    It’s a typographic Rorschach test. And I think I just failed.

    Comment by mpclemens — July 28, 2009 @ 2:41 pm

  4. I’m furious about all the old ribbons I’ve tossed. I’ll never trash another one without lightboxing it first.

    Comment by monda — July 29, 2009 @ 6:29 am

  5. Don’t go lightboxing your old ribbons! This was a happy accident. Whoever typed it had been using the black portion of the ribbon long enough that the leftover ink on the slugs made a clear impression on the facing side of the ribbon. The ribbon also had been advancing in the same direction as the text. And that part of the ribbon just happened to be between the spools, and that’s the only reason I saw it. I did go through the previous half of the ribbon and found nothing else legible. Lots of faint, random letters and unreadable overstrikes.

    Now, if anyone has a typewriter with a carbon ribbon, the used portion should be a cinch to read.

    Clemens: maybe the gum is to keep the girls quiet for a while.

    Comment by olivander — July 29, 2009 @ 9:10 am

  6. I got a totally different translation. Not gum, but Big Red Soda Water.
    Does that clear it up?

    I think I saw Mayonaise For Susan at the Newport in Columbus when they opened for Uncle Tupelo. Talented young fellas, but a little too Generic Post-Punk for my tastes.

    Comment by duffymoon — July 30, 2009 @ 7:32 am

  7. The other Big Red crossed my mind, but that drink is fairly unknown this far north. This machine’s snowy provenance suggests the typist had the gum variety in mind.

    Comment by olivander — July 30, 2009 @ 8:40 am

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