I am a guy named Dan—about six feet tall, curly hair, fairly athletic build. Does that help? Didn’t think so, but at least now you can imagine how much fun it must be for a cop to show up late to a crime scene and receive a bunch of utterly useless information about a long-gone suspect.
That said, here’s a bit of background info: I grew up in a boring suburban town just outside of Seattle, Washington, and once I reached the ripe old age of eighteen I skipped off to a fancy top-tier university where I got a degree in a field called Comparative Literature (such degrees are also known in some circles as “money repellents”). I am in my late twenties, although when I write I often sound like I am approximately 4,000 years old. I started this website because I’ve always been a fan of blogs and webcomics that have genuine, funny, thoughtful, creative, and interesting content—you know, the hidden gems buried within the humongous, excremental mound of clickbait, YouTube comment trolls, people trying to sell you things you don’t need, and massive institutions doing morally dubious stuff with our data that we call the Internet.
Excellent question! I suppose this website is basically a personal blog, although I hate to call it that because I feel like the word “blog” comes with the connotation that I’m either going to (a) post poorly framed family photos and neat travel pics, (b) set up one of those rackets where I just re-post content from other people’s blogs, or (c) talk about tech stuff all the time. Then, elsewhere in the blogosphere, you have those mommy bloggers who make a living by telling young parents week after week about the next shocking thing they absolutely must make sure their toddler doesn’t do, alongside countless thousands of tech blogs, music blogs, fashion blogs, celebrity gossip blogs dedicated to analyzing the tiniest, most bizarre details of famous people’s personal lives (I may do that myself from time to time, but only when I have a good reason for it), and so on. You get the picture. Suffice to say, my aim here is different. Here at Timeless Typewriter, I intend to build something unique. Something special. I want my website to be much more personal, more entertaining, and more intellectually stimulating than your average apartment-dwelling-twenty-something’s hobbyist blog (high standards, I know). More than anything, I want this page to serve as an accurate representation of who I am.
To quote my favorite philosopher of all time, the great Michel de Montaigne, “I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray. My defects here will be read to the life, and also my natural form, as far as respect for the public has allowed.” That way, when I die, there will be this funky little online repository of my thoughts, beliefs, sense of humor, interests, and idiosyncracies for people to view and laugh at until the end of time…or until our species gets violently devoured by a remorselessly expanding sun…or at least until my hosting service realizes that I’ve stopped making payments (in my defense, this is likely difficult to do when deceased). Hooray!
I originally conceived a name for the website based on a lyric from a song by the Blue Scholars, a Seattle-based rap group I used to listen to as a kid. That domain name turned out to be taken, but the structure of the lyric was essentially poetic adjective + name of writing appliance, so I started from there and then took off in a different direction. Plus, typewriters are neat, and alliteration is fun.
Nope, not at all! Why are you still here? Everything you need to know is in the essays. Go read them!
Published: February 9, 2021.
Last edit: March 20, 2022.