..dunno which is worse.
In the old days, it was the blank sheet of paper in the typewriter. A white piece of paper. A blank sheet of paper, usually the cheap paper so thin you can read through it, so thin toilet paper was thicker… But a sheet of paper, nevertheless, promising to give life to your thoughts, give textual reality to your ideas and dreams.
Now, it’s a uncaring white screen, daring me. It’s daring me to work, put words on the screen. Not *real* words, mind you. Little 1′s and 0′s.
REAL words came from a TYPEWRITER. It made noise. It was WORK to write. Your typing fingers would feel the impact of the keys… and ribbon rolling across, the “e” with the top filled in from endless hours of typing. Your fingers would vibrate from the typing….
With the paper, you could have the eager joy of ripping it out of the typewriter and stacking it up, the stack would grow and grow. If the page sucked, you have the visceral pleasure of ripping the offending piece of offal out of the infernal machine and crumpling it up, crushing the life out of it. Then tossing it to the wastebasket, already overflowing with crushed dreams, thoughts, ideas… shitty dreams, shitty thoughts and ideas not even worth the 5 cents for the paper.
Now… Now, when you dislike something, it’s CLICK. It’s deleted. The typing. Non-tactile clicks…
Not the same. Not at all.
If Hollywood executives don’t know who John Carter is, they certainly know what John Carter is. It’s the kind of cautionary tale that keeps studio chiefs popping Ambien at night: a vanity project with sky-high expectations that has gone wildly over budget and now seems destined to land with a massive thud at the box office—unless it can somehow rake in more than $400 million to break even. In other words, it’s the kind of movie that causes heads to roll.
