To heck with the whole lot of you. Go ahead, use Times New Roman — I've had enough of this bullpuckey. You won't have Courier New to kick around anymore!
You thought
I wouldn't notice the State Department replacing me with Times New Roman?
You think I'm some old coot, unaware of what's going on in the world? Well,
I'm not done wiping my own chin just yet! I see what's happening here. I
used to be the font, but now even the government is turning its back on me. Well, I'm not going to stand here waiting for the inevitable; no, not me. And you, Secretary Powell, if there was one person in the government I would have trusted, it would have been you. You know a thing or two about being marginalized, don't you?
I, and my father before me, dedicated our lives to you people. We birthed you, we educated you, we married you and we buried you. When you were sniffing mimeographs in grade school, we were there smiling back at you. Where was Times New Roman then? Rosy-cheeked and suckling on his mother's teat, that's where! And now you thankless so-and-so's, with your love of fangles and gizmos, are going home with the one who didn't brung you.
This is the society you people have built: taking things for granted, assuming
your potatoes and pone appear magically at the market, not giving a
moment's appreciation to those who have toiled for you for so long. You have
no loyalty, no respect for the past. The whole world's gone catawampus and
no one gives a ripe goddamn. It's all your free love and flavored chewing gum
that's done this.
Tradition doesn't mean
anything anymore. With Churchillian stoicism, I've stood strong, fighting
off the assaults of graffiti and curlicues and the dreaded heart above the "i." And
this is the thanks I get for my years of dedication and sweat? It's just
not worth the effort anymore. Go ahead, knock down Big Ben and replace it
with one of those digital watches, see if I care.
My papa, Courier, was the standard bearer. That was a man who understood
tradition! But he wasn't ignorant; he knew that tastes sometimes change.
He once told me, "Son, tastes sometimes change." And that's why he sired
me: to pass the bloodline, to carry on the Courier name. True, I haven't
had any progeny of my own. (Well, not that I would want to publish, that
is. I mean, Perpetua is a fine looking female and a dutiful mate, but I'll
adopt Zapf Dingbats before I acknowledge that bastard son of ours, with his
sissified serifs and slanty ascenders.) But I hadn't given up on fathering
a legitimate heir. I even had a name picked out: Trey. I could have done
it, too. Don't you worry, I can still capitalize like a March hare.
Times New Roman ... Roman, my arse. You know he made that name up himself.
Used to be called Fento. What an ego. You should see him strutting around
the break room like he's Caesar or something. I don't care what Religiously
Mad Max says, it's the Romans who screwed everything up. Without them,
Jesus H. would have been able to write his own book. Oh wait, I forgot, once
he started balding, you people would've started worshipping someone younger,
probably someone who wore clothes with buttons.
Everything old becomes new again, and one day down the line you people are
going to want old Courier New around again. You're going to want me on your
sandwich boards selling soda pop, and on your letterhead selling professionalism.
And you know what'll happen then? I'll chase you off my front porch with
a hose, that's what.
I won't be some rickety Hall of Famer you cart out to hobble around the
bases at an old-timers game. I won't be looked upon as kitsch. I won't have
some father telling his child, "You should have seen him in his prime. You
should have seen him on a Selectric." No siree Robert, not me.
So
get going, get along now, go run to your Times New Roman. But don't think
you can come crawling back to me when his lines seem thin and the descender
on that ridiculous "g" strikes
you as profane and you wonder why you ever thought he was the cat's pajamas
in the first place. You'll have your own willynilliness to blame for that.
Go to hell.
E-mail Patrick Quirk at pquirk@gmail.com.
—
graphic by Danny Corrales
(bekadan@hotmail)
You Won't Have Courier New to Kick Around Anymore