Jobs That Are Not For Me; Typesetter.

I would be a terrible typesetter for a noosepaper, as my spelling is so pour. If it wasn't for spellcheck, this blog would be a morass of spelling and typing errors.


I thought of this today as I contemplated Mark Twain. He had made lots of money off of his books, as well as marrying into money, and still managed to squander his wealth on a scheme to invent an automatic typesetting machine for newspapers. Because of this, he spent his later years traveling and doing lectures just to keep the creditors off his back.

Imagine it, America's most well known and revered author, forced to travel the country doing reading gigs in every Podunk Junction, staying in crappy hotels, eating the blue plate special, and relying on the kindness of strangers at the bar, just to make ends meet. There is a reason that most every picture you see of Mark Twain, he is in a white three piece suit. He used to refer to these suits as his "Go To Hell" suits and he had several. The reason he had so many was he got a good deal on a bolt of white cloth when he was near broke and had a dozen suits made out of it. It made packing simple and everything matched, as well as being appropriate for every occasion.


This made me realise that I would have been a cheap and ineffective way for him to save some money on his typesetting scheme and he wouldn't have had to tour so much, but not if he would have hired me as his accountant.


Doc