This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
All right, so, well, like I said in the thing for Johnny's blog was that mechanical pencils aren't bullsh.
Hello, and welcome to episode 97 of the erasable podcast. I'm Johnny Gambr on hosting duties, and I am joined by my co host and friend, Andy Welfle. And I didn't leave Tim out because we're not friends anymore or because we kicked him off the show for having that sexy beard. Tim is traveling and he just told us he's kind of sick. So Tim's not going to join us tonight, but we had already booked a fantastic guest. Vivian Wagner, poet, artist, and teacher. How is everyone doing tonight?
Great.
Very good.
Glad to be here.
Hi, Vivian.
Hi. It's strange because I'm always just listening to your podcast and now I'm on it.
You are casting the pod.
Yeah. So we've gotten a lot of requests through the four years that we've been making this podcast to talk about mechanical pencils, but the three of us, yeah, we're not authorities on that. And so tonight we're going to talk about mechanical pencils as tools used by someone who usually uses wooden pencils. So if you're a member of our Facebook group and you're totally familiar with Vivian and how she uses everything, including lately, mechanical pencils with soft leads, which are really cool. So I'm going to jump right in into our newly abbreviated tools of the trade. Do you want to go first, Vivian, since you're our guests?
Sure. Well, I'm reading a book called the Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. It's sort of a textbook, but it's really fascinating. I've gotten interested in game design lately. I've been playing games, especially solo games, and I've been interested in the structure of games. So I started reading this book, and I'm finding it has a lot to do not just with games, but with any kind of writing, world building, interactive storytelling. It's really fascinating.
Do they focus on digital games, like video games, or just any kind of game, like board games and story games?
Yeah, so he does focus in some parts on video games, but he makes it clear that everything he talks about is applicable to any kind of game. So board games, card games, role playing games. So. So, yeah, it's all very. And in fact, the reason I started reading it is I've gotten interested in writing about and teaching choose your own adventure books, and I started thinking of those as games. And so I started reading this book and just got fascinated by the whole thing. In fact, Now I'm thinking I want to actually design a game now that I'm reading the textbook on it.
Heck yeah.
So that's one book I'm reading. I'm loving that. It also comes with this card deck which is kind of cool, the art of game design cards. So you can use these cards to remind you of certain points that he makes. You can play certain games with the cards or use them to analyze your game or it's just a lot of fun. I'm also reading. So related to that, I'm reading a book that I'm teaching in the fall. So I'm teaching an introduction to literature class in the fall. One of the things I've been realizing with my introductory literature classes is most of my students don't really like to read. And so I've been thinking about ways of making like tricking them into reading or something like that. So I mean the thing I realized is that they don't necessarily like to sit down and read a long book, but they're playing video games, they're playing even board games. They're. They're doing lots of other things that are storytelling or interpreting and participating in stories. But yeah. So anyway, I found this book called Romeo and or Juliet. It's a new novel, choose your own adventure novel by Ryan North. He's a Canadian writer and computer programmer. And this is a choose your own adventure retelling of Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. And it's so fun, it's really strange. And there's hundreds of different pathways through the book and you can, he has the marks so you can follow the Shakespearean pathway but then there's all these other ones and some of them just end right away with like Juliet makes a certain choice and then she gets married to some guy that's not Romeo. And then at the end or someone dies or it's just like there's all these different intricate interrelated pathways. It's just all very funny and strange and it's just a good book. Even in the parts that are Shakespearean, it's sort of retold in this modern day language. So I'm going to be teaching that in the fall and teaching all sorts of other adaptations of Romeo and Juliet and hoping that maybe some of that gets them interested. In fact, I got a board game that's a Romeo and Juliet board game I'm thinking of playing in my class as well. So those are two things I've been reading. And also I just started watching a science fiction series on I'm Watching it on Amazon Prime. It was originally created by Sci FI Channel. It's called the Expanse.
I've heard a lot of good things about this.
Yeah, it's really good. I heard about it on a podcast called Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, which is a science fiction fantasy podcast that Wired.com produces. And David Curtley and David Barr curtly hosts it. And he was talking about it for a few different episodes, and he was wanting to save it because syfy Channel was canceling it. And after three. Three seasons. And just recently, just a few days ago, Amazon prime announced that it would pick it up for a fourth season and produce it. So it's going to continue. But I'm in the first season still, just a few episodes in, and it's really cool. It's kind of a near future, a couple hundred years in the future when humans have colonized all of the solar system. And there's Earth Earthers and then there's this Mars colony that's kind of militant, and there's these sort of people in the middle in the asteroid belt and a Ceres space station, and they're kind of. There's just. It's just a really smart science fiction series that's about politics and class and race and like, just really good and good science, and it's just really special. So I'm loving that series. It starts a little slow, the first episode or two, but it gets better. So I recommend that.
Okay.
And I'm supposed to talk about what I'm writing with, right?
Yeah, what you're writing with and writing on.
So I am using my Bic Atlantis 0.55 millimeter mechanical pencil with Pilot Neox 4B lead, and I'm using a Baron Fig train of thought.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, love those.
I like it. Yeah, I like everything Baron fig paper wise. And so I'm on my third train of thought, just loving it.
Well, what am I. What am I consuming? I just started on the recommendation of a friend of mine who I hung out with at that conference in Minneapolis. There's a podcast called 20,000 Hertz, which is a little bit like that 99% invisible podcast that I really love, except about audio and sound. So they had a. We were deep, just like, talking about the whole phenomenon of ASMR videos and people who, like, will, you know, brush their microphone with a makeup brush and they'll, like, sharpen pencils into the microphone and just, like, make those sounds that give people, like, the, like the little tingle down their back.
The heebie jeebies yeah, like, they like, you crinkle paper and. Yeah, I've heard some of those.
It's a whole genre and I. I don't even remember how I like, like, learned about it. Like, I don't watch this because, like, I'm super into asmr, but I'm just like, really interested in that. It is such a thing. And so they unpack that a little bit in this podcast. They talk about that they had a thing recently about how your phone can be picking up and sending data over ultrasound communications, which is interesting. Yeah, so I'm just starting to get into that. Also, this past weekend, we went to go see the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary called rbg.
That looks awesome.
Yeah, it's very good.
That does look good.
I posted this in the group, but there was. We now know what pencil Ruth Bader Ginsburg uses to edit her writing. And that would be a Palomino Blackwing 602. There's a Super clear shot of it in one of the scenes. So I snuck a. Yeah, I snuck a picture in the auditorium and hoping that nobody was watching me. Pirate.
Yeah, yeah, you can sell it now.
Exactly. But yes, it was fantastic. She's such a. Such an interesting person. I'm actually really excited. I hope next time we talk I can talk about the Mr. Rogers documentary, which is coming to the same theater in a couple weeks.
Oh, nice.
Yeah. So slant another good one. And I am writing. I'll talk about both of these a little bit later, but I'm writing in my Wunderbocks notebook as per what Johnny talked about last week. With a pen, actually, with a new Berenfig pen, which no spoilers here. Johnny, how about you?
Cool. So I finally saw the Post, which everyone in the world saw but me, and I didn't like it.
By the Post you mean the Academy Award nominated film about a newspaper?
Yeah, with Glenn Close and Tom Hanks and other famous folks. Not Glenn Close. Oh, my goodness.
Meryl Streep.
I always mix them up.
How dare you?
They don't look anything alike. And I don't like Glenn Close. He reminds me of a nun I had in school glossing over that. So. Yeah, I didn't. I. I figured, like, you know, this is going to be like all the President's Men about writing and have a lot of stationary porn. And it had like, few pencils and I guess somebody wrote at some point in the movie, but I didn't know what the movie was really supposed to be about. So at the end, it ended. I Was like, oh, it's over. Okay. I feel like this was like the footnote to a film that should have been made about the New York Times.
Well, yeah, there was a film by the New York Times. It's called all the President's Men.
Right? No, that was about the.
That's about the Post.
Oh, you're right, that's about the Post. Yeah, that was later.
Watergate.
Yeah. They ended this movie right as all the President's Men started. Yeah, that scene with the tape on
the doorknob, which I thought was a really interesting decision because it's like the unofficial prequel or whatever, right? Like,
yeah, the whole time I'm like. I'm like, okay, maybe, maybe. I mean, I think I'm alone in not liking it. So this isn't a discouragement to folks. I just read a book called Stranger in the woods about the north woods. I'm sorry, the North Pond Hermit in Maine. Do you guys remember this? Came out a few years ago. There was this guy who dropped out for 27 years and just stole food and clothes from people.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it was.
So the. I forgot the guy's name. The guy who wrote it was sort of shamed out of journalism because he committed some journalistic sins and I guess he just thought he could write a book and get back in. Which apparently worked because it's out in paperback now too. But the hermit guy, Chris Knight, called Thoreau a dilettante. Like, left a bad taste in my mouth because I love Thoreau and he wasn't a Dillon. Well, he was a dilettante, but so was this guy. More, you know, genes that he stole from people. But it was a cool book. It's a really interesting story. And through a lot of it you're like, yeah, I want to do that. And then like, no, I don't want to do that.
What happened to that guy? Did he come back into society?
So he committed like a thousand larceny's or acts of larceny and then he got caught and he's like, yeah, I did it. And he admitted to everything. So he was in jail for like six months because they raised his bond. And then he stayed in jail for another week after his trial and they let him go. But, you know, that's like prison to him. Now he's not in the woods. Yeah, yeah, it's a quick read. It's a cool book. It would actually make a really good movie if it was done well, but it probably would be done badly and be worse than the Post. Yeah. So I thought I'd round it out with a piece of music because Tim's not here and he always talks about the interesting music he listens to. There is a new album out by the Scottish techno pop band Churches with a V called Love is Dead, which is.
Aren't they called Chiverches?
No. Apparently they did this to show up in Internet searches better, which totally works. They're working on their SEHV and it's them. Yeah, it's like really melancholic and super 80s ish and aggressively pop. It's really good. It's on Spotify and Pandora and all those things now. And courtesy of Vivian, I have 4B lead in my Kuru Toga mechanical pencil that I'm writing with, which is like writing with an always sharp black wing, which is really cool in a Write Notepads Goldfield book, which is also super dreamy paper. So my writing tonight is very happy and dark and smooth and wonderful.
Nice.
Super duper. So shall we jump into fresh points before we get to grill on mechanical pleasures?
Sure.
Do you want to go first again, Vivian?
Okay, so I belong to this Facebook group called Colored Pencils for Beginners and beyond. And they have a bi monthly challenge. And their bi monthly challenge for May and June is is to draw a picture with graphite and colored pencil, which is interesting because you usually don't use those together. Graphite sort of muddies the colored pencil and they just don't. But I decided to try a stabilo 008 aquarellable. So it's a water soluble graphite pencil.
Oh yeah.
That was really fun to use for this. And then I used Derwent graphitent pencils, which are new to me too. They're a mixture of graphite and color. A little bit of color inside them and I think a couple other things. But that was mainly what I used with that drawing. I drew some foxgloves that were in my garden.
So wait, what do those graphiten pencils feel like then? They're. You're saying they're mostly graphite but with a little bit of color in them?
Yeah, they actually feel more like just really muted colored pencils. I can't. They don't feel graphite Y to me. But they have really subdued colors. Like, I'm looking at them here. One is, I just got a little six pack of them. Like I have slate green and cool brown and port and ivy. Very English countryside kind of colors. They're really interesting. And you can use them with or without water. Just like Any water soluble thing.
Huh.
That reminds me a lot of those. The pens you can get. They're called like BLX pens or something. They have like.
Oh, yes.
Yeah. They have like a green black and a brown black and a red black. They're rollerballs. Yeah.
Huh.
I thought, look some of these up.
Yeah. The Derwent graphitent are fun to use. They're not all that light fast from what I've read, so that's something to consider. But they're really nice to use and I just feel very Englishy when I'm using them. They're made in England. They say England on them and it just feels like, I don't know, you have to draw like a landscape with them or like rabbits, pears and the moors or something.
That's Derwent. They're situated right where graphite was first discovered.
Right? Yeah. So it was fun for this challenge to play around with graphite and color and mixing that. And so I submitted one of some foxgloves in my garden and turned out nicely. And I guess my only other fresh point is I just got in the mail these new, new Baron Fig Computer World notebooks. I don't remember if you've talked about them on the podcast before.
We did just the last episode.
Yeah. But anyway, I'm enjoying those. I really like the design. I like that there are different parts of this landscape, like software skies, hardware fields, data valley, and they're just. And I do. I think Johnny had said the lines and dots weren't so overbearing. And I agree. I think they're nice. I'm going to use them.
Have you figured out a way to use the lined. The numbered lines?
I'll probably just write. I guess I might use them for lists. They look kind of good for lists. I don't really bullet Journal, but I make a lot of lists, so I might play around with that for them. But they're designed to be like computer coding, which is interesting. This partnership with flexibility, codecademy, which got me looking at Codecademy because I think one of the things I would like to learn how to do is code.
When you make your own video game, then you'll be able to use that, right?
Yeah. And actually I've been learning that the process of coding is similar to any other. It's basically just decision tree kind of thinking. So you can use it for other kinds of narratives too. And I didn't realize they come with stickers, so I got these cool stickers, which will be fun. So those are My fresh points.
Yeah, well, my first fresh point is really cool. It came out I think like the day after we recorded last time. But it is the new Baron Fig Squire, which. It's beautiful. It's orange, has black ink in it. It has this like really interesting, like sci fi theme to it. And I think that the part that is most interesting to me and probably most of our listeners, it was a collaboration with one of our friends, Harry Marks, who is the host of the covered podcast and is just a really talented writer and he's also co editing Plumbago issue four with me. So he wrote a short story, science fiction story to accompany the pen that kind of starts off on the really beautiful packaging for the Squire and kind of finishes up on the website. So it's nothing like nothing amazing as far as the performance of this pen goes. It's just another Squire. But it is a beautiful orange and I know for the orange fanatics among us, which I know that there are a lot of, I think Brad Dowdy, Brad Dowdy is a big orange fan. This is something that everybody will really love. So yeah, go out and check out. I think they still have some in stock. They do as of the recording time, which is May 30, they still have a bunch in stock. So definitely go check that out and at least go to the website and read Harry's story. It's super good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Harry's fantastic. And then he also was on their podcast, the Eureka podcast that they do, just talking about the story and about himself and all of his projects. I'll have a link to all that in show notes. So kind of following up what I talked about before and also of Johnny's fresh points last week I was just enamored with the look of these wonder books which are produced by a guy who was Johnny. Was he an intern or an apprentice at Right Notepads?
I don't know. I think he was an intern. He designed their last round of stickers where one is an oil can. Really, really cool looking.
Yeah, yeah.
And he's a stand up comic too, which is cool.
Yeah. So I. So I know a friend of mine is an aspiring stand up comic and so I, I thought that was perfect excuse to buy the like stand up comedy notebook that he sells where you can just kind of like plan your sets and record your jokes. So I bought that, I took a bunch of pictures and tried it out a little bit and I also bought the wonder books one which is the butcher extra blue paper with the like that Thing where you just like. I don't even know what to say. Like perforate. There's like a perforated pull tab on it that you use to open it. Really beautiful notebooks. Really unwieldy. The way the COVID is situated. It's really hard when you're trying to use it. The string that you use to clasp the COVID clothes is just sort of hanging there. And also the. Yeah, it doesn't lay very well in your hand. And also for me, I don't write very big, so the dot grid on the inside is pretty wide, pretty far apart. Paper seems to be fine. And I of course love his design and the stamps that he's using and the butcher paper that he's using. So it's gorgeous. I'm really looking forward to see what he does next. But yeah, this is just a little, I don't know, a little too much. But I do have to say that pulling apart that pull tab was very satisfying.
Yeah. I cut mine off with a pocket knife because I was afraid I would mess it up.
Well, I. So it came wrapped in like sealed in this like vellum paper, like almost like a wax paper. I had this little like pull string on it to open it, but I broke the string before I had a chance to like unseal it. So I did have to like, you know, tear that part open. But for me, the pull tab worked just fine. I tried to get some of it on video so I could turn it into a gif. But we'll see.
I really like the idea of these journals for stand up comics. I think it's neat to have journals that are for specific purposes with like prompts and organized in some way. I really, I think like almost any profession could use that.
Absolutely. It's almost like. I know a lot of places have like little scout books with a template for like rating beer or wine or something in it cigars. And I love like structured content like that. But sometimes, and I don't know if this is the case with the stand up comedy, but there's like a really fine line between being like, like useful and too prescriptive. So.
Right.
Yeah.
And if it's too prescriptive, sometimes I'd be afraid to even use it.
Yeah, right.
I wouldn't want to mess it up.
So I guess, yeah, I have never considered being a stand up comic. So like, I don't know, like the process that goes into storyboarding that out. But yeah, my friend who I gave it to seemed to be into it. So. Yeah, something like The Baron fake computer world, for example, that's something that is pretty structured, but it's not getting really, really structured and in depth. They're just sort of like. Seems like they've struck an interesting balance there. Even though it's for a use case that I think that most of us probably won't use it for. Yeah, Last fresh point. I wanted to mention that. So we are recording this on May 30th. I'm hoping to get this published by May 31st, which means you will have 24 hours, if you listen to this right away, to submit to issue 4 of Plumbago. After that, we won't be taking new submissions. So, yeah, if you have just an idea of something, even just like a half formed idea, just pitch it to me and we'll talk it through. Somebody I have heard lots from in this submission process is our guest today, Vivian is going to be all over this issue, which I'm excited about. Yeah, yeah. And in fact, you had a few different poems that you're going to run and I was wondering if you would be willing to read one of them.
Sure, I could do that.
Yeah.
Let's see. Well, I could read one called Inventory of Tools. Let me pull this up here on my desk. Jars of pencils with colored leads, purple and pink, yellow and orange, wait to become sunsets and birds, trees and flowers, doodles beside poems, scratches in the interstices of morning pages and shopping lists I don't hold much sacred, but these I do. And my many hued pens, trays of paints, stacks of paper, water, brushes and inks. The more the world's destroyed, the more these tools shimmer with promise, twist with hope.
Ah, I love that. Thank you for reading that.
Awesome.
Sure.
Yeah, that feels very Mary Oliver. Like in a, like, not in a derivative way, but like in a, like the way you're describing things.
I love Mary Oliver.
Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you. And thanks for putting these in. I just love playing Bogo and I'm excited to see this new issue.
Yeah.
Right now I'm working with our super secret mystery cover page designer on trying to find the right combination of paper, stock and design. So it's a really fun part of the process. Johnny, how about your fresh points?
So our friends at Bear and Fig also have a new notebook out called Atomic, which is an apprentice, which they used to make as their pocket notebook. So do you have either of you have these in hand?
Mine is on its way.
Yeah, I don't have them in hand yet. But I'm drooling over them on the website. They're baby blue and they're so pretty with sort of that spirally atomic look that our friend Lenora says is not what an atom looks like,
it's a model.
Yeah. I majored in philosophy and I've never seen an atom, so I'm just going to go with what this says. But yeah, that was sort of their limited edition thing before they had their subscriptions was that they had different versions of the Apprentice, which is, I think the first thing I ever bought from Baron Figures. So this was super exciting. And dot grid, which is like their perfect paper, I think. Yeah, I think I have all of the apprentices and I have an unopened pack of the Path River Grass one that came out in 15, but I have no idea where it is. But I know I have it because I bought two and one was never used. So either Charlotte took it or it's around here somewhere. Yeah, I'm excited to get these. This color is like, yum, yum.
They don't do limited edition pockets very often. I wonder if the larger Vanguards, like the Computer World size ones are just, are they more popular or. I would think that these little pocket notebooks ones would be. I'm using an apprentice right now, in fact.
Yeah, they're really nice.
Yeah.
And I mean, it's been so long that I mean, I hope I'm not trash talking Baron fake because I really like Baron Fig. The last time I did an apprentice there, quality control is still, you know, finding its place, whereas now it's.
Yeah, the stitching was off a little bit, wasn't it?
Yeah. I'm excited to see this because the Computer World notebooks look, look like they were made by a computer. They're like absolutely perfectly cut, perfectly stitched looking, oh so fine. But yeah, I'm, I'm stoked about this and I hope this means they're gonna do some more.
I really wish they would experiment with coverstock like, like, not necessarily like a butcher blue, like French paper company stock. But you know, they, they have really gorgeous designs, but I, they always have like that, that pebbled texture and I, I would love it if they like you know, branched out from there a little bit.
I haven't thought of that. Yeah, I'm glad that they're going back to putting some of the, the Vanguards in boxes because that's really cool. It's another chance for a cool design. Yeah, well, they've only done it twice with Computer World and the Black Box, which is really cool. That's my favorite.
Oh, no. I guess Train of Thought didn't come in a box, did it? No, no, no.
It had a wrap, like a band around it.
Yeah, that's right.
Portal would have been an easy fit. They could have made a geometric box. Those were really cool books, too.
Yeah.
And they could use foil or something.
Win, win. Yeah. I literally have no idea how they keep up with their own schedule, but it's really impressive.
Yeah.
Even if they have one that I'm not crazy about, I can appreciate that. It's still pretty awesome.
Yeah.
Like the pen. I don't use a lot of pens. Okay.
Mostly I just love their paper. I mean, I would buy whole reams of their paper if they just sold that.
Yeah.
You know, somebody did you guys catch in the group. I don't remember who posted it, but somebody was wanting to know if they can buy essentially a blank paperback. They really love paperback paper for writing. And I was like, that's really interesting. I have no idea where one gets that paper.
Yeah. We were talking. I posted some things. I think the closest thing would be these newsprint notebooks or notebooks that have that kind of rough, recycled paper in them, But I don't know if that's exactly what they were wanting.
Yeah. I think Baron Fig should release, in addition, where they use that paper and just have it, like, be called, like, Paperback Writer.
Oh, good idea. You know, or Dime Novel. That would have been a good paper to use.
Yeah. Dime novels. A little bit too fancy.
Yeah.
There used to, like, sheets of cardboard in that book. That was thick paper.
Yeah. Yeah. It's nice.
So, Andy, did you get your paperblacks pencil case? Did it find its way to you yet?
It has not. It is. It went from Vancouver, where Wade from Paper Blanks is, and made it to my address, but in Philadelphia. And so I don't exactly know what happened to it from there, but eventually it's. It's supposed to make its way to me. It just has not.
Okay, well, yeah, I'll hold off on.
You should talk about it.
Yeah. So Paperblinks, who, you know, makes really, really gorgeous notebooks. They make pencil boxes now, and they only have three or four designs, I think. But the one I picked is called. I'm going to pronounce it wrong. All right, where is it? Safid S A F A V I D. It sort of looks like old leather with gold inlay and some sort of, like, blue glass. It's so pretty, but. So these boxes are made of, you know, they're similar to their cover materials for their books. And they open up and they will hold an unsharpened blackwing.
Okay.
If you take out the little tray, if you put the tray in, you really can't fit anything that's unsharpened.
Yeah.
But they're just. They're really pretty. You can fold them back on themselves. The branding, of course, is really understated. It's like inside on one flap, it says paper blue blanks, black on black.
Okay, so here's my criticism of Paper Blanks. Like, is the branding understated or is the design overstated? Because it's always a little over the top.
This is true.
Yeah.
They do have really nice paper, though. I like the paper. A lot of pencil. It's wonderful with a wopex.
Just saying, you know that. Just keep beating that dead horse, Johnny. It is.
I use vopex in mind, you know, that I filled up half of one.
So Paper Blanks and Paper O are the same company.
Yeah.
So it's like Paper O I think I like better because it's like a little bit. I don't like. Minimal isn't the right word, but it's a little bit more like understated and geometric, I guess. But yeah,
you could mistake it for something else. Paper Blanks. It's Paper Blanks.
Yeah, yeah,
yeah. They do those really interesting magnetic closures that I've never bought a book where I didn't have to glue the magnet when I got it, but then it worked fine. The hinges are good. The magnets fall off themselves for some reason.
Yeah, yeah.
They're actually surprisingly durable for how pretty they are too. Yeah. And it's cool that folks are branching out into pencil and pen storage. Seems like most brands have something going on. He says. Except Baron Fig. They don't have a pencil case. Hint, hint. Actually, if they made one like this that had the COVID material from a confidant, that would be pretty fantastic. And it would get really dirty and look really, really good.
Maybe it could be like one of those books that are cut out on the inside and you can store some secret things.
Oh, my God, that'd be awesome. They could call it the Shawshank,
Right? You can, like, bring in pencils secretly. Nobody would know.
Oh, that's fantastic. Awesome. So I only have one more fresh point that actually has absolutely nothing to do with pencils or stationery, But I feel like something could be analog adjacent. If it's old fashiony. That would be Nerf guns. We had A Nerf war at a cookout that I was at two weeks ago. So then I might have bought five Nerf guns for a cookout that was this past weekend. So it's really fun because kids run
around outside the Gamber Arms race.
Yeah. I blame my friend and his kids for showing me how fun they are. They actually do hurt now they have a nice welt and, you know, now there's the Internet, so you can buy different springs and you can look up.
You can mod your Nerf guns.
How to modify them. Yeah, I mod at one of mine and it hurts really badly now, so I won't let my kids touch it. But, you know, then I'm like, well, am I doing something cool because now my kids want to run around outside or am I teaching them that shooting stuff is funny?
It's one of those great parent debacles.
You can't shoot a kid, you can't shoot an animal. And if someone says, stop, you have to stop. So therefore they basically can't play.
You're taking away the fun of it.
Grown ups and grown ups going to say, stop. And that's the end. So the kids actually got bored. It was really just grownups. And my friend's son, he was on my team until he shot me in the back. Literally. Yeah, But I mean, I suppose you could modify one to shoot pencils, then it would make more sense to mention
then that would be more dangerous.
Oh, yeah.
Hack wing some Nerf guns.
Shoot so many of the wool packs. It's almost as bad as like a. Like a.30 06.
Those things are heavy. The gun would blow up in your face. Yeah, yeah. So should we jump into our main topic? Yeah. Mechanical pleasures. So we have, as we usually do, a cool list of, or hopefully cool list of questions to ask our guests. And, you know, we're casual and loose. So to start with, I suppose we should have done this earlier in the episode, but, Vivian, can you talk to us a little about your background and what sort of creative and professional work you do?
Sure, yeah. Well, I'm from California originally.
Where in California?
I grew up in the mountains north of Los Angeles, a couple hours drive, and my parents designed missiles on a top secret Navy base out in the desert.
Oh, wow.
Really?
That's crazy. I went to high school by that base, and then I went to college at UC Irvine or got my bachelor's in English and then came out to Ohio because I wanted to experience something else and got my master's at Ohio State and got a PhD at University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, home of Michael
Haggit and Jason Patterson.
Yeah. Yeah. It's been fun hearing them talk about it. So I specialized for my PhD. I focused on modern American literature and popular culture, and I wrote my dissertation on westerns and utopian novels and various early science fiction novels. And I also studied critical theory and other kinds of things. But after I got my PhD, I worked for a few years when my kids were small as a freelance writer during that full time. And I still do a lot of freelance writing. I do a lot of business and technology reporting and some technical writing. But I was hired here at Muskingum University, which is a small liberal arts college in a village called New Concord, Ohio. I was hired here in 2003, and I teach English. I teach a lot of composition and introduction to literature and some modern American literature and some journalism, journalism ethics and public relations writing and a few other things like that. So that's what I teach. I do a lot of a kind of range of writing. I do creative nonfiction writing. I published a book a few years ago on learning how to trying to learn how to play fiddle. And I written recently. I've been doing more poetry, and I do a lot of creative nonfiction essays and some fiction recently. Yeah, and still some journalism. So I do some feature writing and various kinds of stories. I do a lot of book reviewing, too. So that's what I do here. I'm fascinated with popular culture, particularly. And lately I've been, like I said, reading about games and doing some writing about randomness and improvisation and games. I kind of have a book idea that's brewing. I have a sabbatical coming up in the spring, next spring. So I'm kind of starting to do some research for that.
Very cool, huh? So within all that, how do pencils and other analog tools of creation fit into that work?
Yeah, Well, I journal regularly. I'm a big fan of free writing. And I do morning pages every morning, which is Julia Cameron's idea of writing three pages of just whatever is on your mind in the morning. And so I do that. And often I do that. Usually I do that with pencils. And I do a lot of other writing and doodling and stuff with pencils. I annotate my books with pencils. And I also do a lot of art. The last couple years I've been doing more art. So I do colored pencil work and watercolor and some ink drawing. Yeah. So all of that is stuff I use analog tools for. I also love fountain pens and ink. And I like. I have a retro 51 pen with a Schmidt Easy Flow 9000 cartridge in it that I really love. I love my Pilot Vanishing Points with the Roshizuku ink. So I have a few things that I use all the time. I'm not really a collector or an investor in these things. I get something and I like it and then I just use it all the time. So that's what I do. A lot of other. I have a lot of other analog loves too, I guess. I mean, I still play violin and I love instrumental just playing music. I like watches. I realized over Christmas that I have like 20 different watches that were in various states of disrepair. My boyfriend helped me. We kind of worked on fixing them up and then I started giving them out to my kids and their friends. And so I've kind of gotten more into my watch collection lately. But I like doing word puzzles, crossword puzzles and other word puzzles. I use pencils for that. And I write letters or I try to. I sometimes get behind on my correspondence, but I like sending postcards and letters and board games. Recently that's, I guess, analog. I've been playing a lot of solo games and card games.
You are not somebody who is bored.
Yeah, I'm always doing something new. Kind of 10 things at once too.
So of all of the mediums or media that you like, what was it that made you like pencils, specifically? Like, what got you into pencils?
I like the feel of them. I guess it was only recently, the last couple years, I guess when I started using colored pencils. I started here hearing in some of those groups about the erasable podcast.
I've heard of them.
I think before I started listening to podcast I joined the Facebook group and then I very quickly discovered Blackwing pencils. I was like, ah, these are wonderful. Especially just the basic MMX soft core. And so I started using those all the time for drawing and writing. Before then I didn't really realize there were special pencils in the world. And so I usually used pens before that. But yeah, that was a couple years ago now. And now I use them all the time. I mean, I always did, I guess I always had a pencil on hand to annotate books because I never really felt comfortable writing with pen in books. But I like to write in books. But they didn't become something I wrote with regularly until the last couple years. But now I love them.
So moving from pencils in general to mechanical pencils, what made you want to just start exploring mechanical pencils as opposed to wooden ones? Was there something that was sort of like fundamentally interesting or appealing about it or did you just sort of like slide into it because it was new and interesting?
No, it was really just this past spring, I was just one day in my college bookstore and looking at the stationary items and seeing what was there. And I saw These BIC Atlantis 0.5 millimeter mechanical pencils they had. And I've always liked Bic Atlantis pens. That was actually what I used to use all the time before I started discovering other writing utensils. So I thought, well, I'll try a packet of those. And I brought them back to my office and started playing with them. And I thought, wow, this really isn't bad. I like the feel of it and I like that I don't have to sharpen it. And I could write. I can do my free writing without having to stop and sharpen. And even the BIC lead that the original one came with wasn't so bad. I kind of like the feel of the BIC lead. It was just an HB lead. It's made in France. But I thought, oh, this is nice. And so I went back and bought all the ones that they had there a couple other packets. And I realized later when I was looking on Amazon and elsewhere that these aren't really. It doesn't look like they're made anymore. So I'm happy I have a few packets to last me the next few years. But then I started looking. I mean, the HB lead was my favorite. And so I read on the group, I guess I heard people talking about darker mechanical pencil lead, so I ordered some 4B. I ordered the Pilot Neox 4B and the Uni. Nanodia 4B. Yeah, or Nanodia, I guess. Dia, I don't know. It's supposed to have like ground up diamonds in it, which gives it a certain hardness and unbreakability. So I have both of those and I really. I like both of them equally. I like the pilot maybe slightly more. It's a little soft. Softer. So I loaded that up into these and then it quickly became. This became my go to pencil. This big Atlantis with the 4B lead. I just love it. I use it all the time and I journal with it in the morning. I use it for annotating books. It's nice especially to take around when I'm teaching and not at home with a sharpener right nearby. This has become my go to pencil.
I sometimes forget that, you know, BIC doesn't just make the click mechanical pencil, which was my main experience with the.
Which is not Good at all. These are totally different. I mean, these are shaped nicely. They're nice to hold. They're weighted nicely. Yeah, they're totally different from the cheap bic. Well, I mean, the crummy bic mechanical pencils. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm the kind of person that, like, when I find something I like, then I just start using it all the time. Like, you know when you get an album and you just, like, listen to it all the time until you're sick of it. But I am so, like, I'm in this. I don't know how long it will last. But right now, I'm almost always using this bake atlantis.
Awesome. So what are some of your other favorite mechanical pencils?
Yeah, so I did start after I got those. I went on jetpens and started looking around, and I got an otoe sharp pencil that I like. It's made out of wood, and it looks like a wooden pencil.
Oh, yeah.
And it has a nice feel. And especially putting sharp or the soft lead in it. It feels like a nice wooden pencil with soft lead. The one thing I don't like about it is the ferrule. Kind of the eraser is a little loose in the ferrule. It started bugging me, So I put some little tape there to kind of tighten it up, and it's fine now. So I use this.
That's what I've noticed with ohto. Like, they're designed really nice, but the manufacturing is always just, like, a little shoddy.
Yeah.
I bought my sister a fountain pen that is kind of like that.
Yeah, I was kind of disappointed with that, because I like everything else about the pen sign. Like that it's wooden, but, yeah, I didn't really like that. Now it looks kind of crummy because it has this tape that I put there, but it works all right. And it doesn't shake and rattle like it used to. Let's see. Oh, and I also got these. I think after one of the erasable episodes, Topher and was less on there. I can't remember who was talking about these TWSBI junior Pagoda pencils. They're new, and there's three different colors. White and, like, a tangerine and a blue. And I order all three of them, and they're really nice. They're 0.52, and they feel nice. So I've been using those, too. And I think the other one I like lately is this pentel champ. This one's actually 0.7 millimeter, but I like the feel of it. It's kind of got a weird grip section. All of these are just cheap mechanical pencils. I haven't gotten any really fancy ones, but those are ones that I've been using. One thing I will say there's the BIC Atlantis 0.7 millimeter. I also have that. I just. I don't like it as much. It's slightly thicker, and I don't really like the thick lead. And you can't get 0.7 lead in 4B, so I'm not quite as fond of those.
Yeah.
But they are still available.
So speaking of the, you know, using softer leads, I think I. I don't really think about using softer leads often because it just seems like it would just break super easily. Right. Like, because it's so thin.
Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit about how using softer leads is different from like, from standard leads, specifically in a mechanical pencil and what your preferred brands and grades are generally?
Yeah, I mean, I'm finding that this pilot lead and the uni lead really aren't breaking that much. I mean, if I really press hard, but because the lead's so soft, I don't have to put press that hard to write, so I'm not breaking them that much. It depends on the. I don't like the. I have the. How do you say it? Kuri. Toga.
Kuru. Toga.
Kuru Toga. Yeah, I don't quite like it as much. I know it turns the lead and it's supposed to keep it sharp, but I don't know, that one maybe breaks a little bit more. But I haven't had much of a problem actually with this breaking, especially with the. For some reason, maybe the Bic Atlantis, just the way it holds it in there. I don't bring out too much at a time. The Baron fig paper, which is my favorite paper, is pretty toothy and it does eat up the lead pretty quickly. But I don't mind. I like it after the paragraphs I have to click.
Yeah. I think I often when I use mechanical pencil, I think I just advance the. The lead too far. And I know that like, with like super thin lead, like a 0.2 millimeter, you're really not supposed to have that sticking out much past the. What do you call it? The metal tip.
Right, Right.
Yeah.
And I don't on these that. Just a little bit past enough to get it. I don't like it when it gets so close to it that you can feel the metal against the paper. That's a bad feeling. But just a little bit beyond that. So it's kind of. You finesse it, but you can. I can do it.
What's your favorite widths of
the 0.5. Yeah, yeah, I like the 0.5. The 4B 0.5. That's my favorite.
4B 5. That's good to know.
Yeah.
So on a completely different track, what are some of your favorite wooden pencils?
Yeah, so. Well, I like the basic Blackwing mmx. That's probably still my favorite. Go to pencil. And I like the 73. I got a box of those and I really like them. I mean, it's strange to think about these have the same core and so I mostly like the core in those. But I like the feel of the 73 and I like the 602 for some other things and the 54. So I like all those. In fact, I haven't really found a black wing that I don't like. I also really like the Mitsubishi handwriting pencils in 4B, the darker ones. They're really nice and soft and buttery. They're better maybe for drawing. They do lose their point pretty quickly for writing, but they just feel so buttery and nice. I like The Tombow mono 102B's I use those. A box of those I'm working through. I also really like John Morris, got these prayer pencils from Japan.
Oh yeah, I have a pack of those.
Yeah. So during the spring I was writing a prayer each day with those. Even though I'm, you know, I'm Buddhist and I don't really think in terms like traditional kind of prayers, but like I was writing what I called a prayer with the prayer pencil and it felt kind of, I don't know, it was like a meditative thing. And they're interesting. They feel a little bit like chopsticks because they're square, but they have a nice feel in them. And I asked my son to translate. My son knows Japanese and he was able to see they have little sayings on them about focus and study and meditation. I really like those. And lately I've been playing around with these. Stabilo. The Stabilo 8008. They're called aquarellable. They're water soluble graphite pencils. So I've been playing around with those mostly for painting and like their water solubility. But they're actually also fun to just write with. They're kind of nice and dark. They have an interesting feel. So those are some that I've been using lately.
So for somebody who is a wooden pencil purist, like, oh, maybe Some of the people you're talking to right now, for example. So whenever I talk to people who are really into pens, I usually can land on a wooden pencil that's like, you know, right for them. Like people who are really into sharpies, like those big thick Koh I noor triograph pencils. People who are really into fountain pens often like a really nice long point like 3B. What, what is, what is a mechanical pencil that would be really good for a wooden pencil? Purist, do you think?
Well, you know that ohto sharp pencil is nice because it does feel like a wooden pencil. That's one that I would, I would think of. It's not all that fancy and it does have that issue I mentioned, but it's the feel of it in the hand. It's the closest to holding a wooden pencil that makes sense of any that I've tried. Yeah, yeah.
I'm a big fan of the zebra number two pencils which are those little like four inch mechanical pencils that look like a regular pencil.
Oh, those are like a wooden pencil.
Yeah, I like those a lot. Those are pretty adorable. They're just, just the right size. They have like a metal ferrule and an eraser on the end of it. Unlike you know, some of the other paper mate pencils. Like that big crappy like plastic thing that they were like this will replace your wooden pencil. Oh yeah, yeah. So yeah, the zebra number twos are big. A big favorite of mine.
I like the little zebra pens. I have a little mini pen. I use that with like pocket notebooks and it folds up into this tiny little pen but it writes really nicely.
Yeah, cool.
Awesome. So moving on again, I keep jumping into new things. What are some of your favorite books maybe aside from Baron Fig or papers or things to write on that you like for different tasks and various pursuits?
Yeah. So we can't talk about Baron Fig anymore, huh? I was going to say I just use it so much. Yeah, well, I've been. I found this really neat site on Etsy called Printable Pineapple and she creates interesting templates for different kinds of notebooks and planners. So I've been carrying this Traveler's Notebook, an A5 size vegan traveler's notebook that I also got on Etsy. But I have, I carry the Baron Fig Vanguard in it. But then I print out these purple printable pineapples. I have a monthly planner and a daily tasks daily planner. So I print those out and then I staple them and create my own notebooks. And I really love the Freedom of that. Yeah, it's pretty neat. You can kind of customize. She's got lots of things like food and budget and money. Like various kinds of notebooks for different purposes. Some of them are just dot, grid or lined. But you can get like just for a few dollars, this whole suite of you get these PDF files and you can print them. So those are ones that I use every day, especially the daily tasks 1. I really like that. I'm a big to do list creator and I like the structure that she has on there with daily times and then daily to do things and the top three things to do each day and then the rest of the things you want to do. Then she has things on there like how much you work, I don't know, other stuff that I. How much water you drink. I don't always fill all that out, but I like the lists. So that's another one that I use every day. And then I use a lot of other kinds of art paper. So I really like fluid watercolor, cold press blocks for doing watercolor. And I enjoy using the Strathmore watercolor postcards. I make little postcards when I travel or to send to people. And I just started using a sketchbook from Lida Art Supply. It's pretty nice paper, good for sketching and takes a little bit of light watercolor. I do also really like. I have a lot of field notes, but I like a little bit of a bigger notebook. So I gravitate more toward these A5 notebooks, but I like the field notes. Dime novel and I've been writing science fiction stories in my dime novels, so that's fantastic. For some reason that's become what I do with those.
So what are your. What's kind of your preferred science fiction? I don't want to say genre, but sort of like situation like spacey things or dystopia things.
Well, I would say more what I'm doing lately isn't pure science fiction. It's more like fabulist fiction, I would say. So I've been really interested in like retelling myths and fairy tales and folk tales in kind of in modern day. So like I have a book of poems coming out called Curiosities that's set like in Zanesville and rural Ohio, but it's like all these Greek figures from mythology or also I write from the point of view of various kind of mythological creatures that live around Ohio, like Bigfoot and Grassman and this panther that's supposed to roam. So I do a lot of stuff like that. I guess that kind of stuff would be more fabulous fiction, speculative fiction. But some of the things I've been writing in dime novels, I was doing this whole series of just. It was kind of stories told from the point view of somebody on a ship, a journal that somebody was keeping on a spaceship. So that's something I'm working on. I just sort of play around with this stuff. I'm not really primarily a fiction writer, but it's kind of fun to take on different voices. I tend to write so much poetry and nonfiction from my. And it's all kind of by default, my own voice. And I'm finding it's really fun to take on other voices. And usually those other creatures or people or have characteristics that are similar to me, but they're not me exactly. And I think that's fun. So I'm kind of getting into that lately.
Nice.
That's very cool.
Do you have anything? Well, the other thing I've been using a lot of lately are note cards. So I really like the Baron Fig Strategist note cards. And then I also ordered some of these. I've been using these Exacompta Bristol record cards from Claire Fontaine. Both of those are really nice. And I've always been a big note card user, just as ever since graduate school. As soon as I'd start a new book, I'd put an index card in it, and that's what I would keep my notes on. And I'm continuing to do that, but playing around with these fancier note cards. Because what I realized was that note cards you can get. The index cards you can get, like, at Walmart or just, like, off the shelf are just terrible nowadays. They're terrible. They're like, barely more than just, like, paper. So I went on a search a few months back for better index cards, and I found I like the Baron Fig ones and the Exacompta ones. They're both really nice, sturdy cards. And I've been thinking about using them for other things, too. But I do a lot of note taking.
Very cool.
So do you have anything else you want to mention about mechanical pencils that we didn't ask?
I would just say keep an open mind about them. I know there's a lot of hatred of mechanical pencils.
I mostly just like to, you know, quote that chapter of how to sharpen pencils. Yeah, mostly just to be funny, but
Charlotte does that all the time.
Can you say that word on here? Can we say what the word that's in that chapter?
Yeah, sure.
All right, so well, like I said in the thing for Johnny's blog was that mechanical pencils aren't bullshit.
Yeah, sorry. Good job.
A way harder hit. It says electric sharpeners. Anyway, they're okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Everything has its place. I mean, I think of all these things just as tools. I'm pretty eclectic. I don't get stuck on. Well, I guess I do get stuck on certain tools, but I don't worry so much about the tools. Once I find tools I like using. I'm more interested in what I or others are doing with these tools. So if somebody likes to write with a wopex, I'm more interested in what they're writing than in the tool itself, you know?
Thank you.
They're probably just scribbling, because I assume they're just illiterate.
That's cool.
I have to say, I don't like wopec. I got some wopacks and I ended up sending them to somebody in the group right away because I just didn't like them. But somebody else is creating something interesting with them, I'm sure, so that's just fine.
Yeah.
Cool.
Awesome. So would you mind reading another poem that's gonna be in Plumbago episode or Episode issue four?
Yes, I could do that. Let's see.
Or even two if you want.
You don't want to give them all away. Johnny, we gotta give a reason to buy the zine.
Yeah. All right, well, I'll read this one called Mailing to Byzantium. So. So this is kind of echoing a Yeats poem, sailing to Byzantium, but this is Mailing to Byzantium. It takes a while for the post office to figure out the whole mythical destination thing. Your letter might not arrive at all, and years later, you'll get it back. The envelope stained and ripped. Speaking of a long, mysterious journey through places you can only imagine with this stamp, addressee unknown.
That's where my paper blanks pencil case is right now.
Well, it'll be worth it when it shows up. They're very nice. Yeah. And it'll show up in December. It'll be a Christmas present.
Exactly.
Well, thanks for coming on, Vivian. This was super awesome.
Yeah. Thank you so much. This is fantastic.
Oh, thank you for having me. This is so much fun. I love your podcast.
Thank you.
Feel like I am kind of part of the conversation each week, just listening to it. So it's fun just to be able to be part of it.
Yeah, no, you're literally part of that conversation.
Right, right.
Can you tell our guests or our guests oh my goodness. I'm off. Tonight our listeners, where to find you on the Internet and social media.
Sure. So I have a website. It's vivianwagner.net and I'm on Facebook. Facebook vivianwagner. I'm on Twitter, though I don't really update Twitter very often. I think I'm V. Wagner on Twitter. So those are the places you might find me.
Awesome. How about you, Andy?
I am on Twitter and Instagram at awealthly. You can find my blog@woodclinched.com or more about me at Andy Gold. How about you, Johnny?
So I am@pencilrevolution.com and I'm on Instagram and Twitter ensolution. And we are the Erasable Podcast. Yay. You could find us on the web if you just, you know, Google Pencil blog Pencil podcast, because we're the only one. Or you can go to erasable us. This is episode 97, which is getting awesome. So this will be at erasable us97. You can check out our sort of adjacent to the podcast Pencils all the time group on facebook@facebook.com groups erasable or search for the Erasable Podcast pencil community. And our Facebook page is erasable.com erasablepodcast which you can like for if we decide to make announcements that we don't usually do. We're on Twitter and Instagram raceablepodcast. Thank you for listening and we'll see you on episode 98. The intro music for the Erasable Podcast is graciously provided by this Mountain, a collaborative folk rock band from Johnson City, Tennessee. You can check out their music@www.vismountainaind.com. This has happened before.