Scribe

Bourbon flavored bourbon. Hello there and welcome to episode 107 of the erasable podcast. This episode is sponsored by in defensive paper making high quality notebooks sourced and manufactured in the U.S. visit indefenseofpaper.com erasable to check them out and use the coupon code erasable to save $5 on your purchase. Well, the prodigal son has returned. I spent all my graphite and I'm back to find more paper and to beg for forgiveness. This is Tim Wasem waiting for my midterm heartburn meds to kick in. And I am so happy to be with my two buddies, Andy and Johnny. Guys, how are you doing?

So happy to be back.

Go down to the ship. Yeah. We'll get like our violins out and play together as the ship sinks, as

Results roll in. But I have been looking forward to this all day, all week, even since last week. We were supposed to do this last week and then had to bail at the last second because of a stupid oversight by me. And I was so bummed because I was excited to do this. So I'm really, really excited to talk to you guys. Yeah. So I think we are going to take advantage of all three of us being back together on this election night to talk about a topic we always love and a very just relatable, fun topic to talk about that people usually like to hear and we like to hear from them. And that is our top five pencils to kind of reassess and decide what are our top five? What are the five we use the most these days. I think for all of us, there's been a little bit of a change. But it's interesting to see how much of a change because I think we haven't done this in what. How long has it been? Is it been a year since we've done that?

Long time. It's a lifetime. It feels like 10 years these days, but yeah, but here we are. So let's. Let's get into it and let's start off with tools of the trade. Johnny, why don't you start us out?

What do you call it? Now you abandoned the name that I gave it.

Yeah, right. Yeah. You're afraid I would sue.

You still call it Tools of the Trade? Yes, Johnny, go ahead.

No. I listen to the podcast a little bit, but that's it.

Ooh. Yes.

Yeah.

I have been reading a little more lately. I was on fall break, so I had a week off and was reading. Had some time to read a few things, and we were in the car a long time. So I had a chance to listen to Calypso by David Sedaris, his newest collection, and had to, like, hold back laughter and not wake up my kids who are sleeping at, like, 2 in the morning in the car on the way back from Georgia. It was just fantastic. It was really good. Have you read much David Sedaris? Have we talked about him much?

I don't know. Yeah, let's talk about diabetes and owls.

No, go ahead.

Collections. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is. I've. I've kind of jumped around with collections and I've read like. I don't know, I've read some early ones and then some later. Mostly the later ones. I read the when you were engulfed in flames collection, which I really liked, and the diabetes and owls and this is the. The newest. And he was just on. Oh, gosh, was it wtf. Was he on WTF with Marc Maron? Yeah, yeah, I think he was on WTF with Mark Maron. He showed up on there, which I was super excited about, and, like, re. Excited me about looking into what he was up to because I hadn't read him in a few years. And the interview is just really great. And this collection is super entertaining. My favorite essay is one where he talks about getting a Fitbit for the first time. And he has a history of, like, legit obsessive compulsive disorder. And so he tells the story of, like, getting. Getting a Fitbit and going from getting his 10,000 steps a day to like, working up to 35,000 because he's compulsively picking up trash on the side of the road. And. And. And. But. And now I'm listening to one of his older collections that. It's called Naked, which. And listening to that one now, it's interesting to see. I mean, he's been writing these for a while. He's basically his own genre. But these newer essays are so good and so, like. Well, the. Especially his endings are so well crafted. And at the end of it, you're just like, oh, man, now I see where we were going that whole time. Which. The first one was kind of like, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. Little bit of a moral joke, joke, joke, you know, which is still fun. Like, a lot of fun. But these ones just were. They got, you know, heavy. And it's a lot about family. He tells the story of buying a beach house, and I think it was in North Carolina or something. And they all have these cute, punny, like, pun names about, like, boats and oceans and stuff. And they. And they. They buy theirs. And he names it the C section, like sea section. And it's like. So most of the essays are like, his family coming to stay there. And, like, he tells all these really great stories. But I listened to that and read portions of it, and now I'm listening to it again. I'm almost done with it for the second time because I just wanted to I'm listening to Naked kind of in the Car, but then as I do chores, I'm just re listening to Calypso and it's really fun. I'm also reading a book called Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, which my co host on the membership recommended a couple years ago. Jason Hardy recommended. And it is this. I think I've talked about the Brothers K on here a long time ago. Not the Karamazov, but Brothers K. It feels like a very similar book. It's like a family story of these three siblings and their dad who's a their mom has passed away. Or their dad is a custodian at a local high school and gets himself caught up in something by basically walking in on some students doing this horrible thing. And then they end up trying to get revenge. But it's like having an effect on the whole family. But it just, it tells it through the perspective of one of the younger kids. And so a really cool story. And that's been. It's a really beautiful book. So I'd recommend that to everybody. And also makes me want to listen to the Paul Simon song Peace Like a River and then watch Watching Wise. I haven't really been watching a whole lot. I haven't been sticking with anything too much. But I finally made it to the second season season of the Good Place and that show is perfect. And that's all I want to say about that.

Like the simple premise that you get in episode one, which is woman dies, ends up in heaven, realizes she's like not supposed to be there, she's a horrible person, that she was mixed up with someone else's identity. Like that's like 1% of what goes on. I mean it just like gets so much more complicated as you go. Not complicated in a bad way, but just like it gets. The plot thickens quickly as you go. And so that's. It's amazing. Kristen Bell is so funny in the show. And Ted Danson. Who doesn't like Ted Danson? Maybe some people don't like Ted Danson. I am writing with a CW pencil baseball scoring pencil in the story supply Morning limited edition, which I feel like they put Morning Limited edition. So it didn't mix it up with the NPR morning edition. But I am really enjoying that. And I almost want to. We'll talk about it a little bit later, but. Well, yeah, I'll leave it for them. But I'm enjoying it. It's back. This is the first time I've used a lined pocket notebook in a long time. Which, by the way, David Sedaris, big user of the pocket notebook.

Yeah. His whole process is he carries pocket notebook everywhere. He records these little like shorthand things and then he transfers them to his diary, and then the things from his diary end up being transferred into essays.

That sounds good. Yeah. And I discovered the other day that if you googled David Sedaris notebook and the fourth thing that popped up on Google was an episode of Take Note from our buddies over at Take Note. I thought that was awesome. And the next thing after that was the New Yorker. Like an article from the New Yorkers.

Exactly. They're like SEO powerhouse over there. Like beating out the New Yorker. Yeah, that's me. Well, shall we move on to freshpoints? Yeah, Johnny, go for it.

Okay.

That really sucks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, that's awesome.

Like.

But as one does.

Nice.

Yeah, likewise. I just am too busy this year. This is one year I was almost proud of myself for being like, no, Tim, Tim, don't even try to do it because I get other good stuff going. But I'm. I always get excited for NaNoWriMo time even when I'm not doing it. So it's.

So crack that up.

All right.

Speaking.

I just.

Yeah, on Instagram.

Brooklyn sizes.

so.

Yeah.

And then the owner of it has the texture on it, too, so if you, like, bumped against somebody, they'd stick to you. Yeah, it was on the whole shirt, like, all the way over it.

Like, a sliding door open and you, like, get stuck to it. Yeah.

Wasn't it dj?

Yeah, it was an official thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then finally Lilliputian stage or something.

Oh, it's only 20 bucks. Awesome.

So people would pretend I was out too, if I were?

To you guys to each

I have.

It's fun to think about how they. They seem to have a little bit of, like, a wear on them, even though they've never been used. Just the fact that that has built up over, like, probably decades and decades of just sitting there. Right, right. It's, like, so crazy to think of all that. It's sort of, like, absorbed and what's gone into that, because they're. Yeah, they're not. I mean, they're a little harder than what might be used to, but, like, it feels exactly like what it would have been back then. You know, it seems like a very, like, utilitarian, simple item that would maybe have just been kind of a throwaway back then, but now everybody would go nuts for it. Reminds me of those ones that Johnny shared with me that he picked up from wherever that was, I guess. I don't remember where you. Where you found those, but I was. I was tickled to see it, and I wrote with it a little bit, but I almost just didn't want to wait with. Waste it too much. Yeah, it's kind of a. It's got a little bit of a scratch to it, but not necessarily in a. In a way that's not, you know, not pleasant. It's. Yeah, that's a cool pencil.

It was right in the wheel. Yeah.

Yeah, well, the first thing I was going to share, which is something that I wish I would have been around for right when they. When they came out, but the. The CW pencils. Baseball scoring pencil, which.

When was that?

Yeah, yeah, something like that. And I think that they'd kind of hinted at it for a while, and I remember them asking, like, what would make for a good scoring pencil. It was just, you know, just kind of a fun idea. And what came out of it, I feel like, for me, I just, like. Just to give my two cents about this pencil, is that it is probably the best round pencil available today.

Yeah, well, like, what else is there? Right?

No.

Next.

The field notes pencil.

Yeah, that's for a reason.

Sausage lining edition. No, it's. No, but it is. I think the. No, I think it really. And it's not perfect. Like, there are some issues, but like, I. As a. As a round pencil fan, I've never found really anything else that's still being made today that's as. That I like as much as this granite. What are they? They're like 12 bucks for six of them or something.

Isn't that what. I Forget how much?

10. So, I mean, so, like, I don't know if they're like blackwing prices worthy, but I know it's like a custom thing that was made and. And having it done by Generals is not a. A normal thing that happens. So they definitely pulled off something cool there to have. Have a quality pencil made. And I mean, there's. You know, with the finish, like, as soon as you start using it, the print on, like, all the typing on it, like, rubs right off.

Which didn't really bug me too much. And then once you get the initial layer rubbed off, then it just kind of looks. It almost immediately ages it. You know, it all sudden looks like a vintage, old, old pencil. Like, as soon as it rubs off like this. Looking at it like this could be 40 years old, just based on how it looks. And I really love how it writes. And I've talked to John Pattison and I were talking when we were together for the recording last few weeks ago, and he had got them, and he's like, oh, yeah, I like it. Except the eraser is terrible. But mine, the erasable is great. So I feel like the eraser is great. It's really soft. It reminds me. It makes me wonder if the inside of this and maybe this has come up with you guys, but the inside is the Generals580 core. Because I really. I really like it in the eraser. Eraser feels like the 580eraser, which is.

No, I'm just at your. I'm just guessing.

That's just a total guess, but it just feels very similar to me. I love. And I will stock up on them, I think, just because I love a good round pencil and there's not really any. Any good options out there that are cedar and are as smooth as this.

I jumped all over Them, So I will probably stock up relatively nothing crazy because they're not, they're not cheap. But also I just, you know, they'll last a while. So I was, I'm a big fan. So I bring that up and I found something a while back and this is like right after I had started on my, on my break to start working on membership stuff and doing some recordings for that that I found. I was teaching Walt Whitman in school and I came across.

What?

Wasn't he a good student? Oh yeah, he was.

You were teaching. I get it, I get it, I get it.

Yeah, I got jokes on jokes. He was a transcendental student. He. Yeah. So I was looking up because I remembered at some point seeing pictures of his notebooks, like inside of his notebooks. But it had been years since I looked it up and I'm looking for the link right now. Indiana University has his archives, I guess like his papers are there and so they're starting, they're scanning a ton of stuff and it's been out there for a while. But you can see in his notebooks and he was an avid pencil user first off, just like in general he was a pocket notebook carrier and he loved to write in pencil. And so almost all of his papers are written in pencil. And I came across section at the Lilly archives, it's called Whitman's Last Pencil. And there is a, an envelope. And this is how the story goes. Allegedly the last pencil Whitman used was given to the poet and editor Richard Watson Gilder by a Whitman admirer named John Burroughs who was with him around, I guess around the time of his death. And so he gave him in an envelope and they even show the envelope that says what women's pencil. The last used given to me by John Burroughs. Like it's all like recorded right there on the envelope. And I had zoomed in and looked at it. It's a Dixon pencil that he had sharpened on both sides and I guess was using it as a kind of a carry around pencil. And I did a little digging on brand name pencils and I think I found the one that's that it is on brand name pencils, which is the Dixon's American Graphite 152SM number two. And brand name pencils actually has them available to buy, which is if you're a, if you're a Whitman fan and you want to have like what the last pencil he was carrying around was, it's pretty neat. So I ordered a couple of those. They haven't arrived yet, but I just ordered them. Finally got around to it recently. Yeah, they're eight bucks a piece. And, you know, with the branding pencils, like, the shipping's a little silly. It's like 8 bucks shipping for those two pencils. So I don't know. But it's a cool thing to have, especially if you're a fan of his. And I've become even more. I've always been a fan of Whitman, but then teaching it for the first time. Switching to American lit this year, I've become even more of a fan. So I was excited to have that one. One to sharpen and one to preserve.

I have not.

They had.

So when would that have been?

Ish. Okay. Yeah, I remember when that was there. Yeah. When I was in high school and I remember hearing about it and then trying to make the trip. I went down to IU to see Wilco when I was in high school, and that was there. But we got there too late. So it like, overlapped or I almost got to. Got to go to both of them, but I missed out. So that's really cool. Yeah, I'd love to go there sometime and see. And see the Whitman stuff. And I know they have all kinds of things. Yeah. So I didn't share that. So I put the link in the show notes for the article, and you can go kind of back from there and look at all of his manuscripts for his different poems and things that he had jotted down. Notebooks all in pencil. So it's really, really quality pencil. Pencil peeping there from the past. And I was going to also bring up the story supply notebook, which talked about later, which thank you to Vito for sending, because they are awesome. So we actually. I got the story supply Morning edition, the new one, as well as the. Is it called the smr? Is that what it is? The real colorful one? Yeah. Smr. So got three of the SMR and then three of the. The morning one, which I absolutely love. It's lined paper, which is cool, which I'm enjoying. And I was just ready for a little bit of a switch. But it's a Lined paper. The COVID is black, and I guess it's kind of made to look like morning fog. Yeah, like, kind of like a winter. A dark winter morning fog or fall morning fog or whatever, with two black staples for the bindings.

it looks really good. Yeah, it sure looks like it. But I've got. It's actually hard to tell. And I only have one in front of me, so I don't have the other ones, so it'd be interesting to see if they're all identical. But. But the printing on the inside back cover where it says, all morning, the morning has been blackening, which I'm not sure what that's from, but it's haunting. But even like that, printing is almost kind of faded, as if it's, like, fading back into the fog. So it's like. It's got a lot of texture to how it's been printed. So I don't know how they pulled that off. Like, that part, it's almost like a little blurry, like, on purpose. It's like you're squinting at it and then. But then the. The actual black shapes, that's. This. This fog. Foggy shape is actually pretty defined at parts, so it's. It seems like it was intentional, but it's pretty cool. And I. In my head when I first saw it and I didn't see the name of it, I wasn't paying attention. I looked inside and saw the spots, and it looked like. Like charcoal or something. So I've been thinking of it as the chimney sweep edition, but I like it. So, yes, I've been using that. I slid it into my field notes wallet. It fits nice and snug into there, which I like that I haven't used the SMR ones yet, but the only other story supply notebooks I've ever used were the pencil. The pencil ones. The pencil pusher edition. Yeah, I used one of those, and I liked it. And then I spilled coffee on the other two, and it was tragic.

It all happened in my car, so that was just devastating. So thank you for sending me.

I'm done.

Yeah. Not sure.

But I don't know if they're on a schedule or not. I'm trying to look back and see if there's any evidence, but still, it's just like, even if they're not, I kind of like that at this point, just to. It's almost because I have so many notebooks, so I'm not, like, eager for another notebook. So it would almost be nice for one to just kind of show up now and then be like, oh, man, they got a new one. Sweet. That's great. So cool. So I'm not buying 12 new notebooks every quarter of the year. Yeah. Lastly, I was just going to give an update on membership. The membership podcast. We are. Yeah. So we have recorded. I think we've recorded five full episodes now. Wow. That are just kind of stockpiled. That. We are. We're all learning how to edit podcasts, which we're all kind of like, a little gun shy on getting into that too much. And just, like, we're sort of learning that. So we're probably gonna be putting out our zero episode pretty soon. And Jason and I got together and recorded some music to use for the intros and stuff. Just some simple guitar stuff. But that was. That was fun. We just made kind of a intentionally crude, slightly crude recording. Just using, like, a snowball mic and just sitting around picking on, just improvising a little bit.

Yeah, I don't know. It sure looks like it.

So the funny story there is that we were trying to get something together for this live event. We're like, man, we need a logo. And I've been meaning to talk to my sister about it, and we weren't sure, like, what to go for. And then I went to Canva and that was the first thing that popped. That popped up. So canvas, like a, you know, automated. If you haven't used it, it's like a people use to make Mock like book covers or album covers or. Yeah, you know, stuff like that. And I just like went there and there's like a, you know, whatever 200,000 pictures available and it automatically, I guess, generates them based on where you are is one of the things. So it like detects where you are. And so I think it probably was the Blue Ridge Mountains, but it was just beautiful. And like, it struck me, I was like, this is.

I came here for a reason, because that picture is gorge and it works perfectly. So I went for it and I think we'll stick with it because it just turned out great. Yeah. And when we made the web, when we made the website, we were able to integrate that image really comfortably onto the page. So website's up@membershippod.com but we. So we. Yeah, we have five, five in the can that we're editing and we're going to start releasing pretty soon. I think the, the zero episode should be out within the week. I would say. We had planned on it like around November 1st, and it's just kind of slid back because we've all been crazy busy. John's starting to work on a new book and that he got a. An agreement to start working on, so he's getting ready for that. And then Jason and I have just been teaching and kind of in the throes of that. But it's, it's going really. It's going well. It's going really well. And we did a live show in Knoxville or in Nashville that we just kind of stumbled into on the coattails of John Pattison, because he's been speaking in Nashville for the last, I don't know, five or six years at this festival called Hutchmut, which happens at this big church in Nashville. But it's this, you know, like sort of, sort of faith based conference that's done, but it's all based around the arts and they bring in all kinds of artists and writers and musicians that do some really fascinating stuff. And they all do sessions. And so there's tons and tons of sessions that go on on the weekend. And John has presented there before and it's run by, if anybody knows who Andrew Peterson is, he's a singer, songwriter. He and his brother run the thing through this organization called the Rabbit Room. And so they agreed to let us do a live episode there, not having heard a single episode, which is pretty awesome. And then they also. Yeah, I think we're gonna be. They have a podcast network called Rabbit Room that we'll be a part of. So just for like promotion sake, that they'll put it, they'll put it through that. But we went there and they, they lined us up in what was actually the Wendleberry room of the conference. They have, all the rooms are named after writers. So there's like the Tolkien room, there's the. Oh gosh, over the other ones. I was only in the conference center for like three hours. Long enough to do this, I didn't see, but they're all named. There's like the CS Lewis room, there's the Tolkien room, there's all these. But we were in the Wendell Berry room. And so we were setting up to record. And as has been the case at every recording session that we've had so far, we had technical problems getting set up, like obnoxious ones. So we got there and got all set up and it was like five minutes before we were going to start recording. And there were three people in this room. You know, there's probably like 35 seats. But then all of a sudden it was like in the room, every seat filled up. There are people sitting on the floor in front of us and like on the wall in the back, like. So there's just. There was kind of a built in interest in Wendell Berry at this conference obviously when this norm, this, this room was named after him. So, so there are a lot of people who saw his name on the schedule and they go, cool, Wendell Berry session and podcast. This should be fun. And it turned out to be just a really great time. We just, it was basically a time for us to explain what we were thinking of doing. And we each read a little something of his that we like from his fiction, his poetry, his essays. And we had a guest named Alan Levi, who's a songwriter from Georgia, really fascinating guy who was at the conference and he was a lawyer for like 15 years, and then just suddenly was like, you know what, I don't want to do this anymore. Right now I'm going to go off and get my master's in English. And he went off to Scotland and got his master's in English and then decided to start writing songs. And then he's never gone back to practicing law. And now he's like, I don't know, he's probably in his 60s. He's literally written like thousands of songs. It was really unbelievable. So we got to interview him, which was great. And then it was kind of a cool final part. We, we had opened it up to questions to people in the audience nervously, basically figuring like we could cut this from the recording, because nobody will ask us any questions or nobody will answer our questions that we have. We didn't want them to ask us questions. We wanted to ask that. So we asked them some questions. But we ended up having like 10 people come up, like one after the other and just finally had to be like, okay, we gotta stop. This has been awesome. Which is really, really neat. And yeah, I also had an Erasable listener, Justin Kerry from the Erasable podcast, Erasable Community. He sent me a message like two weeks before and was like, hey, I'm actually going to be at Hutchmoop this year. Can we meet? And he was at the session, sitting right in the front, and he sat down right in the front with his Palomino HB and his Baron Fig notebook. And it's like, oh, man.

Oh man. And John had been there the day before and he's like, I saw a guy with a Baron Fig notebook yesterday.

I meant to say something to him and I was like, I bet that was Justin. And sure enough, it was him. So that was really cool to meet him. And then we all got some Indian food and headed home. But it was just a great experience. So that's going to be our episode zero, which should come out in the next week or so. So it'll be about an hour long and we had a good time. It's a lot to be, to be honest, to do because of all the reading. A lot of reading to do to do a podcast like this. So I'm glad we're supposed to splitting it up into seasons. So we'll do 12 episodes ish this first season, then take a few months off to rechart read. Nice going. Well, I'm excited for it to come out and just to get it rolling because we're kind of in a limbo point right now. So we're gonna. We'll get the zero episode up and then there'll be a link on the website to. To easily subscribe to, like a newsletter just so you can know when new episodes come out. And then we'll get it into the. The different podcatchers as soon as possible. Very cool. So spoiled by Andy doing all this stuff for us.

Definitely. Gosh, like from like the first minute, I'm like, wait, wait. Oh, let's go to YouTube. How do I do things anyways? So, yeah. All right, so I think that's it for FreshPoints. But before we move on to the Main topic, I'm going to turn it over to Andy to talk about our sponsor.

Sure, yeah.

I was covering a belch and so I was talking that whole time. Still a bit of a spread for my taste in the election. So yeah, I Was nervous burping. Okay. Chili election chili. Okay. Yeah. So I will pick up from that question you asked me.

Yeah. Okay, so today we are going to update our top five pencils. And these would be the top five pencils that we like to use to play the game of pencils.

These are some expensive options for that game. But we are updating our top five pencils. And I don't know about you guys, but for me the top five, these are the top five pencils that I want to use the most on a regular basis.

I think that's what we've talked about before. But these are pencils that I just will always be happy if I pick these up. And so we're gonna go through and talk about our. Maybe like start out by saying what are some of the holdovers from your previous list that's been posted on the website? Give like a little overview of those and then what are the new entries if it's not a whole new. A whole new mix. And so Johnny, why don't you start us off because I feel like yours has a lot of newbies on your. On your list. Yeah, yeah.

I'm totally addicted to putting an orange eraser on that pencil though because I just love that color combo. The blue and the orange. Oh gosh, I love it. I don't know what it is.

Like the most flamboyant pencil thing I've ever allowed. I usually go for the. But I like the white too. White looks awesome.

Cool. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

If I would just like. Well, that was. I remember recording with you guys and talking about it, and I hadn't gotten them yet. And just looking at the picture, I was like smitten. I was like, I want these. I'm gonna order. Because I hadn't ordered black wings in a while. And then I ordered them and got them. I was like, gosh, these are beautiful. These are amazing. And then I just like couldn't get a. Couldn't get used to them then just kind of faded away from us. They're beautiful, they look perfect. But I just really wish they weren't the five sided, which I guess I understand the reason why, but still, just if you like them so much, I kind of want to give you, Johnny, give you some of. Some of mine because they're not going to be used over here.

So.

Yeah.

I just pulled one out. I'm playing around with it now. I have one, and I just hadn't used it in a really long time. It's a cool little pencil. They all seem, like, almost identical, but this one just seems a little. What does Carbo Weld mean? See how it says on the barrel?

Yeah, no kidding. Yeah.

This.

I have not, no.

Right.

It is.

It's.

Yeah, I. I didn't have as much turnaround like, or turnover from my, My last list. The, the three holdouts from my last list were the, of course, the Palomino hp. That's my like honorary one. That will always be on. On the list. I always. And also have just so many of them. That they're always everywhere and so I'm always using them. But I still legitimately love it a lot and care like really often. And the Palomino, the. This Blackwing 602. I can't figure out any situation where it wouldn't be on my list. Yeah, it's just. They did it right? Right. They did it. We talked about a thousand times. But it's just such a great pencil and I have had fun hack winging it like you were talking about. I do like using the, the one with the stripe on it. That's a lot of fun. And just using like fun different like eraser colors has been. I like the yellow one put on that is really. Is a really cool, cool combination. So I like like that one in. The other holdout is the Tombow 2558 in B, sort of like orangey yellow pencil. And this is the.

No, no, that's the 9852.

No. 98 something. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's a. I don't think. Yeah, I think it's a different one, but I don't have one right in front of me, so I. Well, actually over there. Hang on a second. Play some, some waiting music for me. Yes, it's the one with the purple ferrule.

Yeah, I'd forgotten about that. But yeah, so it's the purple feral. It's the one that says for general writing. But that B core, that Japanese B core is so smooth and beautiful. I love it so much. So that's my. That's my cheater pick for my favorite yellow pencil. And yeah, so those are my holdouts, the two new ones on my list. One of them is the Mitsubishi 9852. Ew. The recycled 9852, which I've talked about before and I've talked about recently just being like a new favorite of mine that I love a lot. Natural pencil made with the. The recycled ends of the slats that they've kind of cut teeth into and fit together.

Yeah, they really do. And like I've. I've used them a lot and I like to hack wing those and. And just fun to. Fun to carry around, have a good feel to them. And they last a long time because they've got a really smooth HP core that just seems to hold a point forever. But I actually had an interesting. The other day, and I've. I've probably worked through four of them or something like that. You know, four or five, like start to finish. And the one that I'm using right now, I've been carrying around for a while and had it behind my ear, stuck it in my baseball hat or whatever. And finally I was writing the other day and for the first time that little section where it connects came apart.

Yeah, like it like sort of bent it like just barely, but like where I could see the little like teeth that were fitting together kind of all of a sudden jutting out, up and out, which I never.

Yeah, I mean, I. It's still. I mean it's still usable and it's not like super obvious, but you can just see that it's kind of coming apart. And I mean, I use it at school a lot and I got in my pocket and throw it in my bag, so maybe I just beat it up or I just. Or it's just a dud or something. It's still on my list. It's still a great pencil. But it was just interesting. I'd never really noticed that before. And part of me wanted to just go ahead and like slice it right there and make like a pocket pocket pencil out of one side and a bullet pencil stub out of the other. So.

Yeah, that feels right.

Wait, four, five.

No.

Kitobashi.

Yeah, I'm all Japanese. Yeah, that feels right.

Yeah, I was tempted. That was super close. We'll see. Maybe a year from now. Yeah, but I was tempted. Yeah. I think I really never found a, like a European pencil that I actually like, like a whole lot or that I want to keep using on a regular basis. I don't know what it is. I don't think the close one actually.

They're. They tend to be. And this is maybe just in my head, but this is how it seems to me is one. They're like, of course a little bit on the like scratchier side. Like, I mean, of course, unless you go up Higher in the grades, but a little scratchier. But like the barrels always feel a little skinnier than a normal pencil. You know, I don't know if that's true, but it just feel. They feel less substantial in my hand and I just also, I get there. Maybe that's just as a result of it not having a ferrule on it a lot of the time. But one that almost made the list but then I didn't because I feel like it was cheating. Was The Norica. The 2014 Noricas.

Because the Staedtler Norcas, because I use those a lot because I've, I've got a dozen of them here and I like those a lot. But also the ones that you can get now are not as good. So I didn't want to put that on the list because I don't want to be like, hey, this is a pencil I love that nobody can get. So. Because I would. Because if I was listening I'd be frustrated by that. That's a really great, really great pencil. I hopefully they like, they write that ship at some point because that was a, that's a cool pencil.

Liar. And the last one like Johnny, I was trying not to have two black wings, but it just didn't happen. It's not gonna happen there. It's just too good. And I just combined the Blackwing MMX and the 73. I mean 73 is on there because that's actually my. The one that would be on there. But if you can't get that. I still love the MMX and the now like with the new color scheme with the black eraser and the black, black barrel and the new imprint. It's just. That's a sexy pencil. I like it a lot. I've been using those a good deal. Those are a real satisfying pencil to just have behind your ear and smooth

use for lists and stuff. And I said, hey, this is interesting. I don't know, have we ever talked about what ear you put your pencil behind?

So is it different?

Uh, huh. Uh huh. Okay.

You had to put like just put your pen loop on your glasses?

There you go. Yeah. That's interesting because I have as I'm right handed but my. You know how they, they say like everybody's ears are like uneven. Like one's higher so my right ear can't hold a pencil behind it.

It'll just, it'll just fall out. So I have to put it on the other side and put it behind my left ear or it'll just fall on the floor. Actually most of the time I wear baseball hats a lot, so I got like Cubs hat on or something and I stuff it up into my hat so it's like jutting out next to my eyeball, which seems super safe.

I've. Sometimes when I'm wearing sunglasses, I've noticed that I, I actually like, which I probably look like a. Just a total dork, like in public with this. But like I'll be in public and I'll stuff it like between the. What do you call it? The arm of my sunglasses and like my temple. I'll just like stuff it up in there and it'll just be like sitting there, which I feel like I would

Yeah. I mean mine, my sunglasses are pretty flexy so it doesn't. Okay, it doesn't bug me, but I still probably look like a typewriter bell. So anyways, yeah, Those are my two new ones that I've added. So the 9852EW, which is like going to be an all time favorite. And then the mmx, which any form that it comes in is, Is all right by me. Yeah. So cool. All right. Anything else?

Yep, sounds good. Well, it's been fun to be back. It's been. I'm very happy just to talk to you guys. I've missed you.

We haven't. We haven't talked on the. On the line in a couple months.

Yeah. This is like time just is sneaky. Yeah. How fast it goes by. It's pretty crazy. Yep. So. All right. Well, Andy, you want to tell us where people can find you on the Internet?

You can find me on Twitter timwassom and also at Membership Pod, the other podcast and on Instagram timothywasom. You can follow me there and you can find the show notes for this episode at erasable US 107 with all the links and goodies that we've connected to the episode. You can also join our facebook group@facebook.com group erasable as well as like our Facebook page. We'd really appreciate that. That is facebook.com erasablepodcast Our thanks to our sponsor in defensive paper making high quality notebooks sourced and manufactured in the U.S. visit indefensivepaper.com erasable to check them out and use coupon code eraser. I almost used the British pronunciation coupon code erasable to save $5 on your purchase. Thanks for listening, everybody. 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.thismountainband.com.