This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
And this paper sucks for fountain pens.
Who use fountain pens anyway? We use. We use pencils here.
Fountain pens. Never heard of them.
Welcome to episode 167 of the Erasable Podcast. I'm Andy Welfle, here with my favorite classmates, Tim Wasem and Johnny Gamber. Hey, guys.
Hey, Andy.
Hey, what's up, man?
We. Tonight is the night where we take our annual crack at a Back to school episode. Johnny, I don't get what you just wrote. Johnny. Tonight's our annual. Oh, crack to school. I had to say it out loud. Okay, we're gonna talk about some. Okay, okay. I get you. I smell what you.
So many. So many meanings.
Let's get. So let's get nostalgic for a bit. Let's talk about some of the pencils and erasers and sharpeners and accessories that we use when we were in school and kind of how that's changed over the years. But of course, before we do that, let's talk about tools of the trade. Tim, what are you. What's your. What are you consuming and writing with and on?
Yeah, well, a lot of Olympics consuming. We have been watching a ton of the Olympics, which is. We all kind of. Everybody in our house has our own favorite events. Of course, mine I love. I'm for some reason obsessed with diving. I just think the diving is, like, the most incredible thing.
Yeah.
I still think. I mean, I'll stand by this, but they really need one of these times at the Olympics to have just pick one dude and one woman. Like, just average people. And they have to try every event.
The benchmark.
Yeah. Like, here's. Here's what, like, you know, viewer, here's what you would look like if you were trying the uneven bars. Like, this is pretty folks. Or if you tried to do like the skeet shooting competition and they just keep shooting off, like clay pigeon after clay pigeon or, you know, like the high dive. Gosh, that'd be great.
Yeah, yeah. Sign a release, make a person run track and field, like right next to all the other people.
Yeah, yeah. Like so on. Like the 100 meter dash in one of the semis. Like, you get to see them finish and then you wait to see how long it takes the normal person to, like, get. Get to the end. I mean, these people are just. They're superheroes. It's unbelievable.
Hey, maybe you can. Maybe you can answer this question about diving. Tim, we're. Katie and I are trying to figure this out. As we were watching it. There is a little like a hose or something that is Spraying water, like, underneath the diving board into the pool. Do you know what that's for?
I think I do know what that's for. And there's something. Actually, I don't know what that's for, but I think I know what that's for. I'm going to mansplain to you what that's for, and then I'm going to Google it, because I think I figured it out the other day. I didn't bother Googling it. But what I think that's for is, is when they're diving and they are. Have their focus down on the water, that. That creates these little, like, ripples so they can see where the water starts.
Oh, that's interesting. See? Or.
Or that they. It's either that or they feel it hit them, and that's how they know, like, it's time, like, we're going in.
My theory was, is that it's a way for when you're watching. It gives you a visual reference for if you're watching in slow motion or not. But I. I totally get that. Like, it. Yeah. It makes the surface kind of uneven, so the diver can see when they're about to hit it.
Okay, so at some point, while you. One of you guys is just like, yakking on about something, I'll. I'll Google that.
Okay. Yeah, I can. I can absolutely yak on about the Olympics we watched. I really love, like, the stuff that, like, archery. Like, I watched a lot of archery the other day, and just like. Just these, like, rando guys and I mean, they make it look so easy. They're just, like, pulling, you know, pulling the bow back and like, getting ready to release. And. And at one point, you can just kind of see their fingers just sort of like, pardon the pun, quivering and like, you know that they're just, like, applying so much tension. Like, those things. Yeah. Are probably so tense.
Have you ever tried one of those bows?
No.
They are so hard to. Again, normal person. It would just be me standing there, not able to pull it back. I just feel like, well, whatever, you know, I guess that's. Odysseus over here can take care of it.
He can.
The only person who can string this bow. Yeah, it's. It's crazy.
All right, so I just Google it too. It's a surface agitator. It provides a visual cue for divers to help them visualize where the pool is in relation to their dive. You're right.
Mansplain successful.
Well, well, first you mansplain, and then we Internet explain. So, yes, yes, the Internet. Internet always as you know. The Internet is always true.
Yes.
Yeah.
Especially when I'm right and it agrees with me.
Exactly. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. So lots of Olympics, lots of. We did lots of diving, lots of swimming, gymnastics, ping pong. Gotta watch the ping pong. 12 year old girl in the Olympics playing ping pong, which is really amazing.
Isn't that amazing? Yeah. And skateboarding. Now we watched some skateboarding.
That was super cool.
Yeah.
That 13 year old girl from Brazil. Yeah, she's nuts. That was so cool.
And then the woman from the US who's like 34 or something and I'm just like, she, she falls on the, on the, just like off the skateboard. I'm just like, oh, that's going to hurt her way more than it's going to hurt that 13 year old girl from Brazil.
The 13 year old girl made of rubber.
Yes.
She's 13, she's going to be fine. Yeah, yeah. So aside from that, I have been listening to lots of sad music because of the Cubs means.
Okay, so time to mansplain.
Yeah, well, this is, this is sad. Splain is what sad splaining is. As listeners know, I'm a huge Cubs fan. I love baseball and the Cubs have had a really fun team to watch for like five years. And the three main players that ever, you know, that I love, everybody loves their names are Anthony Rizzo, Chris Bryant and Javi Baez. They're so entertaining, they're so talented, they're so great. Within 24 hours, all three of them were traded and then they went to their new teams and they all hit a home run in their first game with their new team.
Oh no.
So a lot of feels in this house. And Henry just got a fish and named him Rizzo. I was like, man, hate to break it to you. And then he like dropped it.
Time to flush that guy.
This one's out. Yeah, feed it to the cat. Yeah, but we, I told him that and he was like, I think I'll be a Rizzo fan no matter what team he is. And I'm like, dang, you and your healthy mindset about sports
so young.
And what have I failed to teach you? You know, what have I failed to teach? But I've been listening to and I'll seriousness though, there's. This is not a new, you know, this isn't new music. But I've, I'm rediscovering a Wilco album called the Whole Love, which is, I mean 10 times better than I remember liking it. And I Loved it when I first heard it. I just didn't. Haven't listened to it in a while. It kind of hit at a weird time, I think, when my kids were really little. And it was too intense for me at that point to, like, casually listen to, because I was just listening to, like, something that'll bring my blood pressure down. Yeah. That raises my blood pressure. So I wouldn't have listened to that Baby Shark. But it's a great, great, great album. So I highly recommend that Wilco, because I'm just getting pumped up for. For live music. We're going to see a concert in September. As long as Covid doesn't stop that, too. And so I've been listening to lots of Jason Isbell and Dr. Dog, who are going to be performing in Bristol here close by, and we're going to see them at the Rhythm and Roots Festival. And then as far as reading goes, I've been rereading a lot of stuff for school, so Of Mice and Men, I'm teaching that this year. I was rereading that, reading those mouse graphic novels, which I think I talked about last time maybe, but I read the second one too, so that's something else I'm going to be teaching, which I'm really excited about. And then when we were in St. Augustine, I think last time we were on, I talked about graphic novels and how, like, I wanted to find more. I got a lot of awesome recommendations from people and I took some of them with me on the trip. I read the. The Handmaid's Tale adaptation on in the graphic novel.
Oh, neat.
Yeah.
Because I. I'd never read the Handmaid's Tale and I've never seen the show, so it was all fresh. So it was like seeing it, hearing that story for the first time. It was really well done. I really enjoyed that and read it like an hour and a half.
It's a cheery story.
Awesome. Yeah, it was great for a drive.
Yeah.
With little kids in the back. Then the other one I read that I absolutely love that. I recommend to everybody. It's called Day Tripper. Have you guys ever seen heard of this?
Okay.
It's written by two. I think they're twins. They're. They're Brazilian. They're Brazilian writers. And it's a. It's kind of hard to describe, but it is. It's about this son of a famous writer, and it's kind of his life story. Or like, it seems like it's his life story and the end of his life, but then it becomes this kind of crazy fantasy situation where you're reliving parts of his life that seem like they shouldn't go together because he's. You know, things like he's died multiple times, and so it's hard to kind of decipher what's going on. But it's really amazing artwork and it's very, very well written. So I. I can't recommend that one enough. I found it at the library and just loved it.
Yeah.
And then writing with here, I've got my black wing slate. Black Blackwing slate. And also I actually have a fountain pen in front of me. That's just what I was using all day today. And it's a clear pilot kakuna that I put a stub nib. The medium stub nib in, and I'm using diamine ox blood, and it's a very un Kind of thing. But I do have a blackwing natural here that is very special to me, a student. This is the one that I told you about a while ago that a student gave to me because they're like, my sister and my dad are like, your show. And actually, one of the sisters that listens to the show is now he's going to be my student tomorrow. And she walked up and talked to me the other day. It was pretty cool. She was like, I knew that my sister was reading Jurassic park before she did because I heard it on your podcast when I had her sister last year. So, yeah, so I've got a black wing natural here as well. That's. That's me. Yeah. Yeah.
Cool. Johnny.
Back to school.
Back to school.
So we've been watching, like, so much TV that I don't want to tell you all of it, but we saw a couple, like, sort of short series that are definitely worth watching. One's called the Night Manager that was on. I don't remember where the hell it was on, but it's on Amazon right now with. Oh, God, what's that guy's name? Tom Hiddleston. The guy that's, like, just super handsome and. Yeah, and he's like. He's in everything that was like, you know, it's two o'. Clock. I should stop watching this kind of thing. And then we started the tunnel a long time ago. And on pbs, they cut out all of the bad language. And that show has a lot of bad language. So it wasn't even just that I'd prefer the language in. It was just really distracting. So we stopped watching it. Now it's on Amazon with all the F Words intact. So super good show. It had Stephen Delane, who is. Who do you play? He was Stannis Baratheon and he was Hawker in Spy Game. And he's just amazing at everything that he's in. He plays one of the stars and I don't know how to pronounce her name. Clemence Posey, the actress who was floor in the Harry Potter series. She is the other lead. And it's really good. It opens up where there's a body in the channel, like on the line between England and France, so they both have to go down and then they try to move it and it's in two pieces, and that's how the show starts.
Nice. Nice.
Damn, this is going to be a ride. And I read Underland by Robert McFarlane, the guy who did a. They did a collab with field notes, I guess, last year, where they used the artwork from the COVID of the book because it was just so cool. And it's like, ridiculously amazing book. Sort of like if Sebastian Younger was a little more like, not erudite, but maybe like bookish. He reminds me of that because this guy, like, doesn't write about it. He goes and, you know, camps out in Greenland for a couple months. Like, geez, you want to learn about glaciers? Like, you're not kidding. So that's really cool. And there's a lot of neat stuff I did not know about what's under us. And it's just a lot of cool stuff to think about. You're like, wow, there's a whole other world underneath of us. We never think about, like, you know, dead people and mines and all this crazy stuff. So definitely a cool book to check out. Apparently there was. It's sort of an informal sequel to a book you wrote about walking. So obviously I have to go back and read that next. And yeah. Oh, we also watched Professor T on pbs, so if you have a PBS subscription, definitely check that out.
It's like Mr. Mr. T.
No, not at all.
Doesn't pity the fool.
Does not pity the fool.
He doesn't pity anybody. If you watch that. That's totally true. He doesn't pity anybody. And I'm writing with, in honor of our topic, an ever hard favor, American number two. That's probably from the early mid-80s. So it. It's like pencils were less yellow back then and age hasn't done any favors. But it writes great.
Yeah. Nice.
Yeah. How about you, Andy?
Who also. Also watching a lot of Olympics. It's kind of replaced our usual post dinner TV lineup. Just because like they start right around 5:30 here you can get. Watch some good things. We watched that really great. Oh really great moment live in the long jump last night. Where the, the high jump. I'm sorry, where the, the two guys were tied and you could just like watch them on like TV like that. You could listen in as the ref was like, oh, it's a tie. We can do a jump off if you'd like. And the one guy goes, can we, can we just share the medal? Can we both get gold? He's like, if you want. And the way that they both looked at each other and then hugged each other was so great.
The Italian guy lost.
Yeah. He just jumped into the other guy's arms. Yeah.
And the, we, we had just watched the clip of that. Yeah, the, the, the, the ref is like, that's a possibility. He says something like that. And then, yeah, the, the Italian guy loses his mind. And then we were watching the 100 meter dash final replays today.
Yeah.
And the Italian guy wins. Oh, that big finish line first.
Yeah, yeah.
But then that same Italian guy from the high jump shows up and jumps into his arms and is like, it's
like, we get it.
He's like our resident celebrator or something.
He's the Adrien Brody. Is it Adrian Brody who just like lost his mind during like an awards ceremony was like like jumping around on the back of chairs and like like many years ago.
Yeah, yeah, that was, that's the guy from A beautiful. It's a Beautiful Life. Fellini or Roberto Bellini or.
Yeah, that guy.
Fellini. Fellini.
That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was. Yeah. Not like just like a huge everyday sports fan, but I, I always enjoy watching the Olympics. Especially when you see like fencing and oh, the long, the kayaks that people ride. Like I just look at that and like I am just a worthless blob. Like I can't do any of this. So that, that's. That also started a new, A new book called Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin. And it's been kind of following me around in bookstore. I guess maybe I've been following it around at bookstores, but I was at Howells in Portland last weekend and I finally saw it and I was like, you know what? I'm going to buy it. I picked it up and it's so good. It is kind of like it has so much in common with like Douglas Adams. Except it's not like comedic like Douglas Adams usually is, but the, the premise Is that, like, you can, like, eventually, in this universe that maybe ours or maybe not. Like, you can learn how to change, like, not planes, as in, like, travel, you know, in the air, but change sort of, like planes of reality and go to alternate universes and. And do that. But for some reason, you do it while you're in airports. And so you have to, like, be traveling or be ready to travel sort of like in. In this plane in order to travel in those planes. And it's really interesting. And she just is so imaginative with, like, different kinds of people and cultures and worlds out there, and they're always, like, a little bit different, but they tell us something about ourselves, which I think is, you know, Ursula Le Guin's whole. Whole shtick. So really good. Kind of a book, short stories that all interrelate. I really enjoyed it. And I am writing with. I have my. My blue palomino golden bear out here, but also I'm writing with that Jinhao shark pen that I got for, like, three bucks from, I think, Goulet pens.
What color did you get?
I got the. The translucent blue one.
Oh, nice.
Blue demonstrator.
And I have a translucent red. It's pretty.
I like it. It's so inexpensive and. But it's. And it's, like, you know, not the best pen I've ever used, but it. Yeah, it's cool to look at. And I am writing with a really gorgeous ink that my friend Johnny Gammer gave me by G. Harban called Lierre Sauvage. And I'll talk a little bit more about ink in the freshpoints. Trying to be mindful, of course, that this is a podcast about pencils. But. So, yeah. Yeah. Speaking of which, let's jump into freshpoints. Tim, do you want to. Do you want to start us off?
Yeah, yeah. I've just mainly got the one which is new field notes, which it seems like we just had new field notes, because we did.
Yeah, they were a couple months late, so I feel like these just came, like, a month and a half later,
which I think they said that when they released these ones, they were like. And don't worry, the other ones won't be late because of this. Like, they're still coming. Yeah, they had said, don't worry, they will be there. And they've once again, beautifully taken on a nature theme in their. In their theme. It's bad writing, you know. Theme.
Theme.
The theme is their theme.
Yeah.
What theme is it? Well, their theme is their theme, and it's called Trailhead And I, I mean I am super excited about these, these notebooks. They're really, really beautiful. It's like my favorite thing at first glance is that it is. There have been some, you know, some notebooks will come out and you'd be like, this reminds me of this other edition or this reminds me of, you know, whatever. And this one has some overlap maybe in like the, the map on the back where you see the trail going down, it kind of reminds me of the coastal one. But that dark green and orange combination just, I feel like makes it its own thing.
Yeah, I love that orange. Like the, it's kind of a, you know, they always talk about like in the liner notes they, they mentioned that it's like a. What do they call it? Thick brute force application of whatever ink. This one really is like, this one is like a little bleedy. And that's the whole point, which is really cool.
It says on the website it says a sturdy forest green linen cover with an application of orange crown foil.
Yes.
Is that the. Because I don't have them in hand yet. So is that the foil stamp of the.
It's. It's a foil stamp, but it's not metallic looking. So it looks like, it looks like someone just took a big like one 1.5 millimeter like gel pen that's bright orange and just like drew on with that. It's, it's like not super precise. So like when it says where it says fieldnotes brand.com on the back and like proudly printed and manufactured in the usa, like it's, it kind of like bleeds a little bit, which is, which is really cool. So yeah, it's, it's definitely like brute force.
Brute force.
And the texture is, is really pronounced in a good way.
Yep.
Yeah, I think I, I missed the word linen when I read about the, the release. I was just looking at the picture. It's like, wow, that's so pretty. And then it showed up like, jeez, this evening cooler in hand. Which happens a lot. But like literally in hand. Yeah, rubbing it.
And they, they did that thing that I really love that they sometimes do with their lined notebooks where they have like a, like a double line for the header and it's, and it's a different color than the, than the like regular lines. So it's the inside they use. It's called a vanilla paper. So it's like kind of creamy. It's very creamy. With a fine application of blaze orange and double knee duck canvas light brown soy based inks. So that lines the lines are, like. The rules are brown, but the, like, header, like, double line is the blaze orange.
Yeah. When I saw that, I was hoping it would be the paper from America the Beautiful, which was so good. And this is still good paper. It's not the same as that.
Yeah. It's maybe not as thick. I can't remember how thick that one is, but I love that creaminess and it goes with the. Like, that hunter green. Forest green, so. Well. Yeah.
Yeah.
That patch was super sweet, too.
Yeah.
This makes me think of, like, camo.
Yeah.
So like, in, like, a good way.
Yeah.
Not always a good way. Yeah. Camo in a good way.
Camo in a good way.
Or like hunting camo or something.
Yeah.
I don't know that orange.
What I like about this, like, you know, it seems like there's. We've talked about this a lot before, about how some additions are, like, kind of a very literal theme. Like, the. The ones to do with national parks are pictures. The national parks. And the ones, like the campfire ones are like. There's a picture of a campfire on it. But this one is, like, a little bit more abstract in its theme. Like, doesn't. There's not a picture of a trailhead or like. Like, you know, I guess there's a map of the trail, like there is on the back. But.
Yeah.
Yeah. I just like. Because it's a little bit more like, abstract in the way that it's approaching it, which is not some. I think all of my favorite ones. Most of my favorite ones are like that. Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm a big fan. I've got as. As of recording. I have some on their way, so.
Nice.
I'm looking forward to. I haven't bought field notes in quite
a while, so I'm sure you're running out.
Well, actually, I mean, for me, running out means that I only have 20 notebooks left. I think that's what I've got over there. I mean, I've used. I've used a good bit, and it's been a while since I bought any. I don't have that big of a stash, so this definitely one that I'm interested in.
Nice.
So, yeah, I was excited about it and what the. We didn't talk about the extra. You guys are the subscribers, so it was. I know you got a patch, but was there something else?
Nope, just a patch. But it was quite a bit bigger than I thought it would be. I was thinking, like, carrot badge size. Yeah, it's more like, you know, bobcat size.
Yeah, this is like 2 1/2. 2 1/2 inch inches in diameter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Very cool. Yeah, I mean I'm not a subscriber so I won't get. But I. That would be a very cool bonus to get. I like like that. Yeah, we look good on a hat, you know. Makes me want to get like subscribe and then get a hat to put it on or something.
Oh yeah.
And the box this time. Well, I guess for everybody, your first sub subscription of the year has this little mice on it. That's actually super adorable.
I didn't. I guess this isn't. Yeah, I guess this is my last subscription.
Yeah, mine always re ups in the summer.
Okay. Yeah, maybe I'll get it with my. My fall. My fall up.
It's like it was miniature. Like my kids really all wanted it. Like hell no, it's mine.
Yeah.
Yeah. So that's. That's all I've got.
Nice. It's a good one.
How about you, Johnny?
So I released a scene where I shocking owed. Yeah, yeah.
You did what?
I think I've done like five since last time we recorded. But so in the last pencil revolution, I wrote an ode to the non photo blue pencil, which is like a really great tool if you're doing zines. So at the risk of mansplaining, non photo blue pencil is just a pencil that doesn't get picked up in black and white copies. So you can, you know, use it for layout and not have to worry about erasing it. Charlotte uses it for her cartoons about Feral Head and that way she can just ink it and not, you know, risk messing up the paper. And then Blackwing came out with some last week, which is so freaking awesome and definitely the one I've been most excited about for a while. So I'm really looking forward to them showing up. It's part of their lab thing, which I didn't know was going to happen again. They did those. Oh God. Last time, two or three years ago.
Last time they did it, it was that. That one where you. What they were using the. The foil. The holographic foil stamps.
It was. Oh, I forgot about that when I was thinking of Black Friday.
Yeah, they did. The Black Friday one is the first one which was. Which was a weird one because there wasn't. Was there anything like really labby about it? I can't remember.
They were just like experimental. Yeah, not really. Yeah, they were, you know, black pencils. Cool.
Yeah.
But this is just like bonkers. Like they look cool because they're blue but not all the way. And just if they even made one. Awesome. I'm like really, really stoked.
Stupid question, but the. The photo. Whatever.
What it's called non photo blue.
Non photo blue. So is that a certain shade of blue?
Yeah.
Or is it just that color? Like, is it just that that color doesn't show up or do they have to put something special into the. The ink or.
It's that color. And evidently that color is also super far from black. So if you were to color scan it, it's really easy to digitally remove it too. But you can get pens and sometimes I make graph paper that's non photo lined. So I can just put stuff in the zinging and the lines won't show up with limit. With different, very different degrees of success if you get the color wrong. But yeah, it's really cool. You can get mechanical pencils with it. Like I said, pens. I'm sure that you could come up with a fountain pen ink that would be invisible to a color copier, which
would seem really cool and also pointless, but very.
I'm writing this and you can't copy me.
Jerk.
It's like writing an invisible ink. Well, then why'd you write it? I don't understand.
You know what, you know what I want now with like, if they're gonna start experimenting with like different cores, I want to see like, like a grease pencil and one of those eraser pencils that you used to find all the time, like back in the day. Oh yeah. In a black one.
They have those. Cool. Who makes them? Staedtler and Stabilo, where they look like a pencil and they write like a grease pencil, but they're water soluble, so.
Oh yeah.
If you write on your mirror, it's way easier to get it off, which is cool. Can, you know, you can go over someone's house and mess with them right in their bathroom mirror.
And like, what did you do?
And you flick your finger, you're like, calm down, it's all good.
I do that all the time.
This is all just an elaborate scheme. And you fell for it.
The regular grease pencils, when I was in grad school, I used to use them for logic because I was, you know, was an affect like, oh, look, a beautiful mind. And that really, really builds up on your mirror after a long time. Yeah, it was like really, really disgusting. I grossed myself out just like. Yeah. And even he used the wooden ones. Like, geez. I had like this, the paper wrapped like slab of literally grease wrapped up in.
Moving on. We had those the ones that you had to peel.
Yeah.
I could have appealed, right? I could never figure this thing out.
We had those when I worked as a. Back in my days as a cheese monger.
What?
We had those for writing on giant wheels of cheese to, like, label them and put the dates on.
Wait, we're gonna have to have an episode where we talk about this.
Yeah, we'll have cheese episode. The After Dark episode about cheese.
Remember when we. Remember right after we got our tattoos, we went and had lunch in that, like that co op Johnny in Baltimore. And I think, Tim, you told us about. About those days then.
I think so, because I saw somebody doing it because I know how to. One of my favorite sort of like a parlor trick that I could do, like at a party, if I had an extra 200 to blow, is to buy a full size wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano, which is like the size of a car tire. And I learned how to. To open them and, like cut them up.
Oh, yeah.
Stuff.
I was like, oh, man, I could do that and then give everybody free cheese.
I'm going to invite you to a party and buy you some. Buy you some cheese.
So if you subscribe at the Parmigiano Reggiano level on Patreon, I will come to your house and cut the cheese.
Tim is your personal. Tim is your personal cheese monger.
I will cut the cheese at your house.
What's that smell?
Tim's doing artisanally
for the.
Right, you know.
Okay.
The artisanal cheese cutter level.
Yeah.
So the only fresh point I have is to hawk my own wares, and that's that I started a penzine that I worked really hard on that is out, and that is it. Oh, and Andy has a really, really long article in it that was super good that I hope he'll talk about.
It's my. It's my opus. Did Brad. Brad contributed to it, right?
Yeah. Oh, Brad brought the forward.
Nice.
I was thinking of, like, you know, in academia, you get somebody that you think is awesome to write the forward, but I forgot to send it to him first because you're supposed to send it to them so they know what they're talking about. So that day I'm like, oh, crap, Brad.
You're just gonna have to trust me.
He's like, I bet this thing is awesome. Yeah. But
his four was great. And, like, it was a lot of fun, but I'm just turning out to be, you know, all these things I didn't know would happen. Like, it's really Hard to handle legal paper. It's hard to fold it. Then I was like, oh, crap, I need a new size of envelope. And then the shipping labels don't fit. So I've got it all figured out.
I can't tell you how many times I've almost bought one of those, like, flyer, those paper folders on ebay that, you know, you can, like nonprofits would use them. You would printed a paper out and you could fold it into a Z fold or like a trifold just by sticking paper through it. It just goes whack, whack, whack. Just spits. Folded. Oh, yeah. You can buy a machine that will fold papers for you. Oh, wow.
This one I was going for like a newspaper look. So it's like half of illegal, and then that's folded again. And then I have to unfold it and iron out the creases that creates and then fold back. But, you know, I could sit still for a while when I do that, so that's good.
Yeah.
But I'm getting in the way of. You're talking about green ink, which is always a fun topic.
Oh, no problem. Yeah. Well, speaking of Johnny's penzine, I. It's been something we have brewing for an episode of Indelible, which is our. Our pen podcast, our Patreon only pen podcast. And also something I wrote a little bit about for his issue. And then also is just something that's been in my head for a while. So as I sure I've talked about here before, I really love green inks. And it just never really occurred to me until Johnny sort of like dragged me into fountain pens kicking and screaming that it's like, oh, hey, there's a bajillion green inks. And they're all a little different out there in the. Out there in the world for fountain pens. And so I was like, you know what? I. And oh, and also I found out that you can order like, sampler sets on Goulet pens and Van Ness. They'll just send you like, dozens of them. Dozens and dozens of them. They'll just send you like 2ml worth of ink in a little vial and
which is like, what. What would you say that's like two. Two pen fulls or something?
Two or three.
Yeah, two converters.
I would say that. Yeah, I'll. I'll say that Van Ness is a little bit more generous of a pour than Goulet is. And also, also maybe screws their caps on a little bit tighter because, oh, geez, when my Goulet shipment arrived. There was a few of them that just like had opened a little bit and a few of the labels got completely soaked in some sort of a green ink. But it's all right. There was still enough of everything left to at least test it. And then so I ordered. I kind of went a little, little ham on that. I now have 40 vials of green ink samplers.
I don't think I'd ever heard that number.
Like, it's a lot. It is a lot.
It's gone up. A week ago it was 33.
Yeah. And I. Well, and then I got my Van Ness shipment in.
So Katie's like, honey, we have to talk.
I also ordered a few. Like there was a few blues that were just so gorgeous I couldn't pass them up. And there was, there was one like this orange that I saw that I just loved. So I ordered more than just green inks, but mostly green inks. And I. And I also had one of those colo rings that Anna from well Appointed Desk makes and sells the like Japanese, the blank Japanese flashcard looking things that use for ink samples. I think we talked about that. Oh, you know what, we talked about it on Indelible. I was trying to figure out how best to like swab these inks. So basically what I did was I took a Q tip and just made a swab of each of these inks on, on a page. And then I took this Kaweco and just used as like a dip pen and just wrote like the name of the ink by, you know, the brand. And then I also wrote down when I like the date of when I swabbed it. And I've definitely come to some conclusions about the kinds of greens that I like. And I'll save like the full list, the full reasons for, for a different podcast. But basically I've discovered, didn't realize this before about myself that I, I think I like it to have a little bit more yellow in it than blue. Not to make it like a really like olivey green ink, but like something like wild ivy, which is a J Urban ink. And then this one Johnny, you sent me, the Lierre Sauvage is like. Has a really nice yellow in it. Yeah.
Did you try the olive green that they do?
I think so.
It's really super yellow.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I mean the super, super yellow I think is not what I'm, I'm shooting for, but something that looks just like. It's kind of grassy looking. Right? Like it looks like like wild Ivy does or something like that. So I really like that. And that's, that's kind of my. So I have, I think Wild Ivy is still my favorite. But I have a nice, nice list of recommendations that will be in, in Johnny's Penzine. So order, order that to find out more.
The next 40 issues of Johnny's Penzine
will feature new, new inks.
Andy's column reviews of Green Ink.
I told you, I can't remember, Michael. So Mike Hagen, Mike Hagen from Leadfast also really loves green ink. And at one point he and I were going to start a green. A green pen blog called Green with Penvee. And it was going to be. It's a terrible idea. We just realized at that point we can't just take on any more, any more of these kind of projects. But I think, I think we're gonna. For this episode of Indelible coming up, I think we're gonna see if we can get Michael Mike on as like a guest. Yeah. Because I mean a. It's been a while since we talked to him. This is Voice. But then also. Yeah. See what his thoughts are. So. Yeah. So that's my, that's my, that's my green ink update. My fingers were pretty disgusting looking for a while. At one point, at one point in like the afternoon I was sitting on a, like a long call, just swabby inks and my fingers were just like so green. And then that evening I was like, we were having people over, I was cooking for them and so I just, I was like, I just want you to know that I. My fingers are all scrubbed off. I think my hands are like, who's hungry? It just looks disgusting. Enjoy. Enjoy your risotto. Yeah.
So a couple weeks ago I cut my thumb like really, really badly and I had ink all over my hand because, you know.
You do. Yeah.
And it was, it was black ink. So for a long time actually it's still there. There's like this black line that's healing in it and every time I show it to somebody, like, dude, something's in there. No, it's ink.
You're absorbing the ink into yourself.
I mean it's even non toxic ink. It was sheer bond.
Yeah.
I think it's natural black pearl, right?
Yeah.
They get it from black pearls.
Yeah, no problem.
Look, I got a valuable thumb.
Yeah. Well, speaking of inks and things like that, I went to Portland, Oregon last weekend. Just enjoyed a really nice kind of weekend away. And we stayed at a really cool like haunted old Victorian kind of out Is that out in the burbs? It was. Shoot. It was like north. It's right by the airport. So like north. Just straight north from the city. But really, really cool. Really cool. Old, old Airbnb. And saw so many, so many ads for George Fox University when I was out there.
Yeah, yeah.
And I found this.
My sister's. She's going to be back there this year.
Oh, really?
Teaching online.
Okay, cool.
They asked her to come back and teach online.
Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, it was, it was cool just to be like, oh, hey, I've guest lectured there before. I found this really cool, famous. Yeah, this really cool place called Oblation Press. O B L A T I O N And it is pretty amazing. It's a shop that, that has, you know, gifts like, like letterpressed cards and stationery and they have a bunch of fountain pens and they have pencils. They also sell typewriters, old restored typewriters. It was super cool. And I met somebody there. We were, I was just talking about pencils with somebody behind the desk as, as you do and was talking about the San Francisco Pen show. And this, this person behind the desk was like, oh, hey, I'm going to the San Francisco Pen Show. It's like, oh, hey, that's awesome. I'll be there too. And she, she looks at my, like she looks, she looked at my tattoo and then she was like listening to me talk about pencils and she was like, she's like, have you ever heard of this podcast about pencils? And I was like, yes, yes, I have. And she's like, oh my God. So yeah, that was, that was really fun. She, she herself was more of like a, you know, like a pen and stationary podcast kind of a person. But you know, we travel, we all travel in the same circles. So yeah, we had a nice chat that we do. Yeah.
That is very cool.
Last thing I will mention is completely unrelated to any of that, but something that I have been pretty, pretty into in the last wow. Few years. I feel like I've talked about it in the show before, but maybe not. There's this little tiny like indie game console that is being made called a playdate. Have we talked about this?
I don't think so.
No.
You wrote about it in Disposable issue three.
That's right. That's right. If you go to Play Date, which is the best URL ever. This company that makes Mac software that I've, you know, I've used their software for years and years called Panic, just decided they've also made Some games, they made it the entitled Goose game which is a really great game. This one called Firewatch. And they, they decided to, they're like, you know what? We're going to make a game console and we have no experience with hardware. Don't know, don't know anything. So they, they teamed up with this company that makes synthesizers called Teenage Engineering. And they, I think they're based in Sweden, Norway somewhere over there they, they just made this super cute little, tiny, tiny game console. 4 inches by 4 inches and like 9 millimeters thick. And it also has a crank on it and that is part of the gameplay. Like you can, you can do things with that crank. So like a fishing game or whatever. And it's finally, finally, finally after years and delays and setbacks from the factory, they started pre orders. So place that pre order. So if anybod here is interested in tiny little indie game console and likes.
Do you mind me asking how much? Yeah, this game console goes for?
It is $179 and it is not bad. Yeah, it's not cheap. But also they're doing this really interesting thing at least during like over the first like several weeks where they're releasing games in seasons. So like if you buy one of these. And the original idea was if you buy one of these notes, not quite but like kind of like over the first 12 weeks every, every like let's say Monday you go like a new little, little game downloads to your play date and you can access it and play it. And with all of the delays and the extra cost and everything, they've doubled that to two games a week. So you get 24 games included in that. And they're, they're made by well known and also up and coming like indie game developers, which is really cool. So yeah, super, super neat little device. I, this is the kind of gaming that I like. I don't want to play like a big old like Call of Duty like or NBA 2K or whatever I want to play.
Just you have to put in like 400 hours to finish the game.
Yeah, I just want something like little and quirky and also it's fun. It has a one bit display so just black and white pixels, no grays, no colors. It's so like, like if you like pixel art, like it's definitely going to be a cool thing. I am very cool.
We need to talk later because I've been researching obscure Nintendo Switch games.
Ooh, yeah.
So we'll talk, we'll talk later. Weird ones where you're like a lawyer in the game.
Is that the one where you have to shout objection into the microphone in order to, like, stop. I have some.
Okay.
I have some suggestions and some ideas. Okay. There's one called Baba is yous. That's really fun. Okay. It's a grammar game.
This is. This is a grammar game.
It's a grammar game. It's more like.
Let's stop. Let's just talk about now. So what, Graham? Just talk about it.
So it's like a. It's like a dungeon crawler. Like, there's, you know, your little character and you go into rooms and you're trying to. There's like little. There's little things that are lined up. So there's like. So you're a little character named Baba, and there is, let's say, like a flag in the corner, and over on the other side, there are little blocks that you can move around. And one says Baba is you. One says flag is win. There's maybe another one that says, like, wall is stop. And you kind of quickly as you go, you find out that you can not only move between things and move stuff around, but you can move those rules around. And so if you. So it says flag is win. So if you. Basically, if you can get to the flag, you win the level. But if you can't get to the flag, maybe you rearrange it so it says wall is win. And then you go and touch the wall and you win. Or maybe you can rearrange it so it says like, oh, like Baba is wall. And then all of a sudden. Or like wall is you. And then all of a sudden you are the wall and you can move it around. Things like that.
Goodness. Now I'm going to be taking my switch into my classroom and being like, hey, guys, look. Hey. Hey, fellow kids. Video games are cool.
They're just like, please give me some Call of Duty. Yeah, it's.
I'd say it's more like we're gonna play Nintendo Switch. Yes. We're gonna play a game called Baba is you.
Yeah. Less grammar. More like linguistics or logic puzzles maybe. But, yeah, it's. It's really fun.
Cool.
Yeah. So anyhow, I. That's the kind of games I'm. I'm into. Just like.
Like that.
Sorry. Stuff like that. Write that down. That is. That is it for FreshPoints. Yeah, I. Yeah. So. So, Johnny, you suggested this main topic, which was basically, I feel like we've. We've touched on it before when we talk about, like, kind of like nostalgic stationery and things like that. But we've never really, like, kind of dug into like, our off, like school supply experience compared to, like, compared to the kids nowadays, like that kind of a thing. Right. Like, my Trapper Keepers are coming back and you know, have. Did yikes ever really go away, like that kind of stuff? The answer is yes, but. Yeah. Just love to start the conversation. What are. What are some. Maybe let's start with this. What are some. Some things you remember from your elementary or middle or high school days past that you just don't see anymore.
American pencils.
Yeah. And you had something. You had a reason for that. Right. Like you were telling me a little bit about this.
Yeah. So I'm older than you guys, and when I was in elementary school, we didn't have a trade agreement with China. So there were no Chinese pens at
your elementary school, I mean, anywhere. Yeah.
And your Catholic school didn't have a trade agreement with China?
No.
The United States. So sometimes there were like, you know, those, those weird pencils where you would pull one, pull the tip out and put an end and everything. Stationary was made in Taiwan back then. But I don't think there was a single kid in St. Thomas that didn't have American made wooden pencils because, like, what else were you gonna buy?
Yeah.
If you were at the, you know, Kmart back then or whatever, I mean, I had.
I had big old. These big giant, like dark blue Dixons that we used in grade school. Like, like uncapped at the end. So. So yeah, even in the. I guess that would have been like the mid, late 80s, probably mostly late 80s still, you know, American pencils. For as. As much as I can remember.
You know, it's. It's interesting, I think, about that. My elementary school was called E. A James B. Eads elementary in, In Munster, Indiana. And they had a dispenser, a pencil dispenser that you'd put a quarter into and you turn it and it would give you a pencil. And. And they had printed these round pencils that said James B. Eads elementary on the side of them. And the chances are pretty good, right, that those were made at Musgrave, probably. Right.
Eberhard Faber did a lot of that stuff back then too.
Okay. Anyway, so it's just weird to think about that because, like, that was kind of like, it was one little like kind of status symbol thing because it's like, oh, man, that pencil was purchased with your own money.
It could also be on site. It cut out. That also could have been like a Harcourt pencil. Do you remember Harcourt pencils? They're. I think they're factories in Indiana. They're in. Yeah, Milroy, Indiana. And I think that they were mostly like. I think that they, like, customized pencils there. I think they're mostly known for, like, foil stamping and stuff like that, so.
Yeah, yeah, that could have been it, but.
Yeah, totally. Yeah, that. That would have been. Oh, you know what? We didn't. We didn't talk about the new scrape pencils. We should wait. We should wait till we have them in hand and we can actually use them. Oh, my gosh.
Feels embarrassing. I was so excited.
But we haven't. We haven't actually got a hold of one yet. So.
Yeah, I want to. I want to have them in hand, so that's.
Yeah, I'm excited.
True.
Yeah. Anyhow.
Yeah. Then also, like, when I was in school, in. I think in middle school, like, if you didn't have a pencil, they would sell you one for 10 cents. Which. 10 cents was a lot of money in the early 90s for a pencil. Like, 25 cents for a pencil is kind of a lot for. Yeah, like a student pencil.
That's what I remember it as. But.
No, no, I believe you. I'm just saying, like, man, that was. That's why it was a status symbol.
Inflation, man, it was rough.
Like, damn.
Now they're like $50 per pencil. We're all.
We're all standing around the water fountain like, can you believe what they're charging for pencils these days?
This is my bling.
25 cent pencil to get in second job, third job, keep me in pencils.
Got to get an extra block of my paper route just to pay for my pencils for this.
I really hope there are some kids that listen to our podcast that are in that situation. It would build really good character.
The. Yeah, we. I don't remember. I don't think we had like a, like a pencil vending machine in my Catholic school. But I. I do know that. Yeah, we just had like, just a whole, like, box or bag of them just in the back of our desk. So, yeah, they. I never kind of like, ran out. And. And I also know at one point, man, at one point we had. Because they were all like, dark blue, like a navy blue. And some of them are red. And I remember just like. But not enough of them are red. Like, more of them are blue. So if you just got lucky and got a red one, like, man, you were high on the hog. Yeah.
Do you guys remember, like, kindergarten, first grade pencils like what you sort of learned how to write with.
Yeah. And I think that was those big thick Dixons that we were using.
Were they laddies or were the beginner?
I want to say they were beginners, but I could also be wrong about that. I. Yeah, I've. Over the years I've talked to a few people who like are pretty sure like they know what they like what I was talking about. And I think that most of those are those beginners. But I could be totally wrong. Yeah. Some of them could also be like. I also could be misremembering. It could be. Could be just a giant like Eagle Pencil Company pencil or like an ever hard Faber or something too.
It's probably a pencil that would fetch a nice price on ebay, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, we had a Faber Castell Goliath in kindergarten. They gave us one of those and it was like, this is your pencil. I still have mine.
I was going to say, is that how you remembered it? Because you still have it or you.
Yeah, I have it. When I started the pencil blog, I found it and pulled it out. I wrote an article that was on Hmong being. It was like an online thing. It was like a lot of like non nostalgia. It was sort of like traumatizing, like. Oh God. Even though that was. I didn't go to a Catholic kindergarten, but. And then they gave us these things that were. I guess they were a knockoff of the Dixon beginner pencils because they were fat and black, but they didn't have a logo and they were just like freaking garbage.
Yeah.
And they gave us this paper that was like basically, you know, tan toilet paper with lines on it.
Yeah.
And it was really hard to write on and impossible to erase on. Yeah, it was, it was not pleasant.
At my school, our paper, like the, the photograph papers were reused from like paper on the other side just to reuse paper. And there's a big, big hospital across the street from. From my grade school and they would just send us old medical records because HIPAA was a. Back then. So we were just like writing on the back of like a medical record printouts at school.
Oh my God.
Yeah. Like, oh, this guy's chief complaint is the chest back.
Back in those pre HIPPA days.
Pre HIPPA days, man.
There's a Learn about Everybody's vaccine title.
Yeah, everybody's vaccine status is on there.
Oh, geez.
Yeah, just like put the paper over like, derek, your dad has diabetes.
How do you know that?
Sorry about your dad, man.
Sorry about your dad.
Got really Dark as it does.
Were you, were you all using, what kind of notebooks were you buying?
So I remember being pretty dedicated to the sort of novelty spiral notebooks. You know, I'd have baseball teams or Star wars or something like that. But I remember the big status symbol was always the five star notebook by Mead. And then once you got into high school, if you were walking around with a five subject, five star notebook, that made you 12% smarter than everyone else around you. So, oh man, we probably had to
use those until high school. We could, we only had company.
Well, that was high school. I'm talking about high school. Like when we got to high school, when you started carrying those around, that
was like, oh man, look how thick that notebook is. I, I always, even, even then I was, and this bugs me to this day, but even then I was like, you know, I took way more notes in some classes than in other classes. And if you fill up one of the subjects while the other one was still like halfway through, like that just bugged the heck out of me.
Well, I mean, that makes sense though. You're not being particular. Like then you got to get a new notebook and then you have two notebooks and that defeats the purpose of a five. Six.
Exactly, exactly.
Like, damn, you guys.
Five stars. More like one star.
Yeah, I had those in high school and I immediately went back to composition books for college because they're more durable. And yeah, when I was in college, we had there was this stock of Roaring Spring, the quote unquote premium ones that are actually eight and a half by 11 and aren't rounded, cornered. And every semester I would buy, you know, five or whatever of them. And then next semester I'd come back and the exact ones were still sitting there. It took until my junior year for them to all be gone and was like crap. And we didn't have the Internet to buy stuff from, so that was sad. Then to get the lesser quality ones with lines. That was horrible.
Yeah, yeah, I, I remember I had, I mean, all of the cool, like bright color 90s, I think mostly. Shoot, were they mostly Mead? I think so. Just like spiral bound notebooks where, you know, the spirals eventually got like kind of squashed in your bag but like had those really great, like just bright bold colors on them that like are kind of back in, in fashion now, kind of vapor wave.
And these kids don't know how good they have with double O binding. Like we had them where you carry it in your backpack for one day. Now it's squished by the end of the week, half the notebook's gone.
Yeah.
Or you. You have the. The one kind of like rogue end of your spiral that's like tearing a hole in the side of your backpack.
Yeah.
Who always had, like, a hole that was like being bored in the side of their backpack.
Yep.
If you ever notice that as a, like, man. I get you, man. I understand what's happening with you as a fidgeter. Sorry.
As a fidgeter, I would definitely pick at the end of the spirals to, like, make them longer. And I would, like, poke little holes in my erasers with it. Like. Like my. My fidgeting sensibilities outweighed my. Like, be respectful of stationary responsibility. Like, Like.
Yeah, well, my.
My.
My favorite stationary fidget when I was in. Especially in high school, I remember doing this a lot was that I had discovered the Pilot G2. And I would like. You know that scene in Forrest Gump where Forrest Gump's like, disassembling the gun real fast and then he puts it back together? I would do that. I would do that in class with a pilot G2. I'd be like, shh. Can I, like, disassemble it? I'd take apart the clicker and I'd take off the spring, and I'd take it all apart and then I'd put it all back together as fast as I could.
Now do it with one arm behind your back and blindfolded.
I know. Yeah. Not blindfolded. Yeah, I totally could have done it too, but that was. That was my. My fidget of choice in class. I never got called out for it, but I used to do that all the time and. But I. I love that, that G2. I actually have some notebooks from when I was in high school, and I wrote in that, like, it was like a point. The 05 Pilot G2, which now as I'm, you know, a grown ass man that was way too skinny. Like, it's like, I look at my writing and I'm like, what were you thinking, man? You look like a child. Shows my. Shows my bias a little bit. But I'm just like, man, like my. My handwriting looks ridiculous with that tiny little line. And now I've got this big, like, you know, I'm using the 10, like twice as big.
Yeah.
Big loopy handwriting. But I. That was. Yeah, I did that all the time.
Do either of you remember the first time you switched to pen and what grade and like, what pen it was?
Yep.
What do you think?
You go first. I'm the oldest and I'm gonna go first.
Is that you who said. Yep.
Yeah, but I'm the oldest. Don't make me.
No, go ahead. You can say
this is a safe space, Johnny.
Yeah. Oh, we weren't allowed to use them until fifth grade. It was like a really big deal.
Yeah.
And then I had blue paper mates. And then I had the US government click pens that I stole from my father.
Oh, the Skillcraft in the army.
Yeah. So I have a serious soft spot for those things.
Speaking of taking pins apart, Skillcrafts are super hard to find nowadays.
Oh. You can get them on Amazon in a box.
Oh, and maybe I'll do that. Man. Yeah.
This is so hard to find.
They have like needlepoint ones. They have recycled plastic ones.
The last time I saw them outside of a post office was I was at the Buca Beppo in Orlando, Florida. And they had Schoolcraft.
Yeah, my dad. My dad's got a. Well, I think you guys might have seen his garage full of stuff. Sometimes he'll find stuff. So he'll find like a box of them. Like, you want these? And of course they're 20 years old. They don't work.
Yeah.
But he gave me some Skillcraft pencils this past weekend when I saw him,
which made me very happy. Yeah, my first. So in fourth grade we got to use. We got to switch to pens. And it just so happened that I went to the. Oh, shoot. What is it? It's the. The Cleveland Museum of Arts. Like, shoot. Cozi. What's Cozai. Museum. Cozy museum. It's the. Oh, you know, it's the center of science and industry in Columbus, Ohio. My, like just that summer my parents and I went there for like a. Like a family trip and I bought a Fisher space pen that had the space shuttle on the side of it.
Nice.
And that was what I brought to school with me as my, like my first pen. And I don't remember how long I had it before I lost it, but it was. Man, it was an expensive pen too. Like, I bet my parents were mad, but that was the first pen that I got to use.
It's impressive though. That's a good first one.
Yeah, the.
I think mine was. I think it was fifth grade for me. And the first one I remember, I think I have this memory that the. The. We were only allowed to use pens if we had erasable pens.
Oh my God.
And it was those ones. I think it was PA Paper mate, that had like the big kind of like.
Yeah.
Pencil style eraser on the top it's all blobby.
Blobby and greasy.
Garbage.
Yeah.
Oh, they're garbage. Like so terrible.
Yeah.
It was disgusting. But I do remember getting into middle school, so middle school for me would have been 2000ish, like around 2000. And so I was in middle school in 2000. And that was when, or at least as far as I remember, that's when jelly roll pens, like, exploded.
Yeah. Literally exploded.
Everybody was obsessed with jelly roll, like gel pens, like jelly roll pens. And so that was kind of the hot commodity at that point was in. You know, that was when they had come out with like the metallic sparkle ones.
Oh, yeah.
Which if you were a dude, you had to have like, mostly like the black one because you could still feel like secure.
Yeah.
As a middle school boy, you'd be like, this neck looks like, like sparkly black. It's like the sun or it's like stars or whatever. But I remember that being a big deal.
Yeah.
I remember liking them for the most part because I think it was just something different.
Yeah. But I feel like the form factor of those jelly bell pens have not changed. You can still buy those exact ones. Yeah.
Johnny. Johnny and I, when we. We met up in D.C. when I was there with Execute, the XQ group, we went to that. Johnny, we went to that store at Jenny Bick. Yeah. And we were looking at that like they had a display of the. The jelly rolls. They look exactly the same.
They have some really sweet colors too. They have a blue and then it's on black or white paper.
Wow. Yeah.
Dreamy. Very cool. Really dreamy.
Yeah.
Now I gotta. I gotta say this about elementary school pencil use specifically. And this might have been my. This might be a, like a core memory for me with stationary. But when I was in fourth grade, my. My teacher was named Mrs. Harvith. H A R V E T H which still seems. Still seems made up. Harvest Harveth. And she was awesome. And she was a great teacher. And I remember that she seemed baffled by this. But there. This mania came over my fourth grade class because we were all obsessed with the pencil she was using, which was a mechanical pencil. Excuse me, but I was a child. I was just a dumb kid. But it was a. It was a mechanical pencil that looked very much like a regular pencil that she always had. I guess, like, she probably bought one box of them. It wasn't because she loved them, just because she had.
Was it the zebra number two?
No, it was the paper mate. Sharpwriter.
Ooh, nice. They were called the Scripto something when I was young, that was, like, my first mechanical pencil.
Okay. So now they're called the Papermate Sharp Writer. They vaguely resemble a pencil. They're yellow. They have a eraser, and they've. And you twist them by twisting the. What we would call, like, the collar on the wooden pencil.
You.
And we were like. I remember we were all just hounding or like, what is that pencil? Like, we got to have one of those pencils. Can I have one of those pencils? Like, where'd you get that pencil? And she. And I remember her finally being like, okay, fine, you want one of these? Do this. And she had some task force that she gave us, and she's like, if you do it, I'll give you one. And then, like, the people who did it got one, and it was just kind of like, yeah.
Then you realized it was 80 cents for a dozen at Walmart.
We did it. We did it. Yeah. And then you try it, and you're like, it's fine.
Those are the.
We were so obsessed with getting those.
Those are the mechanical pencil of choice in the office, like the office stock room of Facebook.
Really?
Oh, really?
But they're. They're not technically refillable. Like, you can. But you have to take a piece out that you're not supposed to take out.
Yeah, yeah. Don't you.
I thought you just pulled the eraser out. Then all you have to.
Now they. That you have to, like, pull the eraser out and, like, kind of get that last little nib out of that black thing and then jam another piece in and then screw it back down.
There's a. I'm looking at the packaging now. It says less lead breakage.
That's. Yes. Target has them in colors. Multicolored.
Yeah, possibly.
I've seen, like, translucent ones before. Are they like that or are they, like, way cooler?
Yeah, these are. These look kind of translucent. They're, like, purple and blue and pink. And it's a 12 pack at Target for three bucks. Oh, I'll send this to you. Johnny's, like, going to brb. Going to Target.
It's on Uber to Target. They're open for. They're open for 12 more minutes. Let's do this.
Yeah, I really just like, our. Like, when we got into mechanical pencils, it was really just like the. Oh, shoot. What are they called? The Bic. The big clicks.
Clickster or whatever.
Yeah, just like the. The one is. Was always like. Like a black barrel, but it had, like, a multicolored clip on it.
That's A great pencil.
Yeah. It worked really well. It was very good for doing that thing where you. You click it all the way out and then you, like, shoot it in your arm. Like you're injecting yourself with something, like, very good for that.
That. That one time you don't click it right.
Yeah. You actually do eject yourself with a big old choreographite.
When I was younger, they were tan and brown, which was hideous. But, like, if you could find those now, they would be so fat.
Oh, yeah.
Like, really, really nice.
Yeah, I. Yeah, and they always, like. They're always a little squeaky. If you remember, like, writing with that graphite was just like. Like. Yeah, just like, especially filling in, like, a. Like a standardized test. Yeah.
How I'm gonna find a picture of this? Sorry.
Did anybody here have any of, like, sharpeners other than the. Just the big old, like, Boston on the. The classroom wall? Did you have, like, a little handheld or any of that kind of stuff?
Yeah, but they always sucked compared to that.
Yeah, that's my exact answer.
Yeah.
Like, I. I do remember them, but they were always terrible. Yeah, it was just, like, a waste of time, so.
And did they have, like, you know, the crank sharpener when you guys were in school?
Oh, yeah, they had the big old. We had one. Shoot. What was it? It was. It. I can't remember. It was in middle school. Our. Our school was that K through 8th grade, so our middle school was, like, just a wing of the grade school. And I think, like, our science teacher had an old Panasonic, like, electric sharpener that was on her desk, and. And you could use that. And it was. Everybody just liked that better because it was electric. But, yeah, we mostly just had the crank sharpeners.
I remember the. As it should be in a lot of ways in elementary school, but the art teacher had the best sharpener.
Oh, I bet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you go and go into her room, and you. It was always kind of like, make sure you sharpen before you get out of here. Note to self, cash in that opportunity once a week. We got once a week in art because George Bush. So let's. Let's make sure we sharpen our pencil.
Yeah.
And the ones that we had were. They were probably, like, as old as the school. They were garbage. They didn't sharpen your pencil so much as just, like, you know, mulch it all over the floor.
Yeah, mulched it.
It was, you know, everything would come out looking flaky, and I just thought pencils were stupid. And it turned out that those sharpeners were just crap.
Yeah. They just. Yeah. Just like taking a weed whacker to the wood on your. Yeah.
I mean, I probably could have chewed a better point if I had better coordination, but at my kids schools, they're all. They're all electric now. They don't mess around.
Yeah.
And one of Charlotte's classes, I guess this is two or three years ago, somebody put their pencil in backwards and ruined it. And, like, the class was not allowed to use their pencil sharpener until they owned up to it. It was a big bunch of drama over a 25 pencil sharpie.
Oh, yeah. Oh, I bet.
But I remember this. I think I remember hearing about that.
Yeah. I gotta build character, I guess.
We had a. It was not my child, so. So in my. In my Catholic school, in the evenings, sometimes they would have the CCD students. Do you know. Do you know what I mean by that? Like, the. Yeah, the kids who are like the public school ruffians who are like, you know, like, doing classwork to become, like, confirmed. And we always, like. And who knows if it was actually them? They were always, like, blamed for the stupid crap that people did. And at one point, one of the things that happened was somebody put a. A couple, like, partially unscrewed rollerball pens on top of the fan blades in the classrooms, like the. The ceiling fans. And so the next day, you turn on the ceiling fans and they just, like, fly out and just get ink everywhere. Everywhere.
Oh, my God, that's brilliant.
It happened one day, and I remember we all walked in and it was just like, what is this? And there's ink everywhere.
Yeah, that would have been me if I had a ladder.
So I don't know if actually was. We definitely blamed it on the, you know, the. The godless CCD students.
Catholic school perspective.
Yep. They're not like, they go to public school. They're like, you know, they're pretty rough.
Meanwhile, they didn't get beat by nuns, right?
Yeah, we were tough.
You guys don't even get beat by nuns.
Come on.
Have you ever even been a kid? If a nun has never, never ever, like, raised her hand to you.
So. Okay, couple other things. I. I'm. I have. I want to see if you have, like, disparate memories of things that happened. Like, like Tim's thing about the, like, assembling and disassembling the. The Pilot G2S. Like, I have. I have two of them that I want to share and I want to hear, like, if other people have similar sort of, like, little Vignettes of memories. One of them is something you could do in first grade with. In Sister. Sister Mary Gertrude's class. Sister Mary Gertrude Ann is her name. She was. She was pretty scary. She, like. One of the activities you could do is she had this box full of like. Like cardboard shapes. Like, this is a shape of a rabbit, and this is the shape of a, I don't know, fish, an octopus or whatever. And you could put that on paper and you could trace it, and then you could take your pencil and fill it in with, like, just, like, straight parallel lines, like, thin. To, like, fill it in. I don't know why we did this. I wonder if it's like some sort of like a really old timey holdout from when Sister Gertrude was young. Did either of you ever do this?
No. I still don't understand what you're saying.
I'm pretty sure it's busy work. You just traced shapes onto paper, and then you fill in, like. Then you take off the stencil, and then you just, like, fill it in with just, like, lines. So instead of, like, coloring it in, you're just, like, drawing lines to fill it in.
Was it to build coordination?
Now that I think about it more, I think it was just to shut us up. But, like, Catholic school. Yeah. I have no idea. I'm gonna do a little research and see if this was, like, a common practice in, like, the 50s when she was a kid.
But we need to come up with, like, an erasable, like, stencil of this so that we can have people do it and, like, submit to us, Like.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's a good idea.
Sell it to people to unleash on their children for a lot of money. Kickstarter.
Get it made out of brass, like we did tracing. And the. The other thing that I always did was whenever I got a new eraser like you, like, it was usually a pink pearl, but sometimes it was, like the white one or whatever, that same shape. I would. I would, like, take my. My pen, if I had a pen or a pencil or whatever, and I would draw, like, little tires and windows and turn it into a car. Did anybody else do that?
Yes. Yes.
Okay, good.
I do have memories of that. Yeah.
Knight Rider was a thing when I was in elementary school.
Oh, yeah.
I had kit. Pink kit.
Yeah.
Yeah. Elementary.
David Hasselhoff. Baltimorean.
Oh, he's about Baltimorean.
Yeah.
I didn't realize that.
That's. That's not something that anyone's proud of.
Neither him nor Baltimore, the country of
Germany Yeah, they're like, go, Baltimore.
They come. They're traveling to. Do you ever hear that he was, like, huge in Germany with his translation, like, the trans. The German translation of his songs.
Yeah. Yeah, what?
Yeah, pop songs were, like, huge in Germany. So you're gonna have, like. You're gonna have tourists that are there to see where the Hoff grew up.
I mean, I don't hang out with people who listen to David Hasselhoff, so I'll take your word.
I don't know what kind of life you're living there.
Next time we're together, that's all we're doing.
Oh, hell yeah.
So I just. I just googled elementary school tracing to try to figure out what that was all about, and the only thing I'm getting is Covid contact tracing for schools. Sign of the sign.
Thanks for listening, folks.
Yeah, that's great. Any other disparate memories you need to validate if this was just you or if this was, like, a thing?
I have a little one. Like, when we got to middle school, they took away our pens and made us use pencils again. Oh, in sixth grade. And, like, like, what the hell is this about? They were, like, really weird. You had two yellow number two pencils and one eraser in your clear pencil case on top of your book.
Books.
Like, that was it. They were so strict, but, like, could never more than two pencils and. Yeah, I don't remember when they gave us pens back.
Were people, like, stabbing each other with pens or, like, I wonder why they did that.
We. We had. This is, like, a longer episode. We had a really sadistic nun who ran our middle school, and she would just, like, get something in her head and, like, yeah, we're doing handwriting. So I had handwriting classes until eighth grade because she didn't like her handwriting. So it could be related to that. Yeah, I don't know, but. Or maybe she was just really mean.
She took all her. She's a John Gambier. You're a wiggle worm. 1.
No, no. This woman is terrifying. I wouldn't go near her if I saw her.
Yeah.
Yeah. She owes me a lot of therapy bills.
Yeah, I think. I think I. I think I sense a new Tuesday zine.
Yeah. What I have for tomorrow is I hate people who exercise.
The.
The upshot is that exercising is lazy, because if you want people to like you, you should develop a better character. And it's much easier to do some crunches. So, like, you're not working on yourself. You're just working on your belly. And that's, that's lazy.
It's.
And this I am like the most hard working some gun you're ever going to meet because I don't exercise.
Oh, let's move on.
Yeah.
Tim, what about you? Any interesting memories of stationary use in school? Do you all play pencils?
No, we've. Yeah, no, I don't think I never played that. I mean I do have, and this is, I mean a little cliche, but I do have definitely a memory memory of being in cad. I don't know, what do we call it? It was CAD class but like where you learned how to use AutoCAD to
like, like do drafting. Computer.
Yeah, computer drafting. And I remember that was the class where we had. It was in seventh grade, maybe we had first discovered the taking a wooden pencil, a sharp wooden pencil and throwing it into the ceiling.
Oh yeah.
That was the first time. Yeah, yeah, that was the first time we had ever done that. And I remember it being like a thing in his class. And every day he would be like just, you just gotta stop doing this. Like he would get so mad at us.
It's like, dude, we just want to do it more now.
Yeah, yeah.
I think you shouldn't.
It's like the fact that you don't like, you don't seem to know who did it. Even though it's above us right there.
You know, doing them in a slant like throwing your voice. Yeah, it wasn't me, but it's right over your head. It wasn't me.
It wasn't me. Come on. But yeah, it's just like. But so that's one that comes to mind is just like the memory of throwing pencils into the ceiling, which is thing which you can't do with a mechanical pencil.
True.
Yet another reason why they're, they're just the worst garbage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My wood clinch post that gets one of the most traffic still to this day is where I kind of reminisce over the game of pencils and like, you know, trying to figure out if other people played this. And sure enough, yeah, people are just like. Yeah, we sometimes people are like, oh, we called it some. This different thing. We didn't call it pencils, but yeah. And what I'm referring to, if you haven't read it is just like the. When you take turns trying to hit each other's pencil with your pencil to try to break the other pencil.
Oh, we just called that pencil fight.
Yeah. Yep. That's a.
We were not allowed to do it. We were getting a lot of trouble.
There's a. And it used to be. It's like, 10 years ago. I should check to see if it's still going on. But there's a pencil fighting league in Seattle that was going on, and there people would dress up in characters. Like, there was the Taekonda robot who was a. Oh, the pencil fight. Yeah.
Future Olympic event. Yeah, I hope.
I hope So. I mean, 2024 is coming up.
Yeah.
Yeah. And it's in Paris. Like, totally.
Cool.
Yeah.
Would it be a winter sport?
I was just wondering that. Is this a winter sport or a summer sport? Like, I think. Yeah, Yeah. I think you need to make the athletes compete in just, like, really little, tiny, like. Like clothing, like. Like the summer Olympics. So it's probably a summer sport.
I have a pencil fight speedo that's left over from eighth grade.
I don't know if we all.
I mean, I don't think I can wear it out in public.
You probably should.
Or have any more children.
All right.
Okay.
That was weird. Anything else we want to talk about before we button this guy up?
Yeah, I was going to ask you guys about erasers.
Oh, yeah.
Did you guys have anything interesting? Like, we had, you know, pink pearls, and there'd be, like, that one kid in the class with an art gum, and you're like, the hell's wrong with you?
Toured toward the end of high school, maybe, maybe even early college, I discovered the, like, moldable erasers. And I definitely switched to that because it was an extra thing to fiddle with, but it was pink pearls most of. The. Most of the way for me.
Yep. My. My mom is an artist. She did architectural renderings where, like. Yeah, she'd get blueprints, and then she would mock up what it would look like, you know, in person. And so I have the moldable erasers, those kind of, like. What do you. Is that what you call them?
I mean, just needed erasers.
Yeah, yeah.
Kneaded erasers. Those were all over our house. So that was. That was definitely the. The primary one in my mind is. Is just remembering using my mom's kneaded erasers that she had. I do have. And everything other than that was just kind of like novelty erasers. You know, things that resembled other things or things that I got at the book fair. Things.
Got a lot of those for holiday.
Got a Cubs game. Yeah, exactly. So that kind of stuff. But the needed erasers was, like, the most actually useful one.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, those were. And. And I. I, at one point, I also really loved the black pearls. So the. The ones that are just more rounded. I still. I still really love those. Yeah, they just like the way they feel, like little worry stones or whatever.
Cool.
Anything else y' all want to.
I mean, I. I apologize to any nuns that might listen to our podcast.
I don't. No, I don't. Yeah, yeah, you chose.
If you want to apologize. If you apologize to me on behalf of some of your ancestors, that. That would be good. I'll send you a thank you card.
All right, guys, let's. Let's button this up. Johnny, where can people find you on the Internet?
You can find me@pencil Revolution.com and on social media @pencilucian.
Pencil Eeushan. He puts the U in pencilution.
Should put an umlast on it. Pencil Eeushin.
Pencil Eeushan. Tim, how about you?
You can find me on Twitter @TimWassom and you can find me on Instagram at Tim Wasem.
Perfect. And hey, how's it going? Trying to get Tim Wasem back on. On Instagram.
Haven't tried yet. I talked about it. I was a lot of talk the last time. No, I take that back, actually. I did, I did. I did try it very briefly, but it was kind of the kind of thing where I. I was having so much trouble getting into the email that I originally used that I just gave up pretty quickly. So, yeah, I'm weak. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But yeah, yeah, yeah, that's me.
And I am. My website is Andy, wtf? And I am on Instagram and Twitter as wellfley and on LinkedIn too. In case you want to find me on LinkedIn. This is the Erasable podcast. We are Erasable Us. You can find a recording of this episode and show notes at erasable us160. We are also on. We have a Facebook group that is one of the best corners of the Internet. Just search on Facebook for Erasable Podcast Pencil community. You can find our Facebook page, our Twitter and Instagram as braceablepodcast. And we have a Patreon. You can give us a little money each month for some extra content and kind of to keep us in pencils and to keep our website up and running. And speaking of Patreon, we have several, many producer level patrons who, you know, give US$10 a month or more. And we just like to like to thank them by name. So huge thank you. Go to Chris Jones, Dave Tubman, Stuart Lennon, Jay Newton, Hans Zutelman, Kelton Wiens, Larry Grimaldi, Fourth letter, Bobby Letzinger Kathleen Rogers, Alex Jonathan Brown, Johnny Baker, Mary Collis, Leslie Tosette, Dave McDonald, Jason Dill, Random Thinks, Thomas Eckerberg, Anderson, John Baynon, Chris Metzkis, Michael Hagen, Measure Twice, Joe Crace, Lissa Baby Think Travel, Eat Gangster Hotline, Ann Sipe, Tana Feliz, Chris Ulrich, Sarah Hunter, Jacqueline Myers, Michael Diallosa, Jenny. I think these are more than just the producer level people. Bob Oswald, Hunter McCain. I'm just gonna say them all. Give everybody a thank you. Terry Beth Ledbetter, Millie Blackwell, Franklin Furlong, James Dominguez, K.P. o.A. Pryor, James Spears, Jamelia Alicera, Judy Molnar, Gary Varner, Andrew Squish, Paul Moorhead, Kyle, Andre Torres, Diana Oakley, Steven Fansale, Allison Zepeda, Chris L, Aaron Willard, Harry Marks, Adam Prabola, Jason Santa Maria, Dave Tom Keakley, Bill Clow, Miriam Burkhout, Bill Black, Donnie Pierce, Andre Prevost, Nate Rabeck, Phil Munson, Larray Smith, David Johnson, John Wood and Scott Hayes. All right, thank you everybody so much. Truly. Keep us in pencils. We really appreciate it and we'll all talk to you soon in a few weeks.
Bye.
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