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Transcript
Do the Harlem shake.
Hello, and welcome to episode 175 of the erasable Podcast. It's been a while since we've been able to get together and record, so hopefully you still remember our voices. If not, I'm Tim Wasem and. Oh, damn it, Johnny.
Johnny strikes again.
That was a good one.
Do you want to fully read what Johnny said here?
Yeah. And I smell like horsebunch blankets. I almost went full Ron Burgundy and just read that straight through. I am joined by Andy and Johnny. Hey, guys. How's it going? Hello.
Hey.
Happy New Year.
I got Google Doc bombed. Yeah.
It's been almost eight years, but he's still Google Doc bombing us. It's.
He's spreading them out now, and so when it happens, it's hard to avoid. I thought we were past this, and then I smell like horse blankets, and that's so specific and wonderful. I gotta send you some kind of award in the mail for that one.
When I turned 40, I stopped maturing.
That's probably a good thing. Yeah, just.
I'm done.
Yeah. All right. Since you last heard from us, the holidays and the new year have passed, but we're still here, ready to start another year of pencil goodness. Even if there are some forces that seem hell bent on ending our species. The new Bond villain, company Sounding Omicron, or us destroying our planet and undermining our democracy. All that good stuff. But on a sunnier note, we're going to jump right into tools of the trade. So, Johnny, why don't you get us started?
Can you follow that up, Johnny?
Sure. I think I mentioned before that I'd watched a show called Baptiste on Masterpiece, and it was sort of a spin off of the Missing, which is a series about missing children. But there are only two seasons, so there are only two missing children.
So on a sunnier note.
On a sunnier note, missing children.
The first season was, like, heartbreaking. The second one had a good ending, but for real, sunny note. We just rewatched All Creatures Great and Small on PBS because season two comes out today.
The new one or the original one?
The new one.
Well, I guess the new one. If season two is coming out. Yeah, I really need to watch it. That guy from the Durrells is on it. That kid?
Yeah. He's so funny. It's real. We binged it. I didn't remember half the things that happened. And there's a scene where James is administering to a cow that is the size of a small school bus. And it's not, you know, it's not CGI or animatronic. Like, good God, I need to move to Yorkshire. I'm gonna ride one of those cows. I figure since I don't eat meat, they'll probably let me.
I hope.
Also, good luck finding vegetarian cuisine in. In rural Yorkshire.
Yeah, I'm eating a lot of cheese after I befriend the cow. And I have been reading enough lately, but I recently start at Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead, which is so delicious. I smell a third Pulitzer in a row, which I don't think it's ever happened before.
That dude is on fire.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
Also, Harlem Shuffle sounds like that. That like, viral video thing that was really popular in like 2010.
Yeah. What was that called?
It's called the Harlem Shake.
Harlem Shake. Yeah. There we go.
Do the Harlem Shake.
There you go, Andy. Get it.
There's that. There's the intro right there.
If you hear any rustling and bumping noises, that's Andy dancing as we're talk.
Oh, man. So, you know, it's like his other books. Five pages in, you're like, oh, yeah. So I think it's only still back on hardback. It just came out. But, you know, you could probably get it pretty cheaply somewhere because no one charges full price for those. And I'm writing with a general's test scoring 580 that our friend Jason Patterson sent me a long time ago with a Blackwing feral on it, which is just delicious. And I'm using a notebook that I made and my new bullet journal from Write Notepads, which is a dot grid with numbered pages and hardcover. And so damn pretty.
Oh, that's the one that we all got to sample a couple years ago.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they just scatter the flute, dropped them in a dot grid with numbered pages. Perfect for bullet journaling. And I have the red one. It's lovely.
Yeah.
How about you, Andy?
Well, over. Over the holidays. Kidding. I watched a lot of television just because we didn't really want to go anywhere because of, you know, the Omicron Corporation. We finished. Have I talked. I've probably talked on here before about Escape to the Chateau. Right. Do you all know about that? It's this really great hope improvement show, but it's this British couple who moved to the French countryside into a 17th century chateau that's just sort of falling apart. And they're. They. They sort of resurrect it and turn it into an event space. And they live there with their family. And this season has been. I think it's season seven was, I think the first one since Pandemic was in full swing. And so they weren't holding any events there. So they just did stuff with the family and did a bunch of work around the, around the chateau. It's just really good. It's very relaxing. It's kind of like idyllic. There's really some gorgeous, just like old architecture. And as a new homeowner who's trying to like figure out all the little idiosyncrasies of my house, like, it makes my problems look so small. When you have a, you know, a giant 50 something room chateau to try to fix up like they have. He turned this like outbuilding into a workshop and he had to figure out how to get these 20 foot high doors off the hinges and resurrected. And meanwhile I'm just like trying to figure out just how I can latch my bathroom door better. So makes my problems look. But that was, that's just a really good show. If you just want something to like, you know, you can read the Internet or you know, eat dinner or something while it's happening. That's a really good show. I think in the US it's on Hulu. Have you all watched don't look up on Netflix?
Not yet.
Yeah, we watched it.
What did you think of it?
That one festers in your brain afterwards.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's been so polarizing on, at least on Twitter. Like, some people really love it, some people really hate it. I really liked it. I kind of forgot like how good of an actor Leonardo DiCaprio actually is. He is just very dynamic. Like he, you know, played this just like very, just like hokey scientist from Lansing, Michigan and trying to like figure out how to like get people to listen to him about this meteor that's just like hurtling toward Earth. And it, yeah, it was just very good and just very scary because it's just, it felt like a documentary. I think a lot of people said, like just very real and present dangers that like, you know, the, the people in charge just don't pay attention to because they really want normalcy or they're trying to protect their campaign or whatever.
Yeah. And I actually, I saw some people kind of blast this or say they didn't do a good job at it. But I thought it was hilarious. Like the satire side of it. I laughed a lot when I was watching it. Like the, all the kind of caricature versions of all the people that we've seen amongst all the, like the, the climate change problems and the. The president played by Meryl Streep and her son.
She was.
So
this is my smoke show of a mother.
Yeah, I thought it was very funny too.
So I especially like how like it was. They very clearly did not assign a political party to the president.
Right.
Like she had a big portrait of Richard Nixon on the wall behind her, but she also had that photo of the Clintons on her desk.
Yeah. Because if anyone would put a, like a Nixon painting behind their decks, it's just that part alone just made me laugh so hard. It's like imagine how little self awareness you would have to put Nixon behind you.
Well, granted we had a recent president who put a. Just a little statue of Andrew Jackson behind his desk.
It's a little more subtle these days in 2020, 2021, 2022, whatever the hell it is.
Yeah.
But
yeah, it was very good, that final scene. I thought about it for like days.
Oh God. Yeah, yeah, we'll just. The one after the credits.
I was talking about like the final scene of the movie, like a dinner party. But yeah.
Oh yeah, yeah, that. That was so good. Yeah. Johnny, I think, don't let the kids watch it, but I think that you would like it. Yeah, watch that. I am in the middle of reading the Every, which is a book by Dave Eggers. It's a sequel to the Circle, which is his book. He wrote about a, you know, like a. A large social media company. And I, I can't remember, I'm sure I talked about this early on in the podcast days, but I read the Circle on the airplane on the way to move to California to go work at Facebook. And it was just a really weird headspace to be in just to read like, about this like very not at all loosely based fictional organization.
And didn't you say that they had like a recommended reading list and that was on there or something? Am I making this up?
Like Facebook, Not Facebook. They didn't have that as a recommended reading list, but I wouldn't be surprised.
A weird flex that would be.
Yeah,
there were some things like that he just sort of like wholesale lifted from the Facebook office. Like I think in, in the Circle there's like a mantra or a poster or something that says feedback is a gift. And there, at least when I worked there, there were literally posters on the wall that says feedback as a gift. So, so the Every is a. As a follow up. Like it takes place like 10ish years later. And it's basically like the, the Circle, which is similar to Facebook, acquires Amazon and it just turns into just a hyper mega corporation and they become even more sort of isolated and powerful and influential. And it's, it's. It feels a little bit more fictionalized than the Circle, but at the same time, looking back on the Circle in reading it in 2014, like a lot of that kind of came to life after it came out. So maybe we're just like a few years out from, from the every. I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to think about it. But it's basically instead of really focusing in on like streaming your life online and kind of a surveillance state and corporations messing with, I don't know, voting or public opinion or whatever, this is focused a lot on misinformation. And what are they really honing on here? Just like capitalism and like capitalistic environmentalism, things like that. It's just. Yeah, it's pretty good, but also very much not a subtle book. Like, Dave Eggers just really wasn't interested in trying to like be nuanced with this. Still, still very good, huh? I enjoyed Dave Eggers and I am writing with my Karita Kent Blackwing Volume 93, the orange one in my equally orange Baron fig confidant. How about you, Tim?
I am about halfway through reading Project Hail Mary.
How is it?
It's very good.
I have it on my to do list.
Yeah, I'm enjoying it a lot. And I actually haven't read the Martian. I hadn't read what's his name, Andy Weir.
Is that it?
Yeah, yeah. So I actually never read the Martian. I have a copy of it. Didn't get to it and just heard enough praise of Project Hail Mary that I just decided to start with it. And it's excellent. It's a. It's another kind of along with Don't Look Up. It's like a story about like the world's coming to an end because the temperature of the sun is dropping because there's this weird formation forming on the side of. I think it is a Venus or Saturn. I think it's Venus. And they're. They take a sample of this weird formation and they find out that it's basically an alien life form that's sucking energy from the sun. And so the main character is this middle school science teacher who used to be in.
You're right, Tony.
He used to be in academia and got fed up and then later in life became a teacher and then because of some papers he wrote earlier in his career, he gets asked to just kind of take a look at something related to this global effort of figuring this stuff out and then kind of goes from there. It's very good. It's a. A lot of science and a lot of math. And for somebody who is not good at math, I'm enjoying it a lot. Yeah, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Really good audio book, too. I've got the audiobook that I've listened to a little bit. I just watched last night. I just watched the Tender Bar. Oh, what is that? It's the new movie with Ben Affleck. It's directed by George Clooney.
Yeah.
And I. I had heard George Clooney on wtf. And that was how I. It kind of ended up on my radar. But it's based on the memoir by Junior Moinger, and it's this story of a kid growing up in like, a house full of people. Like his cousins and aunts and uncles live in the house with them in their grandpa's house, and just kind of a dysfunctional family sort of thing. But he ends up wanting to become a writer. And then his. It's about. Mostly kind of about his relationship with his uncle, who's played by Ben Affleck, who kind of roots him on who's this. Definitely kind of like a good old boy character, but also very literate. And he's a bartender and he works at this bar called the Dickens that. Yeah, there's books everywhere. It's a wonderful. If you like books about writers and dysfunctional families, it's definitely worth watching.
Imagine Ben Affleck, despite the Netflix.
And he's even. He's so likable in the movie. It's just. I guess I like Ben Affleck. When I told my wife's on a trip and I told her what I was watching last night, I said, I'm gonna watch this movie with Ben Affleck. And she's like, oh, she's a teabag. And I was like, yeah, I know, but I'm gonna try it. And it was worth watching. So it's on Amazon Prime.
I think if any of us can love something as half as much as Ben Affleck loves being back together with Jennifer Lopez. Like,
yeah. Or I think I. As much as he loves being back with Jennifer Lopez, I love the meme of him smoking a cigarette outside, like out front of his house. So.
With a bunch of Dunkin Donuts.
Well, there's. Yeah, I think that was a different. But there's one where he's. He looks like he's like in a deep Sigh. Like holding a cigarette. Oh, my gosh.
He's very memorable.
Yeah. And I've been listening to a lot of the band Big Thief, which I don't know if I've talked about them on here. I've. I kind of had a weird relationship with Big Thief when I first found out about him. I didn't really get it. And I got an album of theirs for Christmas a couple years ago or something. And something about it just weirded me out or I didn't want to listen to it. It made me, like, strangely uncomfortable or creeped out. I don't know what it was. I've kind of. I've gotten over that. And their new stuff that's coming out soon is how I got back into it. So they've put out like six singles because they're putting out this huge double album. And the songs have a very different vibe and they're amazing. So I don't know if you go on Spotify. There's like a. And it looks like an EP at six songs. I forget the name of it. But the album comes out February 11th and I'm really excited. The album's called Dragon New Warm Mountain. I believe in you.
That's some word salad right there.
So I think that speaks for itself. I think everybody understands what that means. Yeah. So Big Thief, it's good stuff and fun to play on the guitar. Kind of weird chord progressions sometimes that are. Yeah, really nice. And I am writing with a Moon Products Tri Rex. And I am writing in my Blackwing Woody Guthrie progress notebook.
Nice.
Which Tri Rex are you rocking?
It's the red one. I don't even know. I don't know. Are all Tri Rex. Do they all have the kind of like jumbo triangle shape with the points shaved off?
Does that make sense? They have a regular red one, an intermediate dark blue, and then the jumbo red.
I don't even know what I have. Hang on, here we go. This says I gotta. I ordered it back. It just says Train Trian Ser. Red pack of 12 is all it says. So obviously they shortened it with an ellipses, but. So I have no idea what this is, but I really love it and I love sharpening it in my electric sharpener and getting a big crazy point on it because it lasts forever.
I have a couple traces, but I don't know if I've ever really seriously sat down and written with it.
Yeah, I had this one. I had this exact one and I was drawing with my kids and it had ended up in a I think, Johnny, you might have sent it for my kids. Like, you sent, like, some jumbo pencils for them to use. And it had made it into their hands and been used for a while. And I found it in just a random bucket full of crayons and pencils and stuff and started drawing with it. I was like, gosh, this is good. By the end of the day, I had ordered another dozen of the same exact one. And, yeah, I like it a lot.
Yeah, that company makes the USA Gold pencils. And there was like one or two summers. There were one or two summers where they made a USA Gold version of a jumbo pencil that was really just repainted Tri Rex with a gold feral. It was so pretty.
Whoa.
I think I found, like, I have two of them somewhere.
Wow, that's cool.
I kept searching everywhere for them and couldn't find them. Sad face.
Well, you guys want to jump into fresh points?
Sure.
So it's been so long since we've talked to each other that we're just going to make this a fresh points catching up episode. Talk about some things that we've had on our mind in the meantime and get the. Get some momentum into the new year. So, Johnny, why don't you.
So at the end. End of 2021, is that what year it was? Yes. I got a minor obsession with the Emilio Braga books that are just so nice. I ordered two from CW Pencils before they closed, and one of them is an A4. The grand finale, I think they called it. It was, like, bonkers colors. It is so big.
Yeah, but that one.
Yeah. I tested fountain pens on the last page, and I was like, oh, this is amazing. But for some reason, the last page is a different kind of paper. The inside is. It's okay for fountain pens, but the book is so pretty, I don't really care if it bleeds or shows through. So I picked up another one because I wanted a little, tiny a 6ish one. And I found them at Little Otso. I think it's a shop in Portland. It was like 14 bucks, and they shipped it, you know, wrapped all cute and safe, so that was nice. And I got another wordy award from Ed Kemp, which, like, made my new year.
Yeah, I need to. What was the. The category you won?
Oh, I forgot.
I need to watch his.
Dude, you're making us look bad. I think.
I mean, he's not wrong, but.
Yeah. I mean, I could watch Ed talk about zines forever, so it's diff. I'll put a link in the show notes. It's a really cool video and I don't know if we're gonna brag about any stationary related gifts we got for Christmas, but I got a Waterman Perspective fountain pen and I'd requested blue and I got a blue that I didn't know existed. It's sort of like periwinkle. So pretty. And I got a signature punching cradle for bookbinding, which makes me very happy. I have. I'll try to find a link. Last time I looked on their Etsy shop, they didn't have any more, so maybe they restocked. I don't want to like tease you. Hey, look, here's where you could get it, but you can't. Yeah, I'm trying to think if I have any other fresh points. I'm doing subscriptions for my zine this year because people keep asking and I figured out how to do it, so Yay, that's fun.
Are you able to do that through Etsy or how do you set that up?
I'm bypassing Etsy.
Just paper, just writing it down. Keeping a ledger.
No, they're so weird about shipping that. Like it'll just be over complicated and I can't work spreadsheets. So I bought a vintage French ledger book that I'm going to use to keep track of everything.
I love when I'm joking. And then I end up right. Because that happens. That happens a lot with us on this podcast because there's like, oh, you could just do this. And then we're like, yeah, that's what we're gonna do. That's the way we think.
We.
There's no extreme possible.
Yeah. I was so like really excited about this ledger. I tracked down another one. Made me very happy. But yeah, that's it. I mean I'm just like pencil wise, grabbing what's around. Right now I'm holding a Ticonderoga from those Target packs. Remember they had the cool different kinds of pink and light blue. This is the.
Oh yeah. From years ago.
Yeah. Such a great pencil. I didn't realize I had two packs of them. Score.
Johnny, do you still have any of those letterpress editions of Pencil Revolution Zine in your shop?
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we have. I don't remember how many left. More than half of them are gone and they're letterpressed by Brian Bedell, who you might recognize from our podcast and a company he works for called Field Notes.
If any. If anybody listening is on the fence and wants to buy this. But isn't sure. Like, you should jump on it. It is. It feels so nice. I. Johnny sent me one and just, you know, after I'm done reading it, I just like to run my fingers over the COVID because it just feels. It's such a high quality little booklet.
So, yeah, Brian did a really good job.
Yeah.
Sight unseen. I just got the box and then I saw what they looked like and I screwed a couple of them up because it was different to fold. So I have a couple that can hang up. That's cool. I had to actually wax them at first.
You had to wax them to keep
them from cracking because it's against the grain and the.
Oh, yeah.
The board is so thick. But I figured out another way to fold them so they don't crack, which saved me so much time.
What do you wax them with?
Vanilla wax. It's like a vanilla vegetable wax. It smelled really good, but I couldn't get the smell out of my head for days. It's not strong. It was just like so deep in my hands.
Million years. If I was trying to prevent something from cracking when, like paper from cracking when I was folding it, I would not have. I would never have think to wax it.
Have to go in the garage and dig out my. My old, like, skateboarding curb wax. I think I had some that was vanilla, but. Wow. I texted you about this, Johnny, but just tell everybody like this. The COVID is so well done. Like, you have to frame that. Like, you have to. Oh, yeah, frame one of those covers. Just.
Yeah, I have two or three of them. Cut. Cut off.
Nice.
From when I completely botched the folding. If you guys want one, I'll send you one. But when they're gone, I don't know what I'm gonna do for the COVID for reprints because I can't follow that up.
You should just do a comically, like, opposite direction. Have Henry design one for you.
Just like color hand draw it, make it try to look like the one that Brian did.
Recreate this with crayons and then that's what you'll use.
Brian actually has side. Like a side business called Midwest Ephemera where they do those kinds of work. And he sent me some of his kid zines, which were, like, really good. And I think he said his kid's going to steal his letterpress to take to college a smaller one. Dude, that's awesome. See if. I don't know if Brian listens to this, but thank you, Brian.
Yeah. That's so good.
Yeah,
I was just trying to jump in there. I Didn't know. Sound like you're deep in a coffee.
What is new with me? Lots of little things I was trying to think about if I got any stationery related stuff for Christmas and I did not But I got something that is I always think adjacent which is something Katie got me which is a pour over set. I have actually never owned a coffee pour over set. I have my aeropress I have you know a coffee maker but just never had a pour over so fellow which is a just like a super bougie coffee brand as a housewarming present. A friend of ours got us a like a fellow kettle and it's. It heats up water real fast. It's super nice. And for Christmas Katie got me a pour over what do you call the container that you put the filter in that you put the coffee and that you actually pour into the drips down into the carafe. She got me one of those and this really great double walled carafe by fellow. It's all part of the stag collection. S T A G G makes super good coffee. I highly recommend Johnny, you what do you usually use? Do you use pour over or do you usually do your mocha pot French press usually? Okay. Yeah. Oh that's right.
Yeah I can do those in my
sleep which I usually French press. Yeah, you have to. Tim, what about you? What is your usual go to?
Lately we've just been using our Nespresso machine like all the time. I usually just do a double espresso over ice and put some milk in it but when I have time I use the Aeropress Usually if I'm making like just my one cup for myself and I've got a little time to.
I never thought that I would ever want to pour over set because the Aeropress always just did what I wanted to do and if I wanted like a volume of coffee then I'll use the drip coffee maker. But the pour over is such a really good happy medium. It isn't quite as americano e as a Aeropress but yeah it's also takes forever takes takes some time to to pour over especially if I'm pouring coffee for both me and Katie. But I really like that highly recommend something else that is extremely well engineered and very fussy that I got is did anybody get their makers cabinet Feral pencils in?
I forgot to order one.
Oh I back there kickstarter right after Noah came. I don't remember which episode it was but some months ago came on here to talk about it and I think it came right after I Moved. It is just to refresh your memory. It is that. That lead holder for like little pencil fragments and it's. I like, how do I describe this? It's a lot like other stuff that maker's cabinet makes. It's extremely well engineered and well considered and the details are really thought out. And it's also extremely fancier and more engineered than what I am looking for. So it's. Yeah, it just is. It's just. It's a lot. It's made of brass. It's very heavy. It. It works great. You could unscrew the base and stick in a pencil fragment and screw it back in and put the eraser in the top. But it's also very like thick where you hold it like at the base and so a little bit it feels like you're kind of choking up on the pencil. I guess I could probably make it shorter and just push the point into
it more, but seems like their stuff is engineered to stay put, you know. I mean. Yeah, it's not like a take with you to work. All their stuff is kind of like it's meant to be stationed at a workspace right here.
Yeah.
Or at least that's how it's always felt to me. Like.
Yeah, it's definitely less fussy than their Hubble. Like, it's much easier to pick up and use, but it's because you just have to stick a pencil in there and write with it. But it is extremely engineered, so they put a lot of time and effort into it and it's a really good conversation piece and probably honestly not something I'm probably going to use every day, but I enjoy having it. It's very cool to play with and, and fit. I, I also over the holidays, so, you know, last time I was on the show, I missed the last episode. So it was. We just moved into this new place last time I was on. But I have my office set up a little bit more. I bought a new desk. I got a Jarvis sit stand desk which is, you know, just like it has a nice bamboo top and it's, it has a little motorized, little up down thing, motorized legs, so I can set it to a standing position pretty easily. And I got a really cool monitor arm, like a boom arm for my monitor. So I have so many things on my desk on a boom arm. Now I have this microphone that I'm talking to you with. I have a lamp that's like on a boom arm and my monitor is on it too.
So at a cup of coffee on a boom Arm. Yeah.
I just push a button and just goes tips into my mouth.
Dumps it in your face.
Like a. Yeah.
Playhouse kind of thing.
Exactly. Yeah. So many things. But that's a kind of stationary related. I just have a nice desktop now. It's pretty deep, which I usually don't even think about having a deep desk. But it's really nice because I can put a lot of stuff in front of me and I. I can push up my keyboard so I can put my notebook like pretty far forward on it. So I'm a big fan. I need to do something with my cables. It's kind of out of control underneath my desk. But I'll focus on that next. What else am I going to mention? I. I had written down wall calendar and I guess what I was going to say there is. So every year, so there's this Japanese. It's called the Japan Center Mall. And it's a. Just a small independent mall with a bunch of like, great Japanese businesses in it. In San Francisco, it's where Mido is, which is my favorite stationery store. And there is this one business called Shiki, which I don't exactly know how to like, what the main value prop of how to describe the store is. But you know, when you go to a nice Japanese restaurant, they have that really beautiful dishware that you like, put your soy sauce in and it has like cherry blossoms on the plates, things like that. They sell that. So if you want to. If you want to buy that stuff, you can buy really fancy chopsticks. You can buy little like lucky cat charms, things like that. They also have a really cool calendar set, so a wall calendar. It's one of those ones where it has their name and phone number at the bottom as like a promotional calendar. But it's made by a prominent Japanese artist whose name is escaping me. And I'm looking through my camera roll trying to find it right now. But he draws pictures of like cats that are just in different, like, situations, like cats dancing around a maypole for May and cats like playing in the snow for December, that kind of stuff. And it's just like a fun tradition that we like to go buy it every year. And so, yeah, we just picked ours up. Yeah, here it is. It is. Hajime Okamoto is the name of the guy who. Guy who makes this. And it's. It's part of the Kabamaru series, which is Maru is cat. It's just. Just a fun cat. So I'll post some pictures in our. In the thread. But I like this calendar a lot. It's such a good, just like yearly tradition as the calendar turns over to go get it. Last thing I want to mention is I've. I feel like I've given this update like several times over the last year here. But I just want to say it again. Like I've just been in such a. Just a creative sl. Just like a focus slump, right? Like it's kind of hard to do anything more than go to work and come home and just veg out with the tv. Just with everything pandemia going on, it's hard not to languish. So all that to say is I have, I don't have any updates on. We have most of our content in. I just need to put this together and yeah, I'm going to try to find just like 2 days, 10ish hours to just concentrate and put that together so we can get that out the door. Well, we don't even have pre orders open yet, so I anticipated this. So I tried not to take people's money right. Right away. I. Johnny, you're the zine machine. I should hand all this over to you.
I was just writing you a comment.
We'll figure this out. I'll put this together. Had a friend email me, just asking like, if Plumbago is dead. And I just, I saw that, I was like, oh God, no, Plumbago isn't dead. It's just backed up. Yeah, we'll figure this out in this year. Hopefully early in this year. So. And, and also just like a bajillion things around the house. I have been learning a lot about patching leaks and figuring out how to put holes in walls that are made of plaster and lath and all sorts of things. So that's been keeping me busy. But I'll set it.
So much fun.
Did you get a Dremel yet?
I've actually owned a Dremel for several years. I've. I bought one. I was really gung ho about. I had this like, old Mac classic, which is like the 1984, like for one of the first like Mac computers to come along. And I found this website where somebody was like, you can turn it into an aquarium and they called it a Macquarium. I'll find a link and share it here. It's really cool. And I was like, so gung ho about doing it and I just like, just, just. I bought a Dremel to disassemble this old Mac and I got to a point where I had it all disassembled. And then I was like, oh, now I have to, like, build an aquarium in here. I just sort of stalled on it. And that was like, literally 10 years ago. So I've had a Dremel for a while, but I have not yet put it together or I have not yet used it for any of my house projects.
Does Apple let you put whatever kind of fish in there you want?
Only certified Apple fish Airs.
Ifish.
Ifish Fin is not included that you have to buy that separately.
This is totally related. Did I ever tell you guys my favorite dad joke? What do you call a fish with no eye?
Yeah, that's pretty good.
I just got a Dremel this morning because I don't know what it's going to be helpful with bookbinding, but I'm. Oh, yeah, Find out. Hopefully not lose a finger.
I mean, honestly, probably pretty good for drilling holes if you need something more than an awl could do.
Yeah, like the sanding features.
Yes, sanding, polishing.
I'm probably gonna hurt myself, so I'm gonna order some of those armor gloves, and they're only using for shucking oysters, so.
Yeah, you can buy a crap ton of attachments for it. So you can do so much with a Dremel.
Yeah, this one came with a lot of cool stuff and a light that's built into it.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Swoon.
That'd be handy. I have a Dremel. The only thing I use it for is grinding down my dog's nails, so that's. Oh, the only thing I've ever used it for, so. Works well for that, you should do
a DIY Dremel podcast offshoot called Dremelable Grindable.
Grindable.
That's a different thing. It's an After Dark episode. All right, that is my fresh points. Tim, how about you?
The first one, the thing I was going to bring up, I've already kind of talked about everything about it, but the tri. Rex, I was just going to talk about that. And I had reached out to you guys about this because we alluded to this earlier, but it's one of those. It's always a fun experience when you have so many freaking pencils everywhere for you to have one that you've had for years, and then suddenly it just jumps right into your face, and it's like, this thing's amazing. This is one of my new favorites. You know, that's always like a fun, fun experience, and I've just really been enjoying that. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna leave it There. I don't really have anything else to add besides what we talked about earlier. But I just, I love the shape of it. I love the feel of it. And it's kind of the best of both worlds of the jumbo and the triangle. Triangular. But also it doesn't look like a child's pencil, I guess. I guess that's kind of a bonus. And I, I was also, there's a practical application too because I saw it, I loved it. And I also thought about the, the way our school's set up is that I'm always. I move around throughout the day. I'm not in like the same location. And we have these little basically like flat topped podium kind of things that is supposed to act as our desk while we're in that space. And aside from black wings, pencils just roll off of them all the time. So this one's nice because it's got a nice flat side on it. So I can just set it down and it's not going to run away from me. But yeah, and I, I ordered some on, I got a dozen on Amazon and I want to say it was only eight bucks. So a really good deal for a really good pencil. The. It has a larger core and it's. When I sharpen it with the electric sharpener. Gosh. The tip is. I mean it's a half an inch long. Like the graphite is got to be close to a half an inch long. I mean it's super long.
Oh, did you get. You got a school. The Exacto School Pro also the one
that you had and recommended. Yeah, that's got like the sick. It's got like the dial with the six different holes and it's huge. Yeah. I mean, I love this.
Love it.
It's right there. I see.
Yeah.
And you could put a, you could put a sharpener on the end of your dremel and just like, oh my
gosh, I'm gonna use the sanding feature now. I'm just gonna start sharpening my pencils with a dremel.
I can blame erasable Workman's comp.
Yeah. Well, over the years we've, we talked a lot about bullet journaling and I've voiced how much I hate it at times. And then I voiced. But I voiced how much I need it at times. And recently I told you guys I was gonna try it again and I was doing it in a slate blackwing slate, like dot grid, notebook and was just knew I needed to have something to organize myself. And that one seemed flexible enough. I was like, I'm trying again. And I was liking it. Okay. But then I would always just get away from it. And then I had just a really dumb obvious epiphany, which was to use a pocket notebook with graph paper in it and just keep my bullet journal in pocket notebooks, which I just had never. Which is not. I mean, it's not like some groundbreaking idea, but it's been perfect. And so I always have it like in my pocket and I'm. I've got one right now. It's in my hand. I've got a National parks. Which one is this? This is. Where does it say Great podcasting right now? Which one is. Where does it say. I know it says somewhere in here. Oh, on the friggin front. Arches National Park. I just saw a national park memo book. The dyslexia was kicking in.
So.
Yeah. And so I've been keeping a bullet journal in a pocket notebook and I don't do. So basically what ends happening is that I, I do the whole month. I'm not doing a lot of the tracking stuff because that was just getting. I just didn't need that right now. I made a key. I did the month tracker for the whole month. And then I keep my daily notes on one page and then if it goes on to the next page, I let it go onto the next page. And I always leave one full page open for a micro journal about the day at the end of the day. I don't do that every day, but I'm really liking the setup and it's helping me stay organized and not miss as many deadlines and paying my water bill and stuff like that. And also like my favorite thing about bullet journaling now is just my brain is just. I just am like always foraging for things to watch, things to read, things to listen to. And this is just a really fun way to kind of over the course of a day, look back and be like, oh gosh, I thought about five different things that I wanted to look into and that's been my favorite part to just at the end of the day be like, oh gosh. Yeah, I forgot to look in that. Like right now I look at it and it says the Power of the dog. Or Power of Dog. I don't remember what the title is, but have you heard of this movie? A western that's on Netflix, made for Netflix, has Benedict Cumberbatch in it. That came out recently.
We saw the trailer of that. That looks really good.
Yeah. So I'm gonna watch that tonight. So this is just a way for me to not forget everything.
So what you're saying is, you're right. You're not writing it down to remember it now. You're writing it down to remember it later.
You know, that's good. That's really good. I'm gonna put that in my bullet journal. Hang on a second.
Yeah.
You could make a note to let Johnny know how that movie is.
I will. I will do that. I will do that. I'm going to watch it tonight once the children are asleep. Yeah, it seems like it's going to be. It's going to be cool. It's kind of. I get the vibe of like, Assassination of Jesse James kind of movie. Like a slow sort of ambient kind of Western feel, which is right up my alley. Really excited about that. And. Yeah, so this is. This has just been a really good system for me to make my bullet journaling just less precious enough that I keep up with it. And it's like always on my. On me. When I'm doing it in a notebook, I feel I don't know what it is. It's just I'm constantly wanting to make sure that it's, like, perfect where when it's in a pocket notebook, it's just kind of pure utility. Like, just go for it and use it and get stuff down. So I like it. And the last thing I have. And I honestly don't remember how I ended up here at this place, but I ended up on a website or an art. I don't know if it's an article or like a search function within the Smithsonian Institute. And it is a page that just says pencils in the Smithsonian. And so they have. Everything in the Smithsonian is archived beautifully and good pictures and descriptions by archivists and all that. And this page, I think it's actually an article. It's because it's like their Spotlight section, but it's a whole thing about the pencils that are in the Smithsonian collection. And I'm not gonna run through everything that I see. This is fascinating. It is super fascinating. And there's some stuff like there's like a pencil block in there that looks very Mike Dudek ish. So he better lawyer up, because I think somebody's gonna come after him. No, but it's a little different. Actually has like a rounded. It's like a bunch of holes for pencils, and then there's a sort of rounded slot. And I don't even know what that's for. I haven't looked into that one. But it is definitely worth digging through and just exploring because there's a lot of cool stuff, old stuff, new stuff, there's blue stuff, green stuff. Yeah. I think some of my favorites that I was going to mention that are in here. One is there is this combination retractable pen and pencil that if you're on the page, you guys, it's towards like it's right on the first page. You should see. And it is from. See how old it is? Late 18th century. And it's silver. And it has what looks like a combination lock at the top, which is for keeping track of the date. Like you. You twist these around to keep track of. Yeah. What day it is, which is really awesome. And again, it's a pen and a pencil. So it's also a cool artifact in that. That it's 200 years old and can do some pretty amazing stuff. So it's really cool. But it is just kind of a wormhole to get lost in. So that. That's one of my favorites. The other one. The other ones. There are two others I was going to mention. Right at the top, there's one from Venus Pencils. It's the. It says the Venus Pencils perfect pencil. And it's basically a bullet that's like a refillable bullet pencil from Venus that I had never heard of. And I think it came with pencils in all different grades. So you can swap out. It's like basically half size pencils and all these grades with this brass looking holder. So you just pop in whatever you want. You can actually see the. The slit in the metal. It can't be brass. It's obviously something much softer than that. But it looks just like the pencil extenders we have now, like the CW1 and all that. So that one's very cool. I was very excited about that. And then the other is down below, there is a box of five slate pencils.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah. And this is 19th century as well. And these are just straight, unwrapped graphite. That's free. You know, it's in the Early Office Museum, apparently, which is someplace that I
need to go there.
Yeah, yeah, I want to go to there.
So those pencil boxes that are over on the right from there are in the Air and Space Museum in Chantilly where they have the SR71 and the Enola Gate. I have a picture of those from last time I was there.
Yeah, the limberg ones. Yeah, those are very cool. So it is a wormhole and there's a lot there, like you can just keep expanding the page down below and it'll show you more and more. I just saw a Hoover for president pencil that's been cracked in half, which cracks me up that it's there at all. So, yeah, that was a fun, fun lunch. I was like over lunch, I was just kind of scrolling through these and kept clicking. Show more, show more. And there's old school pencil sharpeners that are basically just a flat stick with, you know, speaking of our dremel with a sandpaper on them. Cool stuff. So check that out if you've got some time to kill and want to look at some cool old. And that's all I got is good talking to you guys. I missed your voices. And we were all so busy over the holidays that even it was hard to keep up with each other over text and stuff because all of us were just all over the place and doing a million things. And it's good to kind of get back in the swing of things.
I somehow made it to Indiana and back without getting Covid, which I think was just like a miracle. Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
I mean a good.
Yeah, yeah.
Well done.
Well, not just a miracle. You're careful.
Yeah, that's true.
You're supposed to do.
I like to imagine you doing like neo style, like dodging bullets like in the, in the airport. You mean people are sneezing? Yeah, people are. You mean.
I'm telling you, when you're finished, you won't have to.
Yeah, no, Andy, when you're vaccinated, you won't have to.
Sneezes are just flying over your shoulder. Little kids sneezing on the airplane.
Quadruple vax.
It was fine.
Do you hear about that guy in India who says that he's had 12 vaccines? Yes.
And he thinks it's curing every. Like all the other maladies.
He wants more. He's like, my back doesn't hurt anymore and all this stuff. Yeah, he's like. Isn't he like 75 or something?
Something like that, yeah.
That's amazing. All right, well, yeah, let's wrap this up and it's good to be back on our schedule and it's good to. Good to talk to you guys.
Yeah.
So Johnny, where can people find you on.
You can find my website@pencil revolution.com on social media at Pensolution. And I just figured out you can re. You can type in Etsy addresses differently, so it's pencil revolution.etsy.com.
oh, nice.
So handy.
Yeah, that's useful.
Nice.
How about you, Andy?
I'm @andy WTF and Instagram and Twitter as at Awelfley. How about you Tim?
You can find me on Twitter imwassom and I'm on Instagram @timothywassom. If you want to support the podcast, you can find us on Patreon at Erasable Us Patreon. We've got extra content on there. We're going to be doing one of those soon. Our pen podcast called Indelible that we do, that's just for Patreon supporters. And there are also free gifts that come with different levels of support. So we want to thank our Patreon producers, people who are supporting us at the producer level, that is Matthew Shaven, Andrew Austin, Tara Whittle, Ida Umphurs, David Johnson, Phil Munson, Nathan Raybeck, Donnie Pierce, Bill Black, Miriam Bokout, Diana Oakley, Tom Keakley, Andre Torres, Kyle Paul Moorhead, Ali Sarah Jamelia, Stephen Francali, Aaron Willard, KP Millie Blackwell, Chris L. Hunter McCain, Michael D', Alosa, Jacqueline Myers, Tana Feliz Tana Feliz Sorry Anne Sipe, Joe Crace, Measure Twice, Michael Hagan, Chris Metzkus, Bill Clow Random thanks Jason Dill, Dave McDonald, Mary Collis, Alex Jonathan Brown, Andre Prevost, Kathleen Rogers, Bobby Letzinger, Fourth Letter Kelton Wiens, Scott Hayes, Hans Noodleman, Jay Newton, Chris Jones and John Wood. So thank you so much. Thank you for those who've been supporting us over these last couple years. We appreciate it so much and I always love that part of the episode reading off those names. So thank you so much for your love and support. You can follow the podcast on Instagram Raceable Podcast as well as on Twitter Raceable Podcast. You can join our Facebook group@facebook.com groups erasable and like our Facebook page at facebook.com erasablepodcast take it to rate and review us on itunes or recommend us on overcast or anything you can do that can make us more visible to people who might like to listen. To Such a crazy concept for a podcast to talk about pencils for 175 episodes. So thank you so much for listening. You can find the show notes for today at erasable us175 and we will talk to you in a couple weeks. Do you like our podcast?
Most people like our podcast, but if you like our podcast maybe we'll turn it off.