This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
So everyone has been trying to get me to get a Stanley Quencher, but I did acquiesce. One of these.
Mine is a Microsoft Teams 1. Nobody wants that.
I mean, Owen and I refuse to use them. We use glasses like.
Oh. Like civilized people. They're like.
I'm like, you're drinking out of a bottle. Are you a baby?
Hello and welcome to episode 223 of the erasable Podcast. I'm Andy Welfle. I'm coming to you from the left coast. I'm joined by Johnny Gamber. I'm coming to you from the right coast and not joined by our friend Tim, who's who would have been coming to you from the central coast. He is. We had a sh. Yeah, we had a scheduling conflict today, so he's not able to join us. So with the news cycle going around faster than most of us can keep up with, let's slow down a little bit and talk about some analog pursuits. So we have some fresh points, we have some readings from our, our commonplace books. And as always, if you are joining us, if you're a patron, even at just like a couple bucks a month, you can watch a video of our lovely faces while we talk about things. Maybe we'll even hold up. We know what we're talking about, but also try to describe it to you, to those of you who are just listening to audio. So how are you doing, Johnny?
Hanging in there. How about you?
I'm about, about the same. It's a lot of doom scrolling. A lot of. Yeah, a lot of trying to like self care and keep myself from dreams growing, which isn't always super successful. So I've been, you know, I've been getting the itch to, to figure out how to make some more zines. Like I, you know, I started making the 404 magazine when, when January 6th was happening and I was just like glued to the television and just like needed something to do with my hands and I started just like folding and assembling them. So I feel like I'm. Yeah, just like I need to just do something with my hands for the next four years. Well, great.
And put something cool out into the world.
Yeah, we'll see what we'll see we can do. So before we jump in, since just the two of us, it'll probably be a fairly short one today, but Johnny, any tools of the trade you want to talk about?
Yeah, so speaking of zines, I just finished a book called the bookmakers, which is 18 lives in the Making of Books. So it Includes book binders, typesetters, these sisters who would put illustrations into a Bible, and then it's like, you know, have enormous Bibles and all the way up to the end talking about zines, Even, like, pretty recent scenes. So it's a really cool book for book nerds. There was a chapter about. Are you familiar with the doves type? Oh, so guys, first name Cub Sanderson
was
William Morris's sort of, like, counterpart. Like, the Kel Scott books were so, like, ornate and so much art. So his were really stark and he had this perfect type face. But through, like, legal troubles, he threw them all in the river in London, so they don't have them all.
Oh, yeah, we talked. I. I either read about that or you told me about that or. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. That's really cool. And somebody went on an expedition recently to, like, go find the letters and found a bunch of them.
Yeah, there's. There's a chapter in Mudlarking the Hammersmith one about that. And then apparently the guy who was working on this finish, you can buy it as a font, which is cool. It's really pretty. It's. Yeah. I don't know how good it would look on the web, but, yeah, for printing zines and stuff like that, it'll be really cool.
Yeah, that's cool.
But, yeah, that was a really cool book. It was very. He had a whole thing in there about how you can't make a living as a book binder that you have to do other stuff. There's a big chapter about Shakespeare's first folio. And you know what the circle status of bookbinders in England. And related to that, I've been listening to a lot of White Zombie and Rob Zombie. What the hell are you gonna do? And you're. For walking around. I'm like, well, everything sucks. Just like road work, everything.
How does. Wait, go back. I want you to explain how that relates to book to book binding. Okay.
No, I was like, I'm not making this connection. I read a very calm book and I'm gonna walk to get the kids from school and listen to, like, you know, devil music. That's kind of funny. Yeah. And has a lot of weird samples in it. But my kids are really into lawnmower svu, so I'm, like, watching it nonstop lately. I feel like it's possibly inappropriate, but I forget they're getting older.
Yeah.
Rosie doesn't watch it. And I showed my older two, the Matrix recently because I'm like, hey. Or actually, all three of them. Like, you know, what if the world wasn't real? And they're like, what? So they really liked it. It's really happy.
Yeah. That's where I was in 1999 when I went to see the theater. Just like this.
Yeah, I remember that day. I remember who was there. I remember walking out and being like, oh, my God, I canceled all my plans that night. I gotta go sit.
Great.
And so I. You know, I don't listen to a lot of podcasts, but I got into lore recently, which is like, oh, yeah, so addictive. And I keep saying Harry Marks his name. So I like that.
Yeah. I have a podcast that I recently started listening to I think you might like. It's called the War on Cars, and it's basically about urbanism and biking and it's pretty good. It's not just sort of that they talk to like the. I don't know if you're familiar with the menswear guy on social media. He's like, talks about like, suits and men's clothes. It's like this whole thing, but he manages to frame everything in it. So he, like, talks about politics and he talks about just like, he has these, like, really amazing sort of like takedowns of just like crappy conservative politicians who just like attack him for one reason or the other. And he was on a recent episode of. Of the War on Cars and just talked about like, how walkable neighborhoods and urbanism affects men's fashion. And that was kind of interesting. Yeah. So a lot of stickers. Put that. Yeah, I'll put that in the show notes. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.
Awesome. And I'm sorry that's hard. Like my giant litany evolves stuff. I got you.
I feel like SVU is just like, it's always on some channel. Like.
Yeah, we've been watching on Hulu, so you can like, watch five of them in a row.
My. My ex in laws would always just like, keep the TV on. It was either like, it was one of those, like, acronym shows like SVU or csi, or just one of those shows was always on some random cable channel. Yeah, I've been reading a lot, I think, just trying to, like, you know, stay out of my head and stay out of the news. I reread a few old favorites in the last few weeks. One of my favorites is a book called Sourdough by Robin Sloan, who is a. He's a local author and he's written a bunch of books I've talked about here. But this one is kind of like combining a little Bit of like tiny. Just a touch of science fiction and fantasy with a tech worker who starts making sourdough bread and, and it has sort of like these interesting properties. And she gets. Just opens a booth at a, like an underground farmer's market, which is really fun. And one of the main characters who's maybe not exactly a villain but is basically just like, just not exactly Alice Waters, but not Alice Waters. Alice Waters is the woman who started the Farm to Table movement, like food movement, who has Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Yeah, it was a really good book. It's just like many of his books, it's set in San Francisco so it's really like familiar scenery and sometimes that's just a little cozy, right? Like seeing stories told in places that you're really familiar with. I like that a lot. Have moved on last night actually to Cory Doctorow has a new book that came out yesterday. Cory Doctorow, you know, is, has written so many books. He. This one is called Picks and Shovels and it's part of a small series he's. He wrote about this guy Martin Hinch, who is a forensic accountant. And so he like, he's like a part accountant, part like detective and part like computer hacker. And so it's a lot of like he had a book about like, like taking down like crypto criminals and stuff. And it's a very, it's like a cozy computer thriller maybe. So haven't gotten to the thriller part yet, but that just released yesterday and I had pre ordered on Kindle, so just got that. Speaking. Speaking of Kindle. Well, we can get to that in the fresh points, but I'm going to ask the world for some recommendations to move out, move away from Kindle because A, I don't want to be tied to like Amazon too much, but also B, they're Amazon's taking away your ability to like get books off of Kindle and so they're just trying to like close the ecosystem a little bit more. Not too thrilled with that. So yeah, it's. I'm just looking to see if there's any other good like sort of third party E readers out there. Uh, don't tell Tim because he's, you know, all in on his, his Kindle scribe. Tim, if you're listening, pay no attention to this. Uh, so yeah, just reading that also. Just, you know, I think YouTube knows when I'm stressed, when I'm a little bit my nerves a little bit afraid because this happened like a few years ago when I was going through some personal turmoil. And it's happening now again. It's surfacing content that. Do you ever see those like videos of people restoring old things? Like. Yeah, like just. Oh, here's a. Here's an old like deli meat slicer from the 1920s. And I'm just gonna like restore it. And so there's no words. They just sort of. Yeah, it's very relaxing and very like cozy. And I've been getting YouTube recommendations for that. So I've been watching it. I just watched like a 40 minute video of somebody who was restoring this like old. Gosh, what was it? Like a lighter? Like a, A sailor's like, like lighter, Like. Oh, cool. Don't even know how to say it. But yeah, it was very cool looking and it was. Yeah, it was a lot of fun to watch. So I mean, I wouldn't say it's fun to watch, but relaxing to watch.
Are they showing you stuff like where someone will pull this like rug from like a car maintenance place out onto the driveway?
I've seen that.
And then clean it and you're like,
yeah, just so much dirt comes off of that.
Yeah, like I'm not even doing it. This is satisfying.
Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. I used to watch, I would get a lot of like people who would restore old books, which was really fun. I'm sure you've seen those just like really nasty, beat up books and they would just take out all the signatures and resew them and. Yeah, that was really good. Yeah, it's amazing. And then another good one is people who hand make men's shoes. Oh yeah, that's a good one. It makes me want to buy a pair of like handmade shoes. But also they don't look that comfortable, so maybe not. All right, so that's tools of the trade. Do you have any fresh points for today, Johnny? Yeah.
So first one is pencil related. I am clumsy and I spilled the soda all over my little notebook that we use to write down Minecraft coordinates. And I write in it with a pencil and we wrote in it with a green coconut scented gel pen.
So interesting.
Those are all gone.
I don't know.
Believe it or not, is gel pen.
Did. Did. Did it run? Is it waterproof or did it.
This one was gone. Maybe it's because it was sent it, but I never heard of the brand. We picked it up in Chinatown in Boston. Like it smelled really good. Like when you were using it. My head. He would just sit there sniffing the damn thing.
Sniffing markers, you know? You know right now it's Coconut gel pens. And pretty soon it'll be Sharpies.
So, like, Henry, no screenshots, no pencils. It's gone.
So.
But Henry was using erasable pens at school, and he stopped. He doesn't like them, and he doesn't like mechanical pencils anymore. He's like, I just like pencils. He likes wood ones.
Okay, well, ha ha.
Like, when I tried to get you to like him, you weren't into it, but I guess he's the age where, you know, if I don't say it, he likes it.
Yeah. But.
Yeah. So I. I don't know if I can forward this to people. I did an interview recently with the Potomac chapter of the Guild of Book Workers. Um, Guild of Book Workers is the American organization for printmakers. Bookbinders, anybody who does book stuff. Oh, cool. So then they have a couple of chapters, so I got to do the one for Aris, which is, like, Baltimore, Washington, a little more around there, but it's.
What was the kind of thrust of
your interview, how you got into bookbinding? Well, I think I read a lot of stuff with my family, so it was fun. I actually haven't read it.
Is it mostly, like, people who in there. Is it mostly people who, like, you know, have a bookbinding business just from home, or is it people who, like, work at, like, Random House or something like that? Like what?
Oh, so one of the movers and shakers I had coffee with yesterday, and she works in conservation at Smithsonian, so.
Cool.
So kind of, like, all over.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it was. It was. I don't know how I can email it to you, but I don't know how much or where it is because it's an email thing. But anyway, so Andy and I were talking about this earlier, and, I don't know, a couple weeks ago, I lost my favorite bone folder. If you don't know what a bone folder is, like, you know, this is a plastic one. When you're book binding, it's how you fold stuff. So I started using it. Like, oh, nice.
I got mine right here. This one is actually bone folder. Yeah.
So I'm a vegetarian, so why do I use bone folder? But I had this one. Like, I loved it so much, I bought two backups for it. And then, you know, they're not quite the same. I didn't use them for three years. I lost it and, like, lost my shit for, like, days. Like, tearing up everything, finding it, digging through the trash. I didn't get in the dumpster, but I did do that. Once when I lost my favorite ruler and I found it. But, like, the only thing I could figure out is, you know, the world's going to crap and what else are you going to freak out about? Like, I can't forget about that because then it's just, you know, existential issues. I have a trans kid. Like, that's frightening. So I just freaked out about that instead. And then took up a little bit of wood carving and I made an. A red oak folder, which is like carving a rock. I didn't realize at the time.
What did you use to carve it?
Oh, I can't reach it. I used a kiridashi knife, those Japanese knives that are only beveled on one side. So you could shave my hand with it. And when I was finished, you could still shave my hand with it.
Oh, wow.
But I can't pick it up. It's drying. It's been polyurethane. So, like, evidently they used to be required for all Japanese school children to sharpen their pencils.
Okay.
Before pencil sharpeners. And they're really nice for sharpening a pencil.
They're perfect. Is it the. I can't remember, are they the ones that, like, they. They fold up and they're like. There's a special one that, like, I think they used to sell it on pencils.com for pencil sharpening.
Oh, I forgot what that's called. Let me grab this. Sorry, Folks at home. So you can get ones with handles, but usually they're just.
Oh, cool. Oh, yeah, I've seen those before. Just sort of like a solid piece. It's actually kind of shaped like a bone folder itself, but yeah, it's handmade.
Not that expensive. Like, 25 bucks.
Mess.
But they're like. I always used my number six opponel for pencil sharpening. This is vastly superior. Like, it's really kind of crazy how you can get the perfect line without this. Pick one up is really fun.
Yeah.
But yeah, like, I've been spending a lot of time making stuff and I have a big commission for a local university to make 50 of the same book. So I'm just kind of staying easy.
Oh, yeah.
And yeah, all booked by man.
You're just like. I remember when you were just like, just brand new to this and you were just like, oh, yeah, Just a hobby. I'm trying it out and all of a sudden you're just like, oh, yeah, I have a big commission for 50 from a university.
Well, I've done work for them a couple times, so it's like yeah, Third or fourth time I've done it, but they keep getting a little bigger, which is good.
Yeah. Where does. When are you going to start renting your own like workshop to like do all this stuff in?
I really want to get a studio, but I think all, all the money I make would pay for it. Although it'd be worth it. It's already fun that like, you know, I have a bank account for supplies. I'm like, oh man, the paper I like's on sale. I can buy as much of it as I want.
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, right. And then I wind up, you know, using store bought notebooks because you get paralyzed by choice.
Yeah, I get it.
But I'm curious to hear about the Black Wing 11 because haven't got mine yet.
Okay.
I mean, not that you should talk about that first.
No, that's fine.
Those are all of my fresh ones.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, let's talk about the Black Wing 11. I'm trying to remember. Okay, so catch people up. I think that, I think it's since we last recorded, but I have deactivated my Facebook and Instagram account and. Well, I didn't just deactivated it, they're deleted. Like they're gone and oh, whoa. One of the things it takes a month, it takes 30 days. And I think two days ago, three days ago was when 30 days hit. So got deleted. So one of the big things I was sad about and something that, you know, kept me on there for years was the erasable group. And finally I was just like, I, oh wait, we did talk about this because I linked to the Discord, which I'll put another link. I started a erasable discord and it's still very small. Still trying to figure out Discord. But we did do our like, you know, quarterly when blackwing said, like, oh, hey, here's the new volume and here's the number. We started our rampant speculation and I don't think anybody quite got the quite got this theme. I certainly didn't because it's sports related. But the Blackwing 11 just came out and I'm holding it up to the camera now. And what is it? It's a soft pencil. It's black and sort of like dark green. It has a dark green eraser, black feral and a gold clip. And it has at the very bottom, it's kind of hard to see. Do that autofocus thing. It says, God, what does that say? 56. Let me grab the box real quick. I forgot to bring that into the shot. But it is It's Bill Russell, basketball player, celebrating his achievement and just kind of his participation in civil rights. He's a black player, a fearless advocate for equality. He was a vocal leader off the court, standing with civil rights icons like Dr. Martin Luther King and Muhamma. So this is a tribute to him. It is. You know, I think we talk about this every time. There's a soft pencil that's really, like a soft black wing that's released, but I keep forgetting how much I like them. I never use them except for when I'm, like, trying out the new volumes, and they're just. The soft is really delightful. Like.
Yeah, I still think it's my fave.
Yeah. I think Firm is my favorite. That's the one I use the most, at least. But, like, it's just so buttery and nice to write with. So. I don't know, aesthetic, like, thematically, I appreciate it, but I am not a sports person, so I. I think I appreciate other ones more. That being said, like, yeah, he seems like an interesting guy. I read the, like, little. They had, like, a little Zini as the subscriber extra. And I will say that this is not just a. A foil wrap. Like, this is. This has that sort of, like, soft touch coating on it that makes it just nice and smooth. Kind of like the Golden Gate bridge pencils. And then at the bottom, like, where they have the, like, the Jersey letter, it's a little bit more. A little bit more glossy, so it just, like, feels a little bit different. Gives it a tiny bit of grip. Trouble is is like two more sharpenings and that'll be gone. So they put it just way down there at the bottom. So I'm. Yeah, I'm a. Like, thematically, like, it's not my cup of tea, although I do appreciate it. They're sort of like, design execution of the themes pretty good, I think. It's not, like, super. There's not, like, little basketballs or something on it. And, yeah, it's somewhere. For me, it's somewhere in the middle of, like, you know, some of their themes.
So.
Big fan of that. So that is the black 11. Yeah.
I appreciate when they. They do ones that aren't, you know, a musician or a writer, but still somebody who's really interesting. Cool story.
Yeah.
When they go back to the stories part.
Yeah. Yep. I'm trying to. I'm trying to figure out I should know what team he played with. I can't figure that, but I'm sure it's. Maybe it's in the Sports magazine. Oh, Boston Celtics. Okay. That's it. Yeah. So that's why it's that kind of green and black color. Yeah. So that is the Blackwing 11. Just got that I think mid last week. I think it came in. So surprise. Yours is running so late.
Yeah, we haven't had mail in a while for the holiday and stuff. We had a lot of bad weather recently. Okay.
It's probably fine. Don't worry about it. Another cool thing we did a couple weeks ago that was really fun was in San Francisco. We had a rare book fair. And that was really interesting that I think you. I don't know. Have you ever been to a rare book fair? I assume that they.
No, I've been to some rare bookstores. Not a fair.
Yeah, it was really cool. They had people from all over the world. We had like, things where like, they had like first edition copies of like the Hobbit that they were selling for like $45,000. And they had. Yeah. And they had like everything from that to like pages or layouts from like illuminated manuscripts that they were selling for like $400,000. Like, wow. In like the 1400s or whatever they had. Yeah, just like early examples of printing presses. They had a really cool. I took a picture of it. I'll try to put it in the show notes. But they, they did a really. They had a really neat, like, pocket notebook that belonged to like a Victorian lady that had a little cutout for. For a little loop for a pencil. And that was really cool. Here it is. I'm going to hold it up to the camera, but I'll try to put some pictures in the show notes. They let me just put a. Oh, neat. Yeah. Put a picture of it. And so there was a little. It came with a little tiny pencil. It's hard to see. Yeah, that had a little like, ball on the end and it just kind of fit right in there. So. Yeah, just really so much neat stuff like that. I, I went, I mean, to look at that. But then also speaking of bone folders, the San Francisco Zine Fest had a little table there and they're just a few Fuel Disney. And they had, they were selling. I bought one cause it's so cool. A 3D printed bone folder. Oh, that's cool. Just plastic. And it has the San Francisco Zine Fest like, logo on it. It's not like super great as a folder, but it's a really good little, like, takeaway.
Did you like, sand it down a little?
Probably, yeah. I think. Yeah. It's hard to see the kind of rough edges but like, like many 3D printed objects. You can kind of, kind of hear the like the ridges. But it's. Yeah, it was fun. It's not. Definitely not a replacement for a bone folder but. Or a red oak folder. I also, I guess in the last few weeks I can't. I don't even know where I was getting this content from but I was, I. I bought a few vintage pencils from some random people. Are you familiar Johnny, with the pencil grocery? I. I can't remember. I think I saw it. Oh yeah, I was doing something on the erasable Instagram account which is still active and I saw a. This French Conte branded vintage pencil that they had called an Indiana hb. It's hard to see here. And so I'm just like I'm from Indiana and so I bought this from the, the pencil grocery people who are really cool and they. I bought. I think I bought the rest of what they had and they sent me the box which was really cool.
Oh cool.
Yeah. And I think I picked up a few other things which I don't have in front of me but from their Etsy store. I'll have a link to it in the show notes. But yeah, very nice people. They sent me a nice little note kind of accompany it. So it was. Yeah, it was really fun. So the Indiana pencil is not, not that great of a pencil but it's fine. It's old. It has a cool like writing on the side of it. It's a little scratchy like you know many kind of vintage HB pencils are. But yeah, I just think it's neat to have. Have an Indiana pencil. I also, God, I don't even remember why I was there. I think I was just bored one night and I bought a load from John Morris from his Etsy shop including something that had been looking for a long time but I guess I haven't been looking for too hard which is the pentel Black Polymer 999 which is a pencil that like a lot of people love. And I've just. For whatever reason I've never gotten one or tried one and I still haven't. I should sharpen it up and try it out. But he. I got a bunch of other cool stuff too. I got that. I actually ordered the like they didn't have the HB black polymer. They only had the H and the two H and so I ordered those but he had an HB that he threw in which is cool. So got those also ordered Some really cool old, vintage, old vintage. Tombow had some neat looking tombs here. My favorite thing that I got was this old like Tombow writing set. It's. I'm sorry, this is a Mitsubishi Uni writing set. It is Mitsubishi Uni white and it comes with a bunch of pencils. I think they're all the same grade. They're all HB with different colors and then just like a little polymer eraser on the end of it. How neat. So I'm debating whether or not to open these up and actually use them or just leave them nice and pristine in this case. But we'll see.
What do the, the ends look like? Are they dipped with a little plastic pin?
Yes they are. They are tipped just like paint tipped. And yeah, I love these holding this up to the camera. Like the ferals are. Well not the ferals but the, the capped ends are. Are striped and each one has a different, slightly different color. So there's a. Actually weirdly there's two blue. There's blue, green, red, orange, yellow. And I like how it says. It says Ooni in it but I don't know if you can see this Johnny. They're in quotes. It's like Ooni pencils. So I like that they do. And I got some other cool. Just old tombows. And here's a fun one. It has a. This is. Includes a Yumi Matsutoya Love wars pencil. This one on the bottom here.
Oh neat.
Don't know what that is. So I just kind of just went through his shop and was like oh that looks interesting. That looks interesting. And yeah, so can always count on John Morris to have cool. Just cool vintage Japanese pencils. So I feel like I think that
pencil could be prophetic. Like that's what's coming. The Love War.
The Love Wars. Oh God. Well mouth in a good way of a pencil.
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah. Link to both the pencil grocery and to John's Etsy shops in the comments. If and I imagine many of us know, you know, know John Morris already but you know it's a good shop. Speaking of a Gus online shops, our friend Gary Varner no Geist is once again shutting down. I don't know if this is for real this time because I feel like it kind of starts up and shuts down. But you know he was living a nomadic life for a while so I get it. But I also bought. He had a few Blackwing collab singles that I've always just. I kind of wanted to try so I just didn't. What are the green ones. It was the Blackwing X. Gosh, what are those?
I don't know.
Yeah, I should be getting them today. I can talk about them next time. But I ordered some of those. And then I also. He's always had. And I've never. I felt for some reason only bought them from him, but he sells, like, single plastic sleeves to put, like, field note singles in. And I think they're just baseball card holders or something. But I. Yeah, I ordered some of that just to keep some old, black, old notebooks in. So. Yeah. So wish you luck, Gary. I hope everything goes well and I don't know, maybe we'll see no geist again. I don't know.
We were chatting about bookbinding, so he's still gonna sell stuff that he makes.
Okay.
Make pocket notebooks and stuff.
He's done. I think I bought one of his earlier. Like, one with, like, an embroidered cover. It was really nice. It says limited series. Yeah. Yeah, those are really nice. So that's that haul.
Yeah. He said his back hurts and they're like, bookbinding hurts your back. Oh, I wish you luck, Carrie.
Yeah.
Maybe he has better posture than I do.
Yeah.
Not always very careful.
Yeah. Just punched over the table. What else did I get? Oh, yeah. I spent some time going through my pressed penny collection, which I know I've talked about here before, and I just sorted them out and I. I have. I have a bunch of press pennies if anybody. Ooh. If anybody wants to do a press penny trade, hit me up. I. A bunch of ones that I don't. I'm not gonna use for trade. But I. I can't remember if I showed you this, Johnny. This is something I found on Amazon a while ago, but it's basically I would. I was noticing that all of my, like, press penny, like, little books that you get just didn't hold enough. And I was like, I need, like, several of these. But then I found an Amazon. Somebody made a, like, a traveler's notebook style penny book. And so it looks like this. Oh, wow. And the pages that. It has these really. It has these inserts that you can put your press pennies in. Um, I'm showing this to the camera right now.
Awesome.
Yeah. And so you can just. If you wanted to, you could just buy these inserts and just like, use your own traveler's notebook to put them in, which is pretty neat. I've been trying to figure out there's a cool way to, like, combine pennies and a notebook. But yeah, so I have something like this. And I think I mentioned on here before about how there is a penny, like a press penny membership site, sort of like the American Pencil Collectors Society. There's really. Yeah, it's called E C. It's the Elongated Collector. Cause they call them elongated. And there was this guy who was advertising this and he was making this, and I was like, what is that? And so what I have right here is it's a little wooden thing that has like a little curved piece that kind of goes up and down on pegs. And the thing that I learned was, you know, many pennies, when you get them from. From like the machine are slightly curved like this. And you. If you want to put it in the book, you need to flatten it. So you put that in. You put that in here and you go, boop. And then it flattens your penny out. It is the most.
That's so satisfying.
Silly thing. But I got one for myself and one for my mom for her birthday. So that was.
That's cool.
Yeah. So thank you. Thank you to Ron Sisk for. For making and selling me one of those. That was really fun. I also got a cool little, like, you know, these little, like, tiny toolboxes, these Japanese Toya toolboxes. That's. This is now all my press penny
crap is how much does that weigh?
Kind of. I mean, it's not an insignificant amount. It's like, it's fairly heavy.
That's cool. You put it on a string, defend yourself with it.
Yeah. Last fresh point I'll mention was something I just saw yesterday, and you were talking about that guy who just was kind of investigating the old typefaces that got thrown into the TAMS hundreds of years ago and restoring it. And I just. I just remembered just a really great blog post I read yesterday by a guy named Marcin Witchery, who is a type designer for Figma. And he wrote a book that I think we've talked about here called Shift Happens, which is just a huge volume about keyboards, the history of keyboards. Oh, cool. And he wrote just this and coded just this incredible little experience about this font, this typeface called Gorton G O R T O N. And I think that we're all. We've all seen it and we're all familiar with it. It's basically like the font that you see on etched plaques and like little, like, plaques and doorways and like, old mechanical keyboards, like from the. The 40s through the 70s and just kind of all over the place. And he just talks about how, like, he sees it Everywhere. And he just really digs into the history of it, which is really cool. And it's basically, it's a font that wasn't meant to be, like, pressed into paper. It was a font that was meant to be, like, etched with a machine, like with a router. So there's a lot of, like, specific things about it that like, makes it able to, like, makes it be able to do that. Right. So, yeah, really great. I'll have this as a link in the, in the show notes, but it's called the hardest Working Font in Manhattan. And Marcin, like, if ever you've like, like look this guy up on YouTube and see some of his talks. He's kind of like an amazing writer. He's an amazing designer. He's a really good, like, developer. He's a great. He's a great coder. English isn't even his first language. I think he's. I think he's Polish. But yeah, he's just an incredible guy. I've always wanted to get him on this show to talk about his book. Maybe we can make that happen. But yeah, he. My, my favorite. Like, I was attending his talk at the Figma design conference called Config, and he was talking about like, pixel fonts like you might see in video games. And he basically, while he was there, he had like everybody, like with their phones scan a QR code and go to the website. And he was like, hey, draw a capital letter A or whatever. And everybody like, with this like 12 by 12 pixel grid. And so everybody drew an A and then live while he was talking, like, you submitted this font or you submitted this like, drawing that you made and it's sort of like compiled it from the thousands of audience members into sort of like the statistically average A that somebody drew. It was amazing. Yeah, it was really cool how he pulled that off. So this is, yeah, just like everywhere. He has like a really great, like, just amazing photos. And at the bottom he has this cool little interactive, like, thing that lets you type into a Gorton typeface. So, yeah, that is it for my fresh points. What did you link to, Johnny? Etsy Stainless steel. Ooh, it's a stainless steel folder.
Ooh, yeah, I used it more than I should. It's awesome.
I like how it. So Johnny linked me to on Etsy. This leather supply company has a bone folder. Well, it's not a bone folder, it's a stainless steel folder. And yeah, it's lovely. Has a little. I like how it has a little eyelid in it. It Just looks like a big like needle or something.
Yeah, it's actually like the best scorer I have because bone, you know, tends to wear away so quickly.
Yeah, like Teflon, but yeah, I like that. Cool. Should we move on to commonplace? The common. That's a good name for the commonplace. Here we are. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to go first?
Sure. So I'm working on typesetting resistance to civil government, which is also known as civil disobedience by Thoreau. His famous. It's not anti government, but it's, you know, the found. I mean, sort of the foundation of the idea in American letters that what's right is not always what's legal and that, you know, as a person of conscience, you might have a responsibility to break the law. So it's really hard to find a
section not relevant at all.
Yeah, so this is a part. I guess this is toward the middle of the beginning, or the beginning of the middle, where he's talking about like giving your entire self to society and not just, you know, being the benefactor who throws money around. So he writes, how does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer that he cannot, without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization is my government, which is the slave's government. Also, all men recognize the right of revolution. That is the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the revolution of 75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because attacked certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I could do without them. All machines have their friction, and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine and the oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty or slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army. And he goes on to talk about how, you know, he thinks of government as an expedient, that government's only necessary basically because people are jerks and if people wouldn't be jerks, we wouldn't need them. So he.
But they are. We do.
It's like I would advocate for that government, which government's not at all. And when we're ready for it, that's what we get.
Okay.
But you know, it's not an error.
So you're thinking about printing some pamphlets of this, some little zines and.
Yeah, I think I'm going to do some zine versions and like scatter them around then make some fancy versions to pay for making the zine versions.
Nice. Hopefully. Nice. Is it. I assume that's in public domain. Oh yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Definitely. It's been a long time. Yeah.
I'm not good at typesetting this.
It's taking me a long time. When you say typesetting, just, just lay layout, like.
Yeah. And pagination for like multiple signatures.
Like what do you use for that kind of thing for layout?
I used to just use Google Documents and Trial and Error but this is like way too big for that. So I actually don't know yet. Probably LibreOffice has a tool might try that out.
Try. There's a really good. So Adobe InDesign which is like, you know, professional layout tools. It's great. I use it but like it's really overblown for like most things. There is a program called affinity publisher publisher 2 and that is like a Photoshop competitor. I think they're owned by canva at this point but it's a lot cheaper. It's a one time purchase and it's good for. I think it's good for just sort of like layout onto like multiple sheets of signatures and it. If I remember correctly you can export to. You can like set the number of pages in a signature and export it to like to do that just kind of automatically. So I'll send you, yeah. A link to. Let's see, publisher to Texting. Texting you this link. Jenny.
Yeah, I was. I typeset walking one time but I did it the long way so every time I had an issue I had to redo the whole damn thing. Oh no, that's why I never made it.
Yeah.
One of those things are use technology more.
Yeah. And did, did you write this in your commonplace book or did you do this in a. I did, but I
was reading it off the screen because I'm lazy.
Oh, that's right. I had a couple, couple Short ones here. One was a poem that I like. God, I think I just ran across it on social media, but somebody posted it, and it was pretty. Just pretty flooring. Like, it's not specifically relevant to, like, me and my divorce, but there's a few things in there that just. Just kind of rang true just a little bit. So it is. It is this. It is called the Day of Our Divorce Hearing by Ruth Lepson. And it goes like this. You treated me to lunch, a spaghetti place. We had never been so kind to each other. When you said, I'm still a slob, we laughed. After lunch, we stood in the parking lot. You said, you have the last word. But I said, no, I'm tired of being the one who sums things up. You get the last word, but you couldn't think of one. So off you went in our silver car, I to our red one. It's three years later, and even that's just a story now. Lately, I don't feel as if I lived with you, but I remember our kindness that day when it no longer mattered. So that was. And I guess the other one was very short and simple, was actually while I was reading that sourdough book. So it's about this woman who moves from Michigan to California to San Francisco to work at this tech job. And she said, I crashed into the verdant vertical shock of California. I was agog. Southeastern Michigan is flat, almost concave. Here was a world with a z axis. And that was. It's a very simple quote. And it, I think, really resonated with me because I felt the same way coming from Indiana, you know, which is a very flat land, and you can drive and not see the horizon where. Or you can see to the horizon. Right? Like, whereas, like, when you drive around here, and, I mean, plenty of places at the east coast as well, right? There's mountains, there's topography, and you can kind of, like, orient with that a little bit more. Like, if I'm, you know, if I'm facing north, I know that I will see, you know, hills on the left and flatness on the right. Right. Something like that. So it's all of a sudden you have topography and hills and things. And that's something that I'm, like, 10 years later still kind of getting used to. So that's. That struck me. So, yeah, that is. That's our commonplace. So just as a reminder, we are keeping a commonplace book with quotes and things that interest us, and we're going to, like, you know, take some time out in Every show to. To read them. So. Oh, what do you have? Oh, it is something off the shelf. Okay.
It needs. Yeah, it needs to be beat up a little. It doesn't go anywhere.
Throw that in your bag. Just throw it around.
Chuck it across the room.
Yeah.
How strong is that binding?
Anything else before we wrap up, Jenny?
No. Thanks folks for hanging in with us when our schedule, our publishing schedule's been a little off.
Yeah, it's been a little.
I mean, I think.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So, yeah. Thank you so much. I gosh. I guess some of our social media properties have changed and updated, so I'll try to just like give everybody a quick reminder about that. So we do still have a Facebook page and a Facebook group that's facebook.com the erasablepodcast or/groups. Erasable to join that group. But also if you are not a user of meta products or want something else, we have a Discord and I will put that link to that discord in the show notes. Come hang out with us there. Learn how to use Discord like I've been. We have a bluesky account which is bluesky.com erasable us basically a non Twitter Twitter clone not run by billionaires yet. And then of course we have a Patreon and if you, if you are on one of our patrons on Patreon, you can watch a video of this recording and if you're not for any amount of monthly contribution or you can also watch it. So go to patreon.com erasable for that. Speaking of Patreon, we have several subscribers who. Subscribers patrons who Support us at $10 a month or more. Also, if you do a yearly support, you can get like a 10% discount and get still be at the same level. So those folks are Mikhail Tuzikoff, John Schoder, Ellen Mack Tucker, Dana Morris, Liz Rotundo, Melissa Miller, Angie Erin Bollinger, Millie Blackwell, Michael Diallosa, Tana Feliz, Ann Sipe, Chris Metzkus, Mary Kalis, Kathleen Rogers, Ida Umphurs, David Johnson, Phil Munson, Tom Keakley, Andre Torres, Paul Moorhead, William Modlin, John Cappellouti, Steven Fonsale, Aaron Willard, Hans Noodleman. Sorry, Dr. Hans Noodleman and John Wood. Thank you so much everybody for supporting the Racebowl podcast and thank you for listening and we'll see you again soon, hopefully with Tim in tow. Thanks, Johnny. Do you like our podcast? Most people like our podcast, but if you like our podcast, David will turn it off.