This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
We should make like a black wing pill organizer that like matches this. You just.
That would actually be really cool.
Canisters just be like, oh, this is my artisanal pill organizer.
Hello and welcome to episode 225 of erasable, everyone's favorite podcast about pencils, notebooks and pencil related things. It's May. We've made it to May. It's been over 100 days.
Justin Timberlake happened.
Yes. He was supposed to be here. We couldn't. Yeah, we couldn't meet his writer. We didn't have the right snacks available for him. I'm Tim Wasem on hosting duties and joined as always. I say as always, but sometimes we mix it up. But like the best times are always when all three of us are here with Andy and Johnny. So. Hey, guys, how's it going?
Hello.
Hey.
Hey. We're a little late today recording this, so we might keep it a short one because my building fire alarm went off when we were start to. Starting to record. So that was fun. But nothing's on fire. I'm back.
So I'm still amazed. We couldn't hear it over. Zoom. Oh, you couldn't hear it at all.
Oh, it was like ear ringing to me. Wow.
Yeah, no, like the background noise filter. I always. Yeah, jeez. Like dogs barking and like you can't hear them at all. But yeah, it happens. But yeah, we're here to just kind of catch up. We've got some topics we're gonna go over, but it's mainly a fresh points episode. Gonna kind of update each other on a few things, but let's start with Tools of the Trade. And Johnny, why don't you start us out? Sure.
So for consuming, I finally read where the Crawdads Sing, which everyone else in the world read but me. And like, I think it sucked, but I also liked it. It's one of those things where like, it's kind of garbage. But I enjoyed reading it.
I didn't read it.
So it.
I guess on the last one, like,
literary version of like a Hallmark movie experience, they made a movie. Terrible.
Yeah, the movie like flopped. I haven't seen it.
Yeah, it looked creepy.
But there's some like, apparently the. The author is problematic. She sort of want it for. She's wanted in a murder case in Africa from the 90s, I think. And it's like, I don't know, the way that they portrayed race and stuff like that. And there was pretty stupid. You can tell, like a privileged white person wrote it. But moving on in the opposite vein, I just finished Damned by Chuck Palanyak of Fight Club Fame, which is a book about a 13 year old daughter of a movie star and a billionaire who goes to hell. And the book is written sort of as like a letter to Satan. And so it's like dear Satan, this is Maddie, blah blah. But he wrote a sequel called Doomed, which he just picked up. But there's supposed to be a third one that is not around. So I hope so because Chuckling. His books kind of go by really fast. You have to go back and look at them again. He's got a lot of interesting things to say about materialism as he often does. And like there's a lot of cool stuff in there about how people do really dumb things and they still die. Just like why? But. So I have a really bad ear infection and I can't hear out of one ear and I'm supposed to stay away from loud noises. So I had to miss the Birthday Massacre who were just here a few days ago. But they have a new album out which is super good if you like super good music. And I also have re reacquainted myself with Pucifer. Have you guys listened to Pucifer before?
I think you mentioned it.
I really don't know who they are,
but yeah, yeah, it's. I think it's Grumpy on side project from Maynard James Keenan. But it's cool because I don't know, he has a lot more control over the music than with Tool. Apparently like Toolboat, just write the stuff and he shows up and does lyrics and same with a perfect circle. But that's cool. And you know, he's mellowed out in old age. I think he's in his 60s now. Seems like a really fun guy. And so for writing. I actually don't have a pencil on me today. Although this morning I was using a really old Ticonderoga from 50s or 60s. It was like perfect when they were heavier and the stamping was just like so crisp. Perfect. But the later part of the morning I was using a pen which was Narwhal Nautilus Ti. It's the new all titanium black one, which is so sexy. And I just started a new bullet journal for May. I got the 2023 artist edition when it came out, but it's. I don't have it right here. It's green with leaves on it. And whenever I need a new bullet journal, it's never leafy season. So it worked out this time to move on into that. So that's all I got. How about you, Andy?
Well, I am. So Eric and I just started watching this really weird little but compelling little Japanese cartoon show called Chikawa. And it looks like one of those very, like, ultra cutesy. Like, there's like, little animals that may be like bunnies or maybe hamsters or maybe bears, but we don't know. And they like, kind of live in this, like, little forest area. And so each episode is one minute long. And there. There's like 200 episodes. We watched the first 50, so like an hour. And so as it goes, like, the first, like, several are just like these little animals that, like, are eating food that just pops up out of the ground. Like, there's a rice cooker bush and there's like takoyaki, like in a tree or whatever, and it just sort of pops up, but goes. They just like drip feed you these little, like, pieces of lore and it, like, starts to get a little bit darker. And like, there's these monsters in the woods that, like, is. It's heavily implied that the monsters used to be like, other, like, little cutesy woodland creatures. And they don't want to attack their friends, but they are compelled to because they turn into monsters. And their village is being run by these, like, people in, like, these like, suits of armor. And like, they get all the woodland creatures get like, money from doing tasks and they can use that to like, buy things from these creatures. So it's sort of like Animal Crossing meets, like, I was going to say. Yeah, but. But also it's like, dark in some ways. So there's this. And then you meet these other characters and there's like this alcoholic, like, honey badger that's also like, very cutesy, but he's always just like, drinking.
So it make Tom much more interesting.
So there's some deep lore and we're not even like, halfway through. So I'll keep watching that. But if you have any, like, kids, it's safe for kids. So if you wanted to just watch some cutesy stuff with one of your young daughters and then just like there's some like, darker stuff in there too. So one of the ways you can earn money is they give you this, like, weapon and you go out and you basically just slay these other animals. But they're like, maybe you're just a little bit traumatized because they used to be your friends. Like, yeah, it's a lot.
Oh, man.
So been watching that. Got a little bit obsessed with that. Also been watching a couple or reading a couple, like, fairly existential dread Laden science fiction novels. So there's one by Ray Naylor, who wrote like the Mountain under the Sea, which is about octopuses. This is called where the Ax is Buried. And it's kind of like a ish nearish future. Kind of like time when all of our government is replaced by AI prime ministers. And yeah, there's like, there's technocrats who kind of run everything and like, yeah, AI governs and they kind of.
Do you people vote for what kind of leader they want?
Oh, there's no voting anymore.
Oh man, that would be crazy.
Anthropic for Claude. Claude or Chat. GPT for President?
Well, no, it's like I'm just thinking of like they're. We're going to create the prime minister out of AI and like the voting is like voting for like qualities that you want them to have or something.
No, we're done with voting.
That's okay.
Yeah, I want him to have a British accent just because.
And there's another one that I've been, I'm in the middle of called When We Were Real, which is. So in this novel, seven years ago it was revealed to mankind that we're all living in a simulation. And there's all of these like glitches throughout the world. And there's some. These people are on this bus tour to visit all of the glitches of North America. So there's like this solid frozen tornado. There's. There's one called the Hollow Sheep which are just like they're sheep but they don't have any like mass on the inside of them. And it's like, it's mostly about the characters who are attending. Like there's a nun who's trying to write a book about what spirituality means if you're living in a simulation. And there's this one guy who's like an engineer and he has brain cancer and this like influencer girl who like is doing just, you know, streaming it for. It's like some guy who has like a conspiracy podcast. So it's very good. Not sure yet where it's going, but I'm enjoying it. And finally, yeah, I am writing in my Birds of North America field notes that I just started with a high class golden sword from Daiso that is just about. At the Steinbeck stage. So just nice little. Just sits right in, right on my palm. So that's it for me. How about you? Tun.
Sweet.
Yeah.
So I have been watching. Well, I've been reading. I'll start. I been reading a Led Zeppelin biography that's like a huge. It's just called Led Zeppelin. It's by Bob Spitz. And I've been listening to it and reading it. And I always. With, like, music biographies. I always, like, skip the part where they're kids. Just like, I don't care. I just really don't care. I'll give it a page or two, but it's like, I just want to hear about, like, the formative. The more formative years. I don't want to hear about, like, their uncle who is in like, a Dixieland jazz band and, you know, taught him how to play banjo one day. But it's very good. And it. And I actually gave this one a shot and, like, read through it and it moved pretty fast. And Led Zeppelin has always been something that I've liked, never been obsessed with. But, like, the more I learn about Jimmy Page, I'm just like, they're pretty unusual group. And, you know, he was doing like, commercial jingles and stuff for years, like recording, like, and doing session work and all this goofy stuff. But then he'd run off and play with the yard birds or whatever. So it's been really, really interesting. Really good. And a good biography are the ones that give you, like, a big list of things to listen to. So I'm just like keeping a list of all the albums that get referenced and stuff that I'd never heard of before. Old blues records. Yeah, that's been good. And started watching and this was just last night, but I had to bring it up. Everybody's Live with John Mulaney. Have either of you watched this yet?
I saw the first episode. It was weird. It was good. It was weird.
It's weird and good. That is exactly what I was going to say about is I laughed. I needed to laugh last night. And I was just like, I'll just. Let's just try that. I've all. Because I watched the part of the first one. It was like, oh, this is pretty good. I think I like it, but I just kind of forgot about it and I turned it on, didn't realize that it was live. Ended up watching two of them. And it is so funny and weird. You know, it's a lot. It actually is live on Netflix and he has like, people call in, but he'll always have, like, a question for him. And just the way that he handles the calls are really funny because he'll just like, hang up on people, like very quickly. Kind of like an old school show where he'll just, like, answer the question. He's like, all right, thanks. Oh, by the way, what kind of car do you have? And they tell him what kind of car they have, and he's like, oh, yeah, thanks. And then he hangs up.
It reminds me of, like, way better than Bill Maher, but did you ever watch Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher? And it was like, early 2000s, I was probably too young to watch it, but he would just have like, a panel of, like, such different kinds of people. Like, at one point he had, like, Noam Chomsky and Pamela Anderson on. And it's kind of reminded me of that because it was like comedians and then that, like, randomly the, like, financial advice columnist from the San Francisco Chronicle was on, and he was just kind
of like, why am I here?
Like, this is.
He always has one panelist that's like a normal person. Like the last one, it was Richard Kind. I was watching. Richard Kind woke up. They were saying he woke up that day thinking he was Gene Simmons. And so he was dressed up as Gene Simmons and only spoke in Gene Simmons quotes, the whole thing. But they had an HR professional, like, because the episode was about getting fired. And so they're like, how many people have you fired? And then she, like, coached John through firing Gene Simmons. And it was so funny. Has kind of like the absurdity, like the Conan absurdity, but like, in like an understated way instead of like, you know, the masturbating bear or whatever. But like, there's one. He did, like, this intense, like, 60 minutes, like, interview. It was like a one on one interview. And it was with Bubbles the monkey, Michael Jackson's monkey. It was like he was gonna get the first exclusive interview with Bubbles. And it was all, you know, stage, but they just had a guy, like, in a monkey suit who had, like, a machine where he could say things like a. You know, had phrases on it. But it had. It was so ridiculous and it was so funny because it was just like, I can't recreate it at all. Yeah, you just. You should watch that one. Yeah, I was. I had tears on my face. I was laughing so hard because Bubble was like, antagonistic, but also like sort of defending Michael Jackson. It was so weird and so good. It's like that he, like, he's hitting buttons. And one of them was like, has anyone ever flown you to Fiji? And John's like, do you have a button for that? I mean, no. No one's ever flown me to Fiji.
Not lately.
Yeah. So anyway, that is very good. I'm gonna stick with it. And then another recent thing the show Bad Monkey. Do you remember when that came out? It was like, what's his name? Vince. Vince Vaughn show. I didn't watch it. Yeah. And wasn't planning on watching it, but then I saw an announcement for like a vinyl version of their soundtrack was coming out and I was like, that is super random. But I found out that I just happened to click on it. And it's all covers of Tom Petty songs. Yeah, it just came out last year and so. And it's like the War on Drugs, Jason Isbull, Kurt Vile. It's a huge list of like really awesome artists and kind of like varying artists.
And so now I have to watch the show.
Now it's like 20 minutes or 20 tracks of all like Tom Petty covers. It's like a tribute album basically. And it's super good. So that was. It's always happy. I'm always happy to find something Tom Petty related that's new. So yeah, that's that. And I am. I've been writing with. I don't have the one I was using I left upstairs, but I still have the box out. But the 2023 era.
Yeah.
Van Dyke.
So good. Loved that one.
So I sharpened up a new one of those a few days ago, but it's up in my bullet journal upstairs and I have been using the Mount Rainier field notes. Oh, nice.
It's one of the pretty ones.
Yeah, been saving it but, you know, it's been. It's been good to get back into a field notes. I haven't been carrying them really lately, so. Yeah, that's me. Well, let's do some fresh points. Let's see like what's. What else is new. And I was thinking like, if you want to throw in something from your commonplace book when you do your fresh points, you can. Or not just because since we're kind of pressed on time because of schedule. But like, so your fresh points and if you have something you want to read, like, I've got one thing in mind that I might read during that and feel free, but Johnny, do you want to. You want to start?
So this isn't pencil related, but diamine just released a whole bunch of forever inks. So they're, you know, permanent fountain pen inks that are pigmented and not just dye based and they have like whole mess of colors, not just like 10.
Do you have to use a special fountain pen for that?
For the pigment?
Apparently not for them. Like the. What's that guy's name from Brady Hates? Oh, Noodlers. I'm sorry, permanent ones. And like I don't know, from what I understand they're inconsistent and sometimes you have to wash them out. Sometimes your pan is ruined. But I mean diamine, in my experience like they do everything they say they're gonna do. Even their, you know, super saturated glitter inks don't glow clog up pens of mine. So that's really cool. And I found a really interesting paper that is made of sugar cane and it's like really nice to write on with fountain pens, but I think it's uncoated. They just really did the sizing. Like super smooth.
Have you tried licking it to see if it's sweet?
No, I think it's like waste. But it does like when you cut
it the edges, steep it in water
or something weird pulpy. So I made like a whole mess of books for Earth Day and I, I didn't put them up because I was sick. So this is the story of disappointment. But I'll send you guys some of this paper. It's really nice. I bought a case of it and I'm almost all the way through it. And it does handle your printer very well too. And so I'm at a fresh point. So I wrote down two excerpts from Damned and one I think is kind of permanent or pertinent. This is where the protagonist is approaching Hitler in hell and somebody's like, are you afraid Hitler's not going to like you or something? So she wrote within me a tiny voice asks what's the worst that can happen? I lived, I suffered, I died. The worst fit any mortal can imagine. Excuse me. I'm dead. And yet something in me continues to survive. I'm eternal. For better or worse. It's obsequious little nice girls like me who allow to run the world. Ms. Harlot O Harlots. Billionaire, phony, tree huggers, hypocrite, drug snorting, weed puffing peace activists who fund the mass murdering drug cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in some dirt poor banana republics. It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many evils to exist. My cowardice enables. My cowardice enables atrocities.
That is the most Chuck Palanic thing that has ever been written.
There's like an echo of it in, in the skin of a Lion. Like on Dante's first book where he said something about being compassionate and he's like, you could forgive the worst person. So like compassion is dangerous. Which Thoreau says too. And it's. There's some truth to that.
Did Dante copy Off of Chuck Palanic.
Yeah, he was a time traveler.
Yeah,
he just wasn't very dirty minded. His books weren't as exciting, but that's all I got for fresh points.
Yes. Well, one thing I want to mention that I think is pretty exciting. If. So again, if you are a Patreon member, you are watching a video of us talking right now. And one thing that I'm sure you've noticed if that's the case is we are all wearing these really nice different colored corduroy caps, but baseball caps. And what's cool is when you look closely, they're the erasable logo. The sort of two color one is embroidered on the top. So made a few of these just to see how they looked and sent out a couple samples. Tim's wearing like a reddish burgundy one and Johnny has like a grayish greenish one and I have like a navy one and we're gonna put those up for sale. Not quite sure how much we will sell them for yet. I have to figure out how much it's gonna cost us. But we. I'll have a link for that. If not in show notes for this episode on the website. So if you go to Erasable Us and click on Shop, it'll be there. Another really cool little piece of swag that we have is I'm holding this up to the camera right now. It's a little bit hard to see. Could do that like YouTuber thing where you put your hand behind it and this is a. It's a lapel pin. It's about an inch and a half long and it is a little eraser. It's all hand drawn. It's a little eraser friend. It's pink. It has a little face on it and it says the erasable podcast and kind of the pink pearl kind of loopy script. And I was having a conversation with my friend Betsy Streeter the other day and just telling her about like podcast and kind of the erasable logo. And we were kind of talking about how we used to draw faces on our erasers. You know, just pushing your pencil a little bit and kind of make some eyes. And she basically just drew this little thing and I was like, oh my gosh, can we turn that into swag? So she's like, yeah, so gonna have some of these little lapel pins for sale. It's been about 10 years since we've done lapel pins last I think eight years. Eight years, I can't remember. And it was just our logo. So this is a just a fun Little variation on that. It's like a. It's a little bit more erase. Eraser.
Y.
And yeah, we'll have those up for sale. So the. One of the reasons. Last time I asked anybody who was a 10amonth subscriber to our Patreon to update their addresses or if anybody wanted to join, because I'm. We're going to send one of these to you. Trying to. Still trying to figure out logistics of this. I would love to kind of give people the choice between either a hat or a lapel pin, because I know not everybody's a hat person and not everybody's a pin person. So once I figure that out, we'll send out a thing on Patreon. Yeah. And get these out to you. So this is fun. And then we'll have extras of each for sale to anybody else listening or watching. So. Yeah, that is just fun.
Little.
Our yearly swag. Just wanted to go a couple different directions this time. Yeah, it's super cute. I was.
Makes me smile.
Betsy was calling it just like, you know, our little eraser friend. And so we decided to call this the eraser friend pin. I was trying to make embroidery like hats with that, but it's too. The lines are too thin and it's just not readable as, like, as embroidery. So got the pins and probably make stickers or something too. That would be fun. Yeah, that is. That is it for erasable swag. Also wanted to mention on Monday, got to hang out with Noah Beer, who y' all might remember from a few years ago on this podcast. So, yeah, Noah's a British designer. He works for Maker's Cabinet, which makes the Hubble pencil sharpener. And those little. The iris. That little, like, thing, the. I don't know what I was gonna call it a sphincter, but you know,
like the shutter and. Yeah, they have a Kickstarter for a new compass for drawing.
They do. It's the. What is the ellipso? And it's. You can make like any sort of ellipses, so ovals. And he actually brought one with him and was demoing it. It was fun to. Really fun to play with. They also made this. Completely escaped me until he brought it out. But the iris, they made a larger size one that cost $400. But it is.
It's cool.
It's huge. It's like kind of the size of my face. Like I could look through it with both eyes. And we were just one of those. We were just sitting in a bar in downtown San Francisco and he Just, like, whips out this giant, like, gold or brass disc heavy. It reminded me. Does anybody remember? Yeah, it's just a crown, but, like, don't close it because you're gonna get your scalp chopped off. Anybody watch Xena, Warrior Princess? Back in the 90s, she had, like,
caught a rerun here or there, but
she had this, like, weapon that was just a big, like, gold disc that she would throw and bounce off everything and kind of look like that. So didn't try to throw it because it cost 400. No, it's very nice. Yeah, we had a. Just a good chat, and I'm gonna go. So I'm gonna be in London next month. And he was like, come by the shop. We'll show you around. And so now I really want to, like, you know, bring a little camera. Maybe you can do some extra content or something for the show.
That would be awesome.
Yeah. Yeah, that'd be really fun. Quick. Last thing I'll mention is just I picked up, as is tradition, I picked up the newest independent book bookstore, Day Blackwing, which is really nice. It is, like, the last two years before it, it's kind of like this, like, it's a solid kind of color this time. It's green. It's been blue and kind of reddish before. It has a really nice pattern on it. And for some reason in my head, I thought that they were all the same pattern. They're not. It's just all kind of, like. They're all the same style. They're all very complimentary, but I'm holding up the different ears right now. And yeah, they. They're definitely different patterns. I don't know, Johnny. These are these, like, book patterns from, like, old books.
I mean, they could be. Especially the blue one. It kind of looks like some gold toilet. Gold tooling from. It's a gold toilet Outline of the COVID Yeah, they were like.
Yeah, it's like, really like this gold toilet.
Let's make presidential potty.
Yeah. Well, don't worry. He doesn't read books, so. He doesn't. I'm sure he doesn't know where a bookstore is. One of the things I really liked about this. Well, really all of these editions, but especially this one, is they really got the eraser green to match the barrel, which I don't think we've seen this particular green before in the eraser. So, Yeah, I feel like I need to, like, keep track of all of the different, like, hacking, like, eraser colors. Just I don't know why. Like, I think it'd Be fun to just see all the different ones and lay them out chromatically.
Any volunteers to make a spreadsheet?
Yeah. Any nerds want to just make a big old spreadsheet? Yeah. So that's about what I've been up to. Besides that, I'm speaking at a conference next week, which I'm excited about, but also really nervous about, because it's instead of, like, I've done public speaking before, but it's usually been hundreds, and this time it's going to be thousands. And a little freaked out by that, so no pressure. Thinking about wearing my erasable eraser friend lapel pin. Although I do have another lapel pen. I've been apparently out of a lapel pin kick lately of this, like, this laptop that's on fire. It looks like a kid's drawing. I'll post a link to the artist who's selling this in the show notes. But, yeah, just felt right.
Do you get those locking backs for your lapel pins?
I. So this company where I got my lapel pins, where we got the erasable lapel pins, it comes with those, like, little rubber clasps, which I don't like as much as the nice, like, metal ones like that, like the other one. But they're cheaper, and it seems like they're just more readily available.
So we bought someone, I don't know, somewhere online that, like, they lock so hard, they're really hard to get back off. But my kids kept losing pins and getting upset. So, like, all the ones on my jean jacket have those.
Yeah, the Disney pins that you can get and then trade have, like, the backs have, like, little mouse ears on them. They're very fancy because. Of course.
Why not?
Yeah, that's it for fresh points for me. How about you, Tim?
Yeah, I really. Mainly I had one, which is not like something we've already talked about, but. Andy, you sent us these. These knockoff black wings.
Yeah, the ones I got, like, months and months ago.
Those are cool. Yeah, they're.
Yeah, they're pretty solid. Yeah, I've been, like, really enjoying them. They're gray matter. And where do you remind me where you got these?
Office Depot in Canada.
Okay.
Yeah. And I have no idea if Office Depot in the US has them, but I think I saw. I was in Canada and somebody somewhere, maybe in the erasable group or like, just on Blue sky or something, was mentioning that, like, yeah, they're in Canada and they mentioned these pencils. So I was like, well, heck, gotta go to an Office Depot now.
So, yeah, they're yeah, they're great. Pen.
The graphite is great. Yeah.
I've been enjoying it quite a bit. And actually reminds me, I didn't mention this earlier, but John Malay has Blackwing in every episode.
Yes. I've been noticing that he's very prominent. Like, he just like he laces with it and taps it all over the.
Like waves it around in front of him and kind of like it's. Yeah. So that was fun to see, but. Yeah. So I just wanted to.
Yeah.
Acknowledge these again because I just like, I hadn't even looked into him yet and like, you know, online. And so it seemed like. The only thing is they're definitely not made to. The erasers don't come out.
Yeah, they're kind of glued in there.
Yeah. So that's the sort of only downside. But geez, I wonder.
I actually have no idea if anybody knows this. Please illuminate us. But I wonder if, like, Cal Cedar has like, some sort of copyright or IP on the clip, the eraser clip. Because the other. If you remember, there were other knockoff black wings years ago that I think came from. I think it was Flying Tiger. The, like, Nordic, like, like dollar Store. And they had knockoff black wings and. Yeah. And they also didn't have the clip. So I wonder if that's like some special. Because, like, the machine that Eberhard Faber, the one that made the clips, not the feral, is one that broke. Right.
Yep.
So.
So that they've got it. The interesting Blackwing has, like, lockdown. Like, that's the people.
Yeah. Yeah. That's all speculation. I have no way to verify this. But come on, tell us your secret story.
Yeah. Take a tiny little spring and put it in there, like on a black wing, and then you can just pull back and like, shoot your eraser out of it. Won't tell Henry about that.
Yeah.
Speaking of volume of seven, speaking of Charles Bar, does anybody. Does anybody subscribe to his Timberlines blog? Yeah, he's been resurrecting it lately and been doing some really just fun haikus. So just wherever his, like, travel takes him, he'll like. He has a few haikus, which is fun.
So that's cool. Yeah, I didn't know about that. Yeah, that was the main thing that I was going to bring up. And then I do have a couple things that I could read, like Commonplace Book kind of stuff. And the first one, which is going to be like, a little intense, but I just got. I got the book the Way of Zen by Alan Watts. If you're familiar with Alan Watts. It's like all over YouTube. Like speaker, Zen Buddhism speaker from back in the day. He was English. And if you see a picture of him, you'll think it's Eddie Vedder. Like old age. Older age. But I did write this one passes down, which is. It's a little long, but it's. It was super interesting because it was talking about how we like overthink decision making. So yeah, I wrote this down. Yet he might ask whether we really know what information is relevant since our plans are constantly upset by utterly unforeseen incidents. He might ask how we know when we have collected enough information upon which to decide. If we were rigorously scientific in collecting information for our decisions, it would take us so long to collect the data that the time for action would have passed long before the work had been completed. So how do we know when we have enough? Does the information itself tell us that it's enough? On the contrary. But we go through the motions of gathering the necessary information in a rational way. And then just because of a hunch, or because we are tired of thinking, or because the time has come to decide, we act. He would ask whether this is not depending just as much upon irrelevant trifles as if we had been casting the Euro stocks, which I don't know what that is, but it was just a really. Yeah, really interesting passage about like everything comes back to a gut decision anyways. So like always keep that in mind. Like, cuz I know I'm definitely prone to.
Yeah.
Mulling things over.
Tim, what was that word? Euro stocks.
Y yaro R Y A R R O W. I'm guessing it's some kind of plant.
Okay.
I don't know.
Interesting.
Casting the Yarrow stocks.
Yeah.
And then the other one is more fun, but. And I didn't write it down word for word, but I read Mike Campbell's biography from Tom Petty called Heartbreaker and there was a section where he's talking about Bob Dylan. And I'm always like, excited to hear new like weird Bob Dylan stories. And he had three excellent weird Bob Dylan interactions. So I wrote down like descriptions of these sections. I don't want to like write down the whole thing. So Dylan invited him to some sessions and Bob asked him to bring the drum machine with him that he used to write Boys of Summer, the famous like Don Henley song that Mike Campbell wrote. But it's like an electronic drum machine. Mike programmed a beat and Bob did a take playing over it with the band. As the take went on, Bob got way off the beat as if he didn't even notice it was there. He asked to hear it back and when it got to the point when he was way off, he said, why is it so off? Mike told him he had to play along with the machine and Bob said I have to follow along with that. Well then what's the use of that? But he like didn't even notice the whole time and just kept playing and thought that it would just follow him. It's just like such like a funny like old man technology moment. But it was in like the 80s. It was the first one. Then next one is that Bob came over to write songs and Mike with Mike and had brought his great name Dane, who was named Brutus. He pulled up, he pulled up in his brown Cadillac with Brutus sitting in the front seat. And right as he got out, Mike's 150 pound Newfoundland climbed out of their pool, ran directly into Bob's Cadillac and shook off every bit of water and slobber on his body. And they all stood there stunned for a while and Bob finally just turned and said dogs and just walked in like it never happened. And then the last. Yeah, and there's one more basic. He, Mike sent Bob home with a list of tapes or sorry, a tape full of song ideas to see if he would like, you know, write a song off. And he didn't hear back from him for a couple weeks. So he called him, see what he thought of the songs. And Bob said I couldn't do anything with them. All I could hear was the bass and there was no bass on any of the tracks. So those are a lot of those good stories. But the Bob Dylan one's really the crown jewel. Just because I love hearing about those weird stories. Yeah, so. So yeah, that's all I got. Cool.
I just realized I have a couple commonplace books things that I missed. So I'll mention that we can wrap it up.
Sounds good.
One was my friend Scott Bombs, who is a really good type and kind of like icon and brand designer. He has just a pretty good blog. It's mostly like links to interesting kind of designy stuff. So Scott Bombs, I think, I'm sure I mentioned him here before, but he, his wife's like. He so met him when I worked at, we both worked at Facebook and he had these like great posters that everybody's familiar with because our tattoos are kind of like from a design on this poster and he didn't design the graphic but he kind of designed the poster and he had this Marshall McLuhan quote on there. And later I was like, you know, I just found out that this wasn't actually Marshall McLuhan who said it. He's like, yeah, I know. It was somebody else. And I was like, oh. He's like. I was like, how did you know? He's like, well, Marshall McLuhan was my wife's grandfather. I was like, oh, yeah, sure. Or maybe just, I think just a father. But anyhow, this great blog, this came out at the end of February and it just resonated with me. And he says, I miss being excited by technology. I wish I could see a way out of the endless hype cycles that cont continue to elicit little more than cynicism from me. The versions of technology that were mostly being sold today has almost nothing to do with improving lives, but instead stuffing the pockets of those who already need for nothing. It's not making us smarter. It's not helping heal a damaged planet. It's not making us happier or more generous toward each other. And it's entrenched in everything, meaning a momentous challenge to rewire or meticulously disconnect. I'm slowly finding my own ways of breaking free, to regain a sense of self and purpose. I feel like that's kind of a similar journey that I've been trying to be on with technology. So. But that was just kind of a good. It's really good articulation of that. The other one was quite a bit older. I was reading, I think, Johnny, you were maybe the one who told me about this, the book writers and their notebooks. Is that maybe you were someone who emailed us. Okay, that's right. Somebody was talking about that in email.
Yeah, I've got that.
So, yeah, I was reading a little bit above it, and there's a. An essay by Robin Henley called On Meeting Yourself. And it's about keeping a notebook. And he says, and this was written like. Like 2013, I think he said, in this computer adult age, it's nice to carry around something tangible that links one directly to the joy of writing in one's own lousy penmanship. Guilty. Rather than generate a collection of neurons, I think he meant electrons to be autosaved on a hard Drive every 15 minutes. It's nice to have a book to carry around, one that feels permanent and unique, unable to be duplicated. The nexus where the writer meets himself again, if not the rest of the world. So just thought that was a fun quote and something that I like. So, you know, even sometimes if I don't even write in it. It's just nice to like carry something and just. It's like a little solid thing. Right?
Like sort of like your anti computer or something.
I know.
Yes. All notebooks are. But that's just like that one.
Yeah, yeah. And, yeah. And the thing about like writing, let's say you have to every 15 minutes, I'm like, generally I'm like, that's great. I'm really glad I don't have to hit save on my Word document anymore to like make sure I'm saving a paper. But at the same time it's, it's like, oh, yeah, this thing is just like constantly just like saving and remembering and, you know, can't. I mean, you can erase it, but you can't sort of permanently erase it necessarily.
Yikes.
So, yeah, that is it for me.
Thanks. Cool. Well, I'm glad we got to catch up and I'm glad your apartment building didn't burn down.
Me too. It would not be a good day.
Yeah, two very good things that happened today. But thanks for listening, everybody. If you to follow us on Facebook, you can find us on Facebook or our Facebook group. Sorry, Facebook.com groups/erasable podcast. Is that right? It's been a while since I've said that.
I think it's just slash erasable, slash, erase, slash, group, slash erasable.
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But I'm curious, is Dr. Hans Littleman, Ph.D. or a medical doctor? I've never asked him.
It's a long story. It's here. Him, Tyler.
All right, thanks, everybody.
Maybe his first name's Doctor. Was that. What's that from? Sleepless. Sleepless in Seattle. Her first name could be Doctor. Okay, yeah. Good being with you guys and thanks for listening, everybody, and we'll talk to you soon. Peace.
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