Cross Pens

 Dec 10

CNET is the new Consumer Reports, except a lot better. Look at all these reviews: the best cheap wine. Frying pans. They're not just electronics anymore. CNET is where I found these awesome blankets. Check this out: 7 pens, $14 to $575.

I'm surprised there aren't any Cross pens on CNET's list. Maybe that just shows I'm out of date. I got a Cross pen around 2005, about $20 or so I think. I still use it every day. It's basically indestructible. 

So, you know: don't give me a pen for Christmas. I'm set for life, and if a young person inherits my Cross, they're set for life.

 

Dec 31

I told you that I had had my Cross pen for decades and that it was pretty much indestructible. Which was true. So, naturally, about a day or two after that I lost it.

Got a new one from Amazon, but I didn't realize that not all Cross ballpoint pens are identical. Far from it, turns out! So the refills I had for the old one won't fit into this one. Also, the old one rolled open and shut, silently as a ninja. This one clicks.

You're thinking: it clicks. What, is that actually a problem?

Yes it is. A first-world problem.

And now, suddenly, I'm wondering about all sorts of things. There are some very wealthy literary families. People whose great-great-grandparents had Henry James and Turgenev over for dinner. Are their homes filled with veritable piles of Cross ballpoints, the way there were piles of Bic Stics at home when I was a child?

And this thought takes me a step further: would the thought of Cross ballpoints give brain-nausea to some of the economically-elite among the literary, because they still refuse to convert from fountain pens to ballpoints?

Dec 31

I know how important this topic is to you, so I'll be keeping you updated. 

I lost the old Cross pen, the one I'd had for decades, somewhere between Kroger and home. In Kroger I used it to cross items off my shopping list. And when I got home, it was gone.

My best guess is that it slipped out of my right front pants pocket, where I keep the Moleskine notebook, the pen and the phone. Hopefully it's somewhere here on the floor in the house or on the floor of the car, and I'll find it again.

I'm hoping to find it again, not expecting to. More likely it fell on the floor in Kroger, or on the ground in their parking lot, and it's gone.

So I was thinking: would the pen fit into the pocket of the Moleskine notebook?

It does. I wonder whether Bruce Chatwin kept a pen in the pocket of his Moleskine?

Bruce Chatwin was the douchebag over-rated travel writer who is responsible for Moleskines being known as Moleskines.

Moleskines are actually very good notebooks, and the Cross fits right into that pocket, so when I went to Kroger today, I wasn't so worried.

And I know that makes you very happy.

Still Looking For the Perfect Notebook

I use Moleskines. It's one of the few luxuries I allow myself. I don't drink, smoke or eat out, it may well be that I do not have an article of clothing which is less than a year old, including briefs and socks, and what I have is all jeans and T-shirts -- but I use a Moleskine as a daily journal, and every year I buy a Moleskine planner. So, yeah: I'm one of the Moleskine people. I'm currently up to my 33rd Moleskine journal -- wait. No. It's my 32nd Moleskine journal, because I tried a Shinola notebook. The Shinola is journal Volume 31, 27 February 2016 -- 27 January 2017. It's been taking me longer to fill up each journal lately because I've been writing less in the journals and more on this blog. I try to write something in the journals every day, but for a lot of days, all I've written is "Blogged about [so-and-so]."

Most of my journals are pocket-sized, soft cover 192-page Moleskines with blank pages.



Moleskine counts each leaf as 2 pages, front and back, so some people -- certainly including me -- would tend to think of these "192-page" Moleskines as 96-sheet notebooks.

I got a pocket-size, soft-cover Moleskine 2018 monthly planner today at my local independent bookstore, with either approximately or exactly as many pages as one of those 192-"page," 96-sheet dealies. Monthly planner wouldn't have been my first choice, but it's December 30, duh, so the choice was limited. There were a few Shinola planners left. The Shinola notebook I used as a journal seems to me to be about as good as a Moleskine -- which is to say: very good, from my frame of reference. For most of my life I used whatever was the very cheapest option available at the supermarket: mostly either spiral notebooks or ring binders. Moleskine and Shinola are a big step up. The main reason I didn't get a Shinola 2018 planner today is because I'm annoyed by the way Shinola makes and markets watches, coming on like they're really something special quality-wise, but not offering one single mechanical model.

Some of Moleskine's yearly planners, pocket-sized, and larger, and smaller, have about twice as many pages. 400 pages altogether: 1 page for each day, and then some other pages at the front and back. Moleskine calls them "diaries." Maybe other people would call them "diaries" too. But for me, a volume with exactly 1 page for each day, no more and no less, is not an ideal diary, but functions perfectly well as an appointment book.

What I would like is a Moleskine, or some other item of comparable quality, with that many blank pages. Pocket-sized or smaller, soft cover, 400 "pages" -- that is, 200 sheets -- that would be awesome. I haven't found anything like that yet. If you know where I can get something like that, we'll be friends for life. Warning: the toughest part of that description to fulfill may be "Moleskine or comparable quality." Most of the notebooks, journals and diaries I've seen for sale simply don't cut it any more, the way they would've earlier in my life. Once you go Moleskine or Shinola, you don't go back.

This is what I get for not having gone into the book-binding business, so that I could make the perfect notebooks for myself.

Notebooks

Like many, many other people, I've been writing in Moleskine notebooks for years. Currently I'm writing in a Shinola notebook. Like the Moleskines I use, the Shinola is pocket-sized with a soft cover, designed for comfort as I take it with me everywhere I go.

I got the Shinola notebook when I went into the Shinola store in downtown Ann Arbor to look at the Shinola watches. All very good-looking watches, and all way out of my price range. And if I did have that kind of money, I'd be looking for a mechanical watch, and all the watches Shinola makes are still battery-powered, unfortunately.

But I saw the notebooks while I was there, and I bought one.

Compared to a Moleskine, it's good. The cover has a completely different texture. Not sure which one I like better. The Shinola feels tougher, more solidly-made, but I don't know that I can actually quantify the relative toughnesses of Moleskine and Shinola. The elastic band on the Shinola broke, which never happened to any of the approximately 2 dozen Moleskines I've filled up with my scribbles. However, I don't know whether that means that the strap on the Shinola is not as tough. Since I got the Shinola, my writing habits have changed significantly: a lot which previously might have gone first into a notebook and then into this blog has been into the blog without being written in a notebook first. But I still keep my rule about writing something in a notebook every single day. This means that it's taking me many more days to fill up the Shinola than it ever took me to fill up a Moleskine. So the strap on the Shinola may have been as strong as those on Moleskines, and may have broken simply because I opened up closed the Shinola so many times.

By the way: although the Moleskines had gotten me thoroughly used to having an elastic strap to hold the notebook shut, and although it was rather traumatic for me when the strap on the Shinola broke -- I haven't really missed it much. Not having the strap anymore really hasn't made much difference to me, hasn't led to any inconvenience or spilling or what have you.

Anyway: using the Shinola notebook, and not finding it to be grossly inferior to a Moleskine, may have been what it was which started me thinking about still other brands of notebooks. Something I would really like would be a notebook which is pocket-sized or smaller, with plain, unruled paper, and a lot of pages. Twice as many as your usual notebook, or even more. Moleskine has items which fill all of these requirements except for the plain paper: some of their yearly planners have as many as "400" pages or more. I put "400" in quotation marks, because Moleskine -- and some or most or all other manufacturers of such items -- count each piece of paper twice, once for the front and once for the back. So, a Moleskine with "400" pages has 200 sheets of paper in it.

So I did a Google search for better than moleskine, found some other brands which some other people like better than Moleskine (Leuchtturm appears to be especially well-liked), and looked at what was available in those brands on Amazon -- and I still haven't found that elusive notebook, pocket-sized or smaller, with "400" or "500" or so plain pages in it.

And then I reminded myself that I don't have all that much money, and that I do have 4 Moleskines which I had bought before I got the Shinola, and that it's taking me longer these days to fill up a notebook, so that it will be quite a long time before I actually run out of the notebooks I have.

If I were to win a Nobel Prize, or something like that, it might be less extravagant for me to hunt down exactly the kind of notebook I want -- or even to have them custom-made for me. But of course, if I won the Nobel Prize, the chances would increase tremendously that I would be showered with any and every kind of swanky notebook absolutely free of charge, because, as the Tom Petty It's-Ab-So-Lute-Ly-Back-Wards Law of Microeconomics teaches us -- it's ab-so-lute-ly backwards. (It occurs to me that Tom Petty said that around 1985, when he and his band had been rich and famous for a relatively short period of time, and the memory of poverty was still relatively fresh. I wonder whether today, after 3 more decades of being more and more rich and famous, and therefore receiving ever greater big piles of stuff for ab-so-lute-ly free, he has changed his mind completely, and now finds that this arrangement makes perfect sense and is thoroughly just and fair and right, and therefore doesn't want some nobody blogger reminding people of what he said once in 1985 about certain things being backwards and whatnot. I doubt it, but who knows.)

Did you notice all the fancy-looking pocket-sized notebooks with elastic straps used by the reporters in the press conferences in "Boardwalk Empire"? Did you wonder whether they were all Moleskines or all some other brand, all given to the production company for free, because very often companies give big piles of groovy stuff to people making movies and TV shows, absolutely free, and that's sometimes why those companies' names are in the big lists of "Thanks To:" in the end credits, and did you squint and try to find Moleskine in those lists which whizzed by so quickly at the end of each episode of "Boardwalk Empire," and did you wonder what the actors playing those reporters actually wrote in those notebooks, imagining that the method actors tried to actually write what a reporter in Atlantic City or New York City in the 1920's might write, while the non-method actors wrote entirely different things, or perhaps drew satiric doodles of the method actors? Not to mention all of the above, but with the pens they were writing with, whether they were all given to the production company by Cross or what have you? And whether some of those actors might have turned down the free stuff because they already had their own stuff which they liked better? And how much of the free stuff the actors are allowed to keep after the show wraps, and how much stuff they keep that they're not supposed to keep, and whether maybe some actors are having career difficulties and they don't know why, and the reason why is because the word has gotten around that they steal way too much of the stuff they're supposed to give back? (There were also some very cool-looking notebooks in the first Guy Ritchie-Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes movie.)

If you don't notice and wonder and squint looking for and speculate about those kinds of things, my friend, then you are very different than I.

A Man Tossing A Moleskine [SCREENPLAY OF A MONTAGE]

One man is seen in a 3/4 shot against the same background throughout. His expression remains deadpan throughout. The montage begins with the man casually tossing a Moleskine out of screen, a pocket-sized notebook with a black cover and a black elastic band holding it shut. From offscreen we hear a little *plop* as the notebook lands safely on the surface of a desk or table or counter. Then quick cuts to him tossing other things. Generally a second or less per shot, but sometimes a little more if the tossed object makes an interesting sound when it lands offscreen. At first the objects are appropriate things to toss: the Moleskine, car keys. Then shot for shot the objects get bigger and/or less appropriate for tossing: a can of beer. A sandwich. A full mug of beer. (this first time we don't wait for the offscreen crash.) A Dagwood on a ceramic plate. (Faint tinkling crash from offscreen.) A big expensive-looking camera. (Somewhat louder crash.) A cat. A large dog. A puma. A sledgehammer. (A thud and a yell of pain offscreen.) An elaborately-prepared Thanksgiving turkey on an ornate porcelain dish, and as the man tosses it he mutters, "Eat something." (Big ceramic crash offscreen.)

Some Things I Wrote in a Moleskine Recently

In what follows, additions or changes to the original journal entry will appear [in square brackets], with the exception of the names of chess players, where I will follow the same rule as in this chess log, referring to Player A, Player B and so forth. The reader should not assume that Player A below is -- or is not -- the same person as Player A in that blog post. Rather, in each new blog post in which I excerpt chess logs, I will start over again from the beginning of the alphabet.

I dreamed I was trying to return a stolen shirt to a store in a mall, stolen by someone else although I was wearing it. The sales staff would not or could not understand that it was not just an ordinary return. At one point I was an angry young black man, [In waking life I am neither young nor black. I do have occasional fits of rage, but I've recognized that this a problem, and I'm getting treatment for it.] stripping off the shirt and shaking it, angry and bare-chested, at the sales staff, who continued to fail to understand, or to pretend not to understand, that someone had stolen the shirt, instead blandly continuing to inquire if I wanted an exchange or a refund or what. The shirt resembled [my favorite shirt, a] long-sleeved blue shirt with horizontal pinstripes.

After the incident with the shirt, I continued down the hall in the mall, and came across Tim Allen sitting on a couch. Gradually it became apparent that Tim was one of several people sitting on a couch, and that they were all wearing face paint somewhere between circus-clown and Hollywood-Indian. They were sitting very wide-eyed, and very still, as if portraying carved figures. They looked a little scary. Then there were very many Native Americans storming into a house, perhaps a model house on the mall grounds, or a partial model house. I was concerned that I might have been part of what incited the Native Americans to anger. I was also concerned that they might inadvertently trample me in their headlong stampede or turn angrily on me.

Then I was pretty much out of their way and [nevermind who] and I were sitting on the ground and she was rubbing my shoulders. I groaned and she was concerned she might be doing it wrong, but I assured her that they were moans of pleasure and relief.

[End of dream log.]

[My Free Internet Chess Server rating rose to] 1305 after [winning] 3 straight [games] from Player A. ([Who was rated] a little under 1100.)

I'm at Barnes & Noble now. In the men's room, someone wrote on a stall wall: "Empty your mind/And you will attain peace" and underneath that someone else wrote: "Empty your bowels/And you will attain relief." I think the 2nd one is more profound. It's certainly more site-appropriate.

[there follows in the notebook a very bad attempt at the beginning of a sketch of the escalator in the Barnes & Noble. I've always been very bad at drawing, but lately I'm trying to see whether frequent practice might change that.]

When I was a teenager [in the late '70's], I was disappointed that no-one ever initiated me into Dungeons & Dragons. [I didn't realize that it was a game that anyone could buy in a store; from the way the few players I knew acted, I assumed that it was more of a secret society into which one had to be initiated.] Just now, near the bench where I was writing, were two full-grown pudgy geeks of the type which remind me why I should be very, very grateful that there never seemed to be time enough, or that I was never deemed cool enough when I was a kid for that D&D initiation to happen. Harsh? Fuck 'em, I'm being real. Game Stop was the name of the store in front of which the geeks were hanging, loudly speaking Geek. Game Stop? With truth in advertising, they'd call it Girl Repellent. Or just Repellent. [Yeah, I know I play chess. But I don't play it in person. Harsh? Maybe so. Don't some people think I'm as geeky as can be? No doubt some do.]

I had to quickly walk out of the Barnes & Noble to the bench near Game Stop in order to resist the temptation to buy STILL MORE MOLESKINES! A family walked by on the way into Barnes & Noble. One of the children was a toddler saying "Hi, hi!" to everyone they passed. Cute as could be. Maybe she very recently learned to say "hi." Several young ladies walked out of the store just as this family was going in. They exchanged "Hi!"'s with the adorable little toddler. One of the ladies said, "Aw, I want one!" That lady is to babies as I am to ever more Moleskines. [I gather that it's pronounced as if it were an Italian word, with a syllable for each vowel: "Mole-uh-skeen-ay."]

Writing

I've been writing a lot of stuff since the age of 11, if not longer. I believe that was when I wrote my first short stories. I turned 11 in 1972. Not much more than a decade ago, I was still writing mostly with a pen on paper. Then, in 1997, I started to become curious about this Internet thingy, and everything changed... In January 1st of this year, I started writing with pen on paper again, in Moleskinenotebooks with a PilotGS-2 Pro, on pretty much a daily basis. I enjoyed that. I found out that it was Bruce Chatwinwho had given Moleskines their name; I browsed through one of his books and didn't think it was for me, although that remains a very cursory first impression from which no-one should draw conclusions. Anyway, in May of this year I pretty much stopped with the Pilot and the Moleskines, because I had started with this blog, and I'm doing here very much the same thing that I was doing in the Moleskines, except that I'm trying to be more careful here, more polished in my prose style and more reserved with my judgements, and more discreet, because this is going public right away and that wasn't. Some of what I've written here I've copied from the Moleskines. I miss writing in the Moleskines, they and the GS-2 Pro have aesthetic qualities which this keyboard and monitor completely lack, but this blog has pretty much replaced them, whaddya gonna do. After this blog makes me a multimillionaire, I will have the option of writing in nice notebooks with nice pens again, I will be able to pay someone well for typing and data entry, right? Right. Since starting the blog, I've written a page and a half in the Moleskine. A page and a half in a month and a half, noting when I started using a new disposable razor, when I set a new personal best in the number of reps of the Upward Dog I could do in a set, and not a whole lot more than that. [PS, 15 March 2022: I thought they were called Upward Dogs, but what I was doing was going from laying flat on my back, going to a fully extended bridge, then all the way back down. That was one rep.] A page and a half. I was averaging more than that in a day. I used to be downright hostile toward computers, in a way which seems to me, in retrospect, quite neo-Luddite. I used to say that I wanted to chisel my writing into granite, rather than enter it into a database via a keyboard. (I never have learned to chisel granite, despite those repeated blustering pronouncements.) It is clear, in retrospect, that my hostility was based in ignorance, and in the frustration of having tried a few times to use computers, and failed, a frustration familiar to many of us not that IT has spread so wide. I eventually learned to do a few things with computers and with the Inner Tubes, as have so many of us. I can't be objective about the quality of my own writing, I never have been able to do that. It's very often painful to look at things I've written. Kurt Vonnegut'scomment about how he felt lousy about all the books he'd written, and Samuel Beckett'scomment about how to write is to fail, both resonate strongly with me. So I just get through each piece of writing as best I can, hope that it's not too much of an affront to my readers' taste and intelligence, and then get on to the next one. I can say of myself with some confidence that I'm a good reader, and I think there's often a connection between that and writing well, and so that gives me hope that it may not have been fully futile, all the time I've spent writing so many different things, two unpublished novels, large chunks of several more which I may or may not ever finished, who knows how many short stories, essays, letters, journal essays, emails, Internet forum posts, blog posts. Queries... Reflections on the pleasures of well-made notebooks and pens, on the frustrations and ironies and trade-offs of life.