Journal II: Quantum of Empire

Probably ought to name this "Journal 2" or "Return of Journal" or "Journal - The Phantom Menace" or some such Hollywood-style weirdness, as this is vaguely related to the "Journal" blog entry a couple of days or weeks or something ago. And it's certainly more related to the original than most sequels are to their root movies. (shrug) I'll come up with some title that has nothing to do with nothing. If it's good enough for high-dollar movies, it's good enough for me.

Although, realistically, this one could just be called "Paper", but who'd read that? Uhmmm....(crickets)...

Anyhow, I was writing in the Journal (as advertised a couple of days/weeks ago) and suddenly realized that it wasn't going to be too long before it was completely filled, and I was going to have to replace the wad o' paper contained in it that I actually write on. This is made more certain by the rapidly approaching end of the year, at which point I always start a new one whether the old one's done for or not.

As the Terminator says (Terminator 2: Judgement Day), "No problemo", right? It's only paper.

The paper I'm currently using is roughly size A5, and more specifically, is a "Markings" journal. I bought it some time back. I quite like the grid pattern on it that keeps my incomprehensible scrawl generally restricted to more-or-less straight lines. Additionally, I'm a fan of the actual paper itself, which for my purposes is near-perfect, with a creamy ivory color, just exactly the "tooth" that I like, and nearly impossible to "bleed through" with the pens* I use.

Whatever the pen, I'm a fanatic about the paper/notebook I'm writing in, and bleed-through is an issue since I use both sides of the pages. Usually. Unless I get fed up with being left handed, and start writing on the pages upside-down or sideways or something.

It turns out that I have two more of the grid-pattern "Markings" journals in my pile o' paper. You'd think this would be fine, since the last one took me nine or ten months to use up. I should be good for just shy of two years with what I have laying in the office in front of me. But I know that "Markings" is now owned by "Gibson", and I haven't got any information on whether their quality has been continued. What I DO know is that they don't sell ANYTHING with a grid pattern in it anymore, which doesn't bode well for someone as anal as I am about paper. So, I figured I'd try out some of the other stuff I have laying around here, just for giggles and a bit of a change.

I found one with widely separated lines that writes and feels frankly spectacular. But you remember above when I said that the paper that fits is "roughly" A5? Well, this stuff is exactly A5, which makes it a quarter inch wider than I can use. But it's so damned good I was thinking about taking it down to a printer and having them use their mass-paper guillotine to shave 1/4 inch off of it. Which wouldn't be crazy at all or anything.

Shit. (Bruce Willis, "Die Hard 2: Die Harder")

I also have another paper that's for all practical purposes, perfect. It's Japanese, handmade, expensive, and exactly what I want, and it even fits the "roughly" A5 slot. I've been using it for near-calligraphy-style writing for quite awhile now, just for the sheer pleasure of writing on the stuff. But they don't make lined or gridded paper, and I'm really sure that letting my handwriting just wander around with no guidance whatsoever would be a bad thing.

In the end I wound up online hunting around for high-quality paper in a mediocre-paper world. There are a buttload of journal refills out there, mostly containing the kind of paper you'd use to scrawl notes on at a construction site, or for high-school lab classes. I mean, it's usable, but in about the same category as my low-rent plebeian pens...

Suddenly, some forgotten obscurity stumbled across my mind and reminded me that I had one more notebook I hadn't looked at. I rooted around and found it in a bottom desk drawer. It has a cover on it so softly tactile it practically feels alive, which is why I bought the only one I'd ever seen in the first place. That was one day many months ago at a Hobby Lobby.

Y'see, I'd abandoned the Beneficiary to let her hunt down craft junk on her own by cleverly hanging back till she rounded the corner ahead of me, then disappearing. Yes. I'll admit it — I'm a five-year-old. But it's her own fault, really. I've got a paper (and to a lesser degree, general-writing-tools) fetish. So sue me. The Beneficiary generally won't let me anywhere near a book store or an office supplies aisle without keeping me on a leash if she needs to stay on schedule, because she knows there ain't gonna be any getting me out of there any time soon if I manage to wander in. She got off easy this time, with only a single pretty expensive notebook of blank paper.

Anyhow, now that I've dug it out, I find that the paper in the velvety notebook is >< that much too slick, and >< that much too bright, but excellent in every other way. Also that sensuous, buttery cover practically gives me a hard-on every time I pick it up. EXCEPT THE DAMNED PAPER ISN'T LINED.

Just......Dammit. (Hillary, "The Clintons, Part 2: Defeat On A Winter's Day")

But wait, what's this — a website stamped on the the back cover?  Yup, and right there on that site were as many velvety notebooks of EXACTLY the right size as I could ever want, INCLUDING THE ONES LOADED WITH LINED PAPER.

The place is run by a bunch of do-gooder Ah-teests and they're using the profits to bring art and schools to the world, including Laos.  I like Laos, or at least the limited slices of it I saw near-on 50 years ago. I like Laotians. And I like this notebook. Kewl. Win/Win and all that. Sign me up and send me a giant wad of the notebooks, please.

My life is now complete. (Harry Reems, "Deep Throat II: Up And Coming")

No Graphic Here

(The Beneficiary caught sight of it - I'll be busy for a minute rubbing the lump out of my head.)

Oh, it's https://denik.com/ for those of you playing at home (no it doesn't earn me a dime -- they don't know me from Adam), and the notebook I like is called "Crazy Ideas".

It's a semi-crappy amateur-level website that's hard to find stuff on, but worth surfing, and they're out of a variety of things like calendars and schedulers at the moment because, yo, end of year, right?

But they've got the journals (lay-flat is the only way to go), at least for the moment. If you run across these things at your local store (for all I know they're everywhere and I've just not run across them before) pick one up, feel that cover, and tell me it ain't speaking to you…

FOOTNOTES:

^{*The pens I use are Pilot G2s, Blue or Black, Bold (10). These "click to use" ballpoints can be bought by the pickup-load for pocket change at practically any WalMart. What can I say? I'm a classy guy, and my writing instruments reflect it... ↩(Back To Text)}