Here we are, the day at last. As I write this, it’s a little over five hours to the local Pelikan Hub 2018. First, I answer yesterday’s question about what I might take along:
Old and new, top-end and popular, all bundled into one conveyance.
I started to do this in chronological order, but then forgot a couple and decided to just press on rather than start again. That M30 sure stands out, eh?
Pelikan heavy, of course, but not 100% birds. I might even grab a couple of others in the brief window between work and hub, just for giggles.
For today’s film, I thought I might find something whimsical involving the actual bird. The very first one that came up in the search involved a pelican in a park in Germany devouring a pigeon. This sounds amusing in the abstract, but… not what I want here. So, we revert to pens; here’s someone who isn’t me showing off a duplicate of one of the pens I’m taking along tonight.
…and now I’m worried someone will try to test the limits of my pen’s flex. I hope I’m not the final panel in an Alex Norris cartoon later tonight.
Those who were paying attention for about four hours yesterday will have seen a gestational version of this post– apparently somebody hit POST rather than SAVE yesterday. I will put this down to mental exhaustion– the rowers are all present on their benches now, but the guy in the jerkin keeps banging away on his drum.
Tonight is going to be full of powerful mental activity: choosing and inking pens for tomorrow’s Pelikan Hub! The New Classic is definitely coming along. I think one of the P1s will, too, and some of the less-known (at least around here) cheap moderns– I know the local hubmaster is bringing a plentiful selection of Souveräns for other attendees to ogle, and my thing has always been breadth of collection rather than depth. Still, I’ll likely bring my own M600 along, because it would be mean to not take it to a party meant for it.
I may also bring some not-Pelikans, too, just to keep accusations of favouritism down a little.
There was a bit of a discussion lately among my Facebook associates about the relative merits of various Sherlocks Holmes. My opinion on this topic has not changed much since I laid it out here five years ago (almost to the day, good heavens). The practical consequence is that my Youtube sidebar is now crammed with things Granada TV will probably be issuing copyright complaints about. But until that happens, here’s what happens to be first in that line-up.
The best episode? Perhaps not. But it’s got the best Holmes in it, so it’s good enough.
I hope you all enjoyed Labour Day. I marked it by labouring to keep the Lego glaciers of my son’s making from engulfing the living room, which kept me from the Choose Your Own project.
If you missed it in the sidebar– there’s a new story on the writing site, the genesis of which I explain in this post.
I was listening to a presentation of “Peter and the Wolf” while driving back from lunch just now, and it felt like Fate suggesting today’s film. So, sure.
I also spent much of that insubstantial drive trying to imagine the story from the wolf’s point of view– even listening to this very version as a kid, I did find my sympathies leaning toward the wolf, and now, aware of habitat encroachment and the vital role of apex predators in every ecosystem, that inclination grows.
Today’s pen: Parker Moderne (which is, coincidentally, about the same age as the piece of music)
Today’s ink: Herbin Lie de Thé
The little bit of “Kick a Cat…” was actually done on Tuesday, in interstice produced by a dental appointment keeping me from The Regular Job in the morning, and I was not inclined to step into the office until just before Mr. Slate yanks on the birdasaurus’s tail to indicate the end of lunch. But why lose a day of writing, even though I’m away from the current project? A stop at a dollar store on my way to a post-dental lunch produced a notebook with shockingly good paper (seriously, it’s somewhere between Rhodia and Tomoe River), and I used my lunch stop to write publicly like a damned hipster.
French onion soup, a chicken breast pretending to be a burger by hiding under bacon, and a pen that’s a little too fine for the job at hand; how I enjoyed some free time on Tuesday.
A friend showed this to me earlier in the week (along with a load of others, via Facebook). It reminds me very much of the sort of thing the NFB was ushering into the world when I was a kid, and that’s exactly the kind of stuff we looked forward to in the school day film viewings which inspires this flavour of entry here.
The idea of showing this sort of thing to the kids was, I think, to instill some sense that art was a thing worthy of pursuit. I call this art. You may not, but if you stick to that line, you can expect the shades of Ray Harryhausen and Willis O’Brien moaning under your bedroom window until they see some sign of repentance.
†Usually my path is hand-written first, typed second, and then off for comment by readers before third. This story got a complete POV change and I didn’t feel like restarting the process, so because I’m the boss of me! we might consider this second draft more of a v.1.1.
‡ After vast struggle to push the narrative forward on Monday, I realized belatedly that it wasn’t moving because it had fetched up against the buffers at the last station on the line. Those 56 words are vanishing as I smack around the current version into the usual “second draft” shape, so what this really records is the waste of a whole writing session.
