In the fountain pen community, they’re called frankenpens. Pieced from pens that otherwise would have rested in peace, frankenpens are the inevitable creations of mad people who wince at the thought of handling a ballpen. My first (and only) frankenpen is a Parker 61 put together from three Parker 61s. It has a turquoise section, …
It washes over me, and keeps me warm at night. Hello there, Bob Mould. Good to listen to you again, after all this time. Even better to see the red lights streaking past, almost in time with the curl and wail of Sugar guitar, as if this city were nothing but streaming video to your …
I forgot my settings. Let’s try this one more time, baby.
Were it not for The Week That Was, I wouldn’t have made it through the week that was. The Week That Was is part of what happened to Field Music, whose Tones of Town was on my heavy rotation playlist last year. (The video for In Context even inspired a storyboard – that wasn’t approved, …
Those tiny tragedies that accumulate overnight on your skin, bruises embossed, scabs you don’t remember hurting for: he collects them, you know. The commas you always neglect to put, the ellipse that extends a thought unnecessarily, a parenthesis you left without a close: he tends them like flowers. The runs in your stockings. That bra …
What we love stays with us, sometimes. The road slick with rain and borrowed light. The machine of the city turned quiet as feathers. He walks wet with courage, by turns incandescent and dark. Two floors above, a window flares on. He could look up. He could. This has always been our story: the resolution …
Noodler’s Baystate Blue stains skin, sinks, pens, everything. I was foolhardy and loaded it into one of my Danitrios, and now I have very subtle spots of blue on once-pristine beige lacquer. Let’s just call them spots of honor – I have used Baystate Blue and survived. Waterman’s Florida Blue is brilliant wet, but dries …
What’s a girl to do? There are too many plugins to play with and not enough brain cells to understand them all. Massive props to Matt Jacob for developing a WordPress.org plugin that plays nice with Ping.fm. I have been waiting for this for months.
Birthday Letters came out in 1998, and peculiarly for a book of poetry, became a bestseller. Ted Hughes left his wife, Sylvia Plath, and their two children, after 7 years of marriage. She killed herself months after. A legacy for a mother: it strikes me as a pitiful trade, like thorns for blood, fish bones …
I am fascinated by the Noodler’s line of inks because I never thought the bottled ink market could be segmented even further, small as it already is. Within the line, there are inks that highlight, appear only under black light, and prevent forgery. Noodler’s X-Feather is for those who write on cheap paper – where …