depathologizing your own responses to things means no longer worrying about which symptom matches which diagnosis matches which branded treatment model and instead practicing gentle non-judgmental curiosity about what you’re going through from the perspective of someone who wants to fulfill one of the most basic and primal needs for you which is the sensation of being seen and heard
i actually dont mind tumblr posts reposted to pinterest. the 13 y/o “pinterest in the only social media my parents let me have” girlies deserve a little treat
i had a meet n greet with the anaesthesiologist for my top surgery and he said it’s his favourite procedure to work on because everyone who wants it is just so truly happy to be there, and i can’t stop thinking about this career that is 99% attending to various sadnesses miseries and woes and 1% having funny little dudes in dangerfield buttonups throwing themselves on the operating table like YEEHAW LET’S GOOOO
as the anesthesiologist was wheeling me into the OR, i grabbed the nurse’s hand as we passed her, and i said, “I’LL BE RIGHT BACK, I’VE GOT TO GET SOMETHING OFF MY CHEST.”
my journey to the OR was temporarily delayed because said anesthesiologist was bent at the waist, in hysterics, and took several minutes to collect himself.
not me realizing that people are…defending alex jones? for “calling out” ye west? you know that he didn’t “call out” ye for being antisemitic, right. he did it because ye was being Too Obviously Antisemitic. ye killed his plausible deniability.
alex jones has made his living for over a decade on walking RIGHT up to that line and not overtly crossing it. he goes off about a “globalist conspiracy” every time he’s on air. he talks about the “jewish mafia.” ye just walked right over the line and said “Hitler was a good guy actually.” alex jones isn’t horrified at what ye said. it’s that ye said it OUT LOUD, ON AIR, WHILE STREAMING.
i refuse to live in an era of rehabilitation of alex fucking jones. jesus christ you guys.
once in a work meeting we had an ice breaker that was “tell us about the first friend you made in school & whether you’re still friends” and everyone told heartwarming stories about growing up together with someone and having this lasting positive relationship
& I had to be the dyke in the room that was like “we met when I was 4 and were friends until 8th grade when she realized I was gay and told everyone so I lost all my friends at once, and she never spoke to me again until college when she added me on facebook and I thought maybe she’d grown as a person but then she started sharing transphobic memes and I blocked her” 🙃
Everything in it remains true: Moleskine notebooks are overpriced for what they are, and even over-hyped;
they’re not the original Moleskines referred to in the Bruce Chatwin
(famous travel writer) anecdote which accompanies (or used to) each one. This is a typical example; here’s an extract:
Moleskine notebooks are synonymous with understated style and
professionalism. They have been used by some of the greatest writers of
our time, including Ernest Hemmingway and Oscar Wilde, whilst plain
paper versions were popular with artists Picasso and Van Gogh.
Um. No, they weren’t.
Current Moleskines are a 1997 product which resurrected a long-defunct brand. If those Great Names used them there must have been a bit more resurrection going on, because by 1997 every single one - including Moleskine’s poster-boy Chatwin - was also defunct, most of them for quite a long time…
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There are many other elastic-closure notebooks far more fit for purpose, especially if that purpose involves a fountain pen. My own current fave is Rhodia, with a Leuchtturm next in the queue, though I bought a few Moleskines some years ago when I still used gel pens a lot (Pilot G-2s are excellent).
Despite changing almost entirely to fountain pens, I’ve been working my way through the Moleskines because TBH they were too expensive just to chuck out. But they’re restricted almost entirely to gels again, because the wretched paper is so prone to bleed-through.
Here’s an example:
Here’s the other side. Every line is visible to some extent, and a couple of them have bled through. A broader nib, wetter ink or indeed both combined would leave marks so severe that a “120 page” notebook might have just 60 useable pages, and if the bleed-through was bad enough to mark the next page as well, maybe not even that.
There are several reasons for bleed-through: nib width (obviously a Broad nib <B> lays down more ink than an Extra-Fine <EF>), ink viscosity (“wet” flows faster than “dry”) and the way nibs vary between manufacturers, because widths don’t seem to have a standardised size.
It’s obvious that my Lamy Al-Star <EF> nib writes
far broader than my Pilot MR <F>. With the same ink in both, the difference wouldn’t be as conspicuous, though I suspect it would still be there; Lamy nibs skew wide while Japanese nibs skew fine. Those variables apply to all the rest as well.
So why use broad nibs and wet ink if it’s so messy?
On heavy or just well-finished paper it
isn’t, and the combination is (a) pleasant to write with, since the nib
skims effortlessly along a lubricant of ink and (b) broader nibs with a bit of flexibility create more obvious line variation, and that makes for graceful handwriting…
…and fountain-pens in general, due to not needing pressure, can and probably will improve the sort of scrawl ingrained by years of using ballpoints. Voice of Experience.
The primary reason for bleed-through is low-grade paper, and Moleskine has that without a doubt. They should spend less on marketing and fancy associate-with-whatever’s-trendy-now covers and more on better materials, but they don’t need to, having settled into the comfortable “Lifestyle Accessory” slot where things sell by familiarity of brand-name, not quality of product.
IMO Mont Blanc fountain pens are there too, and have been since the early 1990s. @dduane‘s MB-146 was one of the last without the various authenticity marks that happen once a thing becomes desirable enough to be worth counterfeiting - as in China, which churns out a lot of fake MBs. (China is also where Moleskines are made…)
DD’s 146 may also be one of the last meant for use rather than possession. Nowadays (IMO again) a big MB is the fountain pen To Be Seen With. The equivalent big fountain pen To Write With is a Pelikan.
Just don’t try using either of them in a Moleskine…
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And yet, rummaging through old posts, I found something which amazed me as much now as when I first saw it 8 years ago. This was done with ballpoint pen on Moleskine, and embellished with real gold.
Wow…
To add a small thing on this, the 1997 Moleskines used a thicker paper. Fountain pens worked fine back then. Several years later Moleskines dropped the thickness of the paper and they became a bit rubbish for fountain pen owners.
