Borrandoque: una colección de gomas maravillosas

Or something like that, my Spanish is terrible (but before I am cold in my grave, it will improve. This I vow). But this web site features a very impressive collection of pencil erasers that almost sends me into yet another irrational collecting fit.

Must stop inner 13 year old from clicking Purchase button at iTasho... or ogling the pages of Flickr's eraser group...

Surely some of you pencil and paper types share my fondness for erasers. Fess up.

The diarist, take II

Have you ever heard of the Holmes and Rahe stress scale? Go on, take the test. Although I've avoided the dreaded top 5 thus far, my score these days comes out well over 300. It's coping mechanism time. So naturally, I turned to the timeless vice of paper junkies everywhere, and bought yet another blank journal.

Journal-keeping is a habit I ended at age 25, having struggled since that time to determine what is worth documenting about adult life. I know, that sounds a little dour. What I mean is, prior to the age of 25, I wrote in journals to (badly) contain a surplus of daily melodrama brought about by an itinerant, youth-y lifestyle of rotating rental homes, dead-end jobs, and boy trouble. Then suddenly I woke up one day with a full-time techwriting job and a fiancé, and Fiestaware dishes, and that kind of thing. In my case a merciful development; people with depression have no business being young. But what do you say in a journal about Fiestaware dishes, or cats, or commute times? Journals equal drama, it was the only equation I knew. So that was the end for journals and me, and the next (cough cough) years went undocumented, until now.

So I've got this little Ecosystem "lagoon" colored artist journal (that looks like this one) and a Mead-Scholastic pen case that does not strangely appear to be for sale anywhere on the interwebs (I bought mine at the great University of Washington bookstore). And I have, after an extended intermission, begun documenting my mental state on paper. I can't promise it's as entertaining as the daily antics of a train-wreck 20-something, but I find myself looking forward to that 5 minutes a day when I sit around drawing in the margins of a notebook page with Sharpies or woodcase pencils. You know, I've missed it, really. It's good to be back.

Silent Type II: Your poem is here

Just a quick update, went to the P.O. box today and gathered up a bunch of Silent Type II submissions. Take a look at the spreadsheet, which should reflect the latest envelopes I have in hand, to make sure your submission arrived!

If you sent it out and it's not here, let me know.

Here is a link to the original call for submissions if you have no idea what I'm talkin about. The deadline has passed (but if you contacted me that your submission is on the way, I will wait for it.).

Oh yeah, you ask. You've sent me your poem. What's next? Well, in the next couple of weeks, I will read through all the poems and sort out questions about cover art, page order, layout, and all that sort of thing. If I have questions about your submission, I will contact you directly (so make sure I have your e-mail address). Once all of this is worked out, I will send out a tentative schedule for publication. I am thinking early summer. If your poem appears in ST2, you receive a free copy. If you want a copy and did not submit, this issue will have a cover price (this is not a for-profit endeavor, it is simply to recoup some shipping and material costs for the overall project).

As the author of a poem in ST2, you of course retain all rights to your own work, and are just giving me permission to publish it in ST2.

If you have any other questions, I can just add to this post with the answers. Looking forward to seeing this come together! Sorry it won't happen faster, I have an insane amount of work, school, and family related commitments going on at the moment.