vote

I'm trying to get back into the swing of writing fiction. I've got several idea started, and I need some guidance on which to persue first. Perhaps you all could help. Of the three vignettes below, which would you most like to see finished? Submit your vote in the comments below. Sometime this week, I'll start working on the one that has the most interest.

Strange Little Loops

I should be dead, and judging by the looks on the faces of everyone else in the room, the fact that I'm not is a bit of a problem. My consciousness should be implanted in my spare body on Mars right about now, and my original body, the one I was born in, should be flat lined – stopped heart, no brain functions, just waiting to be put on ice. But I'm still sitting in downtown Cleveland, buckled into the very comfy transference chair, wearing the big, blue transference helmet, and the machines that would have plunged needles and tubes into my freshly dead body in order to put it into suspended animation are precariously poised, unsure of quite how to react.

Over at the operator's console, both the green and the red light are on, and the guy standing behind it is scratching his head and looking very worried. The woman who bucked me into the chair is staring at her tablet and frowning.

"I'm due in a meeting on Mars in three hours," I said, "is there a problem?"

Interview

God is terrifying. I don’t mean existentially – though the concept of an omnipotent being that has the power to destroy your soul at any second is pretty hard to swallow – I mean personally terrifying. The dude has seven heads, three of which breathe fire, two of which have eight eyes each, and one of which is always screaming blasphemous lies at the top of its lungs. Plus, there are the tentacles that seem to have a mind of their own and the blistering heat that turns anyone who gets within fifty feet into charcoal. Terrifying.

Satan, on the other hand, looks like he could be your grandfather and he’s always carrying an extra beer – which conveniently seems to be whatever brand you like best.

Now, tell me who you’d rather sit down across the table from to do a one hour interview with. Seven headed scary guy? I doubt it. So, guess who gets stuck with that assignment? I don’t even speak Aramaic, for crying out loud.

The Last Page

Jack had the remaining secrets of the universe written down in a notebook. It wasn't anything fancy – just a normal college-ruled composition notebook that he'd picked up at a local drugstore for $1.29. At this point in the history of humanity, there weren't that many secrets remaining – there was quite a lot of knowledge to be found, to be sure – but the big things – the underlying, fundamental secrets of the universe were few in number, and they invariably reduced to fairly simple equations. In total, it took fifty-three of the hundred and twenty pages of the book to record them all.

The secrets had been revealed to him, whole cloth, in a dream just the night before. He'd awakened, grabbed the notebook out of a pile of unused junk on his desk, and begun writing. At the time, he'd felt a little bit like a prophet: not responsible for the contents, but responsible for delivering the message.                 

His only regret, as he sat in seat 14B, was that the notebook was currently in the backpack stashed under the seat in front of him. The one he was now bracing himself against as the plane hurtled uncontrollably toward the ground. He wondered just how long it would take for humanity to rediscover the secrets on those pages. Ten years, a hundred, a million? Would there even still be humans by the time they found them all? Especially the last page – the one that tied all the rest of them together. How long would it be before that one was produced again by the mind of man?

ink review: noodler's #41 brown

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My infatuation with Noodler's bulletproof ink continues. This time, it is #41 Brown – an ink named after the junior senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown. I'll get to the political meaning behind the name later, when I discuss the label - but for now, let it be known that the ink is a rich, dark brown with golden overtones. It is highly saturated, like most Noodler's inks, which results in a solid, clean line with little shading.

I tested the ink on a Rhodia notepad, Staples bagasse, and cheap office-quality copier paper. Compared to Noodler's Black, #41 Brown is less viscous - it doesn't enable the pen to glide across the page like an Olympic ice skater, but it is still easy and pleasant to write with. Like most Noodler's inks, it exhibits very little feathering – even on copier paper. Bleed-through is non-existent on all of the papers I tested it with; show-though is also low to nil.

Like most Noodler's inks, the drying time varies widely depending on the paper. On cheap, absorbent, copier paper, it dried to the touch on three seconds. On Staples bagasse, it dried in fifteen seconds. However, as is typical, it took over a minute to completely dry and become smudge proof on the coated Rhodia paper. 

Historically, drying time has been the major factor preventing me from extensively using Noodler's inks. As I mentioned in my re-review of Black, my writing habits have changed extensively enough that I no longer find the long drying time to be an issue. Your mileage may vary – if you are tearing through pages in a Moleskine or Rhodia Webbie, committing your latest brainstorm to paper, you may well be unhappy with the results. If you are a lefty and insist on using high quality paper and notebooks, you may be in for a rude surprise. However, if you spend all day writing on legal pads and copier paper, you may quickly fall in love.

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Noodler's bulletproof inks are designed to withstand attempts to remove them from paper. The dyes bond to the cellulose in the paper and can't be washed away by water, bleach, or other methods. Therefore, they stand up fairly well to water on most paper. On coated papers that resist ink, they may sometimes smudge, as the ink that dries upon the surface is still susceptible to being washed away.

The results of the water tests demonstrate this behavior. On the smear test, in which I run a wet finger across the paper, some of the ink travels with it, resulting in a light brown smudge. The lines remain perfectly legible, and just as bold as before, but the excess ink does make a bit of a mess.

On the drop test, in which I let droplets of water soak on the page before blotting them up, the ink performs admirably. Since the blotting paper picked up the excess ink, it's nearly impossible to tell where the water was sitting. The ink that did bond to the paper remains bold and readable.

On the soak test, in which I run the paper under a stream of water for several minutes, the bulletproof #41 Brown shows its true power. The excess inks was carried away quickly, leaving a completely legible set of lines that appear no different than how they started. Noodler's bulletproof inks don't mess around.

Nathan Tardiff, the wizard behind Noodler's ink, doesn't do things in half measures. He designs his inks to behave well on the most common paper types, instead of assuming that the user will have paper that is friendly to fountain pen ink, and he designs his bulletproof inks to stand up to all but the most determined forger.

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One of the other areas where Mr. Tardiff deals in extremes is in his political beliefs. He's not afraid to share them, going so far as to plaster them on the labels of his bottles. In the case of #41 Brown, the label has three catfish (the mascot of Noodler's ink), which are apparently from Lake Pearl in Wrentham, Massachusetts, residence of Senator Scott Brown. The three catfish are pictured as thinking, in order, "Cast asunder one party nepotism and feudalism," "The 'Scott' heard round the world," and "It's the people's seat! Monarchy in Massachusetts eternally results in revolution."

Collectively, they refer to the US Senate seat that was held by members of the Kennedy family (or their family friends) for over 50 years, starting in 1953 with John F. Kennedy. The family remained a presence in the US Senate until 2009, when John's brother Ted passed away from a brain tumor. In winning a 2010 special election to fill the vacated seat, Brown became the first Republican elected to the US Senate in Massachusetts since 1972.

That's quite a bit of background info to explain the label on an ink bottle – but the good Mr. Tardiff doesn't shy away from labels that need to be explained. Regardless of your political affiliation, it is fair to say that the labels bring an interesting touch to an otherwise utilitarian bottle. Aside from some specialty lines, Noodler's inks are packaged in plain, 3 oz., glass bottles that are sourced from high-volume suppliers in order to keep costs down. You could easily see these bottles filled with spices in your local grocery store. The bottles are filled to the brim, so be careful when opening – make sure you've got it somewhere flat and stable before you unscrew the cap.

Noodler's #41 Brown is a great ink – one that I'm glad that I have in my collection, and one which will see a great deal of use in my daily work. It's somber enough for business use, I'd suggest, but also interesting enough for artistic endeavors. I'll happily recommend it, as Noodler's inks are one of the best values in the industry.

Review notes: The wide strokes were made with a 6mm steel Pilot Parallel calligraphy pen, the medium strokes with a 1.9mm steel nib on a Lamy Joy, and the narrow strokes with an EF Palladium nib on a Visconti Homo Sapiens. The paper is Rhodia 80gsm.

thrive cleveland

If you live in the Cleveland area, you should keep an eye on this awesome group of people who are working on cool programs to encourage happiness and goodwill in our community. [Thrive] Cleveland can be found at: http://bit.ly/Ko81aK.

soundcloud

I'm experimenting with using SoundCloud to host audio versions of my poetry and short stories. You can check out my first experiment here: http://soundcloud.com/carpedavid/the-fog. It is a recording of my poem, "Fog."

Is this something, O gracious reader, that you'd find useful? Interesting? The recording above was made with my phone, so it doesn't have the best sound fidelity. If this is something that you all would enjoy, then I might invest in a nice microphone, and perhaps even recruit other readers.

facelift

I've grown weary of Blogger's limitations, so I decided to move to a hosted blog at Squarespace. As you can see, the site has received a bit of a facelift in the process. I'm still working on getting Disqus put in place for comments, but am pleased that Squarespace was able to pull all of the comments over into its own system.

Please feel free to take a look around and let me know what you think.