Editing The Pen Addict 318/transcript (section)

== Pencil Preferences ==


'''Les Herger:''' I am. What am I using the most? You know what? I just picked up a six pack of the Midori MD Paper Products B grade. Oh, man, that pencil. I keep reaching for it, and I am really just, it's so smooth.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Les Herger:''' So I keep reaching for that, and what else am I reaching for all the time? You know what? I keep going for the new Blackwing Volumes 1001, the five-sided.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Les Herger:''' And I think it's a 602 core, which I don't usually like that much.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Do you like the softer or the harder?

'''Les Herger:''' I like the Pearl. Okay. And I also like the extra firm, so.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. So both, but just not the 602.

'''Les Herger:''' Yeah, I don't, because.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' In relation to the other two.

'''Les Herger:''' Yeah. My first experience with the 602 was that it was a little gritty feeling to me. And if I'm paying that much for a pencil, I want silky smooth.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Les Herger:''' But, yeah, that five-sided pencil is really cool. I'm digging that a lot. So I'm going for that a lot.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Nice.

'''Les Herger:''' But those are the two that I'm really going for over and over and over and over again lately.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool, cool. Yeah, so I still use the pencil I asked you about the most when you sent them to me was the orange and cream, the creamsicle-looking Dixon Ticonderoga. That's been kind of my favorite out of this batch. But as I was getting ready to talk to you, I broke out the whole batch again. The general cedar point shocked me how much I liked it. But, like, I didn't even consider it. I was like, you know, I like the natural color. I was like, the ferrule is kind of weird. I don't care for the black eraser. Then I wrote with it. People who don't use pencils think they're probably all the same. You can tell. Like, I could, even not having a lot of experience with, like, probably, what, I have, like, eight pencils left that you sent me that my son didn't steal. So, I could probably tell the difference in probably five or six of them just by writing with them. There are differences in all these lead grades. So, you know, if you haven't picked up a woodcase pencil recently, I implore you to try a few. And that's the thing, right, is you can get a bunch of pencils, like you said, on eBay or go to CW Pencils or go to JetPens or anywhere. And you can get 10 pencils for, you know, 10 or 12 bucks. And that's even probably on the expensive end. And, like, one of the pencils that shocked me the most besides that journals was you got me one from Target. It's like this wooden, like, dipped end. I won't, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know you can't remember all the ones you sent me because this was, like, a year ago. But that pencil writes really well. And I think you said they were, like, six for a buck or something like that. That was a shockingly good pencil.

'''Les Herger:''' Those are from the dollar spot.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so that's, like, that first kind of bay usually when you walk in, right, where kind of sometimes all the deals are.

'''Les Herger:''' Yeah, it looks like garbage at my Target. It's, like, where all the stuff goes to die. It's always bombed.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly.

'''Les Herger:''' Customers have just, like, ransacked it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I couldn't believe it when I figured out. It took me a while because it's not really marked with what, you know, it's not stamped with what it is. I was like, I can go back and read this note because this is a really good pencil. And I was shocked. So, yeah, if you haven't tried wooden pencils, that's going to be your next addiction because there is a difference between pencils. You can find some that meet your writing needs, whether it's darkness, you know, softness, firmness, point retention, eraser, whatever, aesthetic. There's a pencil out there for you. So did you ever find any composition books in the dollar spot at Target? Because we're going to get into the weeds about pencils. I want to get in the weeds about composition notebooks more importantly. So you're the biggest composition notebook fan on the Internet, according to my metrics, which is something I greatly appreciate. I have a soft spot for composition notebooks because, number one, I didn't know there were that many of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's start there. How did you find so many composition books?

'''Les Herger:''' Well, it's a combination of like I know that every store has their own brand and just going in. And because I do this roundup every year where I go and I just buy a composition book everywhere and then test it out with fountain pens and pencils and see how it works. And then also now people in the RSVP group will send me like notifications. Hey, Target has a composition notebooks out. They look like this and this and this. Or have you been to CVS yet? They have this brand. Have you been to Walgreens? Have you checked out Rite Aid? So I'll get all of these messages letting me know that there are composition books places and I'll go and I'll pick up one. And usually they're, again, for $20, I can pick up like 30 composition notebooks. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What is it about the composition notebooks that makes it special for you?

'''Les Herger:''' It's a perfect combination of nostalgia and cheap.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Les Herger:''' You know, you can pick up something that, you know, I mean, for me, when I was a kid, I hated them because they were cheap. And everyone knew they were cheap. And, like, that was a big thing for me because I was a really poor kid. I grew up in a really poor area, but I was also really poor. And you didn't want people to know that you were poor. So I didn't like composition notebooks because they were $0.10.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Les Herger:''' Back then, back in the old days.

'''Les Herger:''' And, you know, I wanted the Mead Five Stars. Right. Because those were the fancy notebooks.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But now... Some of those even had plastic covers, if I remember correctly.

'''Les Herger:''' Oh, yeah. The poly covers. Yeah. Well, you can get poly-covered comp books, too. Nice. But, yeah, like, for now, it's, like, really nostalgic for me. That's, like, composition notebooks are school, cheap writing, and, you know, I just love them. I don't know.