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Why didn’t it occur to us that we could do stuff with the Lego plate on the Lego Moleskine notebook? Have we become…a grown-up?! No!!!

We opened the Muji Lego bricks-and-paper set we got for our birthday last year.

What, your friends don’t give you Lego sets for your birthday? Ayyy, adults.

Voila!

This is the first attempt, which looks like the work of an uncoordinated 5-year-old. Wait till we break out the paper designs.

Saffy, cancel all our appointments today!

Like all notebook fetishists we believe that the notebook we write in affects the quality of our writing. We know this to be untrue because James Hamilton-Paterson wrote his brilliant history of the Philippines America’s Boy on newsprint school notebooks with artistas on the cover. (Come to think of it we haven’t seen notebooks with artista on the cover lately.) But we like to think it anyway.

The Star Wars notebook is one of the best notebooks we’ve ever had in terms of output: we wrote copiously, met our daily quota of 1,000 words, and liked our penmanship. Plus this notebook got to travel a lot and it went to the Australian Open finals. There are 5 blank pages left so we’ll have to start a new one later today. We hope the Lego notebook is as “lucky”.

Steps at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Travel is especially conducive to writing in notebooks, travel and solitude. On our first trip to New York we filled up three Mead spiral notebooks. We spent a lot of time alone, walking up and down the city (We walked from the Metropolitan Museum to the Strand bookstore downtown more than once, which is not as insane or unusual as it sounds), getting lost in the subway and having fascinating conversations with strangers. We missed our cat (We only had Koosi then); we sat in the park and fed squirrels despite the admonitions of friends about encouraging the tree rats.

Periodically we would stop for a coffee and a Snapple (We loved Snapple, it was the Seinfeld era. A vendor in the park taught us the best way to open the bottle), sit on some steps (Having been raised on Sesame Street we love stoops), take out notebook and scribble. The great thing about New York City is that you could sit on some steps with a coffee and a notebook, next to bums with hangovers talking to themselves and bankers in Ermenegildo Zegna inhaling hotdogs, and no one would care. We hope Homeland Security hasn’t changed that.

Steps at the NY Public Library

Here’s Joan Didion On Keeping A Notebook, via The Electric Typewriter.

We’ve been using Pilot sign pens since the 1990s, starting with the Pilot V5 (in black, green or purple). Newspaper editors swear by them. Ten years ago we tried the Pilot VBall Extra Fine (always black), and it’s been our absolute favorite writing instrument since. In the mid-noughties we heard that this line was being phased out and we went into a panic. Happily it is still available at our local bookstores. We always carry 3 or 4 of these pens at all times (Our excuse is, we scribble for living) and use one up every week or so. Whenever we lose one we kick ourselves.

Recently we realized something about our beloved Pilot VBall Extra Fine. Our discovery does not diminish our attachment to this excellent apparatus, but we do worry for our clothes. You see, this pen has the tendency to explode in airplanes. (Haha Pilots on planes.)

On at least six occasions, the last one a week ago, we’ve opened a Pilot VBall Extra Fine in an airline cabin in order to write notes, only to find ink all over our fingers. The ink leaks out of the nib. In each case, the pen was half-empty (You can see the ink level through the transparent tube) or half-full if you’re an optimist. We figure the leakage has something to do with cabin pressure.

Fortunately the exploded pens have not leaked onto our notes or clothes, although we now have a couple of bags with Rorschach blots on them. (Obviously it’s the lambs screaming, Clarice.) We are devoted to these pens and will keep on using them, but next time we get on a plane they’re going in a Zip-loc bag.

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Esoteric nerd knowledge from Miguel R: “Pilot techpoints explode in planes because of the pressure difference. So when you take the cap off, kaboom! One solution I’ve read about is to invert the pen so all the ink is in the bottom when you take off the cap.”

Please try this on your next plane ride and tell us if it solves the problem. In return we will give you…Pilot pens!!!

bookstothesky. Read the entries here.

Congratulations, bookstothesky! Please post your full name in Comments (It won’t be published) and we’ll alert you when you can pick up your Limited Edition Star Wars Moleskine notebook at National Bookstore in Power Plant Mall, Rockwell, Makati.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

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bookstothesky, you can pick up your Moleskine notebook at the Customer Service counter of National Bookstore in Power Plant Mall, Rockwell any day starting Friday the 21st. Enjoy!

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Speaking of notebooks, here’s Charles Simic on notebook-ing in the NYRB.

Writing with a pen or pencil on a piece of paper is becoming an infrequent activity, even for those who were once taught the rigorous rules of penmanship in grade school and hardly saw a day go by without jotting down a telephone number or a list of food items to buy at the market on the way home, and for that purpose carried with them something to write with and something to write on. In an emergency, lacking pen or notebook, they might even approach a complete stranger to ask for assistance. For instance, on a cold January morning, I once asked a fashionably dressed middle-aged woman, standing outside a building on Madison Avenue smoking a cigarette and shivering, whether she had a pen I could use. She didn’t think this was an odd request and was happy to oblige me. After she extracted a pencil not much bigger than a matchstick from her purse, I took out a little notebook I carried in my pocket, and not trusting the reliability of my memory, wrote down some lines of poetry I had been mulling over for the previous hour, roaming the streets. Today, she’d probably be staring at an iPhone or a blackberry while puffing away on her cigarette and it would not cross my mind to bother her by asking for a pencil.

The kind of notebooks I’m describing are still available in stationery stores (the ones made by an outfit called Moleskine come in a variety of sizes and colors), so someone must still be scribbling in them—unless they are bought purely out of nostalgia for another time and remain unused now that they have so much competition. No question, one can use a smart phone as an aid to memory, and I do use one myself for that purpose. But I don’t find them a congenial repository for anything more complicated than reminding myself to pick up a pair of pants from the cleaners or make an appointment with the cat doctor. If one has the urge to write down a complete thought, a handsome notebook gives it more class. Even a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil are more preferable for philosophizing than typing the same words down, since writing a word out, letter by letter, is a more self-conscious process and one more likely to inspire further revisions and elaborations of that thought…

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Long-overdue thanks to Rio for the Moleskine folio. No we don’t think it’s bonkers at all, but our sanity standards are a bit different.

Dear Reader. Years ago Star Wars was defiled by its own creator. Now we beg you to help us in our struggle to recover what was great about Star Wars. We regret that we are unable to convey our request to you in person, but our site is having technical problems and we’re afraid our mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed because we live in the future and Darth Vader has already blown it up.

But information vital to the survival of the Rebellion is contained in the memory systems of every child who ever sat in a movie theatre and heard about The Force. That child is you, and you will know how to retrieve it. You must see Star Wars safely delivered back to the people who love it. Its creator has been amply and most generously rewarded.

This is our most desperate hour. Not really, but that’s the line. Help us, Reader. You’re our only hope.

This week’s LitWit Challenge: In 1,000 words or less, summarize Star Wars Episodes IV to VI. Yes, the first three to appear, the last three in the chronology: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi.

Don’t just rattle off the plot points, make us relive the moment Luke turned off his computer and fired.

Best entry wins a Limited Edition Star Wars Moleskine notebook. Post all entries in Comments by 1159pm on Friday, 14 October 2011.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

We need theme music for this, and the opening crawls. Maestro?

The Limited Edition Star Wars Moleskine notebooks have arrived at selected National Bookstore branches (Greenbelt 1 and Power Plant Rockwell for sure). Available in two sizes, plain or ruled.

Each Star Wars Moleskine comes with a print of the 1977 movie artwork.

Pocket notebook PHP995, journal PHP1380.

Do not underestimate the power of Moleskine users raised on Star Wars. The good Star Wars, not that Jar Jar Binks crap.