Things you recently bought or got

I just bought beard shampoo and beard oil; figured if I am going to keep this for awhile, I should maybe take it seriously. The oil is called "Lumber Yard," supposed to smell like, well, fresh lumber or at least sawdust. That appealed to me because my favorite job as a young man was spending several months working in a lumber yard unloading railroad cars. Smells sort of like sawdust, but sometimes like dusty cardboard. The shampoo and oil seem to make the beard softer and less itchy.

 

I just use the bulldog oil and l'Oreal beard shampoo from Sainsburys. I think the results will come in, in about two weeks time once I've gotten into a regular pattern. The bulldog oil is tea tree, green tea and aloe vera. smells amazing.

 

All that perfume talk is just triggering my allergies. KEEP THAT STUFF AWAY FROM ME! I'm already THIS close to develop full blown asthma.

 

Was in a dvd shop today and found a copy of the 1960 Rod Taylor film The Time Machine. Chuffed with this find. Don’t know how faithful it is to the book and I don’t care cos it’s one of my favourite films.

Incidentally, don’t know if I’m alone in this, but this will be one of those films I have to watch during the afternoon. Most films I’ll wait until dark, but adventure / swashbuckling / fantasy / family films have to be watched in the day. I call them my afternoon matinees.

 

I get that. Something about the atmosphere around the screen that just makes the film more lively.

 

I think it also boosts the enjoyment of being off work somehow. Sort of accentuates that this is my time.

 

You got me smelling belts and wooden stuff. What a peculiar taste in scents. I don't think I've ever smelled a guy wearing this kind of scents. Or have I?

 

Put your face up to the screen.

 

If you're close enough to smell it, you are not social distancing.

 

I give up! Screen scent? Really?

 

Social distancing is awesome. For me, at least. Far less triggers from perfume.

But I still get the occasional folk that do trigger me from 5 meters away outdoors. Unbelievable, the amount of stuff they must have dumped on them.

For some of them, it's the laundry detergent and softener (in particular the softener. That stuff is the devil's piss) that has soaked their clothing. In particular if they use that stuff that "leaves a fresh smell for months". Bleurgh.

Laundry detergent perfume/fragrances were the first triggers of my allergy. I have a suspicion it's those cheap artificial fragrances. There are about 4 or 5 substances that are in EVERYTHING. Cleaning agents, cosmetics, detergents etc. Even in (particular in) expensive perfumes. Those substances are not natural fragrances that you would find in plants and animal secretions – they just have the same surface structure so they stick to the same smell receptors.

I grant that by now there could be a psychosomatic component to it – no real bodily response, my brain just makes my body react because of the smell. After all, there is no possibility of blind testing, as I will be able to notice the smell. The only thing my allergologist agrees that can be done right now is avoidance. Which is getting easier – yay social distancing – and by now it's getting better. Even with heavy exposure, I seldom get those really bad reactions lasting for days that I had a couple of years ago.

 

That sounds terrible.

 

Perfumes are a trigger for migraines in one of my friends. He always looks for the line at the supermarket with men in it as they are less likely to have bathed in scent.

 

I got a replacement nib (actually, nib/feeder combo) for my old Pelikan M200 piston fountain pen.

The pen was gifted to me over thirty years ago for Abitur (the exam in Germany at the end of secondary school that qualifies to attend University). As was usual then and still is now, it came with a M-sized nib, and it always wrote way too broad for my taste. Given that it was (and still is) a pen in the almost 100€ price range, that seemed like a waste to me.

So I found a great deal online for an EF-sized nib (about €20. No, not a counterfeit, the original replacement piece from Pelikan. Prices varies a bit depending on inventory numbers, and this is at the lower, but regular, end.). Fits, works flawlessly, and writes nicely and smaller. Design has changed a bit (the original had some ornamental loopy lines on it), but it's hardly visible and doesn't affect the functionality.

The thing is, the clerks in brick-n-mortar store where you had to go to get these pens always were huffing and puffing to not give you anything but the M-size, which is why I never got around to exchange it before. At the most, they would sell you a whole new pen (with a smaller sized nib) as 'Special Order'. It's one of those behaviors that drove people like me to shop online, even though I know the economics behind the behavior.

 

I got (as a present) some Pelikan fountain pens a few years ago. Unfortunately they were the cheap plastic ones without clips, and the gifter didn't realize that the "color" was of the body only so I got three or four otherwise identical low-end fountain pens.

It's really ok though, I write like a seal with a neuromuscular disorder trying to hold a pen in its back flippers.

 

Pelikan is one of the big names here in Germany. They do make cheap school fountain pens (it is still mandatory for students here to use a fountain pen. The school market is split almost evenly between Pelikan and Lamy), but also have a luxury segment. My M200 (actually it's an M250 in burgundy red, which is not made anymore, but it is still not old or rare enough to fetch significant collectible pricing. Give it ten more years at least. Although it is in excellent shape, from what I have seen on specialty forums. Some corrosion on the clip is all.) is at the low end of 'luxury', and a typical graduation gift.

When it comes to functionality of fountain pens, 'cheap' does not at all mean 'bad'. There are many fountain pens that you can get for <€$20 that work perfectly fine and better than anything that was sold decades ago for luxury pricing.

 

I'm sure that functionally it's true, but I just wanted a pen that would go with my Harris Tweed jacket.

Yup, I'm an idiot

 

YES!

Or I bought it off him, but the elbow patches were why I chose it, the parfum was an unexpected bonus.

 

Several hundred dollars worth of anime on blu-ray.

-Tsukimonogatari

-Owarimonogatari Volumes 1-3

-Zoku Owarimonogatari

Watched Tsukimonogatari last night, and I was not disappointed. Falls under the category of best $75 I've ever spent for four episodes. Well, and a deluxe booklet and some other packaged goodies.

 

How big is your library?

 

Still in its infancy, but they grow-up so fast. :')

It started with the collector's edition of Your Name. I'm not at my apartment currently, but off the top of my head I also have Wolf Children, A Silent Voice, Akame ga Kill!, Steins;Gate, and now the entire Monogatari series up through Final Season.

Oh, and I have The Garden of Words on DVD and 5 Centimeters Per Second. There may be one or two others I'm forgetting. So a small but solid collection.

Do you have a library of anime, or of vinyls or anything?

 

Damn, this is hilarious

 

Nah, no interest in anime. I have 3 LPs but no speakers or amplifier.