I Fought The Stub And The Stub Won: In Which Dr. Inkenstein Files And Files Again

Following up on the fude post, Dr. Inkenstein now relates the horriffic tale of the….. (crack of thunder, claw of lightning) HERO THAT STUBBED ITSELF.    

It all began with the thought:  “Hey, this Hero 616, of which I have many, might make an interesting fude.” 


So without further study, we grabbed the pen and a pair of jewelry pliers and attempted to snag the teeny little hooded nib and force it to turn up at the end.  Just like a real fude. Without even heating it first!    


But rather than bending to Dr. Inkenstein’s will, the end of the nib promptly snapped off.  


Here, the normal 616 nib, on the burgundy model, compared to the snub-nose green:

  “Well,” we thought.  “Maybe it will still write.”    And so it did.  Like a carpenter’s wood chisel.    

We cried.     TT__TT

But then, out came the girlie-manicure tools, which we have seen (with our very own eyes!) nibmeisters use.  Ones with professional names you would all recognize.  And we don’t just mean the manicure tools.    


We filed.   We tested.  The nib still behaved like a chisel.  It still tore out big chunks of paper.    


Dr. Inkenstein:  You dare defy your creator?    

Hero:  Hey.  YOU’RE the one who broke me in the first place.    


We filed some more.   And again.   And again.       And what do you know.   It wrote.   Like a fountain pen.


So now, we give you: the results!   In living color!  

We invite you to invest in some manicure tools and see whether you can’t rescue a mangled nib for your own scientific uses. 

 It’ll be fun.   Dr. Inkenstein says so.

Are You Loathsome Tonight? In Which We Post a YYH Fic

Hiei, Halloween, and professional wrestling make a dangerous combo, but toss in a stalking killer, some frightening food, and things go downhill fast.

A/N: This Halloween tale was late in arriving--or early, depending when you read it. In The Cowboy Trilogy it was fun, hijacking the titles of classic westerns and using them as chapter titles. Here I get to play with classic song titles.

Excerpt:

Then there was the case of the Psychotic Leprechaun, which Hiei had prosecuted with Urameshi Yuusuke. Who would have thought a creature one foot tall, and resembling a monkey rather than that cartoon guy with the pot of gold, could be so strong? Hiei had been forced to wield his Black Dragon. After its deployment, Hiei had fallen into a trance so deep that Urameshi, unable to rouse him, had covered him with a few sheets of newspaper and left him in the middle of the street.
Hiei had awakened in a garbage dump. Not his finest moment.

Focus on tonight. So it's Halloween. What of it?

The story in full here.

Nose In The Air: In Which Dr. Inkenstein Does Fude

There is something about a fountain pen with its nose turned up. And not just the fact that it looks like someone dropped it by accident head-first on a granite floor.
　
No, fude (or, as some of you know them, ‘Chinese calligraphy pens’) actually come that way. On purpose. This is because the snub nose gives you great variation of line, if you happen to be lucky enough not to be a southpaw hooker.
　
Even then, a fountain pen with a fude nib will make your handwriting look a bit less as though scribbled by a monkey with the espresso jitters.
　
Fude. Naturally, Dr. Inkenstein is crazy about them. And has been collecting them for a while.
　
In my little fude family are three or four Sailor ‘bamboo’ stick-type pens, each with its nose turned up at a slightly differing angle. And another Sailor, the Profit Special Script, which resembles a 1911 in shape, only cheaper. This one’s an everyday writer in my rotation, currently loaded with Iroshizuku Fuyu-Syogan ink, which, for those of you without a Japanese dictionary on hand, means ‘gray.’

Even if it looks blue here!

　
There is also the very spiffy-looking golden-brown Bookworm and the jaunty marine-y Jinhao, among others. All of them have their strengths and weaknesses. All have their noses in the air to varying degrees.

My selective group shot, L to r;

 

Jinhao, Bookworm, Sailor Profit, GLM:

　
But we are focusing this time on the newest of the lot, the Guanleming 193. Which was, like the other Guanlemings in my collection (previously reviewed here in Some Like It Cheap), a mere five dollars.
　
　
I wasn’t thrilled with the GLM 193 when I first inked it up. Maybe it was just the wrong ink.
　
From that previous review, Some Like It Cheap:

　
When it was empty of green, I loaded my GLM with a mix of mostly Waterman Havana Brown and a drop or two of Levenger's Shiraz. Because you can't be Dr. Inkenstein without a science experiment or two.
　
The more I use, the more I like.
　

This little wonder has become one of my all-time favorites.   Like other GLM pens, you can get it while it's still available at isellpens.
　
　
With the nib at a high angle, fude write almost like a normal fountain pen with a little flex and flair tossed in. At a lower angle, they’re almost like paintbrushes. With the nib held upside-down, they produce a hairline.
　
In short, they are the Swiss Army Knife of fountain pens. And for only five bucks (the GLM 193) you can dip your beak into the Turned-Up Nose Brigade.