Tonight Emily and I went to see David Rees discuss pencil-sharpening techniques at a bookstore in Berkeley. We volunteered to demonstrate an experimental technique in which Emily pretended to be a Toyota Corolla named Emily, and I pretended to drive her through a drivethrough while sharpening a pencil, and then I pretended to pretend to be an alien trying to pay for food in pencil shavings. (This is all per written instructions in Mr. Rees’ book.)
Anyway, it was great, and he sharpened my vintage Blackwing afterwards at a discounted rate. There was a ten-year-old sitting in front of us who asked a question whose answer required profanity, which was wonderful, and people around me kept murmuring in agreement with statements about pencils, which was also wonderful. Here is a bad photo of my post-performance graphitey hand with Mr. Rees in the background. And now, back to my life of deleting racist comments off of news stories about children.
