Mission: Shogun Bagworks

Like most people, I think the best kind of robot is the kind whose chest opens up so it can shoot missiles or energy beams at its enemies.

(Shogun Warrior Dangard Ace deploying that chest-based what-for.)

Also, like most people, I have long said "But there could never be a backpack that reminds me of the best kind of robot".

(And lo comes Mission Workshop to prove me unimaginably, and consequentially, incorrect. Gaze upon the Mission Rhake, with its chest gawping and its payload imaginable. Image from Zdnet.)

So that's 400 wing-wangs I'm gonna have to spend, I guess. And that's a big pile of yua!

What's weird is that I can't quite tell at this late remove how / why I knew / know that Shogun Warrior Dangard Ace can open its chest to shoot missile laser things and that that's an incredibly cool and important thing to do. It took me metric forever to find an image of the chest-blasting fromthe only issue I had (issue 9), and that image is one tiny panel of two missiles launching that, spoiler: the big monster shrugs off like nothing. So why did I then spend a couple years drawing giant robots (that I was careful to identify as "ancient"), most of which had opening chest plates that revealed neat weapons?

The world may never know.

(I mean, it's not like I saw this rad attack, cropped from here. Anyway, this slightly radder attack.)

Side note one: man, the comics I grew up on sure were turbo-ruined by bad coloring printed cheaply on awful paper. Check out this great Herb Trimpe art and believe me when I tell you the color version of this that I had looked substantially less good than this. That monster design is exceedingly odd, though, with teeth and tongue coming out of what appears to be eyelids...and the whole thing breathes fire?, and it's extremely pleasing in its oddness. Also pleasing is that I could not explain why its name is "Starchild" with powerful telescopes and substantial computing power at my disposal. Also I very much appreciate the least unsuccessful giant robot attack being a head-first tackle that causes the monster to "whump".

Side note two: one of the pitfalls of buying your comics off a spinner rack is that you might only have one issue of a book, and that issue might mostly focus on a character that ... turns out not to be a good one. The issue you pluck might well in fact focus on a character that somebody could even say ... "sucked". (The summary of his career is not the most exciting read.)

(Man, that is some action of the old type. I actually still really like this way of telling a story.)

And yet something about this stuff still makes me happy. And I don't think it's exclusively nostalgia. The Trimpe art is fun, and there's some energy and weirdness to the giant-robots-fighting-monsters genre that translates pretty well to the comic format. I don't know if it's enough to get me to join the backpack brigade, but it's at the very least the closest I've come for a long time now.

—Fat, ever ready to drive a giant robot (as long as it's not a stick)

Pen 15 Club: Pen Is in My Hand (and I'm Rubbing It on My Notebook)

Years back, somewhere around 2004 or so, I lifted from Tinzeroes the idea and practice of carrying around a small notebook, where I'd put everything I'd write. (I haven't always been consistent about this, and have lost a few things over the years that I had scribbled on scrap paper or whatever. Bummer.) As years passed, I started to layer ideation atop that key central thought, not just "put everything in here", but "structure the notebook so it's easy to put things down in it, and find them later, and make the down-put things easy to jog up against one another, which is where ideas come from".¹ That is, one wants a system, one wants something working and workable.

Structuring the input requires a bit of attention to the notebook itself. Luckily, I used to do zines, so I have an amazing and incredibly high-tech way of mapping out how a notebook works. Basically, what I do is draw thumbnails of each page, then think about what might go on those pages.

The thumbnails look like so (diagrammatically, anyways: usually I just scribble on the back of an index card).

As I've worked on my notebooks, I've also worked on a few other things, like building good habits, keeping track of what I read and what I watch, making notes as the year grinds on of what HEAVY TUNES I may be particularly wallowing in, etc. So, for these stable projects, it makes some sense to devote specific areas of each notebook to them, after which I have blank pages to fill with what I will (which mainly turns into notes for episodes ofI Don't Even Own a Television: A Podcast About Bad Books, my current main artistic / productive activity, or notes for the renewed blogging activities you have no doubt noticed.

What that ends up looking like is something like this, again, diagrammatically.

This takes a little getting used to. Particularly jarring is that looking at a "spread" requires you to look at a left page and a right page and set the beginning to the left page, where most books start things on the right page. Moving to the specifics:

1. Index: I number each page (by hand)^2,3. As I fill each page, I mark across the top what generic bucket this page's contents go into: #Reviewiera, #Vim, #IDEOTVPod, etc. Then, on the index, I mark what page I started on and what bucket it was. This is more or less an analog version of Evernote, or a stripped-down, not-that-fussy approach to so-called bullet journaling.
2. Habit Grid: every day, I'd like to do certain things: drink water; do pushups; read; drain the world's oceans to kill god; brush my teeth; and so on. A tool I have found useful is to make a list of those things, under a date, and mark them when I do them.
3. Workout Log: On the habit grid, I mark a simple X to indicate a workout of one or another kind; on the Workout Log, I note what I did: was it 5BX?, or did I go for a run, or did I do TRX?
4. Movie/Book Log: As I finish things, I write them down, with the date. Also shows go here, trips to the ballet, etc. I've recently been logging the Avs games I watch, but that's mostly just so I can shame myself for spending 25 yua a month to watch maybe one Avs game a week. (And as of tonight's 3-6 Columbus debacle, I suspect I will wean myself off this particular habit.)
5. HEAVY TUNES Log: As I recognize myself falling for something, I make a quick note of it, or anyway I try to. This is particularly interesting at the end of the year, as I start to work on my HEAVY TUNES of the year, because usually by then I've forgotten like half of what I listened to in any given year. Plus if I do a half-decent job, I get a little bit of insight into my year qua year, like a little diary!
6. First Free Page: Helpfully, this is a right-hand page, which keeps the cognitive dissonance (of starting something on a left-hand page) down. From here on to the end of the notebook, I can just use it as normal.

If I fill up one of those original pages I've set aside, I just go to the next blank page or spread and start again there, noting this in the index. This happens a lot when I'm not writing very much. During those times, the notebook is mostly just a set of various breadcrumb trails of long-term projects (the logs, the self-improvement, the sundry, the what have you), punctuated by notes for the podcast (which I record every two weeks).

This is pretty standardized for me now, and pretty polished. Which means, of course, that I am now completely bored with this as a format. I'm finishing the notebook I started January 5, and will do it again in a new Field Notes, but after that, I'm interested in trying something new in some new type of notebook, just for a change. I have a system, it's working, it's workable, but also one wants some novelty, for half the fun of working on a system is tweaking it. Thus I end up rotating new pens in and out, but now even that substantial jolt fails to thrill, and I'm going to need to seek out a new form factor, I fear. (All this, novelty and rotation and craving, I have touched on before.)

Also there are a few substantive reasons to seek improvement: First, the system described above was created and smoothed when I wasn't writing much, and in this system, I am reserving numbers of pages for month-plus spans of time: even in the as-streamlined-as-I-can-get-it version above, I'm reserving 7 out of my 48 pages, which is a lot to lose if I end up filling the other pages before I've filled those 7. (This was a worry, because this notebook was sketched to span 5jan2019 - 7feb2019, but by 27jan, I had only 2 pages left. Luckily (?) I didn't write anything for a few days, so the concern abated a bit, but not wholly. Second, as the year turned, I decided I wanted to knock out a few weekly goals. These will require their own charting system.

For weekly goals, I'm a huge fan of Bram Moolenaar's Vim desktop calendar. (It's how I scheduled Like a Shit Sandwich, and there's just something very congenial about it to me.) But Bram's calendar doesn't fit well in a Field Notes notebook, which makes it harder for me to chart the weekly blog / workout goals I've already identified as important for my 2019.

So what comes next: one more Field Notes, default writing implement my beloved Pentel 205 mechanical pencil. And after that? Something probably 6x9, that far I've gotten. But no farther. Yet.

¹ My "notebook" is one instantiation of the idea of maintaining a "file", as described in the great C. Wright Mills book The Sociological Imagination, in the chapter entitled "On Intellectual Craftsmanship", which, n.b. if you use a search engine you can find in the convenient Portable Document Format, an activity I suggest, because it's an interesting, exciting, inspiring read:

[Y]ou must set up a file, which is, I suppose, a sociologist's way of saying: keep a journal. Many creative writers keep journals; the sociologist's need for systematic reflection demands it.

In such a file as I am going to describe, there is joined personal experience and professional activities, studies under way and studies planned. In this file, you, as an intellectual craftsman, will try to get together what you are doing intellectually and what you experiencing as a person. [...]

Under various topics in your file there are ideas, personal notes, excerpts from books, bibliographical items and outlines of projects. It is, I suppose, a matter of arbitrary habit, but I think you will find it well to sort all these items into a master file of 'projects', with many subdivisions. [...]

After making my crude outline I examined my entire file, not only those parts of it that obviously bore on my topic, but also those which seemed to have no relevance whatsoever. Imagination is often successfully invited by putting together hitherto isolated items, by finding unsuspected connections.

² Yuck, yeah, for certain.

³ Mostly for the past couple years, I have used Field Notes notebooks. Their paper is pretty amazing, the size is good for most shirt pockets, for when it comes to that, and they're only 48 pages long, so the numbering process isn't too onerous. Plus, I was given a million of of them, and I love using them, so it's pretty much hustling from win to win fast and nimble and clean.

NOTE: this chronology is not comprehensive: I carried personal notebooks from probably Grade 7 on through the first couple years after high school; these are where I'd write my poetry, and the place I'd practice free-handing the AC/DC logo. At least one principle established all the way back then has carried through to present: a certain obsessive concern with chronological order. Also back then is when I discovered the problem where you jot something down on a page, but what do you do if you only have one line thus jotted, and no follow-ups emerge, did you just devote an entire page to this!? As so much Natalie Portman might chimeyelp, "CONUNDRUM!"

PEN 15 Club 2: more on the Sharpie(r)|Pen., questions posed and answered

Well, I knew this would happen. When you say something as controversial as I did yesterday—"the Sharpie®|Pen. implement is pretty okay for writing things with" was merely the felt tip of my offensive offensive—you're going to have to expect pushback. And pushback I have from Pen Internet and elsewhere received.

Occasional contributor and life partner Pierre Idiot Trudeau, perhaps predictably, mounted the fiercest assault on my position.

I'm confused as to how these Sharpie Pens are different from the Sharpie fine and Ultra Fine markers. Is there a ball or different ink release system? I know that you've used those others I've mentioned, so I'm curious as to what makes it different/more pleasing.

Later, a pervert calling him-or-herself "Unknown"* continued the savage pile-on.

*Likely fucking story, friendo.

I have a bunch of conflicting emotions about pens. My trusty Micron is great for small missives, but if I truly want to make a statement I have a Sharpie in a holster. I tried the double tip dueling fine point/regular Sharpie, but hardly used the fine point. Turns out, I only use the Sharpie for making signs or responding to analog social media. There are a number of other instruments in my pen-theon which I will leave until another entry on which to elaborate.

"Pen-theon" is pretty good, though, so kudos for that. To address these wild accusations: I did not explicitly compare the Sharpie®|Pen. to the more common Sharpie "permanent" marker, for two reasons. First, I am a MarksALot man**, and brand loyalties are important***. Second, I mostly write on paper, and people who use Sharpie markers to write on paper make me uncomfortable (nervous, irritable). I have tried this, under the occasional influence of one disreputable brute or another, from time to time, and the overwhelming experience is one of bleed-through, of paper more ruined by ink than (ad-)dressed by it. The hand feel of a Sharpie marker is also completely vile: chub-stubby and slick—no, thank you!!

**No, I'm not.
***No, they aren't.

Recently I uncovered a smallish cache of the small-tip Sharpie markers, and attempted to deploy them to label presents. Stolen from work a job ago, they had all gone dry, nestled patiently in my art silo. The metaphor is, of course, clear.

The tip question posed by Pierre Idiot Trudeau is easy enough to answer. The Sharpie®|Pen. boasts a standard protrusive cylinder felt-tip, no ball to be found, basically the same format as the Micron art pen. The Sharpie marker, of the small-tipped variety, does, I believe, incorporate a ball encased by a plastic cone (among its other failings)****, whereas the more common "fine point" marker is a thick, slab-like cone of felt.

(Note here the tip propaganda of the manufacturer, included so that we may better understand not what to think, but what we are wanted to think, by those who are not our friends.)

****I can't verify this, because I took all the ones I had and threw them in the fucking garbage, where I assume they remain, sucking shit. I took a long look at Sharpie dot com, and could not find the sort of pen I am remembering. After additional research, I have come to believe that I may have been remembering not a Sharpie, but an Expo Vis-à-Vis dry erase marker of some sort, or a Sharpie equivalent. I fail to see how this minor error in identifying the tool I was using could in any way invalidate anything I have said about the experience of using the tool. :(

(I don't even like looking at these hateful objects.)

Perhaps more important than the tip is what comes out of it. Standard Sharpie marker ink is, as I have hinted, not my favorite thing to apply to paper (except for wrapping paper, a task that comes up not very frequently, as I am an ingenerous clod), but the Sharpie®|Pen. issues forth something that, as the container indicates, "won't bleed through paper", which is cool. Using science, I have determined that the Sharpie marker and Sharpie®|Pen. do in fact have different inks: as the image below indicates, Sharpie markers can write on glass, whereas the Sharpie®|Pen. cannot, to its credit.

(Science!)

So. To recap, always a good thing to do with your pen:

• Tip differences: Sharpie®|Pen., a pleasing cylinder of felt jutting from a metal tube, like a tiny Chrysler building; Sharpie marker, a galumphing, turgid pile
• Ink differences: Sharpie®|Pen., a kind, gentle fluid optimized for gracing, indeed grazing, paper, whence good adults write; Sharpie marker, a harsh substance perfect for those who wish to "make their mark" on arbitrary surfaces (childishly)

Of course, Pierre Idiot nor his campaign were finished.

I have specific pen/marker/highlighter needs/opinions based mostly around the paper that's getting written on. I petitioned my boss - unsuccessfully - to allow us to buy the one step up paper that we used to buy because it "feels better to write on". This was met mostly with eyerolls, but a bit of sympathy from the very same people.

Indeed! Sadly under-recognized, except by the attractive geniuses who read this post, is the vast truth that: The Paper ... Makes the Pen. The barrel matters regardless of surface, but the pen's contents and tip are wildly at the mercy of whatever you're planning to rub them on! This is one reason an ultimate pen, much like an ultimate morality, can likely never be discovered. As for your boss, I recommend collective action and concerted activity. Be unwavering in your demands, unstinting in your efforts, and unquenched in your desire for total victory (read: slightly better office supplies). You might try framing it as a workplace safety issue, if you can. "Paper cuts are causing paper cuts" is a slogan I can hardly imagine meeting with anything but immediate boss capitulation.

Now, if you want to talk highlighters, this here is the gold standard. Smear Guard ®

I didn't, but thanks for the input.

That bit about "childishly" was a joke.

PEN 15 CLUB

Took a quick look at the last time I talked about pens, my mind aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention, and had a discomfiting, disconnected moment. I could scarcely recognize the child I was, tho' the child ever is father to the man, nor credit the opinions he expressed.

Particularly alien I found the conclusion, in which 2017 Fat plumped for reaching in the main for the Pilot (Precise) V5. This bears essentially no relation to current practice, preference, or predilection. The (r)evolution has I think more to do with what I'm writing on than what I'm writing with.

(I found this pen in the bag of scissors / tape / pens / etc. I maintain for Xmas-present-wrapping operations. Man, I sure chewed on this one a lot.)

I've been working, with a kind of dogged, halting persistence, to refine my notebook approach, spurred by conditions both material (I have roughly a dozen Field Notes notebooks on hand) and ideological (I love those Field Notes notebooks, and the uniformity of writing things in identical containers drives a certain urge towards tweaking my approach to their filling, until I feel optimized, plus I have watched more than one video about bullet journaling). Details on all that to come. But with a striving towards consistency and perfection must come a desire for sameness—in this case, yoked to an/the ever-present lust for novelty, viz., I saw a new-to-me kind of pen when I was in a stressful situation and (therefore) in need of easeful consumption—and thus came into my life the stirring adequacy of the spartanly named Sharpie®|Pen., whose chubby, softish barrel is bleh at best, but inoffensive, and whose tip and ink please nigh-invariably.

(You may be able to see that the tip is slightly bent, because I dropped it point-down onto a hard floor, almost immediately after starting to use it. This is vaguely reminiscent of using a pencil, and I kind of like it.)

Not as stable a platform as the light carbine of the Le Pen nor the fully functional Batmobile of the Micron ~Art Pen~, it hits much the same marks, but with waterproof ink and a less intimidating mien. I tried to use it exclusively in my most recent notebook, and except for the day I forgot it at work and had to press back into service one of my absolute favorite (green) Le Pens, I succeeded. Pleasing consistency!

That notebook (was) finished last night; the next follows. After a painstaking review of my Pen Situation and my Evolving Habits, I have decided to retire the Sharpie®|Pen. for the duration of that notebook (48 pages, usually around as many days), for reasons I will describe just as soon as they are clear to me.

(These are fine-tipped, 0.8 mm. I wonder what the Ultra Fine experience is like??)

pen is in my hand

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the internet has been a net bad for humanity. By allowing glib, superficial access to largely decontextualized facts, it's created a vast army of people—mostly men—who, perniciously, believe both that there's nothing they don't understand and that understanding things requires no more than a cursory googling and quick skimming of somewhere under four web—usually just Wikipedia—pages. (There's also the brain-poisoning feedback loop wherein the most casual expressions of approval somehow displace and outweigh any/all other potential inputs, eventually, out of sheer volume, replacing the real world entirely. But that's a matter for another time.) But I cannot deny the few archipelagos of what I can only call Good Internet which remain. Mostly they're singular. What characterizes Good Internet is usually that it is and does One Thing. It expresses one sensibility, maybe, or, more reliably, it treats (of) only one topic. Good examples of Good Internet would include:

• Ian's Shoelace Site
• Can Opener Internet
• Knife Internet
• and, oddly, the roughly 60% of the internet that turns out to be devoted to bodybuilding

I'm sure we'll eventually cover all of these individually. But right now I want to talk about Pen Internet.
Pen Internet is good. Here are some examples, some people taking an interest in something and working to communicate that interest to whoever might be listening.

• Pen reviews written and drawn in the pen being reviewed
• "The Pencils of Pens"—a phrase redolent, evocative, interesting
• The Pen I Write With—showing the range of people's pens obsessions

That was fun. Now I want to talk about pens. Mostly I want to talk about good pens. What can I say? Pen Internet is intoxicating, also inspiring.
Most of what I write personally (rather than professionally), I write by hand before typing it up in vim. Some years back, I learned, by watching Tinzeroes, that everything works better when I put everything into one notebook that is always carried with me and close to hand. That way, I always know where everything is. I never have to wonder where to put something. And different pieces can, just by brute juxtaposition, connect in unexpected ways. Writing in a notebook implies needing a pen—so:
I have a lot of Moleskine type notebooks. An underreported feature of those notebooks how poorly their paper takes so many kinds of ink. The right-hand pages have a slicker coating than the left; a lot of pens skip on the right, bleed on the left. Displeasing. Also I like to write a lot of postcards, which tend to have a coating that smears basically all inks...

This means a popular option doesn't work well for me, so, so sorry G-2, but you don't really make the cut. Other reasons: (1) I have had spills annihilate things I have written with this gel ink (making it bad for mail); (2) the rubber thing (a) is condescending and (b) gets loose on the shaft, which is distracting, or gets gummy, which is disgusting. Linewise, 05 is a little bit too thin (scratchy on soft or thick paper); 07 is a little bit too thick (makes it hard to write as small as I like to). Poor experience on coated paper, ill-advised hand feels, ubiquitous, cheap, allows fidgety clicking, adequate weight for debate spinning: 6/10; acceptable fallback option. Often have one to hand to loan out or write a check with.

Le Pen felt tip. Dirt cheap. Colorful! Beautifully designed, remarkably comfortable. Ink not at all waterproof. Too light to be debate-spun. Make a delightful scratch sound when used. Last a surprisingly long time, often given to me by my girlfriend. Can't write a check with it. 8/10; excellent option to be deployed in virtually any circumstance.

Those weird ones Noodles likes. Widely considered the gold standard for people who don't fetishize writing really really small. Good for writing checks with. Wonderful pens, but somehow don't work for me. Too fat, with too thick a line, maybe. Maybe just a vibe thing. 5.5/10; make me feel guilty, like I don't like chocolate or something.

"Artist pens." Magnificent writing experience, can be a little too cushy. Easily lost or stolen. Hyper fucking expensive. Can intimidate by giving writer the sense that the ink is too permanent for anything but a good thought well expressed, and can therefore inhibit getting things down on paper, which is the only important/useful thing about schlepping a fucking notebook around.
But what did you expect? When you pull Excalibur from the stone, you gain power, but you also inherit mad responsibility. 7/10; can't really be spun, no good for the checkbook, fairly good for postcards, other mail.

Papermate El Cheapos. Blobby ink, but last forever. Spin well with a cap on the butt. Acceptable choice, unless you have the option of:

Bic Crystal. Platonic ideal of the ball-point pen. Perfect design: looks good, looks potent, but accessible; fits the hand, accommodates any style. Ink is decent, and can be laid down on essentially anything: paper, denim, skin, walls, seats, Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars. As Robert Heinlein once said, "I feel the way about a Springfield that I do about a Gooney Bird; some pieces of machinery are ultimate perfection of their sort, the only possible improvement is a radical change in design." (Glory Road, p. 58) That's how I feel about the Bic Crystal. Also a good example of William Gibson's dictum "the street finds its own uses for things", in that the hexagonal barrel is the perfect size to stick into a cassette tape for manual fast-forwarding. Perfect for the checkbook, ideal for postcards and envelopes, superb for debate spinning. 9/10; as close to perfect as this world can offer.
Pilot V5. Can be debate-spun, but for whatever reason, I never do so. Not great for check carbons; perfect for envelopes, rarely bleeds; mixed bag for postcards, often smears. Beautiful thin line. Can write pretty small with it. Barrel the right size for my slim paws. Lined up like this, it's not wildly impressive. But...

Somewhere after high school, I spent a lot of my free time (read: fired by the movie theater, working a couple days a week at the gas station, before getting fired there, too) playing Wing Commander on somebody else's computer. It's a game where you fly around in space ships shooting down space ships flown by giant space cats, and it had a really good manual. One of the weapons was called the "Mass Driver" and, from memory, it was described in the following way: "No pilot ever made a mistake engaging the mass driver." (NOTE: I was pretty close! The basic fighter weapon - medium range, medium damage, nothing special. The mass driver cannon is reliable and accurate. Heat build-up and power drain are minimal. Though lasers and neutron guns are more effective in certain situations, no pilot ever went wrong activating a mass driver.)
That's how I feel about the Pilot V5. You never go wrong reaching for one. 8.8/10; lately, I leave the Crystal at work, and use the V5 for personal writing. Boundaries are important.

More Notes on the Total Theory of the Messenger Bag: Defy Marketing (The Defy Strapped)

Sometimes, I am a complete sucker. This is the story of one of those times.

(The Defy Strapped, sejant.)

As should be clear, I do like to shop. And a man's craving for novelty can be real, and confounding. Thus it was that late in 2016, I took occasional respite from ... life, by browsing endless for that great passion of mine, the new messenger bag. Somewhere in there, a company called Defy arrived and began issuing pronouncements which intrigued:

• Materials matter: we have an intriguing sourcing model and are using elements others aren't, from recycled bike innertubes for trim, to truck tarp for the bag body, and to seat-belt webbing for strapping and pocketing
• Local, local, local: handmade in America (Chicago)
• Design is king: let's use our neat materials in novel ways
• It's expensive as all hell: so it must be good!

I should have understood what I was looking at. The company story—because isn't that what we're all interested in? the stories ... of companies?—was and is explicit: "I'm a marketer who has moved into making things." SPOILER: what the company is good at making is in fact marketing collateral; their bags are not great. Or at least the bag I bought is not great.

The main problem is the material. Defy—and other companies—are, reasonably enough, bored with the same old Cordura fabric that essentially every company uses to make messenger bags. To differentiate themselves, they try new stuff. Defy thought to try something they call "M35 Military Truck Tarpaulin Material". Here's what they say about it:

M35 Military truck tarpaulin vinyl/canvas is the same heavy duty tarpaulin used to protect US servicemembers in theater today. It's thick, matte, rubbery feel makes for an incredibly durable bag material which with use over time starts to soften & wear nicely taking on a different patina and character. While it's tougher than the vast majority of tarp material used by other bag companies with enough beating, use and life it can eventually show signs of wear. Those wear marks are a badge of honor! It's military tough as hell for sure, but nothing's indestructible even though it may look it!

If you don't want the material to crack and fray, don't, uh ... buy this bag.

The truth of course, is that the thick, matte, rubbery feel is extremely cool fresh out of the box. About a week later, the outside feels like plastic. (The inside still feels pretty cool.) "After enough abuse it will start to show wear" means that instantly the material will start to crease, and the bag's own hardware will immediately mar the fabric and leave visible scars. Anywhere the bag folds regularly will split and tear. In short, the material isn't strong enough to stand up to itself, much less significant "beating, use and life". To call it "incredibly durable" is at best puffery, at worst a lie. I had scarred it badly within five days of receiving it: it arrived on January 12; on January 17, I pinched the flap between the bottom of a seat at a movie theater and a bottle of wine I'd smuggled into the theater. Smuggling a bottle of wine into a movie theater is, to me, is basically the definition of "normal use", and five days of "normal use" should not permanently mark a bag. Using this material defies convention, to be sure, but no less does it defy usability.

Another major miss is the buckles. Defy is nutty for buckles. Their marketing consists mainly of impassioned praise of these crazy buckles they buy from Austria: supposedly they can hold 1,500 pounds or something, but, when the fabric they're sewn to couldn't possibly hold half of that, who gives a damn? And why would a person want to close their messenger bag that hard anyway? Anyway, all their bags feature these buckles, except for one, the one I bought, which is called the Strapped. First, it's Strapped because it heavily features seat-belt straps, as the shoulder strap, as reinforcing strapping, and as the business-card-and-pen holder. Second, it's for people who strapped for cash, because it's the same form factor as the more expensive Recon bag, but replaces the ridiculous buckles with buckles that are cheaper ... but still ridiculous.

(When the buckles are big.)

See, there is simply no reason to use two two-inch buckles to close a bike bag flap. It looks cool, but is pointless overkill. And, since they're simply difficult to use one-handed, they're less functional than they should be. The whole point of a messenger bag is easy access to the contents, balanced with being able to secure them quickly. This bag fails on both counts. On material and hardware, Defy allows visual appeal to outrank functionality.

This trend—good visuals, poor use—continues when we examine the pocketing and storage options. The slash pocket across the back of the bag does fit a slim laptop: my work Mac fits there, I think my old work Windows machine did as well, but my beautiful boat anchor from Zareason decidedly does NOT fit. (That most bags are designed for the smallest laptops on the market is a sad fact.)

I'm not the best writer, editor, or management stooge. But I AM a man with a very, very large laptop. pic.twitter.com/WHA8rZO4RK

— Chris Collision (@cfCollision) March 14, 2015

The front pocket is okay. It's quite tall, though very shallow. A quick-access pocket like this is always going to have more of my stuff in it than is reasonable, so I can't blame it too much for not being thick enough, but it's worth noting that my glasses case alone is basically enough to make it bulge. (If I had one message to all bag makers, it would be: always include one pocket that fits a glasses case; there are people with prescriptions in this world, after all. My first Jandd had this, as did one of my Timbuk2 bags, and for my needs, this is, essentially, essential.) It's probably too flat/shallow, if I'm being fully critical, and arguably too tall, because small things are inevitably at the very bottom, under my glasses and earbuds, so it's tough to get my chapstick or whatever. But whatever, it's fine. It's fine.

(If the pockets you make are too short for a pocket notebook, the pockets you make are too short.)

The internal pockets, riding on the front of the back slash pocket, are a different story. It's not clear to me why they are the size they are. I.e., what the hell is supposed to go in them? They're too shallow for the Mac power brick they're a half-good fit for, and they're too short for a tablet or even a small-sized pocket notebook. What's up with these? In the event, I stuff them full, with my knife, my brush and comb, my little notebooks, and other crap I need to find more or less quickly. They're bulgy and everything in them scruffs out over the top unappealingly, but they're there, anyway, and you can (sort of) put (some) things in them.

The main compartment is intriguing, in that it is simultaneously too big (it's incredibly tall and quite wide, call it 13.5" tall and 15+" wide at the bottom, wider at the top) and too small (it's preposterously thin, something like 5.5" when it's sitting, thinner when lifted/carried). The general experience of using it involves the top 3 or 4 inches being filled with air, and whatever you want to pull out of it being underneath something else and difficult to get. This bag is wildly not meant to be used like an actual messenger bag—swung off the back to the front, the flexible flap pushed easily aside, the cargo quickly in hand and the bag just as quickly flapped closed and pushed back out of the way—the flap is too stiff, and the bag doesn't yield its treasures without some wrangling, because its top is narrow and a good couple inches higher than it needs to be. For office use, its obvious intended function, though, it's basically okay.

Keen-eyed observers will have noted that none of the pockets close in any way (except the main compartment), which is a sop to two purported failure points or annoyances: first, zippers are held to be fragile; second, velcro hook and loop fastener is held to be annoying. These are both more or less true. Things have slipped out of the internal patch pockets, probably because they're too short, but I don't think anything fell completely out of the bag at any point, and the absence of fasteners is something I came to find quite appealing.

Overall storage is not great. With most bags, you're buying a system as much as a bag, and here, there's just not much in the way of a system: no way to mount other carrying options, nor anything interesting in the way of internal bags to add. To organize my belongings, I ended up using a congeries of Jandd ditty bags and a few options Noodles, TWBGITW, has sewed together for me over the years. And since the Strapped's effective carrying capacity is so small, I started carrying a second bag for my lunch and leaving my dopp kit and spare clothes in the car, instead of being able to carry them with me. Probably good for my discipline, in that it helps teach me not to overpack, but inconvenient nonetheless.

Riding the front of the bag are my favorite features by far. By sewing a length of seat-belt strap to the wall, they are able to make a business card holder and three pen slots. The pen slots need a thicker pen, and one with a clip: my Le Pen (pictured) has been knocked through and gone missing several times, but it's just such a cool way to make a pen slot, I can't stay mad at the bag. Similarly cool is that little business card holder. The D-ring and the snap ring are also excellent, and that they're attached with scraps of recycled innertube is functional, thrifty, and unique. Across the front of the bag, in other words, is Defy at its absolute best: interesting materials used in unusual ways to good effect. If everything about the bag were designed and made this well, this would be the best bag on the market. Or anyway, would be a much better bag than it is.

The inner color, and this must be mentioned, is actually beautiful. My second-favorite feature most days (and my favorite, on the days the pen holder fails to hold my Le Pen). Sadly, this green material is even softer than the outside fabric, and can be scuffed or scarred even more easily. The bag's own hardware scratches it, and a USB stick plugged into a laptop did the same.

The shoulder strap is okay. It's wide and comfortable, but not grippy. When thrown over a shoulder, instead of cross-body, it's constantly causing worry that it's going to slip off. There is a grab handle. This seems like a small thing, but it's as easy to put one on as it is to leave one off, and the incremental convenience it adds, when compared to the cost/benefit of not having one, makes it a practical necessity.

In a very frustrating move, if you want to ride a bike with this bag, you're going to have to buy an extra strap, which is going to add something like 25% to the cost of the bag. This hidden cost is a really annoying way to do business.

Costs in general seem a little high, compared to the value received. While the bag does come in a lovely bespoke cardboard box sealed with Defy-branded tape, this isn't something that helps me fit my laptop, nor does it take the edge off the experience of watching the fabric disintegrate under normal use.

In the end, it's a decent bag sold as an outstanding one. If you saw it in the store, you might find it appealing and want to take it home. Its design is essentially identical to the Israeli Paratrooper bag (main compartment, slash pocket behind it, pouch pocket riding the front with mad pen slots, not much else), which presents a blend of more or less adequacy and more or less elegance. It does have a terrific look, and if it hadn't been so relentlessly oversold by Defy's marketing collateral, it might be an easy bag to love. But it was relentlessly oversold, so my experience with it was mostly a disappointing one. Failures of design—poor materials choice, pocketing decisions made according to appearance rather than function, ill-conceived hardware—overwhelm the Strapped's virtues, and that these failures so closely correspond to what the company claims as its strengths leaves the buyer feeling betrayed, or even cheated.

It's worth noting that Defy may have independently come to similar conclusions as mine: the Strapped is no longer available on the Defy site; the tarp material doesn't seem to figure as centrally in their messaging; the new version of the bag is less tall, and deeper. These are all positive moves. One hopes that their evolution continues to blend functional considerations into the mix that produced a Strapped that was overwhelmingly concerned with appearance.

Previous entries in the total theory of messenger bags megathread:

• Volume 1: Jandd Hurricane Iniki Messenger Bag
• Volume 2: Timbuk2 Especial Claro
• Volume 3: The Israeli Paratrooper Bag

Previous entries in being a complete sucker:

• The U-Turn Audio Turntable Debacle

Toward a Total Theory of the Messenger Bag: Volume 3, the Israeli Paratrooper Bag

Years ago—12 or more—I had many special needs. I rode my bike everywhere, with a 12-mile round trip to work, regardless of Portland weather, and I didn't spend a lot of time at home outside of sleeping and (rarely) bathing. This all meant: I needed to carry layers, for rain, for stench and a hat to keep the sun out of my eyes and rain off of my glasses; I needed to carry entertainment (reading material [Moorcock paperback?], music, my beloved pink handheld, maybe a DS, one or another notebook); I needed to carry bike locks; I needed enough storage space to pick up a sudden Gundam or Stikfa, or wedge in a thrifted Dreamcast; I needed somewhere to tuck my travel mug; at the end of my idiot nights, I often needed a six-pack of tallboys and a Totino's party pizza.

I had two bags at that point. One, my college LL Bean Turbo Transit backpack, big enough that I once lived out of it, travelling, for six weeks, magnificently ugly, but not strong against rain, and not convenient for getting into / out of without taking it off. Two, an early model Timbuk2 messenger bag, modified by its previous owner to use a length of seat belt material as its strap—a bag I adored, but found too big for some summer nights.

Thus it was that Tinzeroes and I betook ourselves to the local surplus store, where I first encountered an item listed as an "Israeli Paratrooper Bag". My first reaction: "Wow, evidently Israel's paratroopers need to do a lot of paperwork, because this bag is like 80% pen slots." My second reaction: "I really like this bag's look, feel, size."

Besotted with notions of kit-bashing and customization, and at a surplus store, I bought a couple strips of hook and loop fastener, a big buckle, and a length of wide, thick strapping. Once home, I grabbed a case of dental floss, my sewing kit, my pocket knife, and an X-acto blade from my model-building set.

I added the hook and loop to close the bag's flap more easily, and replaced the shoulder strap, sewing in as much strength as I could with floss. I added an attachment loop for a blinky bike light, and heat-sealed the straps where I'd cut them with my pocket knife, held over the stove's burner. The X-acto knife cut out one of the two main compartment's dividers, freeing up space and lightening the bag a bit (but I think it was mostly just doing something for the sake of doping something).

Even for summer use, it was never quite big enough. With anything at all in it, it was a little too full for much more than a six-pack, and even the most wadded-up hoody would more or less fill it. And since I hadn't tested where to put the velcro, if the bag was too full, I couldn't close it. Rainy season ruled the bag out entirely for outdoor use: the thick canvas wasn't waterproof, or even really colorfast.

But I loved it. The experience of customizing it had only taken an evening, but had bonded me to it as securely as the shoulder strap was bonded to the bag's side wall.

The size was too small (14" wide, 11" tall, main compartment 4" deep), but every force that constrains my overpacking is welcome. The material wasn't waterproof, but it didn't promote gross back sweat as badly as a plastic bag on longer summer rides. Plus, the canvas was strong without being stiff or rough, meaning that it didn't tear up things it came into contact with (sweaters, for example) or wear through where it creased, with the exception of this one spot, after substantially longer than a decade.

The organization options weren't incredibly robust, but the flat pocket at the back wall was always a good spot for a U-lock, and the front pouch pocket always seemed to accommodate more than I'd expect. And a big empty main compartment is a must no matter what your needs are.

I still have the bag! I throw it in a larger bag sometimes if I'm flying somewhere I expect to be walking around a lot. It's also good for those late-night "need beer" rides. Most of my special needs from circa 2004 are no longer, but a good bag is a good bag. This is a good bag.

Previous entries:

• Volume 1: Jandd Hurricane Iniki
• Volume 2: Timbuk2 Especial Claro

The Frank Frazetta Feet Phobia Feature

Frank Frazetta started out as a comic book artist doing jungle books and such but then one day someone asked him to do a movie poster, and he purportedly made more on that single commission that he was making in a whole year doing comics, so he gladly went over to the commercial art field where he did a lot of book covers and posters and such featuring lily white topless women and about three poses of be-muscled beefcakes hefting a sword or an axe (no offense he was a good illustrator but the formulaic and repetitive nature of his work gets to you when you have to go through it like I did for this).

But the real gold standard of his work is his ritualistic avoidance of drawing the feet of his subjects.  Over and over and over and over again (see below), the feet of his figures are conveniently behind an object in the foreground, off the edge of the panel, or shrouded in shadow.

 

Since becoming aware of this I have noticed that a fair share of current and former comic book artists do the same "cheat" so FF is by no means alone in this regard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The below is one of my faves: her feet aren't quite in shadow - they just sort of blur out...

 

 

 

 

Hey here's a foot! Although it could easily also be the bottom of a really dirty sock - doe that guy have two giant toes?

 

 

 

Three, maybe even four feet in this one below!  The one in the dead bottom center is pretty weird looking...

 

 

 

I guess the sky light people in this one have feet?

 

 

 

 

This last one: WHERE ARE HIS BALLS??

 

-d.d.