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I like: pens (previously discussed), paper clips (particularly plastic-coated bright-colored ones), binder clips, 3 x 5 index cards (in colors) and portfolio arrangements for holding loose documents.
I'm always attracted to vintage office supplies at yard sales and places like that. It's the boxes: the fonts, the simple bright bold utilitarian commercial art.
And then there's stationery...but that's maybe a different post. Sealing wax, engraved letterhead, and man do I desire an embosser.
That have staplers now that you barely need to press, and they do the staple action all by themselves. I'm kinda sad I have a paperless job, because when I was in charge of a huge stack, it totally would've helped.
Hrm. The small binder clips, definitely. And colored file folders because i like to organize. Also the sharpies that have a fine nib on one end and a thick nib on the other.
I like the binder clips too, I usually take two smallish ones and clip them together so that I can sorta fiddle with them while on the phone. As for writing implements, I always have 4-6 pencils on my desk. I don't like ink for the most part. I prefer to scratch with a pencil. Sometimes, I am lucky and I manage to score and nab myself a pencil sharpner that no one uses anymore.
Everything one needs to make a chapbook's readily available at Staples. Some years back, when the mood struck me, I did just that: linen paper, grey cardstock for covers, ink cartridges, an extra long stapler for saddle stitching that nearly broke my wrist. I put a little ad in Poets & Writers; someone in Minnesota has a copy.
Rubberbands and tape. I went through a roll of scotch tape the fist week I got here, just messing around with it. Now I have to be careful not to use it up too fast...
...stupid dispenser, mocking me with it's pristine little strip of tape...
Officeworks is one of my favourite stores and I could just wander up and down the aisles all day.
No, I don't think so. There's something sooo comforting about office supply stores. Second only to grocery stores in the feeling of security they offer.
My favorite work of contemporary fiction is Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War. A few passages in that book talk about the protagonist's faith in his office supplies...he is headed off to the front in WWI, and he believes that if he orders and arranges his desk just so before leaving, he will be safe, and his family will escape harm, while he's gone.
I read that book, Miko (as well as "A Winter's Tale", and "Memoir From Antproof Case").
I have to disagree with the grocery store thing, though. I feel very uncomfortable in grocery stores, and mostly try to avoid them; I think it's the lighting or something. I always get that lying-in-bed-awake-at-4-a.m. feeling - some sort of nameless dread and a sensation of floating away from the world.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
