clichés and bad writing metaphors--thank you, Donald Rumsfeld

My green Pilot V-ball Extra Fine pen ran out a few days ago. I made a mental note to swing by the UC bookstore when I was next on campus and I threw the pen away. No big deal, I thought; I still have a blue one in my bag.

Every writer has her favorite tools. I’m partial to the V-ball with the round top (not the flat), the old-style Bic “banana” (as Russell calls them; yellow, hexagonal barrel), Alvin Draft/Matic pencils (in 0.3 and 0.5), fine-line legal pads, and Magic Rub erasers (although the Staedtler Mars is growing on me).

(I don’t care if you all think I’m a nerd. You know you have your favorites, too.)

So, I walk to the bookstore today and not only have they seriously reduced their inventory, my V-balls are nowhere in sight. Instead, there are some new-fangled retractable rollerball pens and some crappy Uniballs.

I leave.

The temperature this morning was 12° but I decide to try DuBois bookstore off campus.

Strike two.

Lance’s Art Supplies was my last hope, but it wasn’t open until 9:00, so I stopped at a local coffee shop to fortify myself with a latté.

Lance's had a great selection, but no round top V-balls. Oh! The ensuing let-down…

By then, I had wasted 45 minutes of reading time, so I resigned myself to failure and purchased a green “flat top” V-ball and two of the new-fangled retractables and headed out the door for the library. I assuaged my sorrow with thoughts of trying Miami’s bookstore on Monday. But then, as I was walking, I wondered if perhaps I might need to give up on the V-ball and give the new pens a try. (My fear, of course, is in the possibility that the V-balls have been discontinued.) I thought to myself, “Well, you go to war with the army you have.”

Do I feel worse about using a terrible cliché or that it’s gotten to the point where I’m comparing writing to the (now universally determined “unwinnable”) Iraq war?

Don’t answer that.