The moleskine craze

Those little black notebooks. Having one just screams 'intellectual' in a way that's less pretensious than having a goatee and a tweed jacket with elbow patches. I'll confess that I have one. It's my checkbook, because I lost my checkbook ledger a few years back and had been carrying my moleskin around for a few months without putting it to good use. But what I don't get is that it is so the 'it' thing to be carrying. They are lovely notebooks, but I find them too small for everyday note taking purposes.

Now the moleskine notebooks were featured in Newsweek magazine as some sort of it accessory/necessity for artistic college students (and all those who want to look like artistic college students). The article also based all of this on actors/characters from the OC, and claimed that no self respecting artist would use a PC (this writer loves her Compaq presario laptop, btw), so I doubt that Newsweek is really doing much more than following the trends of a few years ago.

Here are my thoughts on moleskine:

1) Legendary journals are not mass produced and sold at Barnes and Noble, Borders or where ever by the handful.

2) A little notebook should not cost me 10 dollars, when I will probably end up losing it anyway.

3) Using the same style of notepad as Hemingway or Picasso will not turn you into a novelist or artist, just like wearing Abercrombie and Fitch will not make you cool, and drinking Coors is not going to leave you in the company of beautiful Swedish models who just want to have sex with you.