Just as I admire actual office supplies, my senses also perk up when I come across their depictions in art and culture. Periodically I will share examples here. Both of the following come from George Rabasa’s smart and fun novel, The Wonder Singer (Unbridled Books, 2008).

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Lockwood wedged his tennis shoe of a car into a tight slot inside a garage studded with Benzes, Range Rovers, and Jaguars in Vortex Black, Eternity Blue, Gunmetal Gray. He reached into the backseat for his cassette recorder, blank tapes, extra Uniball pens, notepad with curling pages, and a brown paper bag containing two mangoes that had been ripening for three days, their scent now jammy and promisingly sweet. He felt a rush of anticipation because he was bringing them to Perla as a special gift (5–6).

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“What’s so hard about writing?”

“Telling the truth,” Lockwood says. “That’s the main requirement. Be true. It’s also the rule most often broken. Untruthful writers should be locked up without a computer or a pencil or even a nail they can use to scratch their lying shit on the walls” (165).