 Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday. What's a five-star review that lives in your head rent-free? For me, it's a review I read many years ago of the 12 pack of purple Sharpies. So the reviewer gave the pack five stars and wrote in the review that in their monotonous work they often had to use Sharpies and found that using purple ones brought a little bit of joy and color to an otherwise unbearably bland life. I'm really bad at remembering exact phrases and I have never been able to find this review since I read it for the first time, but that is the phrase as I remember it a little bit of joy and color in an otherwise unbearably bland life. Anyway, I've been thinking about this because today I've been signing with purple Sharpie and my quest to sign all 250,000 copies of the first printing of the US edition of the Anthropocene Reviewed Book. And it actually has brought a bit of joy and color into my life. There's something about the richness of the purple that really does make repetition somehow less repetitious. Like the first hundred thousand or so signatures were actually quite easy because it felt like a break from the work of writing the book which I found exhausting at times and emotionally draining. In part because despite its grandiose title the Anthropocene Reviewed is a very personal book it's my first attempt to like write about my actual self. Now I want to be careful not to imply that writing is difficult work because I have done difficult work and writing is not it. But for me at least it does require like an intense level of focus and concentration which can be a little emotionally exhausting and this time around because it was about me it felt at times for better or worse like my whole self was being poured into the book which is a little terrifying so anyway signing was a break from that. Also anyone who's been around here a while knows how much I love a beautifully foolish endeavor like I am completely enamored with double agent the world of Warcraft player who plays the game as a pacifist panda acquiring experience points primarily via picking flowers which he has done literally millions of times to achieve the highest rank in the game. I'm also a fan of Kurt J. Mack who has been walking in one direction in Minecraft for the last ten years in search of the far lands and I also love artwork that involves a lot of repetition and careful mark making like this piece by Hiryuki Doi or this one by Robin O'Neill and when I make drawings I tend to do so in an obsessive way like this drawing of 17,000 circles or actually no circles 17,000 failed attempts at circles. I don't know why I'm drawn to art as endurance efforts but whatever I like them they bring me joy. Oh but I can't let it go with that because I have to hyperanalyze because that is my nature like the art critic Robert Hughes wrote of the peculiarly modernist hell of repetition and I think I like work that turns that on its head and finds color and joy in repetition. Slightly off topic but Hughes thinking that repetition is a modern phenomenon strongly implies to me that he never attempted agriculture because like if you think that picking flowers in World of Warcraft is repetitious try thinning row after row after row of carrot seedlings. Anyway the point is the first 100,000 or so signatures were easy and now it has become harder and I still have to sign for 300 hours and my hand hurts a little and this is the part where a test of endurance even an exceptionally silly test of endurance actually becomes a test. Like the book comes out in three months and obviously it has to be printed before that so there is not that much time left in which to sign and there are a lot of marks left to make. Like I remember when I signed 150,000 times for The Fault in Our Stars at the end I was signing like 12 or 14 hours a day and I would be thinking oh I don't know if I can do this and oh this is a lot and then along would come the purple Sharpie to remind me that I made this promise and I can keep it. Sometimes a bit of color and joy is enough. Hank I'll be signing live on YouTube for an hour this afternoon I promise it'll be very boring but it will be purple the whole way. Link in the doobly-doo. I will see you on Friday. Oh PS as it says on my 2021 vision board here's to perseverance both the rover and the value. Hank thank you for making me a fan of Mars so I could openly weep when that rover landed on the red planet. By the way remember when like not scheduling haircuts was my biggest problem? Oh God remember when I thought hair emergencies were emergencies? I want to go back in time and just like pinch that little boy on his cheeks. Alright now I'm really gonna go because I got a sign.