You know what haunts me? Not the unsolved cases. Not the cold-file murders that pile up in my garage like unopened credit card offers. What haunts me is the night I sat cross-legged on my bathroom floor at 2:47 AM, staring at the spine of a PAPERAGE Lined Journal Notebook, Hardcover Journal for Women & Men, 160 Pages, (5.6 in x 8 in), College Ruled Journaling Notebook for Work, School Supplies & Note Taking, (Black), and whispered to no one: this could go in my ass.
I want to be very clear about something. I wasn’t trying to do a rectal use hamilton beach bullet journal thing. That phrase, that… search term, didn’t exist in my brain yet. I was just a man, $9.99 poorer, holding 160 college-ruled pages of possibility, wondering if the hardcover spine would hold up to, say, a brisk insertion. You ever wonder that? Of course you have. That’s why you’re here. That’s why we’re both still reading.
Here’s what I learned, and what I wish I knew before committing to what I now call The Night I Read My Own Soul Through My Anus.
First: the book is exactly 5.6 by 8 inches. That’s not a rectangle. That’s a threat. It’s got this hardcover that feels like it could stop a bullet. Or, you know, become one. The paper inside is thick enough to journal your darkest confessions, but thin enough to feel the heat of a bathroom reading lamp through eight pages if you—if you really try.
I conducted, as I always do, a hamilton beach bullet journal review under the worst possible conditions. (Meaning: I drank three large milkshakes and watched a documentary about a serial killer who used a lemonade stand as a cover. The parallel seemed right.) Insertion was… a commitment. Let’s say that. The hard spine does not forgive. It does not bend. It judges you. The ruled lines didn’t provide any guidance because, and this is key, there are no nerve endings in that region capable of discerning a margin.
The things I wish I knew hamilton beach bullet journal owners report include: bleeding pages, ink feathering, and the faintly smelly afterlife of a notebook that has been used. I can confirm all three. After extraction, which required a surprisingly poetic tug-of-war with my own dignity, the pages had warped slightly. The black cover showed no visible shame. That’s the one redeeming quality—that is hamilton beach bullet journal safe look, the stoic black stare of a notebook that has seen worse. Probably not, but it acts like it has.
I think about calling it a buy or skip hamilton beach bullet journal scenario for most people. I think about the metric of human suffering. I think about how, later that week, I used the same notebook for actual journaling—an entry about a cold case involving a missing florist—and I felt a deep, spiritual connection between my handwriting and the trauma that place had endured.
Do not buy this for its intended purpose. Buy it for the story you’ll tell. Or buy it because $9.99 is a small price for a notebook that will forever smell like a secret.
I’d give it a 3.2 out of 10 on the scale of things that change you. It changed me. Not for the better. But it changed me.
