Saturday, May 10, 2003
PENANCE I just bought a
PENANCE
I just bought a small pack of pens, partly as punishment to myself for having forgotten both to bring one along from home or to steal one from work. I hate to be without a pen, even if I don’t have anything particular in mind to write down. Often, I get my best ideas when I least expect them, and penlessness at such times renders me as impotent as I’m making it sound. That’s a state of being I try to minimize in my life, minimum impotence suggesting maximum potency, so I made myself go out and buy some damn pens. I bought the ones that seemed to offer the best ink-to-pen-to-dollar ratio - I didn’t want the cheapest pen, a single pen with gobs of ink in it, because it’d be just as easy to lose a big pen with all my ink as a smaller pen with only some of my ink, and also because big pen = big item in my bag = bigger likelihood of getting crushed and smashed = biggest possible mess. My biggest items are already at terrible risk of getting crushed on a daily basis, regardless where I’m secreting them; I can’t go tempting fate indefinitely. So I got a three-pack of ball point pens with rubber grips, despite their stupid name: “Easy Touch.” I guess they mean it’s easy to touch their pens, or just a touch of pen to paper and it makes a nice clean mark, or really, I don’t know why they chose this stupid name. I very nearly bought something else just because I didn’t want to support such a bad choice of names. To me it sounds mostly like something that’s easy to steal ("dude, those pens are an easy touch - grab another handful while I scarf the bulk candy") or to molest ("start with an easy touch, then move to a vigorous rubbing, and finally jam the whole pen where you think it might be happiest. Oh, don’t forget to remove the cap - wouldn’t want it falling off and getting lost..."). As pens, they work pretty well, but I think I’m sending the wrong message to the Pilot company. I’ll have to learn to live with my weaknesses. And to touch things like I mean it.