Anyone here care what they write with? I must admit I'd never heard of Fisher Pens until that famous Seinfeld episode. They're an excellent pen. I've bought many people the bullet spacepen as gifts over the years. If you've got a spare 50 odd bucks, buy yourself one. You'll love it. The bullet is the pen in Seinfeld. The AG7 is the model used by astronauts...or was.
I bought my first Fisher AG7 about 15 years ago for around a hundred bucks. If you can love a pen then I loved my AG7. I lost it 7 years ago and the replacement AG7 cost me about $110. Well I left that pen and my keys in the bank last Thursday and returned less than two minutes later but the pen was gone, keys handed in. I asked who handed them in and they just said "some girl". No thought of being helpful at all. I'm generally pretty reasonable but I cannot stand smarminess. I turn on smarmy pricks very quickly in the real world. I figure if you think you're going to get away with being like that then I can get away with being an arsehole in kind. I demanded that the bank check the security cameras because in my opinion my property had been stolen and it would clearly be on camera. I knew I wasn't getting that pen back but I decided to be a difficult cunt because the staff mole took the smarmiest tone with me right from the start saying the bank had a no strings policy on their pens so anyone could have assumed mine was a bank pen there for the taking... As I said, I knew I was never going to see that pen again so I walked out of the bank, got the number for Tafts and ordered a new AG7.
$170 I paid it because I'm a bit obsessive and hated being without my pen for the last four days or so. Worse still, I know they cost around $50 U.S plus delivery but I just wouldn't wait. But I have a plan. I think I'll order two or three in the next few months and throw them in a drawer. Oh and I'll get my name and number engraved on this new one and any others I buy so if they get picked up, they're at least marked.
Last edited by Cletus on 07 Dec 2009 07:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I just like a DECENT cheap ballpoint that doesn't leak.
I buy my own Kilimetrico's for work and home, because I don't go with the usual cheap shit you get at work.
And YES, I verge on homicidal when they go walkies.
Kilometrico is still my favourite disposable pen. They've pretty much stayed the same for over twenty years. I just don't mind leaving those anywhere. Nicole buys boxes of them for my office from time to time. Also, as far as pencils go, I prefer to keep a few pacers with different grade leads. I'm left handed. I used to draw a lot. I suppose I was ok but I never developed it. I labour to draw anything now.
But being left handed forces you in one of two directions. English isn't really designed for the left handed. So you either develop a style of writing that just gets you by or you hone your skill because it's harder in the first place. I was the latter. My handwriting was particularly neat for a boy. There were neater writers certainly, I was just neat for a boy. It's not so much nowadays...I've let it drop a little. I find that if I do have to hand write a lot it improves pretty quickly. But for right handed people, writing is far more natural. In pencil or ink, a left handed person writes and then wipes their hand straight over the words they've written. We smudge the ink and as we write we cover our words with our writing hand. The only way around it, and if you haven't noticed before - you will, is for the left handed person to hold the pen on the opposite angle to what you would expect or they completely change the angle of attack in the wrist. Sometimes it's a bit of both. I ended up combining both. I know of some left handers who have to write sideways, the paper turned oddly away. For some left handed people writing is almost an enemy. For others, like me, it's something we worked hard to get right when young at some disadvantage. I appreciate the tools we write with. I envy beautiful handwriting. I respect it.
I had a lecturer in uni once who said that his handwriting had a half-life of a few hours - after which, he would find it increasingly difficult to decipher.
I find my own handwriting (which was never good to begin with) has regressed to a half-life of a few minutes to half an hour at most. Obviously I sometimes have a higher standard than other times, nut on the times where I let it go, I can't read it within minutes of writing it. It's fan-fucking-tastic.
That said, one of the overnight supervisors at work has the best handwriting I have ever seen. I would read anything she wrote, simply because it was so beautiful to look at; the care she took with every single letter was like she was making love to it at the time the pen touched paper.
Of course, despite having completely illegible handwriting, I take a perverse joy in having a nice implement to inflict it upon other people. When I was a courier, I used to buy $10 disposable pens just because they felt nicer to write with than the $3-for-a-pack-of-5673289-Kilometrico jobs.
...mind you, when I was a kid, I discovered that the plastic that the Kilometrico caps was made with reacted quite well to fire...
The sky calls to us; if we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars
i use the green ones, cause i think writing on kids work in red pen is pretty aggro, and blue and black are boring
plus, they're cheap enough to not worry tooooo much when some fuckwit pushes hard on the page and kills the thing
"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion" - L. Ron Hubbard
Didn't get my name or number engraved on it. Never got around to ordering spares. Lost it last Thursday. Ordered two more from Ebay with three spare cartridges and still paid less than buying one locally. 4 years wasn't a bad run for that one. I think that's about the average for them even though they have a lifetime warranty. It was in pretty rough shape.
Now I have to use poor people pens until one arrives.
"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion" - L. Ron Hubbard
A good pencil is truly delightful to write with. I think people dislike them because they remember the old horrible HB pencils from primary school, but a 2B or 4B pencil is excellent. I did most of my uni composition with an 8B. You'd just have to wave the pencil in the general direction of the paper and it'd be blacker than sin...
The sky calls to us; if we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars
there's a[n untrue] story about the space pen costing THOUSANDS of 70s dollars to make, years of time, write underwater, upside down, inside a shoe, whatever.
and the punchline is: the Russians used a pencil.
"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion" - L. Ron Hubbard
selfish wrote:there's a[n untrue] story about the space pen costing THOUSANDS of 70s dollars to make, years of time, write underwater, upside down, inside a shoe, whatever.
and the punchline is: the Russians used a pencil.
Yes but that is because that broken lead or fragments from sharpening the pencil would play havoc on the instruments.
DUH!
selfish wrote:Being a massive fanboy and trying to hide it is Lestat's worst bottleneck.
"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion" - L. Ron Hubbard
One arrived yesterday. I didn't take a lot of notice when I ordered it and it came with commemorative engraving. I don't love it. I like the unadorned version. I guess whoever ends up "finding" this one in the next four years will consider it a score.
There is a standard one coming. I'll switch to that. Going through my desk the other night and i found another Fisher Space pen I never use. 1995 Star Wars Force Pen. Can't really find anything about it on the Google either. I think it was the official pen Luke carried during the assault on the Death Star.
Cletus wrote:Didn't get my name or number engraved on it. Never got around to ordering spares. Lost it last Thursday. Ordered two more from Ebay with three spare cartridges and still paid less than buying one locally. 4 years wasn't a bad run for that one. I think that's about the average for them even though they have a lifetime warranty. It was in pretty rough shape.
Now I have to use poor people pens until one arrives.
Last week I couldn't find my garage remote. Searched through the car and instead found the pen. I'd left the garage remote inside. The upside is I hadn't lost either of the replacement pens I bought last year so now I have my old beaten up Astronaut Pen and two spares.
We need more threads like this on the Ranch. Maybe we could talk about favourite cooking utensils, disinfectants etc? It'd be nice to have some left-field discussion.
I paid it because I'm a bit obsessive and hated being without my pen for the last four days or so. Worse still, I know they cost around $50 U.S plus delivery but I just wouldn't wait. But I have a plan. I think I'll order two or three in the next few months and throw them in a drawer. Oh and I'll get my name and number engraved on this new one and any others I buy so if they get picked up, they're at least marked.
