Tag: but anyways

curlicuecal:

curlicuecal:

There are no pens in your toolbox—not because
you don’t need them, but because you don’t need to actively obtain them.
In a world where every commodity is carefully tracked and distributed,
pens are the exception, floating freely in unoccupied space. You may
have a pen with you right now, but if you don’t, you could certainly
find one in a couple of minutes, and no one would mind if you took it.

No other product is like this: You don’t drive your car, drop it off
somewhere, and grab the next one you see lying around. Pens are rarely
used start to finish by the same person. When was the last time you

bought a pen, used it for a long time, and saw
it through to the end of its ink supply? Or bought an actual replacement
ballpoint cartridge? Never.

Look at the pen nearest you right now. Do
you even know where it came from? Is it imprinted with the logo of a
company you’ve never heard of?

We spend our lives drifting through an
ephemeral sea of pens, using them and letting them go, like spent I
overs—finding, lending, misplacing, replacing, discovering, dismantling,
piling the components on our desks and playing with that little spring.
If there is any evidence for creationism, it can be found in pens: They
exist all around us, but no one knows from whence they came. We know
only that they are good, they are here to serve us, and some people can
spin them around their thumb.

-Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go To Grad School, Adam Ruben

The main thing I have learned from the notes on this post is that there are two kinds of people in this world:

1) people who have no idea where their pens came from

2) people who would like their pens back, fuck you, and would everybody please stop stealing pens already, what are we, *animals*????