Thursday, June 19, 2008

Weapon of Choice

Number of entries received for the 2008 InnermoonLit Award for Best Short-Short Story: 30

I have an abnormal fondness for pens. I'm not sure exactly when this passion was born, but by the time I was in high school, my tastes had become so specialized that I was almost exclusively using fountain pens (no wonder I disliked math class--the one place I couldn't get inky). My best friend shared my obsession, and we traded different colored ink cartridges back and forth the way some teenaged girls swap lipsticks.

My friend and I were a minority of two in this regard. I'll admit to getting a twisted thrill out of brandishing my blackened hands at cheerleaders, pretending I was going to rub ink on them. It never failed to draw a most comical look of utter terror.

Little did I know that, across the state, my future husband was toiling away with ink-stained fingertips, changing out empty cartridges at inopportune moments, washing dried-out and clogged nubs, making a joyful mess with a fistful of his own Schaeffers.

Sadly, Brian's and my combined efforts apparently weren't enough to keep the mass production of fountain pens a lucrative venture. The only fountain pens at Office Depot these days are the boxed-gift variety, costing $25 and up, with special, impossible-to-find refills. And they don't even work as well as the three buck Schaeffers did.

You can imagine my excitement when I discovered the Varsity disposable fountain pen. Yes, the disposability pretty much negates the purpose of a fountain pen, but I'll admit I'm hooked. It has that good old fountain pen feel. The ink looks rich on the page, and the angled nub makes the worst chicken scratch look more elegant. Because they're disposable, they're mess-free too, which I appreciate now that I'm an adult and need to at least try to blend into the mainstream.

So please, do me a favor and order some to keep them from going extinct. They have black, blue, purple, and even turquoise ink. I see that Foray now has an even cheaper disposable fountain pen, (which hopefully means Pilot's pen has been a smashing success) but I haven't tried these yet and can't vouch for them.

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