I just bought sixty pens.<\/p>\n
Oh, I didn’t WANT sixty pens.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, I only wanted one.\u00c2\u00a0 But you can’t buy ONE.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe at the five and dime, the corner store, but they went out of business, along with the stationery store where the proprietor knew every item in his inventory.\u00c2\u00a0 Now you go to the BIG BOX!\u00c2\u00a0 Where they have EVERYTHING!\u00c2\u00a0 Assuming you can find it.\u00c2\u00a0 But everything comes packaged by the ton.\u00c2\u00a0 So large, that you’ve got shopping carts in an OFFICE SUPPLY store.\u00c2\u00a0 Think about that, back to high school, when you bought your notebook and the paper to fill it.\u00c2\u00a0 Can you imagine wheeling a SHOPPING CART up to the shelf, because what you were going to buy was just too heavy to CARRY to the checkout line?\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t scope out lined paper, I’m not planning to write any book reports, but you probably now have to buy TEN THOUSANDS PAGES!\u00c2\u00a0 Enough for everybody in your CLASS!\u00c2\u00a0 A complete educational supply, from kindergarten to graduate school, you probably can’t buy any less.<\/p>\n
I’m a Write Bros. fan.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they don’t seem to call them that anymore, but I recognized the picture on the box.\u00c2\u00a0 The aqua Paper Mate with the medium point.<\/p>\n
You know the reason they called them Paper Mates was because they came with two cartridges.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, when one ran out, you just unscrewed the pen, broke apart the inner rod, and put the top on the bottom and VOILA!, you were writing again.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of cool until you wondered…why didn’t they just fill up the pen to the top to BEGIN WITH?<\/p>\n
I started out with a Schaeffer, with an ink cartridge.\u00c2\u00a0 No, I’m not THAT old, I never had one of those writing instruments you filled from the actual bottle.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, I DID get one of those ultimately.\u00c2\u00a0 You unhooked a lever, dipped the nib in the ink bottle, and then closed the lever and the pen SOAKED UP the ink.\u00c2\u00a0 My father had talked about these old pens and I wanted to give it a try.\u00c2\u00a0 But only once.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the thing leaked so bad I had to throw it away.<\/p>\n
Actually, the Schaeffers leaked pretty badly too.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d see kids in school with stains in their pants pockets.\u00c2\u00a0 If they were nerds, you’d see the stain in their SHIRT pocket.\u00c2\u00a0 But no one cool kept his pen in his shirt pocket.\u00c2\u00a0 That would be like keeping your COMB in your FRONT pants pocket.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, I had one of those little plastic brushes, that you could put your finger through, we were WAY into personal grooming back in the sixties, before the dry look came in…<\/p>\n
Anyway, you felt accomplished owning a cartridge pen, they took some skill to maintain.\u00c2\u00a0 You kept spare cartridges in your pencil case.\u00c2\u00a0 And when the ink ran dry, you’d unscrew the pen, slip a new cartridge in, and the process of screwing the pen back together would pierce the cartridge and start the ink flowing.\u00c2\u00a0 You MUSTN’T pierce the cartridge yourself, the instructions were clear, it was stated VEHEMENTLY, for if the hole was off center…\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll let you contemplate the awful result.<\/p>\n
Oh, at first ballpoint pens were a novelty.\u00c2\u00a0 Something you gave away.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember my father getting five hundred to give away as a promotion.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it was five THOUSAND!\u00c2\u00a0 There was a giant box in the garage.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes they wrote, sometimes they didn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 And if they did, they didn’t write for long.<\/p>\n
And then came the Bic.<\/p>\n
I didn’t go for the Bic at first.\u00c2\u00a0 Not professional enough.<\/p>\n
But by high school, everybody had switched so I did too.\u00c2\u00a0 I am not an early adopter.<\/p>\n
The Bic would sometimes leak, but not that often.\u00c2\u00a0 And you couldn’t break the nib.\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t they shoot it through doors on TV?\u00c2\u00a0 And they lasted…FOREVER!\u00c2\u00a0 The goal of owning a Bic was to use it up before you lost it.\u00c2\u00a0 I think I did this once in high school.\u00c2\u00a0 God, you could write for MONTHS on a Bic.<\/p>\n
They ultimately expanded the line, to fine points, but they wrote too slow.\u00c2\u00a0 The key with the Bic is it wrote first time\/every time.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, sometimes you had to prime them.\u00c2\u00a0 But once they got GOING!\u00c2\u00a0 Ah, nirvana, you could write fast and furious.\u00c2\u00a0 Like I did at the bar exam.\u00c2\u00a0 But there I wrote SO much I could actually see the ink reservoir go down!\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, Bics were clear.\u00c2\u00a0 At least the model I used to buy.<\/p>\n
But then I switched to Write Bros.<\/p>\n
It happened like everything does.\u00c2\u00a0 By accident.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how you change shampoo, or deodorant.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re at a friend’s house, sans your own, and you try theirs and ultimately decide, SHIT, this is GOOD!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how I got hooked on the Ban Pump.\u00c2\u00a0 And how I finally switched to Colgate from Ipana.\u00c2\u00a0 I believe I needed a pen when I was home from college and the only thing my father had were Write Bros.\u00c2\u00a0 I was reluctant, but I gave one a spin.\u00c2\u00a0 It was COMFORTABLE!\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, those Bics hurt.\u00c2\u00a0 They were industrial pens, no ergonomics there.\u00c2\u00a0 And they lasted just as long.\u00c2\u00a0 I SWITCHED!<\/p>\n
And after my ex moved out, I found a stash of them.\u00c2\u00a0 She’d bought them in one of those fake charity promotions.\u00c2\u00a0 You know, they say they’re calling for the Blind, but the NAME of the company is Blind.\u00c2\u00a0 And, since no one writes anymore, that stash lasted FOREVER!\u00c2\u00a0 But now it’s gone.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m plumb out.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to buy new pens.<\/p>\n
Oh, I was trying to give it a go with hotel pens, which are light years better than my dad’s old liquor store pens, but sometimes they choke, and they have too much friction, and they write lightly…\u00c2\u00a0 They’re good in a pinch, but they’re not real pens, even if you get them from the St. Regis.<\/p>\n
So that’s how I found myself at Staples this afternoon.<\/p>\n
I tried to buy one pen, I really did.\u00c2\u00a0 IMPOSSIBLE!<\/p>\n
And then I noticed GROUPINGS of pens.\u00c2\u00a0 Four or five for $2.50.\u00c2\u00a0 That sounded better, I didn’t need the lifetime supply of sixty on the bottom shelf, for eight bucks.\u00c2\u00a0 But those in the groupings, those were all girl pens, fancy pens, rollerballs and shit.\u00c2\u00a0 God, I’m not into fashion, I just need a pen that WORKS!\u00c2\u00a0 I was flummoxed.\u00c2\u00a0 But then I noticed that eight dollar price was for TWO boxes of pens.\u00c2\u00a0 And I could buy ONE box of pens, SIXTY PENS, for $4.48 plus tax.\u00c2\u00a0 What choice did I have?\u00c2\u00a0 I laid down my bread.<\/p>\n
But it got me to thinking.\u00c2\u00a0 How come Staples knows it, and Time Warner Cable knows it, and the record business doesn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 That you CAN’T MAKE ANY MONEY SELLING ONE!<\/p>\n
Selling one is good for Apple, and good for the customer, but bad for the record business.\u00c2\u00a0 You see if you allow people to buy ONE, they spend LESS!\u00c2\u00a0 People are cheap, they labor over every decision, they don’t want to BLOW MONEY!\u00c2\u00a0 So, you’ve got to give them NO CHOICE!\u00c2\u00a0 And you’ve got to make them FEEL GOOD about having no choice.<\/p>\n
I don’t feel bad about my sixty pens.\u00c2\u00a0 Hey, if you want one, I’ll give you one!\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe TWO!\u00c2\u00a0 I’m a magnanimous guy!\u00c2\u00a0 But better yet, I got a DEAL!\u00c2\u00a0 That one Bic…\u00c2\u00a0 It started out at seventeen cents.\u00c2\u00a0 Then went up to twenty when I was in college.\u00c2\u00a0 Since then…\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s see, the annual fee at Middlebury was $4,500 when I graduated.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s TEN TIMES THAT!\u00c2\u00a0 Which means one Bic pen should cost…\u00c2\u00a0 TWO BUCKS!\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, I got SIXTY for under FIVE BUCKS!!\u00c2\u00a0 What a DEAL!<\/p>\n
Not that I’m gonna use all sixty.\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, it would even take a long time to LOSE all sixty.\u00c2\u00a0 So, if you let people have EVERYTHING, all the music extant, for one small price per month, they’d FEEL good, but would never be able to take all of it.\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, I’m always going back to Staples for more shit, just give me a subscription.<\/p>\n
But I don’t want to rent pens, or lease them.\u00c2\u00a0 Return them when I’m done.\u00c2\u00a0 I just want to own them.\u00c2\u00a0 Give me the chance to OWN my music.<\/p>\n
And then I realized the business used to have this right.\u00c2\u00a0 Singles were expensive, but albums were CHEAP!\u00c2\u00a0 But that was when albums were good.\u00c2\u00a0 Believe me, if my new pens don’t work, if they stutter, if they leak, I’m swearing off Paper Mate FOREVER!\u00c2\u00a0 But I’ve got faith in the company, they’ve never ripped me off.<\/p>\n
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I just bought sixty pens. Oh, I didn’t WANT sixty pens.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, I only wanted one.\u00c2\u00a0 But you can’t buy ONE.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe at the five and dime, the corner store, but they went out of business, along with the stationery store where the proprietor knew every item in his inventory.\u00c2\u00a0 Now you go to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-au","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}