Lunch can be enjoyable.

Just yesterday I was sitting in the restaurant outlining a pen review photo shoot when the waitress brought my lunch. She noticed the pen and said it was gorgeous and asked if she could see it. Of course I let her see it and even sit down and give it a try. She said her dad had used "that kind of pen" but would never let her touch them.Bad Dad!The pen was a Platinum Izumo Akatamenuri and she was fascinated by how the red color shown through under various light conditions. That led to discussing Urushi over several short stops between duty calls. Not often a three quarters of a century old fart gets to flirt with an under a quarter century old beauty over a millennium old Japanese art form.

That pen brought back a lot of bad memories.Back in m home country, the communists made it really difficult for people to get an education. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for poor families like ours was this pen. In order to go to school, we had to get a specific pen very high quality like the one you have. I had child hood friends that couldn't go to school to learn to read and write because their parents couldn't afford to buy one of these.You see art. I see just another tool of oppression.

LOLOkay.But this is a Japanese pen and far more Buddhist and Taoist than Communist.

Meh, nowadays if it makes some kind of a mark on paper, even if it's just a smudge, I'm fine with it.

I do find it humorous that the USA Space Program spent $1000's of dollars trying to develop a good pen that would work reliably in 0 g, while the Russians just used cheap pencils.

Urban legend.

I've become irresistible to twenty-year-old girls.But I have no illusions. Sometimes they tell me, "Yeah, that's what my grandpa says."

NASA Space Pen

"Rats" said Tom pensively.