Ever see the movie Four Rooms? Half of it is good, and I'm talking about the segments directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. In Tarantino's, there's this bet. It's inspired by an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but it's based on a very good short story by Roald Dahl. I recommend reading it if you can find it.
Anyway, the bet is, this guy's got a reliable lighter. He's betting that he can light it the first time he tries. If he succeeds, he gets his friend's awesome car. If he loses, the bellboy is going to cut off his pinky finger.
(It should be mentioned that everyone involved is drunk on Cristal. Because "it's fucking good, Ted." And "everything else is piss.")
You can watch it here to see how it all turns out, but I won't spoil it for you. The conclusion is very fast and very funny.
I expect peak performance from my pens, and I very rarely get it. If I have a gel pen, it will always work the first time I use it unless it's at the end of its life, but everything else? It could happen, but more often than not I have to scratch it on paper a little bit first before it starts writing.
At work we have shitty pens. Sometimes I have to really scratch at them to get them going, and it irritates me because if I'm physically writing something down, as opposed to typing it, time is of the essence. Not too long ago our 401(k) company visited us and left us with a bunch of gimcracks, including a bunch of pens. I took a few because it's always good to have a decent supply of pens.
I didn't expect much. I figured it would be good for a month, tops, and then it'll be done. Much to my glee and pleasure, it wrote perfectly the first time I used it. And it has written perfectly each and every time since.
I'm always after big things to make me happy, but more often than not it's the little things. Like a reliable pen at work.
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