Assorted Afflatuses
A Sad Day Indeed
In our world of disposable doodads and throwaway thingamabobs, I always regarded fountain pens as valiant survivors. After all, most people buy a fountain pen and keep it for life. And, in affirmation of that fact, most fountain pen manufacturers offered a lifetime mechanical warranty on their pens. The idea was, of course, that, should the pen break sometime in one's lifetime, then it could easily be repaired. Today, however, the fountain pen has entered the sad Age of Disposableness.
In my bout of post-school organization and cleaning today, I realized that, after sitting on my desk for nine months, my fancy French fountain pen remained unprepared. So I pointed my web browser over to the Waterman website and started hunting for the repair instructions.
But between the glamourous front page of waterman.com and the slightly more austere repair services page, I stumbled upon the warranty information page. Initially, I was confused. "Why?" I asked myself, "Would Waterman have printable two-year warranty extension cards?" After all, my Waterman fountain pen came with an indisputable, written in thirteen languages, lifetime warranty. Then I discovered the sad truth: Waterman pens now only come with a three-year warranty.
In addition to hurting the pocketbook, this measure also remove part of the wonderful romantic aspect of the fountain pen: its timelessness. So, I suppose, I will have to plunk down the big bucks and buy a Mont Blanc when I next decided to augment my writing arsenal. Hopefully their inflated prices and efficiency-minded German thought processes will stop them from falling to the same disposable demons.
Montblancs are superb fountain pens, but I'd say they're pricey... Pelikan to my mind is more affordable for newbie collectors, and as enjoyable as Mont Blanc writing instruments. But the trademark of MB means a lot to some people, it's like owing a Lamborgini car.
Recently I understood why writing with a fountain pen is good for training brains. This is the only way I make myself think thrice before putting letters to paper! You see, with emails it's very different - there's CTRL+Z combination, there's copy and paste, and everything... emails make people lazy, indeed. And with ballpoint pens, there are all kinds of correctors, whiteners, etc, to hide the errors... so writing with a fountain pen makes one cleverer and more attentive to detail. Just my two cents worth.
BTW, I enjoy reading posts here. Awesome blog!
I have been using my Cross ink pen or a plain ol BIC pen for the last two years, all I do at work is jot down orders all day and I go through a fair amount of pens. I have tried other brands, but none have been as consistent in writing till the ink is gone as the cross gel rollerball. I recently bought two four packs of the uniball "signo" 207 0.7mm and have had problems with it skipping constantly after a day or two of use. I will have to try out the Uniball Vision because I need a pen that dries quickly so I end up with less ink on my forearms at the end of the day.