Editing The Pen Addict 108/transcript (section)

== Gel Pens ==


'''Tim Fletcher:''' When I first got into the hot, I was really surprised that there was not just one. There are, in fact, a couple others. There's only one good one, though.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, well, thank you. Thank you very much. But yeah. Oh, wait. I mean, yes, I was talking about you. Yeah, I don't know if you've heard of this show. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cut Tim off now. Okay. I can do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Band for life. But no, June is great. And I really appreciate her mentioning us on that, on the Culture Gab Fest. And, you know, people were coming out of the woodwork for that one. Yeah, for sure. We got a bunch of action on that. A bunch of people tweeting us. A bunch of people. A bunch of new listeners, I know. A bunch of new followers on Twitter. And a bunch of new readers to the Pen Act blog. So thank you, June. It was great to hear. And we've got your back. You know, from your... If we need to have a talk with your guest hosts on the Culture Gab Fest, we can make that happen. And set them straight. Oh, and I put a link into the note. Note, she's written about pens and stationery before. And we'll have a link in the show notes to... She has an Addicted to Stationery post that she's written for Slate in the past year or so. So she is definitely a full bore pen addict. So thank you, June.

'''Myke Hurley:''' One of us. Yeah, thank you, June.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One of us. Exactly. One of us.

'''Myke Hurley:''' One of us. One of us.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One of us. One of us. So Tim actually has taken me to task on something that came up last week, Myke. And we were talking about just pens in general. Just kind of revamping our glossary. Kind of touching on the very basics, you know, pen info 101, if you will. And my thought was, or my perception is, that out of gel pens, rollerball pens, and ballpoint pens, that in the grand scheme of the general America public, the non-pen addict pen buying public, that gel pens were probably the most popular. And like I said, I didn't have any, you know, hard facts on that. That was just kind of a guesstimate based on what I've seen. And Tim has a disagreement with that. So what do you think, Tim?

'''Tim Fletcher:''' Well, I think, well, in the general populace of people, I think gel pens are still looked at to be a kind of luxury item. Because you buy two of them, two Pilot G2s for like $3 or something. And rollerballs even more so. And when I'm in a, I have to take chemistry classes to get my degree, which is terrible. Chemistry sucks. But they require you to write your notes during the labs and stuff in pen because they think that you're going to falsify your data or whatever. And there were only two other people in my entire history of chemistry labs that I've seen use non-ballpoints. And those two people were using rollerballs, actually. Though I do see a lot of gel pens out there. I really, they're not, it's not very often, I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I will agree with you in that instance and maybe in school in general. If you happen to use a pen and especially in chemistry class, the oil-based inks are not going to get wiped out by as many chemicals and solvents. We've actually done some testing on the blog way back in the day with someone else, another chemistry student, a guy named Brian Gushikawa, who I haven't heard from in a long time. Brian, get in touch. He actually did, took in a bunch of pens and did like a solvent-based test. And the rollerball, I mean the gel inks performed horribly. You know, they, you know, ran off the paper and didn't hold their inks.

'''Tim Fletcher:''' Those weren't off the paper with just a finger.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So I can totally see that. It's definitely situational. So I can see in that situation. So, you know, ballpoints, I'd say maybe even just in general, ballpoints are probably the most popular just because they're the cheapest and the most ubiquitous and people end up stealing them from everywhere. So they just have those to use. I'm not buying the rollerball thing though over gel. Maybe so. Maybe so. But there's such, I think, I don't know, there's very few cases I think where rollerballs are the best choice. I think there's a case to be made for ballpoints and there's a case to be made for gels. And rollerballs just seem to be the, I don't know, odd, oddest of the bunch in from performance perspective. But I don't know. It'd be interesting to see, like, Pilot, I know, commissions a study and I've actually tried to get a copy of it. The, saying that the Pilot G2 is the world's most popular gel ink pen. I would be interested to say what, to see, like, what is Pilot's most popular pen period that they sell. So, and I have a feeling it would be some base level ballpoint that they're mass filling office supply shelves with or something like that.

'''Tim Fletcher:''' Yeah, probably. I mean, I think the, at the, at the university I work, they have Pilot pens that are, that are supplied for the graduate assistants to use. And I think they're Pilot Precise. Are those gel pens?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The Precise is a rollerball.

'''Tim Fletcher:''' Rollerball. Interesting.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Tim Fletcher:''' My friend just came from Chicago. I just, I just picked her up today and she knows I'm into pens and she whipped out her pen that she just bought for this occasion. And it is a uniball. It's another rollerball. I feel like the, like, there are so many, there are so many office supplies where instead of buying ballpoints, they try to go up a little bit in class and they buy a whole bunch of the uniballs or Pilot Precises or whatever. Those tend to be rollerballs. I feel like in office supply cabinets all over the world, whether it's an accounting firm or any other kind of place, if it's not a ballpoint, it's probably a rollerball. Though, I understand why pen enthusiasts would prefer a gel ink pen to a rollerball pen as I do myself. But I just, I think they're a little bit more ubiquitous.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think you're, I think you're right. And Myke and I talked about how the, that uniball, like the Vision line and just some of their basic rollerballs, those are in office supply cabinets everywhere, all around the world. And that's a lot of, that's a lot of people's first taste of actually a good, decent pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, it was mine. Yeah. I, you know, in the office supply space, that was probably mine too. So, I can definitely, definitely see that. So, all right. So, let's, now that, now that we've kind of, we've kind of started that ball rolling, Tim, let's get, let's get into you and I and how this came to be and why the heck we have you on our podcast. But first, I want to mention the pen blog of the week. We have a special pen blog on the week, this week, and it's called Funkmon on Pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How fortuitous. My goodness. I mean, you had no idea I was going to be on the podcast either, did you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That is just insane how that worked out.

'''Tim Fletcher:''' Wow, what a coincidence.