The Bic Velocity Bold 1.6 Ballpoint Pen

This is not a package of Bic Atlantis pens. "Velocity Bold" is not a subset of the Atlantis brand. It is it's own thing. I don't know what's going on in this photo.

I've been handing people pens and asking them to sign things for something like fifteen years. No one had ever commented on any of the pens I've used until three years ago when I picked up a pack of Velocity Bold 1.6 Bics.

People really like this pen. Approximately one in twenty signers will comment on it. A few have asked me to carefully dictate the model specifics while they copy down the information. I've given dozen or so away to people who have either asked for one or who have lamented not being able to get out of the house to go look for one. As a life-long scribbler, note taker and doodler, I understand that the joy of a good pen is non-trivial.

The Velocity Bold 1.6 (the name of which implies that there is a 1.5 or 1.7 (there's not) and lets me enjoy presenting the illusion that my taste is that finely tuned -- (it isn't)) isn't without its faults. Writing a long, straight and continuous line guarantees that the ink will blotch on the next curved stroke. The ink path is too wide to repair a long string of miscopied numbers by sneakily inserting a "9" into the snug little space where you'd forgotten to put one. If you're writing in some limited area where precision is a going concern, you've got to fall back to the practical, scratchy, thin-lined realm of the Bic Atlantis.

The Atlantis is a pretender to the auspicious with its silent retracting mechanism and gleaming real (but let's not kid ourselves... disposable) metal clip -- instantly identifiable to anyone who'd care to identify it. It wants to goosestep angularly across graph paper and almost wishes out loud that the next thing you write will be a quadratic equation. Care to break its heart? Bend the clip out away from the body to accommodate the fat synthetically blended material of a work shirt. Care to watch it die? They stop working at at temperatures below eighteen degrees Fahrenheit.

Signing your name with a Bic Atlantis is a lot like having tartar scraped away from your gumline where using a Velocity Bold 1.6 might be what it's like to rub oil on a swimsuit model.

That said, what's up with this package? I find it hard to believe that the people at Bic actually understand that there are VB1.6 loyalists trapped in an Atlantis world, but I'm clinging to that idea. As I go back to work to strain with my questionable handwriting in those restrictive little data tables, I'm going to want to feel like a well-behaved erudite at a Brahms recital, but whose shitty car is parked down the block with a Sex Pistols cassette in the half-busted tape deck, and whose indecipherable signature rings with the broad, dark and inky scream of a gouged Telecaster because that's really all I'm looking for when I buy a 4-pack of ballpoint pens.