Have you ever tore a package open, and realized that you were the first person to ever touch the item?
Like a pen:
Millions of years ago, a forest is buried by a volcanic catastrophe. For eons, the plant and animal matter ferment into bubbly black goo.
Until one day, this oil is pumped to the surface from deep under the Gulf of Mexico, piped a few hundred miles to the processing plant, where the petroleum is fractioned and polymerized, automatically blended with synthetic resins in the XJ400 processing vat (7500 gallons at a minute, 18 million gallons a month).
Here it meets the ink cartridge, made in Argentina by the world's finest pressure-treated plastomer cartridge die (the GetterdunKreig YT12, made in Berlin).
Next robotic fingers as delicate as feathers and strong as steel pluck the tops and bottoms (ventral and dorsal, in penmaker jargon) out of the sterilized bin while the pieces still hot, still soft. The pieces are spun together like kite string and deposited (as gently as an infant onto a changing table) onto the packaging conveyor.
The blister packer eats pens like a Hungry Hungry Hippo eats marbles. Packaged pens emerge glistening and dewy with possibility, (though most are resigned to their fate as doodlers).
And at the end of all that, you casually pop the package open and are the first (and possibly last) person to ever touch them.
Like a pen:
Millions of years ago, a forest is buried by a volcanic catastrophe. For eons, the plant and animal matter ferment into bubbly black goo.
Until one day, this oil is pumped to the surface from deep under the Gulf of Mexico, piped a few hundred miles to the processing plant, where the petroleum is fractioned and polymerized, automatically blended with synthetic resins in the XJ400 processing vat (7500 gallons at a minute, 18 million gallons a month).
Here it meets the ink cartridge, made in Argentina by the world's finest pressure-treated plastomer cartridge die (the GetterdunKreig YT12, made in Berlin).
Next robotic fingers as delicate as feathers and strong as steel pluck the tops and bottoms (ventral and dorsal, in penmaker jargon) out of the sterilized bin while the pieces still hot, still soft. The pieces are spun together like kite string and deposited (as gently as an infant onto a changing table) onto the packaging conveyor.
The blister packer eats pens like a Hungry Hungry Hippo eats marbles. Packaged pens emerge glistening and dewy with possibility, (though most are resigned to their fate as doodlers).
And at the end of all that, you casually pop the package open and are the first (and possibly last) person to ever touch them.
I _have_ had thoughts like that, yet never articulated them so well.
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