bic ball point pen

In message , andrew heggie writes

Send the buggers back, but be quick about it, they are about to discontinue them ...

Use them for opening kryptonite locks -- the ones with tubular keys.

(Google "bic kryptonite lock"...)

Thomas Prufer

They're probably the dangerous versions, without the breathing holes in the caps (which don't work anyway, apparently). Don't let elf 'n safety hear about them!

There is an unexplored theory that if someone found all the biro pens missing and threw them on the floor they would cover the entire land surface area of the planet..

Same for post-it notes, socks and AOL CDs

"Somewhere in the cosmos, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good life."

Why do conference organisers assume that delegates need a new pen - and course organisers must supply new packs of Post-its for delegates. What happens to part used packs of Post-its?

And Lego. Why aren't we ankle deep in it after all these years?

Are you implying that things can be taken apart once built?

They get taken home by the hotel or conference centre staff.

Owain

Unless you're very wealthy or a very unadventurous builder, you have to take things apart or you run out of bricks.

Usually you have to take something which took weeks to build apart for just one brick to go into the new creation which will be abandoned half an hour later.

Before such things were made illegal under human rights legislation, some children had parents who made them take all their Lego apart so it could go back in the box every bedtime.

Owain

In message , John writes

they end up next to my PC.

From the number of sets of Lego on eBay which have been used but are neatly back in their boxes, probably.

I'm amazed that anyone, child or adult, can take apart a Lego set and put it neatly back in its box with the instructions to use another day. Surely Lego goes into a big box so you can build something /other/ than what the leaflet tells you?

I keep mine in a steamer trunk. You can buy lego by the kilo on eBay these days!!!

Gordon

Indeed. Some of my colleagues do just that at work. Lego everywhere.

Ours is in a large crate in the living room. I've tried putting it away, but it's a waste of effort - I only have to get it out again.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Owain saying something like:

Whenever I was short of the last Lego brick I simply waited for an adult's unshod foot to find it.

Never be short of Lego bricks again...

But the practise was only enforced the day after one of the parents had trodden on a discarded brick barefoot in the dark!