Word: ballpoints
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...beginning it was called Beatlemania. Today it is called Beatlemania. The phenomenon, moreover, now laced with wistful nostalgia and what passes for a sort of panting social philosophy, far transcends the domain of disk jockeydom and bedroom stereo. Would anyone in his right mind pay $17.50 for a ballpoint pen bearing the emblem of Grand Funk Railroad? In Atlanta, Beatles' pens are fetching that much-and even a kid with only 25?can acquire a Beatles bubble-gum card. Not to mention the lapel buttons, rings, mirrors, metal trays, T shirts and posters that variously clutter the landscape...
...center of the rock swarm was the Troubadour, a dank Santa Monica Boulevard bar that offered newcomers three-song auditions on Monday nights. Fast talkers who knew they needed only ballpoint pens and promising new groups to become record company executives jostled in the Troub's murk with finger snappers who knew they needed only luck and chord books to become rock musicians. The Poneys wangled a gig at the Troubadour. They had hit the small time, but they were rock musicians...
Eyes blazing, Solzhenitsyn brandished his unsheathed ballpoint pen like a rapier as he derided all Western efforts to come to an agreement with the Soviets, even over nuclear weapons. The West has made so many concessions recently, he said, that the "Soviet Union does not even need nuclear arms; you can be taken with bare hands...
...Czechs immediately branded Meeker "a bandit" and charged that their troops had been fired on before they began shooting ("Goddamnedest lie I ever heard," said Meeker. "The most dangerous weapon on board was a ballpoint pen."). Though the West Germans were uncomfortably mulling over the various laws he had broken, including filing false flight plans, he is likely to get off with a wrist slap. More worrisome to Meeker were the uninsured damages to the helicopter, which could cost him anywhere from $23,000 to $39,000-unless a benefactor turns up to bail...
...that in an energetic, profligate culture like America's, language seems as disposable as ballpoint pens or beer cans. That throwaway mentality may account for some of the negligence. The argument is not between changes, linguistic innovation, new combinations on the one hand, and priggish correctness on the other. It is between meaning and meaninglessness. When language is reduced, so is civilization. George Orwell understood that "the smaller the area of choice [of words], the smaller the temptation to take thought...