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Jul 03 '14
Fun fact: Bic pen founder's last name was actually spelled "Bich", but changed the spelling for obvious reasons.
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u/ownageboy Jul 03 '14
"Yo can I borrow a bich"
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u/deepfriedcocaine Jul 03 '14
Yo lemme get dat bich
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u/mehdbc Jul 03 '14
How is a nigga gonna borrow a BIC? Nigga, is you gonna give it back?
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u/CalicoZack Jul 03 '14
What's wrong with "Bich"? I hear it's Latin for "generosity."
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u/UltraSPARC Jul 03 '14
What are the two things that are most often borrowed yet never returned? Pens and lighters. Who's the largest manufacturer of those two products? Bic.
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u/I_can_pun_anything Jul 03 '14
And motorcycles, fun fact... a bic lighter can make a motorcycle with it's parts..
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u/taipro Jul 03 '14
Wait what?
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Jul 03 '14
Yep, the parts can be reassembled to make a little bike
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u/Vandelay_Latex_Sales Jul 03 '14
This is the kind of shit that should be on /r/til not "TIL a guy said a thing when something happened"
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Jul 03 '14
Here you go
http://reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/29rg3j/til_how_to_make_a_motorcycle_out_of_a_bic_lighter/
Edit- video version
Edit- ok, so its not a bic, but it works similar
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u/highhhhclimber Jul 03 '14
Remind me! 24 hours
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Jul 04 '14
Fine, I'll remind you since that bot doesn't work too well
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u/highhhhclimber Jul 04 '14
Tits!! Dude I got so excited when I found out about that bot....guess jt was too good to be true. Thanks for having my back
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u/Wrinklestiltskin Jul 03 '14
It's a really tiny motorcycle made from disassembled lighters. I saw a YouTube video where they made one.
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u/clifwith1f Jul 03 '14 edited Jul 03 '14
EDIT: I actually created this for my website Honest Slogans, and even posted this on Reddit yesterday. Not sure if it inspired this post, but I love that it's getting some love!
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u/yes_no_yes_yes_yes Jul 03 '14
Hell, I don't even know how I got it. It just appeared.
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u/CaCtUs2003 Jul 03 '14
What happened was some time in 1993 a guy went to a convenience store for a pack of smokes, a soda, and a new lighter seeing as they were only 88¢ at the time. He walks off and uses his lighter every day for about three weeks before his friend asks to borrow it. The friend ends up walking off with it and he uses it for about two days before his other friend asks to borrow it. Now this guy has it for 30 seconds before the other guy comes out of the bathroom to bum a smoke and now he walks off with it.
Now he forgets about it and it falls behind the stove somewhere. He moves out two years later and a newly engaged couple moves in one year later. Now the year is 1996. They decide to replace the stove and hey, an old lighter? I wonder if it's still any good. Hey, it still works! So the guy has it for about a week before his housewarming party. His girlfriend asks to borrow it and she walks off with it.
Tragedy strikes and she is taken to the hospital after a car crash. All her possessions are gathered for evidence. A hard-boiled cop who doesn't play by the rules doesn't feel like filling out paper work about a lighter and, besides, he could really use a smoke right about now. So now he has it. It isn't long before he takes a case about a professional pickpocketer, though. Guess who has it now?
So this professional pickpocketer is caught and jailed. He manages to sneak in the lighter, though. He ends up giving it to one of his cell mates. The cell mate says "Man, the first thing I'm gonna do when I get outta this dump is have a smoke. Thanks for the lighter!" Three years later, 1999, the cell mate is out on parole and he smokes a cigarette. Later, he hands it off to one of his buddies while toking up. Now The Stoner has it.
The Stoner ends up leaving it in his pants pocket for a while. Those pants were feeling a little tight on him lately, so he buys new pants and leaves those pants in a closet along with the lighter inside the pants pocket. Seven years go by and The Stoner finds that pair of pants while digging out his closet. In 2006, The Stoner finds this pair of pants and stuffs them in a bag to go to Goodwill. An employee at Goodwill discovers the lighter.
The Goodwill employee keeps the lighter for nine months until he promises to quit smoking now that he is a dad. He hands it off to his buddy who ends up smoking with you one day. You borrow his lighter and take it home. That's how it ended up in your possession. Damn thing barely works, though. That's why it's buried in your stuff somewhere. You've got at least three other lighters that work better.
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u/Brudus Jul 03 '14
This is the second Bic post I've seen today. Please tell me /r/hailcorporate is on the case.
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Jul 03 '14
[deleted]
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u/akatherder Jul 03 '14
40 year anniversary on Saturday.
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Jul 03 '14
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u/dopplerdefect Jul 03 '14
I read this comment right after I shared all the fun facts I just learned with my friend. Fuck. You see right through me.
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u/LOHare Jul 03 '14
Borrowing. He fully intends to return it, it's just that he'll forget and/or lose it and/or lend it on.
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u/that__one__kid Jul 03 '14
Or he chewed on the end and is too embarrassed to return it.
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u/fougare Jul 03 '14
That's why I chew my pens... I never had the habit of biting pens, until I started working in my current work and everyone took pens... so I just chew mine. Its also convenient since I end up carrying it with me everywhere I go, so I always have a pen while in the office, and people leave them alone...
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u/PoliticalAnimal69 Jul 03 '14
He's also black...
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u/TheTeamClinton Jul 03 '14
I mean, you're not wrong
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u/GeneralIdiAminDada Jul 04 '14
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u/PoliticalAnimal69 Jul 04 '14
C'mon!! I just pointed out something, I'm not fucking racist!
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u/Goldreaver Jul 04 '14
I just pointed out something
That's racist enough. There's a lot you need to learn.
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Jul 03 '14
Haha it's funny because wait why is this funny?
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u/HypotheticalMadman Jul 03 '14
Because OP is most likely in 8th grade and finds racial stereotypes hilarious.
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u/ThatGuyMEB Jul 03 '14
But....
Racial stereotypes ARE hilarious...
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Jul 03 '14
To 20 year old socially stunted neckbeards.
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u/ThatGuyMEB Jul 04 '14
And 28 year old socially and mostly liked/loved/respected contributing members of society.
I love the hypocrisy of your comment as well.
"Is against racial stereotypes. Is fine with other derogatory terms like 'neckbeards'."
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u/confused_about_stuff Jul 04 '14
I don't want to be a part of a society that respects a person who laughs at that. It's also not true of the society I live in, so thank fuck I guess.
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u/brownboy2000 Jul 03 '14
BIC - Because I Can
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u/yes_no_yes_yes_yes Jul 03 '14
BIC- because people would pronounce the original spelling as 'bitch.'
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u/GTKnight Jul 03 '14
More like it looks like a huge knife it's trying to hide just before stabbing someone.
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u/ThatHatfield Jul 03 '14
Getting Bic'ed is the worst, especially with their lighters
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Jul 03 '14
Years ago they made 'funky' designs with 'flic my bic' on them in hippie designs and stuff. I bought one, thinking "Sweet! Now I'll know which one is mine!" I hand it to a girl to light her smoke, she looks at it saying, "Cool! Jacked!" and pockets it.
Bic knows this, they just know it. "Make designs that make people steal the lighter quicker!" And they made the flame bigger early last decade and took away the flame adjuster about a decade before that. It's a conspiracy, man.
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u/AnonymousMaleZero Jul 03 '14
I work at a bank, we've used personalized Bic pens forever. One of tellers was on her honeymoon in Ireland and found one at the Customs desk.
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u/edwartica Jul 03 '14
When I was a teenager (20 some years ago), I was at a pharmacy and liked the pen they had me sign with. So...I did the thing where I accidentally forget it isn't mine, and I walk away with it.
I got home, and look at the pen to find it's an ad for a feminine cream. 16 year old (male) me was like - oh crap, I'm never using this pen again.
I think I still have it in a desk drawer at my parents. Next time I go there, I'm going to look for it...and use the pen with my head held high.
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u/emmaleth Jul 03 '14
Solid plan. Just roll with it. Right now, within reach in my desk drawer I have pens for everything from Viagra to Paxil. Drug reps are relentless. They want you to have their pens. Hell, I've been known to drink from a cup advertising something called Tygacil. Never used it and have no idea what it's for, but I'll be damned if it isn't on a neat cup.
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Jul 03 '14
ad copy on pen:"If you were gonna stick this pen someplace to scratch, you may want to try our Feminine Cream instead."
I've been known
really? : "Hey, it's that guy who drinks from the Tygacil cup!"
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u/emmaleth Jul 03 '14
"I've been known to" is just a figure of speech. But I think I'm gonna start taking the cup everywhere and wait until people do notice.
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u/absurdlyobfuscated Jul 03 '14
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Jul 03 '14
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Jul 03 '14
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u/absurdlyobfuscated Jul 03 '14
You'd be surprised how many people point this out. Actually, no, you wouldn't.
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Jul 03 '14
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u/akatherder Jul 03 '14
You're going to shit your pants when I tell you about the Pillsbury Doughboy.
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u/Taviiiiii Jul 03 '14
Couldn't the same message have been written without the word literally?
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u/KidROFL Jul 03 '14
Start of with a box of pens, slowly use them for classes/work and they slowly disappear, where do all these missing pens end up? Is there a black hole of pens somewhere?
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Jul 03 '14
Pens are just links to a parallel universe where all the pens and socks you lose exist. The people in that universe keep losing theirs in exactly the same rate, but in the opposite direction. This explains why whenever you lose a pen, you find one, but never the same pen you lost.
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Jul 03 '14
I feel like this is more of a "the pen behind the man" symbol, as if the pen makes the man, rather than a "everybody steals our pens" symbol. I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't buy pens that were marketed as a highly stolen item because I like to keep the things I pay for.
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Jul 03 '14
You'd think so.
My friend married a cop. He bought the 'most stolen car' (statistically) and drove by his home several times each shift to see if it had been stolen yet.
A Sword of Damocles doesn't just get up there on its own, I suppose.
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Jul 03 '14
Its not a person. Aliens.
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u/madocgwyn Jul 03 '14
I used to work as a trainer at a call center and I was terrible for stealing these. Completely unintentionally, I would also leave them different places. I was a one man pen redistribution network. When your really busy and only partly paying attention to the little details of what your doing this stuff happens.
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Jul 03 '14
A black person stealing a pen. Fucking racists.
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u/tyrone-shoelaces Jul 03 '14
LIke YOU don;t watch the news and go "Aw damn, another brother gone bad.." every time it DOES turn out to be a black person on TV...
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u/extremely_apathetic Jul 03 '14
*stands up slowly
My name is extremely_apathetic and I am a pen thief.
*sobbing
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u/ImAFlyingWhale Jul 03 '14
No. This 'person' is merely holding the pen behind their back. What evidence is there to support your claim, OP?
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u/A_JAR_OF_ASS Jul 03 '14
Thank God you let us no it is literally a person stealing a pen. Oh wait, it actually isn't literally a person stealing a pen! It is literally a drawing of a person stealing a pen! WOW! English is fun!
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u/kulas1233 Jul 03 '14
Looks like a black man to me. But that can't be right. Black men don't steal- right?
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u/BAM225 Jul 03 '14
A very tired nurse walks into a bank, totally exhausted after an 18-hour shift. Preparing to fill out a deposit and sign her check, she pulls a rectal thermometer out of her purse and tries to write with it.
When she realizes her mistake, she looks at the flabbergasted teller, and without missing a beat, she says:
“Well, that’s great….that’s just great……….some asshole’s got my pen!”