Creative: The Uni Jetstream

In my opinion, the Uni Jetstream Sport might be the best pen ever manufactured. Neither sleek nor sexy, what this pen has going for it is performance, plain and simple. Mostly plastic, a rubberized grip and a cheap little clicker round out the family of traits but the ink itself, and how it’s delivered, are works of art. My version is a 0.7, widely regarded as the best option. The pen also comes in 1.0 but that version is universally despised like the second series of Star Wars films, so horribly wrong that even diehard fans drowned out the Dolby surround sound with their piercing wails.

As many of you know, I’ve been married to the Fisher Space Pen. I still have this pen and plan on continuing to use it but there is one major difference that has skewed my heart toward the pride of the Mitsubishi Pencil Company’s most important project, the Jetstream.

The flow. How effortlessly the liquid gold flows from the bowels of this pen, like an unsuspecting tourist eating undercooked chicken. What will come forth will come forth at an alarming rate.

Since 1925 Uni has pioneered through the pen and pencil world knowing they held the launch codes for the perfect weapon. Their gleaming ten ounce gem of a pen is worth its weight in cocaine or crystal meth. Fade-resistant, fraud prevention, low-viscosity oil-based ink delivered through a conical tip. Five point five inches of dynamic writing experience.

And for those of you writing in high-pressure or high stress environments, like forgetting to fill out your customs forms until the evil man in the guard booth motions you forward, just know this pen is subtle and won’t provoke violent jealousy from those around you. That same guard might hear the cheap “click,” and actually just wave you through.

Clearly, if I’ve learned anything over the years it is that the pen makes the writer. Ideas, concepts, training, practice are just stupid. What pen you use, and where and how you carry it and how it matches with all the other things you carry, is really the key to becoming rich and powerful in the writing world, and I mean sickeningly rich and powerful. Cars, boats, Interpol warrants style rich.

The one complaint I have is that the ink viewing window is difficult to see unless held to an intense light source. There is nothing better than watching the precious darkness slowly reduce to nothing knowing you have nine more arrows in your pen quiver because you ordered one pen and were accidentally delivered ten. I would have sent back the extra nine pens but I’ve already written such intense prose with the first pen I figured as a courtesy to the world I would keep the additional pens as my means of making this planet a far better and more talented place.

If you are in the market for a new pen then don’t even begin to consider anything else otherwise you might appear like a total idiot. My goal now is to arrange a tour of the Mitsubishi factory where I will sit in balance with all living creatures. Tokyo, Yokohama, Gunma and Yamagata all grace our presence with factories running day and night supplying Uni pen oxygen for our insatiable lungs. There are dozens of offices and subsidiaries worldwide but I must go to the mothership. They deserve me. (And I can take pictures of myself holding vintage film cameras and become even MORE disgustingly rich.)

I sit here now fondling my pen. The white racing strip providing strong contrast to the shiny black exoskeleton. The inlayed ink window smooth under my thumb. The rubber grip filled with sand from the beach. And I could not be happier or more proud. Of myself.

PS: I will betray this pen at some point but for now I consider it my spiritual guide.