I wonder if Mr Biro knew of the multitude of uses his simple invention would have in the 21st century, particularly the Bic version. The lid is perfectly shaped for removing crud from the rollers in mice. The sleeve has been used for jamming into people's throats to bypass an obstruction and restore air flow to lungs. Plus delivering small pieces of paper at high velocity between children. Also I have it on good authority that the sleeve, when combined with a small water bottle, makes rather a neat bong.
Indeed AB. The sleeve also makes quite a neat blackhead remover, although you need a willing friend to do the sucking! It also makes for quite a handy pea-shooter, although I believe these are now banned in this strokey / feely world we live in.
I find them useful for using pushing the recessed reset button on my satellite TV . A mate of mine whose a structural engineer goes to site and uses a bic to push in the vertical cement between the brickwork on buildings under construction. If its a cowboy job there will be a thin veneer of cement instead of fully across the joint depth of the brickwork. If the pen goes through its rejected, the wall is demolished and they are instructed to put it up properly at their cost.
I use the clip for pushing back these s@dding safety caps/slides on the third pin on the UK electrical sockets. THAN I can use my two pin plugs for my laptop/phone charger. Same clip is good for cleaning the rollers inside my mouse (did somone say that already? )
The lung specialist I had the unfortunate experience of meeting a few years ago advised me to always carry a bic around with me. The idea being that if my lung collapsed again and help wasn't at hand I could stick the sleeve between my ribs to create a crude chest tube
When Lazlo Biro went to...ok I forget where it was, but it was someplace like the Himalayas, or Burma...He was told not to go and look at this old temple.
Of course, the first thing he did was to go and look at the old temple, the natives got restless and started chasing him. He had come in on an airplane and, well to cut a long story short, it was like the end of Wild Geese (terrible film) he was in the doorway of the a/c, with the natives chasing after him and gaining. Quick as a flash, he started throwing out pens. This distracted them until the a/c was going fast enough that they couldn't run after it any more and he was able to take off and live another day.
In Papua New Guinea, the yellow Bics are particularly prized as a facial adornment - they replace the bone through the nose. Amazing to see this "branch manager" with wild feather head-dress, no other clothing except some @rse-grass, and a Bic through the nose.
Great for signing for the dole, but the dole officer can get a bit snotty.
One of our groundcrew used to put one down his japs eye whenever he'd had a few drinks. When I questioned the wisdom of such an entertaining party piece he pointed out that it was OK because he always ran it under the hot tap first to prevent infection!
In school the teachers assigned "sentences" as punishment. I would have to write "I will not talk in class," or something 100 (or even 500) times.
I would take four Bics with the hexagonal sides, line them up perfectly in my hand, and write four sentences at a time. To perfect the ruse I would skip a word or two and write them in individually, to throw off the eye.
Over 1000 posts and I bought this Personal Title to try and tell my mother the embarrassing news that I am a closet Jazz fan.
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Manchester
Posts: 138
I once managed to put a cocktail stick clean through my middle finger with a pen tube. It was fascinating to look at, though the doctor yanked it out eventually. If you wiggled it slightly you could get the cocktail stick to touch the bone, really odd feeling, seemed to release huge amounts of adrenalin and make you feel slightly sick.
Alternative uses for Bic Biros.
