First, How Many Tens?

Two questions: why are BOMApens limited editions of a little under ten thousand and why are they specifically limited to the number 8888?

Speaking personally as Mike Scherer, owner and designer, BOMApens are the focal point of my interest in materials, Science, Philosophy and "simple" Beauty and Design. I think they will be perfect just as they are for a good while. So a few hundred is too small. Perhaps a thousand? No, not with the world as big as it is. The price of one of these pens barely buys a budget day in Tokyo–and they're kind of Zen, no? So I settled on several thousand. It's a doable number spread over several years and it's enough to be a business.

8

Numerologists have been around for a very long time. From their wild associations one cannot escape the thought that they're often very clever people who don't have much to do. How else can one come to the strange notion that numbers have a sex? Or that 1 isn't a number at all–but that it "creates" all numbers? Or that one can exert ocultic influence on the fabric of cause and effect merely by speaking numbers and making diagrams?
Fundamental confusion between things and the representation of things is a nasty trap. A trap I didn't want my heavy pens to fall into; what with all the trouble to get them back out and all. So the reason for 8888 has nothing to do with squares or octagons, paradise, Fibonacci, luck, Ishtar, or even that eight signifies prosperity in Chinese. It's because of something even quirkier.

Limited editions declare themselves full participants in the cycle of beginning and ending that appears to be a fundamental characteristic of reality. In other words, it's only the declaration and perhaps the brevity of the cycle that makes it different from other things. Most cycles are more like bits of string–they start at one place and time and they end at another place and time. BOMApens and their number sequence do something a little different because I made the last one first and then followed the regular sequence (8888, 1, 2, 3...). The net result is that the completed cycle of limited editions can be fancied as a kind of ring in spacetime where the end comes back to the beginning. Rings have no beginning or end so they are a kind of infinity. Infinity is written as ∞ which is like 8 on its side. And that's why BOMApens are limited to 8888.

Good thing I'm not one of those knucklehead numerologists or I'd be WAY too pleased to notice that 8888 is made up of 8 little circles.

Numbers to Avoid

Looking into numbers also turned up some really unlucky ones. We're talking numbers with a rap sheet as long as my arm. Unrepentant outlaw numbers that have done hard time and still dare us to catch them selling crack to kindergardeners. Numbers like 13 and 666–so evil that entire floors of buildings simply disappear if they're labeled with either. Especially 666, the sign of the devil and one BAD number. Not even one 666th floor remains on the face of the earth.

Though sadly it turns out that the number '666' should have been translated as '616'. So all venomous and deeply felt insinuations involviong '666' were, alas, completely baseless and rather a bad example of human behavior.

Of course some numbers aren't really bad, it's just the system. Take the Chinese number four, pronounced "suh" (with a falling tone). Wouldn't you know it, that's really close to "suh" (with a constant tone) the Chinese word for death. D'oh! If you're in an elevator and the button for the 4th floor is marked with an 'F,' it means "Forth." Tricky, eh? *

Come tax day, odd numbers in general could be unlucky–if there's noticeably more odd numbers than even numbers on your tax return. I seems that the IRS has observed that people who make up numbers have a strong tendency to make up odd numbers. Note to self: numbers ending in 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9 aren't actually more real sounding than the others.

The timing of Soviet underground nuclear tests (UNTs) also shows this strong human tendency. Recent analysis shows that 94% of the time, tests were conducted on odd numbered minutes after the hour and 85% ended in 3 or 7. The analysis also revealed procrastination on the part of the bodies in charge. Test numbers spiked just before quotas were due.

* Not to appear too expert here. A major ambition of this website is to not just allude to things, but to give you the actual information. In this case I asked a couple of Chinese friends for the specific words for '4' and 'death' that sound alike.

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