This Exists

There is a water bottle out there in the world that will take your vitals and monitor your water consumption for you, like some kind of robotic maître de/nutrition specialist. Yes, I can finally stop asking my Magic Eightball how much liquid (read: bourbon) to consume. Also, the i-dration bottle looks like an ominous alien artifact from the Stargate series. Maybe Dr. McKay used it to amp up Shepard’s puddle jumper. Or something.

Ehem.

Similarly, I present the Hydracoach. It has a digital display that “calculates your personal hydration needs.” I can’t be bothered with digital display screens, though. Call me when the soothing feminine voice of my water bottle can daily remind me to cram some more H2O down my gullet.

For those of you with an off-putting filtered water fetish: the Hydros purifies water without need of a tap (my thanks to Kelly White Philips for blogging about it in March). More altruistically, Timothy Whitehead won a James Dyson Award in 2010 for a bottle that uses UV rays to quickly sterilize unclean water for people in areas that lack broad sterilization systems. What is the difference between purifying and sterilizing?

My guess, a penthouse and a penicillin shot.

But among these fancified gadgets, for me, The ALEX bottle is the real honest-to-Poseidon MIRACLE. It is a water bottle that twists apart so that, holy hell, I can actually scrape the mildew off the sides every fortnight. The container I drink out of everyday could be literally, not just theoretically, clean. I can already taste the residual dish soap. If I had $30 to spare on a water bottle, it would be mine. My precious.