What Ever Happened To […] #1026

 

[Is it Bad Joke Friday? Again? Already?? Well, here’s something I recently thought of that nobody cares about: water bottles. Right. The lowly, lowly water bottle. And why did I ever have my head so low in the first place as to think up such down-in-the-pumps type stuff? (Don’t ask. It’s been an emotionally tough week. Death and dismemberment all around. Not kidding. Sorry.) Well, this is how I got so low as to think that up: I was housecleaning. (It’ll do it every time.) More specifically, I was trying to put coffee mugs back inside kitchen cabinets and discovered, to my horror, that I had no more room. The cabinets were chock (choked) full of water bottles! There must’ve been thousands! OK, no. Maybe a couple dozen. Anyway, as I also discovered and would now like to expound upon, *any* more than one (maybe two, if you, like the Lone Ranger, have a double-holster pack) is waaaaaaay more water bottles than you’ll ever need in your life. Happy Friday! Be even happier: tell a bad joke yourself today… to anyone that’s thirsty and who’ll listen!! :-]

The Bush the Second Administraction Presents…

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO [water bottles]?

You know, the kind with the straws already inside.

Water bottles, per se, still exist of course, but I never see or never get (along with other swag inside race packets) those “old” (ha ha, we’re talkin’ maybe a dozen years) kinds with the long “flexible” plastic suckers sticking out through their lids. You know, those spastic gigantic whacktoast unhandleable monstrosities that I have never seen ANYBODY EVER use… except for this here Harvey “I’m A Lawyer” Levin on television’s ubiquitous “TMZ.”

Ah, and there’s another future “What Ever Happened To” when THAT whacktoast goes off the air. I mean, just how many damn Hollywood gossip programs can there BE on TV???

They always ALWAYS leaked–those old flimsy plastic bottles did–probably because there’s never been an invention yet that can keep the beverage from oozing out the sides of the hole that that damned stupid straw goes through. It’s like, you run along, tilt the bottle…

TILT THE BOTTLE? Am I kidding? You cannot even run at all with such a contraption in your hand without squeezing it and, once you squeeze it, the whole damn lid flips off! It’s the single worst invention ever to be foisted upon anyone ever who’s ever run anywhere in their life. You’re better off scampering naked across deserts, pausing only at oases (or mirages), than to try running and carrying such a completely senseless fluid container known as a water bottle with a straw in the lid. But I digress…

Where was I? And whatever happened to that lovely rhetorical device known as the digression? (Oops. Never mind.)

Ah, yes, running along and tilting the bottle, stopping ALWAYS to pick up the lid and the straw off the ground, and losing ever more rapidly–and splashingly–the contents inside.

What ever happened to race sponsorship? You know, the totally clueless kind? That is, those kinds of idiotic sponsoring merchants that put their names all over these silly, stupid bottles in the first place and had paid to have stuffed inside your swag bag, eh? Every race of 10K or less, throughout ALL the suburbs and most of the cities, used to give you some kind of drug store’s imprinted water bottle. And over the years, you’d end up with a couple dozen of ’em in your kitchen that you would never EVER use, nor have you EVER ever used.

Maybe race sponsors over the years–these long, long years that yours troubly has been “racing” (some call it “oozing”)–have gotten smarter. And cheaper! Nowadays when you show up on raceday and retrieve your “packet,” it’s more than likely you’ll get a printed coupon to hoozit’s pharmacy instead of that hoozit’s water bottle.

Whatever happened to Hoozits?

Nowadaze? Thanks to U.S. “Administractions” following Bush the Second? Nowadaze Hoozits is out of business. Hoozits’s tax burden and other overhead costs have skyrocketed out of control. Hoozits was threatened with raises in employee health benefits’ costs, minimum wage raisings, and surcharges on the tax upon his tax increases–and don’t forget local political extortion and other “protection” expenditures–and yadda yadda yad. That made All Hoozitses evolve from donating water bottles to issuing coupons and, when those expired and after April 15th rolled around, All Hoozitses went out of business. And that caused all the retail workers unions to rejoice (ha) and subsequent Administractions (ah yes, this ever bigger “big government” that the Reagan Administraction was pledged to reduce) to demand more taxes.

So, that pretty much sums up what happened to America, right there! No, huh? OK then. That’s just what happened to those stupid fricking water bottles with the straws already in ’em.

Here, I’ll tell you what happened to water bottles: They are now HYDRATION SYSTEMS! Yes! No kidding!! Look it up!! Running stores don’t sell “water bottles”; they sell “hydration systems”!! These days you have a Hydraform Handheld Pocket™ marketed by Amphipod®. You’ve got nipples and nozzles and backflow-proof “bite valves.” Ya got freakin’ whole BACKPACKS–trademarked Camelbak®–fer cryminnie sakes! And those have “reservoirs” and BLADDERS!!!

Today’s runners, instead of emptying their bladders, now need to FILL THEM!!! I’ve seen it myself. At aid stations where I’ve worked, all kinds of hard-working runners arrive, hastily divest themselves of their, yes, “hydration vests” and then pantingly ask me to fill their bladders!!!!

I’m, like, “Here: DRINK!!! That’ll fill ’em. Otherwise, I suppose, what I *could* do for you is use a catheter. Ya wanna unzip it for me?”

( O_O )

Yours troubly,

The Troubadour
“your fanatically ancient trustless hulking thoroughly hydrated lute-plucking song-and-dance CANTEEN man who sometimes refreshes himself by jerking a soda”

Yankee Folly of the Day:
(In honor of Larry Gassan’s birthday today 🙂
I’ve now strategically positioned myself in a safe, undisclosed (but wonderful!) world-famous multilevel marketing network, hawking salt. Here, you can join my down line.