Liquid Solution is decadent and depraved

Around here, we pledge allegiance to Some Stuff Is Better Than Other Stuff. That's old news. We pledge thus, though, with a purpose:

Axl Does It with a Porpoise

we want to identify that Better Stuff, because it helps us live a better life. When it comes to living a better life, I drink coffee. A lot of coffee. And I never--ever--make coffee at home, because it's not just the drug I crave and require, it's the being not at home of it all.

Since I don't hate our mother the Earth--much--I don't support the cutting down of like every single fucking tree in the entire world. So I carry--everywhere I go--a go-cup. Been carrying them since around '98. Usually they get replaced after I lose one, or lose the lid. Occasionally, I'll flat-out break one. But I always have one on me.

Couple months ago, I decided to retire my old model. A battle-scarred old soldier, I'd had 'er since since at least 04. She needed replacing because...well, I'd become uncomfortable showing up at job interviews with a toothless, incoherent old veteran. Same principle as wearing long-sleeved shirts to work: it's not whether or not they see that I have a bunch of tattoos, it's about whether or not I have enough savvy to make the right moves, send the right signals in and for the environment. So I did betake myself down to the Berkeley Bowl, after striking out at like three drugstores, and ended up with a luminous little number from Liquid Solution.

How is the Liquid Solution? Let me be as clear as I can be:

• Liquid Solution Travel Mugs Are Wretched Products

• The Company Making Liquid Solution Travel Mugs Is a Criminal Enterprise

• Avoid Buying This Product

The main problem is the lid. I would describe its fit as "poor". Or anyway, I would if I were a better person. As I am not a better, or even good, person, I would describe the lid's fit as "incredibly fucking sloppy" and "entirely unacceptable"; I would further suggest that a "Liquid Solution" is precisely what you will have spilling down your chin and onto your shirt if you trust this cup's lid to keep liquids from exiting the cup except at and from the duly appointed portals.

Your expectations for a cup may mirror mine. I want the device to: contain liquids; release liquids; do these things in predictable ways that are controlled by me. This Liquid Solution cup, being garbage, fails to meet my expectations. Therefore, it is garbage.¹ Somehow, there is always some coffee² left in the mug, which cannot be gotten out of it by normal use or special attentions on my part. No, the only way I can get that last bit of brew out is by tossing the mug into my bag and riding my bike around for a while. That procedure invariably extracts...call it a metric fuckload of coffee from the apparently empty vessel, then deposits that substantial quantity of load onto my papers, my clothes, my drugs, whatever happens to be in my bag that day.

Oh, also the handle is already inexplicably cracking.

Liquid Solution, you are either inept makers of things or you are savage, chiseling monsters of fraud. For ten fucking bucks, do I have the buyer's remorse? No. I have the buyer's rage.

Would not buy again; would not recommend to friends.

Four stars out of five.

Rest in peace, old mug, ancient warrior. You were twice the cup at half the price today's world e'er will know.

¹This is a Warlock Pinchers joke. About mimes and France, originally.

²"Coffee. Black coffee. Then I do some pull-ups and masturbate."

Matt Scandrol, after Henry Rollins (circa 1994)