Technologies for the Clearest Juice; The Drippy Stuff; That Wet-Wet; Nature's Friend Part 1: The Sixteenth Ounce

(Smol water bottle is smol.)

I'm using one of nature's least useful creations today: the 16-ounce Nalgene bottle. It's fun in size. It fits right in the hand, it's even pocketable! Like all Naglenes, it's a near-perfect vessel for sticker deployment, second perhaps only as a vehicle for same to the, uh, vehicles driven by special kinds of liberals who say my politics let me show you them ALL of them. However, it's challenging in configuration. The long cap strap imposes:

• A cap-dangle when the open bottle is at rest, which can be unstable and which is certainly unsightly (see visualization)


(Attend in this moment to the angle of the dangle. The weight is distributed...poorly in this disposition.)

• This instability increases as the bottle's cargo lessens, inviting the minor paradox of spills becoming more likely as the spillable matter becomes less
• An awkward flapping when the open bottle is in motion, as, say, when being hoisted for a quaff, i.e. when used for its usual purpose: the quench
  • This is a particular problem vis-a-vis spatter and splatter, as the world's most effective attractor slash distributor of water droplets has long been understood to be the grooves inside the lid (or "cap") of a Nalgene, which no one has ever cleaned adequately nor dried effectively

But! As the worker at the coffee shop this afternoon said—well after I had begun this piece, oddly—"It looks like a fun size!" It does. It is! And I enjoy this adorable lil' bottle enormously probably in oversized part precisely because it is small.

It's adorable. I aim to adore it. Until I inevitably knock it over onto my keyboard later this afternoon sometime.