welcome... to the future!

There is a box of styrofoam drink cups in the office lounge. In big, bold caps, the box proclaims, "New! Now with no-slip easy-grip sides! Patented easy-hold design! Hot OR Cold!" Well, right then and there, I decided that I am living in an age of miracles.

As we all know, the 20th century was a terrible time for people who consume fluids through container-based methods. Most of the time, the cups weren't designed for use with hot drinks. If they were suitable for such high temperatures, you inevitably found yourself wanting a cool beverage. And you were stuck with hot-only containers. It was a no-win situation.

If you did happen to have the correct cup, then it usually just slipped out of your hand before you could drink out of it. Blame it on poor manual muscle control. Or just blame it on faulty cup design. (Lawsuit, anyone? If people can win lawsuits based on injuries sustained because they drank hot coffee, then reason would dictate that slippery cups could eventually lead to multi-million dollar settlements as well.)

Now if you were lucky enough to have a cup that was temperature-compatible with your drink and wasn't so slippery that it would plummet to the earth before your first sip, you knew that it would be easily copied by some third world manufacturer and the original producer would go out of business fast.

But now, during this wonderful new year, decade, century and millenium, we finally have the best of all cup worlds: the no-slip, easy-grip, patented easy-hold design cup, which works with hot OR cold drinks! What a wonderful time to be alive! We can shout outloud from the hilltops and sing it from the valleys: "New! Now with no-slip easy-grip sides! Patented easy-hold design! Hot OR Cold!"

I think I'm going to cry.

Welcome to the future.