Now, I'll be honest: I'm a bit of a water snob. I'll chug a glass from the sink in a heat wave, but I'm a Fiji kind of guy. And since public water fountains are a lot harder to find than gas stations as my parched mouth and I hurtle down the highway, I seem to always have a few bottles floating around.

But I can't say I could tell the difference between Deer Park and Dasani in a blind taste test. Hell, I'll throw Fiji in there, too, and admit the biggest difference exists only in my head (and, yet, it makes allthe difference). It's all water at the end of the day, give or take a few minerals, and it's being used for the same purpose.

I think, as a nation, we are more apt to look at the rows of purified water staring out from their cooled waiting rooms and think, "Now, that'swhat Iwanna drink," than the water we're using to scrub last nights lasagna out of a pan. And we've had good reason to believe one's better than the other--we were warned!

We are still skeptical when we find out the only difference is the cost. And then you start to take notice of the products. Stripper water is retailing for $40 per 750mL? You can buy concentrated water from Hawaii for just under $35 per two liters that you then....dilute with....water?

Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm going to have to say we've reached a serious low point in consumer awareness (not to mention marketplace manipulation) by allowing these expensive jokes to mock us in our grocery stores.

I can't offer a solution to bottles of water...they're convenient, relatively inexpensive, and disposable--er, recyclable. But we all know what plastic is made of (google it if you don't) and that's expensive as it is. I'm not sure I know what the solution would be...maybe a tongue insert that would draw the moisture out of the air through natural respiration. Who knows...but if they can break plastics back down into their original components surely something like that can't be too far behind...