Before I launch into this week's diatribe, I must apologize to the good people at Fiji Water. In my last column I incorrectly stated that the company's product contains two to six milligrams of arsenic per liter. In reality, the arsenic content is only a few micrograms, one thousandth as much as I had stated. As a respected scientific authority, I am ashamed to have misled you. To all of you who stopped drinking Fiji Water because I was off in magnitude -- and I am sure there are at most none of you -- I reach out with deepest apologies. I am here to say that you should not stop drinking Fiji Water because of its infinitesimal arsenic content. You should stop drinking Fiji Water because it is a ridiculous, pretentious product that eats babies and kicks puppies when it walks down the street. I once saw a bottle smack a can of change out of a homeless man's hand. True story.
After being lambasted by an employee at Fiji Water for last fortnight's error in prefix, I decided to go online and check out the company. What I expected ended up being completely true. While the water appears to be without impurities, the people running the company are full of a very particular waste material. There are two things about Fiji Water's ridiculous, self-aggrandizing Web site that bothered me. The first is how many ways it found to say, "Our water is from far away. If you're not aware of this, you ignorant rube, that means it is better than anything you have ever -- or will ever -- enjoy." Reading page after page about artesian springs, primitive rainforests, remote valleys, volcanic chambers and virgin ecosystems made me feel like I was watching a monster truck commercial.
"This weekend only, the Fiji-Rex! The biggest, baddest, rip-roaringest, car-crushing, purest, metal-smashing, most delicious, roughest, toughest, biggester, baddestest, soul-chomping spectacle ever!"
I figured there were only about 16,000 ways to say clean and distant, but the folks at Fiji blew that away.
The other thing that bothered me was how they were hanging their hat on how "Until you unscrew the cap, Fiji Water never meets the compromised air of the 21st century." You know what has been in contact with that so-called "compromised" air? Me. That's who. Oh, and everybody else who has ever and will ever drink this water. There are very few products whose lack of human contact concerns me. Unless doctors begin drawing blood with bottles of Fiji Water instead of hypodermic needles, I do not believe it will make much of a difference.
Every day when I wake up, I'm getting blasted with UV rays the ozone is neglecting to protect me from, breathing polluted air and considering how many electrical devices I come in contact with, taking a daily stroll through an active microwave on popcorn setting. If I were to drink Fiji Water solely for its pristine state, I would be like the 600-pound man who orders a diet soda with his 12 double cheeseburgers and six orders of fries.
I promise, unless you are holding a bottle of water and the label reads, "Nobyl Water: the only water straight from the pristine terrain of Chernobyl. Accident free since 1986," you are fine. If you like the way Fiji Water or any of those other fancy-pants brands tastes, that's great. Knock yourself out. Just remember the puppy kicking.
Now that I think about it, I am really bad with apologies.
So I was planning on making a list of the obnoxious brands that bother me, but it looks like that won't be happening. Damn you Fiji for providing me with so many opportunities to criticize. As long as I'm on the topic of bothersome water brands, I have to throw a few words at Voss, the product of Norway that comes in a giant glass canister. I thought the people at Fiji were long-winded, until I checked out the Voss Web site. There is an epic, pages-long story about the creation of Voss water. The story goes something like this: "Hello Norwegian friend. Is Norwegian water not the best water in the world? Let us put Norwegian water in fancy glass bottles and sell it to people who are impressed by such things. We will make lots of money and bask in how Norwegian we are [insert raucous Scandinavian laughter here]." How they managed to stretch that into a "War and Peace" length tale is beyond me. Anyway, I may have misread, but I'm pretty sure bottles of Voss come with a drug-addiction, a pack of cigarettes and a deep sense of apathy.
Eric's column runs biweekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached at ast@cavalierdaily.com.
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