Bullet Points: The 8 Weirdest Drinking-Related Inventions
By Harry Leeds on May 05, 2008 - 10:15 am | PermalinkWe all have fun when we drink, except for those of us who are depressed alcoholics, but even then the prospect of getting drunk some other way than the classic liquor-to-mouth holds some kind of appeal. The thing is, once we're already drunk, the idea of just putting alcohol into our mouths isn't quite as appealing. When you drink, you want to do it in style, you want to do it your own particular way, and it's also easier enough to impress your friends or dazzle the girl who "doesn't drink that much" into drinking "that much" as fast as possible. Indeed, drinking inventions are forged to make the whole idea that much more interesting. Here are the 8 strangest ways to imbibe we've found:
AWOL or Alcohol Without Liquid
AWOL was first developed for people who didn't like to drink but loved to get drunk by people who didn't like to drink but loved to get drunk. This magic machine takes alcohol, vaporizes it, mixes it with oxygen, then lets you breathe in the intoxicating goodness. The machine, as it is available in the US, allows you to breathe in about one shot's worth of alcohol in twenty minutes, or less if you're good at messing with machinery to make it work faster. Amazingly, anecdotal evidence and AWOL's website suggest that the machine eliminates hangovers! Apparently, mixing the alcohol with oxygen as it enters the blood stream completely eliminates the possibility of a hangover. Twenty minutes per shot may be weak, but no hangover certainly is not.
Pythagorean Cup
This invention was a cup with a hole in it -- no, really. The idea of the Pythagorean Cup is to prevent greediness. If you filled your cup to the brim, all the wine in the cup would leak out the hole. If you put in a reasonable amount of wine, it wouldn't. Of course, you could just have 2 reasonable cups of wine for every one ridiculously sized cup, but this was invented by a mathematical genius (Pythagoras, namesake of the theorem) a long time ago and he probably just got really confused. It is neat that all the wine, even below the line, leaks out, but it still begs the question: why not drink two? More likely, he hadn't invented the Pythagoras cup yet, so he was extremely drunk and it made sense at the time.
The Robotic Arm Beer Launching Fridge
Too much free time on their hands? I beg to differ! If you have the energy and the know-how it is definitely worth it to invent and build a beer launching fridge, then set it up remotely to launch beer to your hand. Unfortunately, it only works with cans, but I'm willing to take the risk and put my Magic Hat aside if I can have my beer launched at me. It works brilliantly, and must be as fun to use each and every successive time (I doubt the whole "press a button and it launches beer at me" thing gets old).
The Kylix
What is a Kylix? Well, we again have to thank the Greeks for this one. The Kylix is basically a saucer that you fill with wine and drink with to your heart's content. Many have beautiful pictures painted into the bottom. Now if I were making my own Kylix, of course, it would be an naked lady Kylix, and as you approached the bottom of the opaque red wine you would see a more and more solid pictures of a naked lady, giving herself to your face. That way while you're licking the bottom you can finally feel good about yourself.
The Little Whizzer
What better way to fill your lowball than with a statue of a little boy pissing into it? The Little Whizzer is a statue of a little boy, and if you press the button he whizzes pee pee into your cup. And if you fill him with whiskey then you can drink whiskey to your heart's content. Have fun! Take pictures of your friends drinking piss and then show them tomorrow that they drank piss. Just think, someone had to make a prototype of this thing, then bring it to a "knick-knack" fair or whatever people do with this kind of shit, and then somebody else bought this idea from them. It's designed after a real pissing statue in Brussels.
The Beer Robot
It's exactly what it sounds like! He has a mug chilled for you at all times, holds a six pack, talks to you, and pours the perfect glass every time. Just the right amount of head. And it's made by Asahi, which is one of my favs. The beer can comes up from his belly, you put in your mug, he opens the can, pours it, talks to you, gives you relationship advice (or something like that) and pours you a glass of beer. And when I say perfect pint, I mean he's a robot and you should be damn pleased that he pours your anything at all considering how hard it is to get robots to make a drink these days. Or I'm thinking of my girlfriend. I forget.
TinChilla: The Instant Beer Cooler
This crazy device runs on two AA batteries, some ice and sixty seconds. It takes your beer can (what if we drink bottled beer? Oh, my poor Magic Hat) and spins it at a high speed. By spinning the can, the surfaces and liquids are exposed to the ice (the whirlpool created inside the can allows every bit of beer proximity to the ice so that the cold doesn't need to work its way from the outside in). No longer do you have to do that weird thing with a bowl of ice and salt to instantly chill your beers. You can do this weird thing with a spinning plastic thing and ice to instantly chill your beers. God forbid you stick your beer in the fridge when you get home from the store! This is a great day for the laziest of us!
Booz2Go Powdered Alcohol
A few Dutch (where else?) students invented a dehydrated beer that yields a frothy glass when water is added. "Why," you ask? Easy to travel with, easy concealment, science is fun and beer is more fun? All of the above apply! At 3% alcohol and 2 dollars a pop (and, according to some country's laws preventing liquid alcohol sale to minors, legal for minors), it's really not that bad of an invention. It doesn't seem like real beer -- it's more of a lemon lime concoction -- but I'm not complaining.
