The obvious Quick Links for April 3rd

Oh hey, it's Sexy Friday. Awesome. Although today is a sad day. Mark your calendars. Why? Because April 3rd 2009 is apparently the day obviousness died. How so? Well, let's find out in today's Quick Links!

Captian Condescending and Captian Obvious are the same person! No wonder you never see them both in the same place!

In yesterday's Quick Links we mentioned how the main advantage of bottled water wasn't it's purity, but it's convenience. So you can imagine my total lack of surprise when I opened the paper this morning and saw that Fitzy had dedicated an entire column to the fact that bottled water is basically tap water. Oh my God! So shocking!

We'd love to agree with Fitzy because bottled water is essentially repackaged tap water, but he makes his point in such a condescending manner (which is really his trademark, hence the Captain Condescending moniker) that we can't help but disagree with him. Specifically this line:

I see that University of the Pacific students are swearing off bottled water. Lunatics elsewhere are not.

Lunatics? Really? We made this point yesterday but we'll do it again. The main selling point for bottled water is NOT its purity. It's the convenience of the bottle. You don't have to worry about spilling it like with a regular cup because of the screw on cap, but when you're done with it it's disposable. Frankly, I don't want to have to carry a fucking canteen with me after I finish off its contents. It's much easier to just throw away. Does that make me a thoughtless bastard? In the minds of hippies, yeah, probably. But hey, you can usually recycle those fucking bottles anyways. So using the waste excuse for water bottles is a moot point because they're recyclable and if you really wanted to, you could refill that cheap plastic bottle just like it's more expensive canteen brother. They're the same fucking thing. Only this time the theoretical PT Barnum is laughing at all the hippie douchebags carrying around a $4 cumbersome piece of plastic.

Oh, and about that cost part. Way to pick the most expensive version of bottled water. Vending machines in general are one giant ripoff because, again, they're there for convenience! Any asshole knows that you can go into a fucking store and buy a whole case of bottled water for wayyyyy cheaper than 5 cents an ounce. Using the vending machine price is like me saying clothing is overpriced and then citing the prices at Urban Outfitters or some other weaksauce hipster store with $100 jeans instead of citing the average prices. Nice try Fitz, but your argument doesn't hold water (rimshot).

Well, that's one way to get your case dismissed

Considering the way things have been going downtown lately, I'm surprised they didn't postpone this decision because the defendant wasn't present. There isn't really much to this story but it fits our death of obviousness theme today. Plus this line might be my new favorite joke involving journalism, mostly because they had to get a spokesperson to say it. I wish I had been in the room for this:

A dead person can't be prosecuted, a court spokeswoman said.

You just know there was some meeting where an editor told the writer that they needed to get somebody credible to corroborate it while the writer presumably slammed their head against their keyboard and questioned their career choice for the 35th time that day.

Saving the best for last

Economy in a nose dive!? What the fuck!? When did this happen!? How are we just hearing about this now!? Fucking A! Somebody has to do something! Oh my God, the stock market! When were you going to get around to telling us about this shit!? Thank God there's places like the UOP Business Forecasting Center to warn people about this economic freefall before it's too late! Quick! Get Governor Scwarzenegger and Barack Obama on the phone fast! They're going to want to hear about this as soon as possible! Man, it's a good thing we caught this early or else we might be really fucked.

Kind of reminds a guy why they got in to journalism in the first place. To inform the people of what they didn't know. And to think, people say newspapers are dying. (sigh) Somebody pass me the scotch.