The Wawabo

I have a brilliant money-making concept for you Bush, and I'll pass it on to you as a freebie, no strings attached. Consider it a gift. It's called the Wawabo, short for the trendy-looking, infinitely re-usable, WAshable WAter BOttle. Get it, Bush? The Wa-wa-bo.

Don't laugh, okay. I'm serious. It could make you billions AND save the world. First you get your Wawabo designed by a Philippe Stark or a Frank Gehry--one of those guys: this part is worth a good investment on your part, because that's what gets the trend-setters hooked--then you work on your foks in Congress to introduce a bill to ban the manufacture, production, distribution, or importation of those disposable plastic water bottles that everyone uses. There's no way you can tell the difference in taste between any of those products: they've proved that. So then you activate your long-neglected drinking fountain manufacturers' lobbyists to demand the immediate renovation, reinstallation and reactivation of drinking fountains in all work-places and public spaces, interior and exterior, throughout the country. (You could also have your design people modify existing models to incorporate a quick-filling Wawabo device, for the convenience of those of us who are always in a hurry.) Then you're set to go.

It's a natural, Bush, no? I mean, it's a given that designer has to come up with one of those sure-fire, everyone-has-to-have-one images--in a variety of sizes, of course. But then think of the marketing possibilities! People really latch on to save-the-world stuff these days, and this is a really green idea. Right? I mean, number one, think of the fossil fuel savings, replacing all these disposable plastic bottles with a single keeper. That must be billions of barrels per year, right there.

Then there's the world-wide poluution problem you'd be helping to solve. Remember when I was in Egypt, Bush, and I wrote to you about all those tourist water bottles polluting the Nile, the Pyramids... even the Valley of the Kings, for God's sake? I mean, this is a problem of truly global proportions. All over the planet there are these heaps of ugly, non-degradable objects lying discarded in the city streets and country by-ways, in the rivers and the oceans, on the mountainsides. Did you watch the Tour de France, Bush? Did you see those guys just chucking their water bottles carelessly by the side of the road when they were done with them? Disgraceful! Those damn bottles are everywhere. What a benefit to mankind, to be rid of that pestilence.

And then, not least, there's a way to spend all that money saved. I read the other day that the world spends $42 billion a year--that's billion, Bush, with a 'b', like you--on the bottled water industry; and for a fraction of that annual expense, one time, we could actually provide clean drinking water for all those undeveloped countries where people are dying from the diseases carried in their water supply. I realize this might be a lesser consideration for some of your backers, Bush, but at the very least it would be a brilliant PR angle, wouldn't it?

Listen, what if you could get your Cheney interested in this, for Halliburton? I think he'd really go for the idea, if you talked it up a bit, in the right way. Let me know what he thinks, okay?