Remembering stuff is just so hard. Remedy: put a little timer on the pitcher that, after inserting a filter and hitting "start", presents four bars representing the percentage, uh, 'filtering power' that's left. Then this "smart" device counts off 14 days, takes a bar away, and then after nearly two months, flashing an arrow telling you that any further sips from the pitcher may result in the very real threat of immediate death. This is your fair warning - buy a replacement filter ASAP!

This is the sophistication behind Brita's digital indicator, as explained by the folks at Brita. This "smart" pitcher cannot warn you when the water is not safe to drink, like say, when a train carrying nitric oxide derails nearby and seeps into the groundwater. This thing cannot even gauge the amount of use it's actually gets over time.

It just says "buy", and that [as Martha Stewart used to say] "is a good thing", for Brita. The selling point: this "thing" is "good" and "smart." Great - duh - yah I need to buy more good smart things. The best overall feature, however, is not having to remember stuff. Just sit back, relax, as the computers, TVs, radios and robots tell us what to do, what to think, and what country to hate this week because "they hate freedom".

OK - drinking poisonous water is not a good thing. It's bad. But, frankly folks, if you want any chance of surviving the coming century, you had better get your immunity up a tad. Building a dependency on filtered, purified H2O will only make life more difficult if things continue to go to hell. It's the "new natural" - being in tune with the environment as is unfortunately exists now. Traces of radiation, fire retardant, plastics, pesticides, what have you, it's already part of our bodies. Stop trying to fight that, and save some cash to boot.

Finally, if you as ad man want to convince me that my schedule is busy, try using a convincing looking day planner, eh?

How many people are using this thing? There's at least twelve different handwritings here ... are we supposed to believe they all use one planner? If they can't afford separate planners, do we expect them to buy something as frivolous as a pitcher with a timer?

But assuming we have one person with multiple personalities and too much yoga time, that makes it even harder to believe that there is not one rescheduled event in an entire month. In fact, the only thing that is crossed off here are the days, which demands analysis: what kind of people X-out days on a calendar as they complete them? People in jail comes to mind. Gosh - is life that horrible? Each day is a chore to be completed?

And who is this rotten bastardthat has Mom coming to town on the 8th, back to the airport on the 11th, and then not calling her until the 26th? Call your mom the day after she flies home, you creep!

The last two days are open, ad man. I'm sure someone could find the time, being the "smart" person that they are, to remember to change the filter on a regular dumb, filterless pitcher.