The kind of crap that occurs to me when I should be paying attention.

The other day I bought a bottle of Propel Fitness Water, because I had a conference call and I'm trying to cut down on the Mountain Dew. I had seen the commercials on TV where the little athlete pops up out of the water drop, and I had been wanting to try the stuff to see if it tasted any better than Gatorade.

I was a little disappointed, because (1) it tasted like crap, (2) it doesn't have any caffeine in it, (3) it made me have to pee really bad, and (4) the lemon flavor apparently does not have a little guy.

Not one.

How do I know this? Well, about halfway through the meeting, I reached for the volume on the phone and tipped the damn bottle over by mistake. I jumped up, instantly bracing myself for a deluge of a thousand tiny athletes, but absolutely nothing happened.

No army of teeny karate guys. No mini-marathon. No desk-sized skatepunk bong party.

Nothing.

Either they aren't really in there, or they don't like to come out and were somehow latched onto the bottom of the bottle like little leeches. I suppose it's also possible that they could have escaped at the bottling plant. I'm not really sure.

I still feel like I got screwed. Not that I really wanted them all running around my cube, but even so, I'm going to buy another flavor tomorrow just to make sure I didn't get a bad bottle.

How awesome would that be anyway? You could bring a bottle to every meeting in case things got dull. When and if they did, you could sneak a few drops on the desk and have the equivalent of a table-top cock fight, only with little mini-ninjas. Place your bets, watch a miniature fight to the death, and clean up with a few paper towels. It would be the perfect way to liven things up. Of course, I'm assuming that they pop out all pre-programmed to do your bidding. If they popped out pissed at you instead, there could be tiny ninja trouble for everyone involved.

Or, if you're not into blood sports, you could go with the tropical citrus flavor. Five or six drops of that one gets you a handful of track and field guys. You could race them from one end of the conference table to the other a few times, then when they got too tired out to keep things interesting, you could just sweep them into the empty pizza box and get on with the meeting.

You might have to stick a few books on top at first, but I'm sure they'd quiet down eventually.