5 Products Designed to Control You When You're Drunk as Hell
If one of your 2015 New Year's resolutions was to not be such a sloppy drunk next New Year's Eve, we've got great news for you: You'll probably get just as wasted as ever, but the wide world of technology will help you hide it more efficiently! Simply add the following to your boozing arsenal and soon you'll be the MacGyver of getting totally blasted. (We almost went with "James Bond," but that was redundant.)
Free Pee Finds You a Place to Pee (That Isn't the Side of a Building)
The first order of business for any significantly intoxicated person is to find a place to pee that doesn't involve uncovering your genitals in public. Places like alleys, bushes, and children's playgrounds are very convenient (and what Mother Nature intended) but also very illegal.
That's where Free Pee comes in: Despite sounding like the sketchiest Craigslist ad ever, this helpful app is designed to direct your ass (or penis, as the case may be) to actual, human bathrooms where you can lawfully micturate.
And most actually have walls around them, unlike this one.
The app even has user ratings, so you'll know if you're going to be walking into a vomit-soaked hole in the wall with nothing more than a horse trough to piss in. You can also add places yourself, so if you've been looking for a way to invite dozens of urine-filled strangers to your home, here's your chance. It's like Yelp, Google Maps, and OKCupid rolled into one!
Wait, the nearest toilet is in Taiwan? Fuck that, we're holding it.
The "free" in the name comes from the fact that the app was originally developed for drinkers in Europe, where a terrible device known as the "pay toilet" exists. However, it's also handy for Americans, as even our Bill of Rights does not guarantee that a business will let you, a random drunken lout, whiz there just because they happen to have a toilet. Not yet, anyway.
A Device That Pauses Your TV When You Black Out
For you home drinkers (or those of you who actually made it back without being arrested), a common problem is sitting down to watch your favorite TV show and passing out before you can even find out what Dora's word of the day was. Well, there's a simple solution for that: no, not learning to drink responsibly. Don't be silly. We're talking about KipstR, a wristband that pauses your TV for you when you're too unconscious to do it yourself.
Which, incidentally, sounds like a concept devised while not drinking responsibly.
By measuring your blood-oxygen levels, the device detects when you've fallen asleep and tells your TiVo to pause and/or record your show as you gently drift off toward vomiting on yourself. The U.K.'s Virgin Media hired two teenage inventors to create this thing specifically as a way to help out parents who've had too much to drink on Christmas day -- this way, the kids can safely change the channel while the show their disgrace of a father was watching is recorded in the background.
Hopefully they're also working on another wristband that deletes traumatic Christmas memories.
There's no confirmation that the KipstR will make it to the U.S., but someone's bound to rip it off sooner or later. Just remember to take it off if you ever go for some late-night drunken Cinemax in the living room, or you could make breakfast very awkward for the rest of the family.
Facebook Will Soon Stop You From Posting Drunk Photos
The only thing more embarrassing than posting photos of your drunken escapades to Facebook (no, you can't do the monkey bars while wasted) is having to clean them all up the next day, after your friends and family have had the many hours you've been asleep/hungover to pass judgment upon you. Luckily, Mark Zuckerberg is about to help you out.
"When the fu- ... ? Janice, call a meeting with the whole staff. I'm ending this."
Using highly advanced face-recognition technology coupled with some top-of-the-line AI, Facebook's software will auto-detect when you're drunk-booking and throw up a warning message before uploading any photos -- this Wired article describes it as a virtual assistant that will ask you, "Are you sure you want your boss and your mother to see this?" But it's not clear if that will be the exact wording, or if they're going with something different. Like, for example, "HEY, NO ONE WANTS TO SEE YOUR DRUNK ASS, SHITHEAD. GTFO."
Of course, this feature doesn't completely fix the problem, because at a certain point of intoxication you don't care if the pope himself sees what you've been doing. Also, holy crap, we're teaching robots to identify when we're most vulnerable? Surely that won't backfire one day.
This is how they put us in those pods from The Matrix, isn't it?
A Complete Drunk Person's Toolkit for Your Phone
Relying on a drinking buddy to keep you behaved while out on the town can be a problem in itself, since nothing stops them from getting even more shitfaced than you and encouraging further depravity. Fortunately, phones are impervious to the charms of alcohol, and that's why someone created Drunk Mode: an app that helps protect you from your own drunk ass.
First, tell your virtual wingman how long not to trust you, with options up to 12 hours:
Still waiting for the "multi-day binge" DLC to come out.
This will activate a number of features designed to minimize the amount of damage you can do while drunk, like hiding your contact list to stop you from drunk-dialing, blocking you from using certain apps like Snapchat or Instagram (not forever, unfortunately), and using GPS to locate your friends in case you get separated or they ditch you for being too annoying.
But what if you sober up early and end up with a useless phone? No worries: Drunk Mode can be disabled at any time by solving a simple math equation you'd be too dumb to figure out with your senses impaired. At this point you can use the "Breadcrumbs" feature, which shows you exactly where you drunkenly stumbled during your "lost time."
"Oh God, even the cemetery? Again?"
Drunk Mode's developer describes it as a "condom for your phone." We see it as more of a doting nanny/butler. Bonus points: Name it Jarvis for the real Tony Stark experience.
An App From the Man to Call Your Drunk Ass a Cab
If there's anyone out there who has a lot invested in making sure we don't all become irresponsible drunken maniacs, it's the government. It's either that or government employees have a real drinking problem, because the Maryland police, state government, and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are releasing an app that will estimate how drunk you are and even help get your butt into a cab.
The app, called ENDUI (which is a bit like "ennui" but with a lot more Jell-O shots), asks users to enter their height, weight, sex, and how many drinks they've had to tell them just how loaded they probably are, and also includes two reaction-time games to further demonstrate your sloshedness (or just pass the time while pooping). It then helps users dial a cab to come pick them up, at which point they presumably learn that they blew all their money drinking.
You can also call a buddy or, apparently, his wife, Jane. Yeah, we wouldn't recommend that.
On one hand, this seems like a noble idea, but on the other, it's also a lawsuit waiting to happen. Alcohol affects everyone differently, so how long until some asshole manages to fumble his way through the tests, decides he's OK to drive, and then immediately plows into a school bus full of noble orphans?
We're guessing 15 seconds.
For more from Ashe, check out Weird Shit Blog and his book, The Book of Word Records, available now!
Also be sure to check out 6 Futuristic Products for the Biggest Asshole at a Party and The 5 Most Inspiring Things Ever Accomplished (While Drunk).
