Hawaii bottles for bucks?

There was a time, while I lived on the Big Island, when bottles completely mesmerized me. Milk bottles. Soda bottles. All those bottles from the 1950s and '60s. The notion that each little plantation town made its own bottles, bottled its own beverages, I couldn't help but fall in love with it.

Now, though, I have no bottles. They've been left to history and I regret it. But there are some folks around the islands that do sell their bottles and made a nice amount of profit, I'm sure.

Ukulele.com has a nice listing of Hawaii bottles, along with pictures and listed prices. I don't plan to buy these, but the sight of them in photos brings back some nice memories for me.

Don't piss it away

That's right. The pic below is a cup of urine. Piss. Or as we call it in Hawaii, shishi.

Don't get pissy, though. News is out from Australia that the world's phosphorus supply may be completely out in 50 years. Urine, it turns out, is a chock full of this stuff. Why is phosphorus an issue? It is a main ingredient in the world's fertilizer supply.

So, while this installment of Holy Crap! isn't a success story, I can't help but wonder who will capitalize on this industry-in-the-making. Hey, maybe if I get started in a minute, the next behemoth in a phosphorus market will emerge. After all, I wouldn't want to piss away a magnificent opportunity.

I'll call my company Liquid Gold. IPO due out in 2010. Ticker: PEEE.

I'll need a little time to figure out how to extract phosphorus from the icky stuff. According to the story, I'll produce 132 gallons of pee every year. That won't be enough. Jeez, I'm gonna need some help. How is this going to work?

Will it be like selling plasma? Will I have to pay people for their pee? Does this mean people will load up on Coca Cola and Mountain Dew (and Bud Light) before walking into my Phosphorus Extraction Facility to wizz it all into my Big Gulp-sized cups? Looks like some research is in store.