"Concentrated water" goes for $33.50 per two-ounce bottle

from washingtonpost.com

In Tokyo and Paris, you can now spend $5 a glass on special beverages selected by a professional sommelier. Nothing surprising there, except the beverages being served are different brands of bottled water -- with various "flavors" supposedly matched to different foods.

Desalinated seawater from Hawaii, meanwhile, is being sold as "concentrated water" -- at $33.50 for a two-ounce bottle. Like any concentrated beverage, it is supposed to be diluted before drinking, except that in this case, that means adding water to . . . water.

And from Tennessee, a company named BlingH2O -- whose marketing imagery features a mostly nude model improbably balancing a bottle of water between her heel and her hip -- is retailing its water at $40 for 750 milliliters, with special-edition bottles going for $480 -- more than a million times the price of the liquid that comes from your tap. More