I love water. I know, bold statement. But I probably love water more than you as I typically drink somewhere between a gallon and a baby pool of water each day. In fact, typing just those three sentences caused me to get up and pour myself a bigass glass of water just thinking about how it feels in my mouth. I’m totally perverted for a cold glass of water, and I don’t care who knows it. When will a man be able to legally marry a glass of water? Probably never. Thanks, Christian Right.

But there are places where water ain’t always welcome. It’s like a middle school boner. And you’re like – not now, water… we’ll have time together tomorrow at work where the wife can’t see us. What am I talking about?

Here are the worst waters, ranked.

7. Tuna water

The least offensive of the less desirable waters. You open the can with your little manual can opener, which, I don’t know about you, but I always like pretending I’m an army private in a 1940s war movie (“I’ve got a message for you, Mr. Hitler!”) when I’m cranking that metal tin open. And I realize that water is there to keep your tuna moist, which is quite possibly the most unintentionally dirty sounding thing I’ve written in some time, but it’s still fucking gross and you have to dump it in the sink. Then the cat smells it, wakes up even if he’s miles away, and looks puzzled about why it suddenly smells like food, but there ain’t no food to be found. Life is cruel when you’re a cat with a small brain.

The worst thing about this water is that it’s lousy with that processed fish funk, which, god help you if you’re opening this can in the morning because you’ll throw right the hell up if you’re mildly hungover before work or if you just brushed your teeth and you breathe in wrong. Otherwise, this is unpleasant, but manageable.

6. Cold, stale water when you change the settings in the hotel shower, mid-shower

One of the lamest aptitudes I’ve developed over the last three years is my discerning taste and eye for hotel showers. Business travel, generally, is fucking boring, and one of the things you pray for while on the road is a quality shower. Quality unfolds about as you’d expect with top end hotels having the best showers, and middle tier hotels having anywhere from good showers to fucking miserable showers.

A good shower generally has decent water pressure and more than one attachment and/or setting. And since at the beginning and end of each day I can usually be found in my hotel room answering emails, one of the things I look forward to most is dicking with these settings. And like an Alzheimer’s patient, I always forget to angle the attachment away from me when I change the setting. And since not everyone shares my curiosity for the various settings of their hotel’s plumbing fixtures, chances are excellent the water in the pipes on that weird setting has been in there for awhile, and thus, grown quite stale.

So, angled right at my face: cold, stale, metallic bukkake of shower water right in my grill. Epic. When can I come home?

5. Hot dog water

Of all the waters on this list, this texture is probably the most unnerving. It’s like halfway chicken stock and industrial lubricant. You open that little bag, pull that compressed tube of delicious animal parts out of its little holster, and there’s a thimble full of this disgusting, viscous meat water left in the bottom. Don’t touch it. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON’T TOUCH IT. Dump it, and then turn on your Foreman grill as fast as you can. Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle! Hurry up and cook, I hear Ted Allen announcing the baskets! Did he say cotton candy in the appetizer round? Holy shit! Cook you bastard!

4. Ketchup water / Mustard water

My personal nemesis. I love ketchup nearly as much as I love Sriracha. I’ve dumped ketchup as the princess to my condiment kingdom in favor of Sriracha for two reasons: 1) Sriracha is more versatile, and, if we’re making gross metaphors, is down with the kinky sex in all sorts of exotic locales; and 2) Sriracha water is virtually non-existent. Because ketchup water is just so goddamn disappointing. Juicy hamburger coming up! Fresh, crispy French fries! Now for the topper… son of a bitch! Shame on you Heinz for not solving this and ruining someone’s barbecue every damn time.

I’m told mustard water is just as bad by my wife, but that horrible neon yellow glop that comes out of a squeeze bottle might as well be poison to me, so I wouldn’t know. [puts on jacket with elbow patches] I only eat Dijon mustard, which does not have this problem. But I trust my wife, so mustard water gets on the list too. Ketchup water can die, and the fact that someone with a genie hasn’t remedied the world of this terrible affliction is a damn travesty.

3. Next morning dishwater, now cold

You gotta let the pots and pans soak, right? Of course you do. What are you gonna do? Finish the dishes that very night like a responsible adult? Ha! But then there they are in the morning. Great. I don’t know about you, but I put all the utensils in the big pot because they clearly need to soak overnight as well despite getting used for 9 seconds all night. Ever need one of those utensils right away in the morning? You now get to reach into the cold standing water that now has stray food particles dancing around in it. I’ve considered just taking that entire pot and throwing it into the front yard rather than reach in there for whatever I needed.

2. Standing water

Which brings me to standing water in general. Standing water is never good. As a thought exercise, consider the term “standing water” and all the times you’ve heard it used. In how many of those times was it a positive connotation? Conservative estimate: 0.0. To repeat: standing water is never good. It probably means you live in a flood plain and now need new windows to your basement. Or your air conditioner is broken. Or there’s now mosquitoes that randomly live around here now. Or you haven’t cleaned out your fridge in a while, and what did this Ziploc bag in the back used to contain? Avoid standing water at all costs. Amazingly, still not the worst.

1. Garbage water

In the words of Homer Simpson, “Lousy, rotten stinking… hate world. Eww! Garbage water!”

This is the fucking worst because Good God, what IS that?! And it dripped on me! What did we throw away? What are we, like, living in squalor that we just have this bag of garbage INSIDE THE HOUSE rotting with all the different garbage species having sex with each other and apparently liquefying into the most horrific substance on earth that has now dripped on you, which, great, now you have to boil yourself and pour hydrochloric acid all over your brain to ever forget that time the stinky garbage juice touched you. This isn’t living, this is insanity.

If you’ve dealt with garbage water in the last month or so, I’m heading down to the nearest church to light a prayer candle for you, and I’m not even Catholic. Garbage water causes you to question of all your most fundamental beliefs, and after praying to Catholic God to heal you, I might try Mormon God next, followed by Buddha God, Shinto God, and possibly even the Dark Lord Xenu.

Get back to the good waters. Preferably with malt and hops. Happy Friday.