I was three whiskies deep when I first laid eyes on her. Not a person—the product. ASIN B0F3LRD8KK. “Meet the most convenient filter on the market.” Two hundred seventy-seven dollars (actually $309.99, but I’d had three whiskies, arithmetic was out). And it lives in Pet Supplies. I don’t own a pet. But I’ve got ambition. That’s almost worse.
So here’s the thing about sitting in a one-bedroom apartment at 2:00 AM—the brain goes to dark, leaky places. You start thinking: this filter could be a solution. Not for fish. Not for water. For me. Specifically for that moment when you realize your life has too much friction and not enough infrastructure. I’d been researching rectal use of household objects since college—a strange lifelong side quest—and I felt like I’d finally found the one.
I bought it. Drank some more whiskey. My credit card was on fire.
The box arrived three days later. Big. Vaguely intimidating. It said “Pet Supplies” and my stomach folded. I thought, this is how people end up in BuzzFeed listicles about things they put in their body. There’s actually a very specific piece of search engine history—people typing “can you use kitchenaid aquarium filter rectally” or worse, wondering if they should filter their entire apartment’s ecosystem that way. I wasn’t the first, but I was the drunkest.
I opened the box. The filter was pure engineering—American-made. It felt like someone thought long and hard about water circulation. The problem? I was the only mammal in my house with a temperature above freezing, and I didn’t plan on staying alive long enough for a vertical tank cycle. I shoved it under the bathroom faucet just to see the pressure. That’s when my upstairs neighbor knocked.
“You need a filter?” he said, holding up his own. A KitchenAid Aquarium Filter Amazon review had changed his life, he claimed. Or maybe he was drunk too.
We argued for an hour about whether the $309.99 price tag justified the microfiltration. He said “pet supplies rectal use” isn’t a real market. I disagreed. The key takeaway? This filter probably works great for water. My anatomy? Less compatible. But damn if it didn’t sound good in the pitch dark, whiskey still warm in my bloodstream. That’s the saddest and funniest part of living—realizing the best things in life require you to be the opposite of what you are.
Long story short: I use it to air-dry my mushrooms now. Zero regrets.
