As an NPR story noted on Saturday, the latest trend in things-that-were-once-free-but-now-cost-money is the designer ice cube.

Embarassed by your generic ice cubes? Well, you can now breathe a sigh of relief because for a mere 10 cents a cube, you can chill your drinks with ice made from filtered water.

Drinking water was branded and commodified long ago. Now the same has happened to ice cubes. Will the next fad be designer lint? Designer gravel? Designer splinters?

It's hard to be broke, yes, but harder still to have money.