5 Creepy Ways to Make Your Long Distance Relationship Work

Online dating, a lame economy and this nonsense about women working outside the home neither barefoot nor pregnant has resulted in a boom in the number of long distance relationships out there.  It’s hard to get a hand job when the only one willing to do it for free is two time zones away from you. But fear not, there are ways to keep your honey sweet on you, even if you can’t be there in person. For example…

The Hug Shirt

The Hug Shirt is not just touchy feely fashion, it’s a Bluetooth accessory. All it takes is a pair of shirts, one for the hugger and one for the huggee. An SMS sends data including the pulse, body temperature along with the duration and strength of the hug from one phone to another. The receiving shirt mimics the data, heating up and copping a cyber feel with all the personal intimacy sentient laundry can provide.

We eagerly await the day that not just shirts can be programmed this way, but an entire line of underwear, bras and jeans that give a whole new meaning to the concept of “nut huggers.”

Drawing Long Distance

Nothing says loving like Lite-Brite, or so the creators of this next long distance contraption seem to believe.

Distance Labs has created the Mutsugoto, a long distance toy that takes a bit space and cash including the setting up of a custom computer vision and projection system in both bedrooms. Once you’ve come up with a lame excuse for needing all this to the tech installing it, you’re set up to get busy drawing. Yes, drawing, sexy, sexy sketching, with light. Each partner wears a ring that can be tracked by the computer, and the patterns they sketch while touching their bodies are sent to their partner, lighting up their boudoir like an erotic etch-a-sketch. According to the creators, this allows for “a different kind of synchronous communication that leverages the emotional quality of physical gesture.”  Which we’re pretty sure means its masturbation with a light show.

Touted as being far more personal and sensuous than text messaging or email, we’d like to imagine this doesn’t devolve into a game of long distance tic-tac-toe, but who are we kidding?

Lover’s Cups

Created by those brilliant nerds at MIT, Lover’s Cups do a whole lot more than just hold your nicely chilled bevy of choice. They’re rigged with more gizmos and doodads than 007’s overnight bag, including accelerometers, sensors to detect liquids, RF chips, LED’s, and vibration motors.  The cups come in pairs, and tapping them together creates a permanent, wireless bond that ties them like a Jewish mother’s apron string.

Whenever one cup is filled and lifted, its mate lights up lets its owner that somewhere out there, someone is drinking from your special cup, hopefully thinking of you.  Or you know, your long distance love forgot, chucked it in the dishwasher and is currently turning this technological talisman of your love into waterlogged trash. Whatever.

My Beating Heart

Everyone loves a hug, but sometimes you can’t be there to give one in person. These plush ‘n snuggly replicas of an internal organ are there for your mate when you can’t be. They come with both a sound chip and a rumble pack-style haptic system so that the hugger can feel and hear a “heartbeat”, adding a whole new level of creepy to long distance comfort.  But it could be worse, at least that creepy bastard you met online didn’t just show up at your door and decide to go home with a real beating heart, namely, yours.

Emotion Tracking Rings

Despite what our poor choice of accompanying photo may imply, we aren’t talking about mood rings here.  Emotion tracking rings are currently used to give feedback to teachers watching over long distance students.  As noble as that pursuit may seem, its only a matter of time before someone thinks to market this technology to gadget loving folks in long distance relationships.  The rings are Bluetooth enabled and broadcast the wearers’ heart rate, blood pressure and changes in electrical resistance caused by perspiration. Software takes these signals and runs them through a program that analyzes the data and spits out an assessment of the wearer’s mood. Designed to tell teachers when their students are frustrated or bored, lovers could soon know every detail of their special someone’s moods, giving them ample warning when that pulse pounding mood swing tells them they’re about to be dumped for someone not living three time zones away.

Read more from Susan at Capricia’s Corner