There's a new high tech toilet seat on the market that includes all the latest toiletry accouterments, including a remote
control and heating capability. Which basically means when Dad is tying up the bathroom for an hour in the morning, now he has no
incentive to ever leave.
The seats even come with a warm air dryer. They supposedly represent the "next big thing" in toilets, and I can't tell
you how long I've been waiting for that.
Also, the top-of-the-line model includes a little man who on demand runs into the john and reads select passages from
Reader's Digest. Okay, I made that part up.
There's no truth to the rumor that President Bush bought several that contain tiny microchip recording devices built into the
lid.
Called the "Swash" the seats retail for $429 to $549, and business is reportedly brisk. I could say the company is flush
with cash, but that's really beneath even me.
Don't get me wrong, I find the things darn impressive. Conceived by a successful Internet entrepreneur who is now almost
so wealthy he can tell his parents he makes toilet seats for a living, and aided by an investment from billionaire Mark Cuban, I'm
only bothered by the fact that our most brilliant young engineers are now going into toilet design, while NASA apparently gets the
slackers.
What next — will the most innovative young MIT grads end up designing ultra-fast high speed urinals?
Will our most intelligent mathematical and scientific minds forsake the Pentagon and aerospace work to devote their lives to
perfecting a new and improved Chia Pet?
If Steven Hawking were coming up today, would we know him as "Self Cleaning Oven Guru Steven Hawking"?
I can easily discern some flaws in the Swash. The remote control is troublesome to me. It's bad enough when men lose
the TV remote and you must pick through couch cushions to find it, but let a guy drop this remote in the wrong place and you spend
the weekend rummaging around a sewer. And that's not progress.
I can foresee other potential problems. A few weeks ago a Colorado man sued a large store chain after his derriere was
somehow Super-glued onto a toilet seat. The way his luck runs he could push a little too hard on the bidet button of the remote
controlled toilet and end up in a head pounding, circling-the-bathroom-ride ala being caught up in a powerful indoor geyser.
All this high tech stuff is fine, and one day I hope to have heated seats — in my car.
But should "high tech" really be the wave of the future in toiletry? Considering the size of Americans' posteriors are
growing at twice the speed of the hole in the Ozone layer, and now resemble something like the back end of a Ford Expedition, if
Expeditions were made of fermented cottage cheese and whale blubber, how about designing larger toilets? Also, if you make the
things really, really large, there's even a chance the average man would be able to hit one once a month or so.
While I'm on the subject of toilets, how about we take all the low flush johns on this planet, load them onto freighter
ships, cruise to the middle of the ocean, far away from any trace of civilization, dump them overboard, and come back and design
something that can handle two slips of ultra-thin paper without backing up like New Orleans after a levee snaps?
But in this flattening world, where countries around the globe are supposedly catching and surpassing the U.S., it's
good news to hear that we're solidly ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to one technology. The bad news? That
technology is toilet seats.
