I was reading the Wired website today. On the right panel and along the bottom panel were pictures of naked butts with a title overtop called “Washlets”. The pictures were supposed to be links, but the links were empty. That is, nothing happened when I clicked on the links. The logo was something like “clean is happy”. After cycling through a number of naked butts, the picture resolved to a toilet seat. Now I’ve seen these seats before, have used them, have coveted them, and have wondered why they haven’t yet made it from Japan to the US.

So, I did a google search and found www.washlet.com and went to their website. Someone has spent a LOT of time and money making a very fancy web page. Pictures of naked butts first get displayed across the screen. Then they resolve into people’s faces. Each of the people talk. After they’re finished, if you mouse over, the facial expression changes … but more importantly, it plays a note! While waiting for you to mouse over, eyes blink, heads kind of move, giving the impression that they’re all alive. So I had fun mousing over different faces to see what kind of a tune I could play. Then I discovered that there were little colored bars to the left of all the faces. Each bar corresponded to a face. When mousing over the colored bar, the same facial reaction occurs and a note plays. There’s only five notes. However, quite the composition can come out of five notes (think of Bach’s Air on a G String which was all played on one violin string). So, have fun making music on Washlet!