For one, you might be thankful you’re in the United States. We have safeguards to protect us here, like the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a Congress that thinks posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms will turn bad kids good, and a legal system that lets any person sue any other person for any reason they can think of no matter how trivial, silly, or whether we’ve already seen it on Judge Judy and even she threw it out of court.

     What with states suing tobacco companies, cities suing the gun manufacturers, and kids suing their parents for things they did while still a fetus (the kids, not the parents), we’re about "this" close to someone suing him or herself. Probably for defamation of character over something they said while talking to themselves, which if you ask me is none of their business anyway.

     They’re pretty much the same thing all around the world, though each country has its own variation on the porcelain theme. Usually the difference is confined to the flusher, or what we call the handle. That’s why when you’re traveling you should always budget a few extra hours in your day—boosting it to a suggested 25.2 hours in Europe and more in the less overdeveloped continents—so you have time to examine the toilet in detail.

      You’ll need it. After all, you could be looking for a button to push, an identical button to pull, a push handle built into the side, a chain hanging from the ceiling, or just about anything else that might be lurking around the bathroom. More often than not you’ll end up flicking the lights off and on several times, running the water in the sink, cutting power to the kitchen, setting off the air raid test siren, and starting that worthless hot air hand dryer before you manage to finally get the toilet flushed. If you do.

     But the coolest toilets are in the home, fastened to the floor. They have heated seats, warm-water bidets, and other features so advanced that it will be at least another five years before anyone figures out what all the buttons do. And another ten until they find someone who really cares. These toilets, which cost between $600 and $3,500, are so popular that 40 percent of the households in Japan have at least one.

     The problem is that, like any technology, sometimes it acts a little too much like HAL in "2001 - A Space Odyssey." Or maybe that’s Hal Linden in "Barney Miller." I get confused. Either way, it turns out that the wiring in some of the older model Washlets can get worn and, well, catch fire, giving new meaning to being in the hot seat.