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Net Gains (Apr 23, 99) |
I can already imagine you going "Yuck!" or "Hmmm…
that's interesting - let me log on to check it out". If you
think this is a gross idea, you're wrong - put your perceptions
aside and see what the site has in store. The website is actually
a virtual representation of a real world toilet museum in New
Delhi. While normal museums exhibit objects of historical, scientific
and cultural interest, this one displays the evolution of toilets
and their various designs.
The Museum has a rare collection of facts, pictures and objects
detailing the historic evolution of toilets from 2,500 BC to date.
It gives a chronology of developments relating to technology,
toilet related social customs, toilet etiquette, the sanitary
conditions and legislative efforts of the times. It has an extensive
display of privies, chamber pots, toilet furniture, bidets and
water closets in use from 1145 AD to the modern times.
However, entering the museum online, you'll go potty seeing loos
- from the simple to the exquisite (like the replica of the throne
of King Louis XIII), to the modern 90's microwave toilets. And
that was just your visual tour of toilets down history. If you'd
rather read, go through the paper presented by Dr. Pathak, at
International Symposium on Public Toilets held in 1995, that talks
about the history of the toilet. If that's not enough, the exhibitor's
gallery has two books and a video cassette about - what else -
toilets, for the buying.
But your job's not done as yet, not until you visit the Aryan
code of toilets (way back from 1500 BC), containing detailed guidelines
for the act, and then washing up afterwards (they used mud instead
of toilet paper, soap, and automatic washers)- different rules
for different classes, and marital states! Wasn't quite that simple
those days…
On a less educational note, the Toilet Museum is a website that
showcases all sorts of toilets from animal toilets to celebrity
toilets. An amazing collection of categorised pictures with slogans,
guaranteed to generate smile after smile. And if you try leaving
this site via the rear exit section, you're in for quite a few
more loony links, one of them being a great shockwave urinal game.
See those websites weren't all that gross now, were they? If you're
looking gross, there actually is a site that showcases a webcam
(camera broadcasting live on the Internet) based somewhere in
The Netherlands - a toiletcam to be more precise that offers a
top-down view of a loo. And if small things amuse you, you can
click to hear the toilet flush. You would have thought that people
on the Internet have better things to do - but then again, they
don't have high Internet access rates like we do in India!
If you have a toilet museum, can a toilet paper museum be far
behind? No way - there exists a homepage for The Whole World
Toilet Paper Museum and Society
. There's a lot of interesting
comments and stories from visitors all around the world in the
Toilet Paper Capers section, and scanned sheets of toilet paper
from all over the world taken from a 1959 scrapbook - don't ask!
For the legal eagles, there even a long winded document about
the significance of Toilet Paper in Tax Law. Be warned though:
some of the pages are difficult to read, thanks to the background
image of toilet rolls…
Isn't it time you got off your throne and get ready for work?