You bet your sweet Biffy

Today, as KJ and I were driving home from her daily radiation treatment, we found ourselves on the freeway behind a white pickup with Texas plates — notable primarily because we live in northern California, where we regard Texans as an alien species — and a sticker in the rear window touting a Web site: Biffy.com.

What in the wide, wide world of sports, we asked ourselves, is a Biffy? A gardening tool? An online utility? Buffy the Vampire Slayer's gay cousin? Our minds boggled at the possibilities.

Needless to say (note to self: if it's needless, why am I saying it?), we fired up the Dell and looked up the site the moment we arrived at home.

Oh, my stars and garters.

It's a bidet.

For those of you unfamiliar with this uniquely European plumbing fixture — that would be everyone here who somehow missed seeing Crocodile Dundee — a bidet is a water-based personal sanitation device used for cleansing the nether regions after elimination.

To put it more bluntly, it's a butt-washer.

Apparently convinced that American rectal hygiene leaves something to be desired, the folks at Biffy have set themselves to the task of marketing a bidet accessory that can be mounted to a standard toilet, instead of as a stand-alone appliance in the European tradition. The Biffy site describes the operation of the unit in graphic detail:

When you are sitting on a toilet seat your bottom is perfectly positioned for thorough bidet cleansing. The toilet seat supports your cheeks while your body weight presses down, spreading your cheeks apart and exposes your bottom parts to the cleansing rinse of the Biffy. In just a few seconds fresh water rinses your bottom completely, like a bidet, only much better for your body and your health.

I don't know about you, but I just don't care to think about my "cheeks" in quite that way. I guess I'm just anal like that.

So to speak.

By the way, you simply must check out the Biffy promotional video, accessible from the Biffy home page. (No, you deve, it doesn't show anyone actually using the device.) Trust me, you haven't lived until you've heard a toddler telling you how much she loves her Biffy. (Frankly, everyone in this video seems just a little too cheery about the whole business for my taste.)

Me, I'm sticking with good old T.P.

It's the American way.