A month or so ago, my wife and I went to Las Vegas for a long weekend.

Valentine’s Day is February 14 and her birthday is February 18, and I learned early on in our relationship that you do not try to combine them. But over the many (many) long (long) years, we’ve mellowed to the point of:

“Are we going out on Valentine’s Day?”
“What, are you nuts?”

…and:

“What do you want for your birthday?”
“Sleep.”

And so with the President’s Day weekend falling between the two, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to not go out on Valentine’s and also have a big bed with black-out curtains. There are also buffets, which is my love-language.

The hotel room was nice — other than the fact that it had Las Vegas right outside the door — and, when I wandered into the bathroom and saw the bidet, I made a sound I haven’t been able to reproduce. Heated seat, glowing blue light, and the kind of steely-eyed menace you get from people who have a job to do and know what’s involved in getting it done. My undercarriage is gettin’ pressure-washed!

Problem, though: the bidet has no instructions. At all. Normally this wouldn’t dissuade me from operating machinery, but here, um, I have some skin in the game. It can’t be that complicated, though, right? You could accomplish the same thing with a garden hose and some privacy. And, hey, there’s a language-agnostic remote control mounted on the wall.

OK, starting from the top. That’s clearly the universal icon for an ass, and it’s got a fountain pointed at it. Great. The basics. To the right appears to be a more… aggressive… flow.

Below that is… a woman? And a spray that covers everything from the back of her calves to half a foot behind her back. And to the right, an even wider delivery angle. I guess that’s the all-orifice hose-down option.

Next is either a button to spring Wolverine claws, or the dryer. Since I didn’t have to sign a liability waiver before sitting down, I’m going with dryer.

Fourth seems to be an adjustment of the… targeting arm? There is a little hatch in the back of the toilet bowl where a nozzle pokes out of when called upon, like the gatekeeper droid at Jabba’s palace. This button must move it back and forth, like an intimate, adjustable pop-up sprinkler. Below that is what I’m going to assume is the spray pressure control, and not a cigarette to smoke after you’ve had your full bidet experience.

Finally, last, there’s the same nozzle icon used previously, but it’s got… sparkles above it? Where the water normally goes? Maybe it uses carbonated water? Or, I dunno, coffee? Does the nozzle get replaced with a magic wand? And is that licensed from Hitachi? Maybe the cigarette idea is right instead.

But wait. I’ve seen that before. That sparkle iconography has become really common — it’s the generic graphic that literally every company on earth is using to indicate AI. Is this an AI bidet? What does that even mean? Is this how AI uses all that water? What was the training data? I shudder to think whose intellectual properly rights I might be violating.

I push it. Nothing happens.

So it is AI.

Below that is apparently the volume control.