Burt Stark is a toilet guru. Curator of the Toilet Museum, an online collection of toilet art and pop culture, Burt was gracious enough to participate in this interview with our PoopReporter, Trashcanman.

PoopReport: So first, tell me how you got started. My guess is that the idea came to you while sitting on the toilet.

Burt: Good guess, yes, sitting on the can was part of the inspiration. The Toilet Museum started out in 1982 as an idea that my old roommate had to add a little personality to the water closet in our small New York City apartment. We decided it would be fun to collect postcards and greeting cards of pictures of toilets, and display them in the WC.

Images from The Toilet Museum.

Fast forward to 1998: my roommate had long since moved out, but I kept adding to the collection of pictures in my WC, aided by friends who sent me toilet pictures from around the world. I've always imposed the following rule on my friends: Once you've seen the Toilet Museum, it is your duty to seek out new toilet pictures in your daily travels, and to send them to me.

In 1998, my two brothers were heavy into web design, and they asked me to hop on board. I wanted to start a web site just to try my hand at web design, but I didn't want to do some dull personal page or blog. While I was sitting on the toilet in the museum, mulling over what my web site would be about, surrounded by pictures of toilets, it occurred to me that it would be fun to make a virtual museum using the pictures in my WC. So, you see, the idea did, in fact, come to me while I was on the toilet.

What did you begin with?

The first pictures that my old roommate and I found were a series of four postcards taken from a book called 'Private Moments in Public Places,' by Phyllis Prinz and Stephanie Saia. We found them in a card shop on Price Street in Soho. Living in a hub of culture like New York City, our collection grew quickly.

Would you call yourself a toilet guru?

For the sake of a laugh, yes, I call myself a toilet guru. The fact is, I really don't know that much about toilets, but I have picked up a few facts from research I've conducted to answer some of the inquisitive visitors to the Toilet Museum.

How were you able to locate the Jenny McCarthy/Candies pic?

What? You don't believe that Jenny invited me to her place to let me take the picture? OK, I confess, I didn't take the picture and I never met Jenny McCarthy. I found the picture in a fan site devoted to Jenny. I'm still on the lookout for a hard copy original of the ad to hang in my water closet, but it's been out of print for years, and I don't have much hope of finding it.

What's the story with the pic of Dean Martin, Bob Hope, and Jerry Lewis? Is it real? Or did they pose for it, or what?

I couldn't tell you. Just like the Jenny McCarthy picture, I didn't take the one of Martin, Hope, and Lewis either. I doubt that I was even born when it was taken. I got the picture at Jerry's Batcave on 14th Street in NYC. They have all sorts of movie-related photos and posters. I went in there and told the staff that I collect pictures of toilets. The staff had fun helping me find some, even one of the customers got in on it, suggesting that we look at pictures from The Conversation, which proved to be a nice find. I left with five or six toilet pictures that day, a nice haul.

More from The Toilet Museum.

Would you consider the toilet museum a hobby, or an addiction?

It's a hobby. Since I started the web site just to get my feet wet with web design, the theme wasn't particularly important to me at first, but after receiving many friendly emails from hundreds of visitors to the site, I was encouraged to keep expanding on the site. I don't want to get too 'Britney Spears' on you, but I owe it all to the fans.

Do you have any interesting things that you know about toilets that we might find interesting? Things few people know?

One thing that people seem to find interesting has to do with water in the toilet swirling in a different direction depending on what side of the equator you happen to be on -- it turns out that this is just a myth. Apparently large swirling things, like tornados, are subject to the pull created by the rotation of the Earth, referred to as the "Coriolis Effect," and they do spin in different directions on either side of the equator. However, the spinning water in a toilet is too small for the Coriolis Effect to have, well, an effect. The direction of the spinning water is actually determined by the direction of the spigots that dump the water from the tank into the toilet.

Another thing I've been told was that Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was the first movie to show a toilet. I haven't been able to substantiate that, and I can swear I saw a movie where a young Mickey Rooney, as Andy Hardy, takes a dump. But I may have dreamed that.

What kind of toilet do you yourself use?

It's white porcelain, with no brand name on it, and a cheap wooden seat. Pretty normal, really. I'll bet you're disappointed. You'll get over it.

Do you think porcelain is the best material for making toilets? It is, after all, the same material used in fine china. Some folks prefer wood or plastic seats, for example.

I think that plastic might retain stains over time, and wood might retain stains and odor. Porcelain is easy to clean, and it's fun to say, so I vote for porcelain.

Do you have any type of 'official toilet prerequisites?' Like a plumbing trade school, or a Porcelain Casting Guild?

A meal, a beverage, and a little time to digest: that's all the prerequisites that one needs to take the throne.

Do you ever get letters from people who are offended by your site?

Only once. I received an angry e-mail from a gentleman from Malta who took great offense at my references to The Pope. I like to refer to his note as the 'Maltese hate mail.' I forget what it said, something about how I should be ashamed of myself, or some such nonsense.

By the way, I used to use a web tracker that recorded the countries and web domains from which visitors to the site came, and through it, I learned that I had one visitor from The Vatican. I suppose they scour the web looking to see what kind of press the Pope is getting. I'd have to guess that they block access to sites like mine from their domain, to keep the Holy See holy.

And yet more from The Toilet Museum.

On PoopReport, we talk about Shameless vs. Shameful Shitting. As a member of the Shiterati, we'd be curious to know your Shitting Status.

I have read your Shameless Shitting Manifesto. I'm completely on board with you, with the exception of the doorless stall thing. That is, I do agree that a Shameless Shitter has the right to shit in a doorless stall, but that's not for me. I defer to the "Freedom of Privacy" clause in your manifesto. The more concealed the toilet, the more relaxed I am. If my movement is accompanied by some gaseous sounds, so be it. Let the trumpet blare! So I guess I can't say that I'm completely Shameless when it comes to taking the brownies out of the oven, but I don't think it's fair to call me a Shameful Shitter either.

Do you prefer to think of the toilet as a place of solitude and Zen? Or just a place to empty your bowels and get out?

Zen, totally Zen. My favorite pastime while sending the remainder of yesterday's meals to the sea is reading. I've heard women call this a "guy thing." Perhaps. But there are always women out there somewhere who can appreciate guy things. Sometimes I completely lose track of the time, and upon emerging from the Toilet Museum, I remember that I have visitors, who ask me where I've been, when, in fact, I've been relaxing with an entertaining novel or magazine with my pants down around my ankles. If that ain't the definition of Zen, I don't know what is.

Do you think American culture promotes introversive Shamefulness? Do you think other cultures promote Shameless Shitting?

I'm quite certain that American culture promotes Shameful Shitting. But it is because of this shame that toilets have become a source of humor, so who am I to gripe? With the kind of censorship that was used on TV in the 50's and 60's, you'd think Americans back then never ever went to the toilet, never even heard of one. Leave It To Beaver was the first TV show to show a toilet, and when they did, they only showed the tank, not the seat. Heaven forbid you show the place where Wally and the Beave plopped their bare naked behinds. All hell would have broken loose.

I don't think I know enough about Middle East, Far East, and Eurasian cultures to comment on the extent of their shit-related shame or lack thereof. I do know that some of the cultures in those places only eat with their right hand because they use their bare left hand to wipe their asses with. As a fully programmed shame-ridden American, I can't help but being repelled by this notion. Don't get me wrong, I respect their culture, but if I ever visit there, I'm packing toilet paper. To hell with that "when in Rome" shit.

Do you see harming, maiming, or soiling a public restroom a harmless prank, or construe it as an act of turd terrorism?

"Turd terrorism," funny. Terrorism might be a little to extreme a word, but judging from your questions, I'm guessing extreme is about as moderate as you get. Maiming public toilets pisses me off...to the extreme. As a side effort of The Toilet Museum, I started the Toilet Webring to link different pages about toilets, and I had one submission by a guy whose website featured toilets that he and his mates (they were from the UK) had clogged with toilet paper. I rejected his submission, telling him that I don't think there is anything funny about inconveniencing other people and making some poor miserable janitor's job more miserable than it already is. As an occasional member of the public, I shit on all those who dare to bring harm to any public toilet.

Do you think Thomas Crapper invented the toilet? Many historians say he didn't.

He didn't invent the toilet. There's no doubt about that. He was a talented and successful English plumber who held several patents that improved toilets, but he did not invent the toilet.

-- Trashcanman