Techno-tits. How could I resist? For one thing, I'd just finished reading another tidbit in the history of women's quest for voluptuosity -- how, in the fifties, women's bras used to explode on airplanes. Yes, explode. The bras had these little blow-up panels you could pump up until you achieved the right size for your bosom. And in the early days of plane travel, well, planes didn't have the pressurized compartment thing down too well. So planes rose and busts burst. Imagine. After that I stumbled over pix from the plastic surgeons' worst-of list of tit surgeries gone awry. There I learned more technical terms than I ever wanted to know for things that can go bump in a bad boob-job. So yes, when I heard from some guy in Japan that we don't need to go through all that for a bigger bosom, you can bet I bounced on it.

Remember all those times your mom said "listen up"? Well once again Mom was right. As it turns out, you can get big boobs just by listening. The claim is that as you listen to this one particular bit of music, which is being sold as a downloadable ringtone for cell phones, your mams will expand. Girls who've tried it say it works. Well, one girl says so anyway, Chieri Nakayama, a so-called "pin-up model" (I have to be cynical, here, and ask myself, is this model now modeling the boobs -- in which case, she's working for the PR company?)

The tune is called "Rockmelon," devised by Hideto Tomabechi, and it's now downloadable as a ringtone for cell phones in Japan. A much-quoted Mainichi Daily News article reports Tomabechi's claim that listening to the "Rockmelon" ringtone causes breasts to grow. (Men might want to watch out lest they get man-boobs. Or maybe ask the question, can it work on my dick or is the subliminal programming body-part specific?)

What is it about this tune, or these sounds, that can turn knobs into knockers? In most of the reports, Tomabechi talks about making the brain and body move subconsciously using sounds; he talks about "subliminal effects." Bear in mind that this is a man who works on the cutting edge of Artificial Intelligence and believes that his model for the human-cyber interface will create the future cleaning robot that cleans your room based on your unconscious sense that it needs to be cleaned, long before you would have instructed it verbally or even realized it consciously. If he's shooting for robots that are going to do all that, then I don't mind taking his word on a little audio augmentation.

Remember those self-help tapes that sounded a lot like the same white noise you could get for free on a bad radio station but that cost a whole lot more? Maybe Tomabechi's just updated the concept. But if you listen to the "Rockmelon" ringtone (and I did... purely for science, ah-hem) it's a notch up from white noise. In fact, it actually does sound like the guitar solo Tomabechi was aiming for, albeit a schizophrenic guitar with the distortion set on 11. "A spokesman" for the company selling the tone (again my PR warning system is going off) says the ringtone received 10,000 downloads in its first week. On the other hand, news of the tone and its claims quickly showed up on BSalert.com.

Though it sounds like your standard snake oil marketing, the man behind the ringtone is rather well-known in Japan for deprogramming some of the AUM Shinri Kyo cult members. Those were the good folks behind the Tokyo subway nerve gas incident that injured close to 4,000 people in 1995. (Speaking of cults, mind programming, and white noise, didn't someone try that whole blind-them-with-white-noise approach outside of the cult compound in Waco Texas?) Anyway, according to Tomabechi, cult-members were brainwashed to take instructions, and in subsequent interviews, he has claimed that any average Joe is susceptible to the same type of mind control. What a comfort. This is an interesting connection to make when talking about a guy who thinks a rock guitar solo can trigger a person to grow breasts.

But Tomabechi is no snake oil peddler. He was educated in the United States, studied Artificial Intelligence at Yale under Roger Schank, got a Ph.D. in computational linguistics from Carnegie Mellon, and he currently owns a company called Cognitive Research Labs.

The guy's got credentials. It makes playing musical mammaries with the Rockmelon Ringtone an intriguing proposition. Even better news is that he's got other developments in the wings. A ringtone that will make you more attractive to the opposite sex, one that will make your bald head hairy, and one that improves memory are all just around the corner.