Really though, it’s all fun and games until someone finds out they’re from the Carrot Top gene pool.

This, however, is quite a sufficient consolation prize:

[photo: advocate.com]
A pregnant man à la “Junior”! Thomas Beatie, an Oregon man, is expecting a baby girl. According to his essay in The Advocate, Mr. Beatie was born a woman but decided to become a transgender male and legally changed his sex to male. He had his breasts surgically removed and started bimonthly testosterone injections, but kept his vagina. Identifying as male, Mr. Beatie legally married Nancy Beatie. The pair wanted a baby but Ms. Beatie is unable to carry a child, so they decided Mr. Beatie would do it. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So, if you’re in the market for dead animals suspended in formaldehyde that inspire slight nausea in your patrons, this piece is for you. Or, if you want to send someone a not-so-subtle message letting them know you hate them, this would undoubtedly make the perfect gift.

Opening bid: 100,000 pounds ($201,710 for you Yanks), as this is from the same artist responsible for such acclaimed pieces such as Away from the Flock (a dead sheep in a glass tank of formaldehyde), Mother and Child Divided (a cow and a calf sliced in half in a glass tank of formaldehyde), and The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (a tiger shark in a glass tank of formaldehyde). (Formaldehyde gets quite pricey, you know.)

I don’t know whether to track the poor girl down and teach her a thing or two about flashes and sunlight and the lack of need for flashes in sunlight, or to just throw my hands up and get a head start on sending her anonymous blame-mail for the next 25 car pileup.

The End.

I would like to take this opportunity to officially announce that I will be fighting these propositions with my whole being. If I had to suffer through three make-up math classes and endless amounts of frustrating nights, there is no way that the brats of today are getting off this easy. Professor, BRING IT ON.

Suddenly, that pesky elbow poking you repeatedly as you tried to sleep upright amidst the cloying stench of airline-issued rubber chicken doesn’t seem quite so horrible anymore.

1. eaten my weight in potato chips (Kettle Brand Krinkle Cut Salt & Fresh Ground Pepper Chips are krazy delicious, and the seething resentment you aggregate when you look at their inane spelling of the word “crinkle” totally burns through all the calories and allows you to practically inhale them);

2. browsed through multiple online collections of 2008 prom dresses, even though I am about ten years too old to attract a spritely young prom date, have consumed about 500 bags of chips too many to fit in an article of clothing intended for a high school nymphet, and am approximately two smidgens too classy to wear metallic purple tulle (bedazzled flowers, however, are another story);

3. and, forced The Boyfriend into watching an episode of MonsterQuest where a bunch of women dressed up to camp in the woods and attempted to lure Bigfoot with their feminine scents, and then excitedly emailed him this morning when I read an article that Bigfoot had, in fact, been most recently spotted on Mars, and not in the campground of some overzealous cryptozoology-flirts.

However, I can now understand why the aforementioned fearless female explorers all put on their best earrings for the occasion.

[photo: timesonline.co.uk]
Despite slightly resembling an extension of rock, or a speck of dust, or a piece of uneven ground, Sasquatch is looking quite studly lately.