Among the many good things at Wondercon 2009 in San Francisco last weekend was a seeing Guts, a large, glossy book of icky photos from the Tim Palen pop-horror genre (the Saw series, etc.) published by Baby Tattoo Books. Obviously, this one ain’t for kiddies, filled as it is with slasher-horror gut-spilling gore. Props to the packaging designer, who packed it up in a foam meat tray. We had a great time at the I Heart Guts booth, meeting nice people and sending some of them away with guts. Someone told me Carrie Fisher took a peek at our booth, but sadly I was helping another customer so I missed her. Oh well. Toycyte did a nice write-up on the guts, so thanks, Jeremy, it was nice to meet you!
If you heart Keira Knightly’s guts — or even if you hate her guts — you’ll be seeing more of them now that she’s agreed to star in 
Peep the latest in nice things for nice people — a 
Getting our plush toys tested has been a real learning experience here at I Heart Guts. Example #1: did you know you have to give the testing company about 14 samples of each plush so each test (mechanical, lead, etc.) can be performed on a different doll? For small-time toymakers like us, sending off 14 plushies of each gut was, literally, like ripping our hearts out. We make our guts in small batches, and each gut is special to us. Curious to see what testing process would do to our guts, we asked the testing people to send the stuff back so we could see what happened. Some of them did indeed have the stuffin’ beat out of them, some had their little faces ripped off. Sad. But the good news is some of them were just fine and that means we have SOLD OUT 
Not many folks know what the parathyroid is or does until — as with pretty much everything within our bodies — something goes wrong. Parathyroid hormones regulate calcium in the blood, which affects bone growth among other things. Folks with elevated amounts of the hormone have trouble with, according to Popular Science magazine, “stones (kidney stones), bones (fractures), moans (psychiatric problems) and groans (constipation).” A surprising new way to deal with parathyroid imbalance involves autotransplantation — instead of getting someone else’s parathyroid (rejection is always a problem), they 
