It was like ripping my guts out to pick a winner for the I Heart Guts Bright Side Project giveaway, so many incredibly interesting and thoughtful responses were there. We were supposed to give away just one shirt, but instead picked 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners, here are their replies below to the question, “What is your favorite organ and why?”:

1) From Nurm: “my favorite organ has got to be the gallbladder, because I need enough bile salts to break down all the buttercream frosting I ingest. Oddly enough, I baked a cake for a bake-off masterchef style Friday at uni and my cake was a chocolate butter cake with salted caramel buttercream and I named it: WARNING: Bile Salts Required.”

2) From Krista: “the electric one my step dad used to play in the den. above it hung a velvet painting that showed boobies.
oh. wrong type of organ.
(insert snare drum here)
i call my uterus clarisse kent. i was on birth control when i got pregnant and area 51 (as i fondly referred to my entire female reproductive system while pregnant) started all sorts of classified actions and subversive policies. my uterus turned into a superhero and i have the baby to prove it.” And last but not least,

3) from kathemc: “My appendix… because it’s no longer there, and because it reminds me of my kooky grandmother. I had an emergency appendectomy (are there any other kind?) when I was eight — perforated, not burst. After I came out of surgery, I discovered my grandmother had asked them to save my appendix, which she brought home in a little jar of formaldehyde and kept in her medicine cabinet… for 22 years. No joke. When I finally asked her why she asked to keep it, she replied “I’d never seen an appendix, had you?” Hard to argue with that logic. It was in the cabinet til she died, and although I did not lay claim to it (It’s not like I could put it back!), the story alone reminds me of all my favorite things about my grandmother.”

How did it take me so long to meet Gotochi Dissection Animals in person? See the inner workings of a panda, rooster, monkey, fish and more, all labeled in Japanese with painstaking detail. Available at Giant Robot, doubles as a keychain.  Now excuse me while I study my vivisected horse. [via Notcot]