Why do we have two kidneys, but just one heart? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have extras of everything in case something goes wrong? Why can’t we be like the lowly earthworm, with five different hearts? Or those girls with two bladders and two uteruses? Or that other girl with four kidneys? Some extras make sense — for example, having two eyeballs gives us better, binocular, vision. The heart and brain have two parts each, of course, but each side has a different function. One chamber of the heart pumps out oxygenated blood, the other pumps in deoxygenated blood; and each lobe of the brain is responsible for different functions and operations. The liver regenerates, so need for two of those, and you can live without the spleen and gallbladder. But as for the double kidneys, we’re not sure why one wouldn’t suffice to clean the bloodstream, and why do we need two lungs? Rutgers University anthropologist Susan Cachel told Discovery Health the one heart/two lung system started about 300 million years ago, when we emerged from the muck onto land. For whatever reason, that’s what we needed to survive on land, and it’s remained the same ever since. Not a very satisfying answer, if you ask me, but there you go.
Archive for August, 2010
Two Better Than One?
Posted: Monday, August 30th, 2010Dear Body…
Posted: Friday, August 27th, 2010
My dear friend Tiffany snapped this photo of people’s notes to their body parts at the Actual Cafe in Oakland, California. I can’t decide which I like better: “Dear Pancreas, I used to be really mad at you for giving up, but I forgive you now.” or “Dear Lungs, It’s okay to just relax.”
Urine My Heart
Posted: Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
Will you take this kidney to be your lawfully wedded wife? I do! Rick White and Kelley Agard, both of Iowa, were married on Monday and Kelley’s donating her kidney to Rick — who has polycystic kidney disease — today. What a fabulous bride!
Heart to Heart
Posted: Thursday, August 19th, 2010
Another reason I’d love to go to Osaka, but will instead visit the internet — Like Atmosphere’s shop has some gorgeous anatomy-inspired pendants, including a brass coccyx, silver pelvis and this here pink silver heart, which can be engraved with whatever you want. {Thanks, Chuv!}
Our Hearts are Full
Posted: Thursday, August 19th, 2010
If you know someone with a lot of heart, we’ve gone big and remade our hearts huge! Our new Humungous Plush Heart is in stock, a handsome 11″ tall and ready to snuggle — or beat. Check it out, or snap up one of the original life-size hearts before they run out, we have only a few left!
Molar Dilemma
Posted: Monday, August 16th, 2010
We get a lot of great ideas from our customers here at I Heart Guts, but one of my personal favorites came from a dental student in Michigan, who begged us to make tooth t-shirts reading “Flossin’ Ain’t Just for Gangstas.” Now while we still haven’t made these shirts, I did make this one-of-a-kind drawing, along with a bunch of other special doodles — including brains, lungs and kidneys – all up for sale in the I Heart Guts store. Maybe you’ll give one of these special friends a good home?
Kicking Cancer
Posted: Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
Some photos from the Grab Your Gonads event near Houston, Texas, which raised money to help a fellow with stage 3 testicular cancer pay for the aggressive treatment not covered by insurance. We helped design custom shirts especially for the event, which raised $6,000 for Matt!
Looks like everyone had a great time, despite the seriousness of the event, and more than a few people donned a testicle pin or two. Thanks to Kandice McBride for the photos and for setting up the fundraiser and thanks to everyone who banded together to help.
Comic Con Scene
Posted: Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
Some photographic highlights from Comic Con: As you may or may not know, San Diego Comic Con International is something like a geek Halloween, where everyone dresses up as their favorite characters. We loved this cute manga-esque nurse with pink hair (we forget the name of the actual character — anyone?); a dude dressed up as a Transformer by scrawling “Optimus Prime” on a box and tossing it onto his body; and this scary doctor figure who threatened to tear our hearts out (also not sure who this character is…).
Also on hand at the Con were lots and lots of cute things, like these new plushes from So So Happy; my baby daughter sleeping atop the I Heart Guts t-shirt table, (okay, I am a little biased, of course, about her cuteness), who was a real trooper in the booth; and of course the colorful Ugly Dolls booth!
And of course there were guts! The DKE Toys booth showed off prototypes of our new Huge Heart (see the liver next to it to see the scale), I met the pimpingest Darth Vader and Boba Fett ever, and there’s our display of plushes on the right. I was lucky enough to have help in the booth from some of my dearest friends, Shelayna, Chuva and Pollyanna, so we had a grand ol’ time talking to people, selling guts, and handing around the baby. The Chronicle Books booth honored our Spill Your Guts journal and mix and match stationery set by placing it between their awesome unicorn journal and Porn for Women. We were also flattered to be called “the coolest booth at Comic Con” by G4 TVs Alison Haislip. Yay!
Soft Hearted
Posted: Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
My spies at Bergdorf Goodman in New York spotted this heartfelt sweater from Marlon Gobel’s fall 2010 collection in the men’s department. {Thanks, Scotti!}
