The hip bone is connected to the.......

This Sunday in Toronto was dreary, drab and just plain blah! It was the perfect type of day for curling up with a good book in front of a roaring fire and sipping a fine port. Having just finished both the Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham I found myself with nothing to read. My apartment does not come with a fireplace and as tempted as I was to wheel in the BBQ I noticed the batteries in my carbon monoxide detector were dead so I thought better of it. As for the port, I checked under the bed, behind the radiators and in both of my flasks, alas, all were bare.

What was I to do? It hit me out of the blue - go look at dead bodies. Luckily, AC and Underpants Boy were both free and equally eager to go looking at cadavers. I had heard so much about “BodyWorks” and it was a perfect indoors sort of day so we piled in Lucy and headed off. From the moment we set foot in the Ontario Science Centre, things went awry. From an on-line ticket purchase that wouldn’t print at will-call to AC fainting at the sight of a dissected Achilles tendon (he snapped both of his last summer trying to re-live his gymnastic glory days) it was quite a trip.

I have to admit I was impressed with the detail and variety of specimens. Did you know there are three headed camels? That one was right out of Ripley’s. After a while however, all the muscles started to look the same, the fatty tissue made me want a bacon sandwich and even all the ‘organ’ jokes began to wear thin. The “male reproductive organs” display was not, as the army states, all it could be. I was a little disappointed - as I am sure was this guys wife. Although if they had put a Ron Jeremy type specimen in the case a few women (and men) would have felt, errrrr, a little short changed. Maybe plastination makes it shrink. Or maybe he was a grower, not a shower. Maybe that’s enough beating of this joke? Yeah, that’s enough. I was just talking about a penis and said beating – hee hee. Ok. That is REALLY it. No more.

And I think I can safely speak for all three of us when I say there is such a thing as too much female genitalia. Poor AC literally gasped, causing a couple of on-lookers to giggle, as he rounded the corner on the ‘ballet’ figure and got a face full of fanny. And I thought those cod pieces were silly looking.

In one case there was a severed leg with a number of signs pointing to this joint or that muscle. One sign read “the foot and toes are an important part of the walking process”. Important? Is essential not a little more appropriate? Did you not see Terminator 2 when he was frozen in the liquid nitrogen and tried to walk? Snapped his feet off and fell. Again, not important, essential.

We also saw healthy lungs (white) compared with those of a coal miner (black). Thinking myself witty, I turned to AC (who is Asian and completely non-PC) and said “if they had a yellow set in there, your people would be represented too.” He and I both had a good chuckle but the lady next to me told us to “get a life”. Hey lady, I paid my $25 and will crack a joke if I want!

One of the most interesting displays explained why people donated their bodies and the forms they had to sign. Just about anyone can do it and you can change your mind right up until the last minute. Having recently seen House of Wax though, I bet Gunther has a House of Plastination somewhere that he takes his “volunteers”.