Chib

You may have noticed that, excepting the occasional zombie apocalypse, we humans tend to function best with our nervous systems intact and our brains, limbs and major organs all connected and happily communicating with each other. Well, we feel it’s our duty to inform you that not all creatures are quite so picky when it comes to the intactness of their bodies. (And it’s not at all because we get a cheap kick out of giving our readers bed-pissingly horrible nightmares. Honest.)

#6. Headless Snakes Can Still Kill You

When faced with a venomous snake, most people’s natural reaction would fall into one of three categories: fleeing, freezing on the spot or OH GOD OH GOD KILL IT CHOP OFF ITS EVIL POINTY HEAD.

While the latter course of action may seem like the surefire way to avoid getting bitten, it turns out that might not be the case. Don’t believe us? Well, here’s a new one for the Nightmare Department:

If you did not or could not watch that video, we will spoil both it and your dreams: It’s a video of a snake head not only refusing to do what any severed head with a shred of common decency should do (die), but also rearing and trying to bite the living shit out of anyone dumb enough to get too close to it.

If you’re anything like us, cutting off a deadly snake’s head is your best and only move. If that doesn’t work, our only follow-up attack is bowing respectfully and doing whatever the hell that severed head wants us to do.

So, What Makes This Abomination Possible?

The snake has heat-sensitive pits at either side of its face, which it uses to detect threats — and let’s face it, if you’re close enough for your body heat to be detected, you’re close enough to be considered a threat. Oh, and also what the hell are you doing standing so close to a venomous snake’s face?

These heat-sensitive pits are capable of detecting a threatening presence for hours after death, which means the snake may continue to defend itself, zombie-style. And yes, this applies even if the body is no longer attached. So anyone dumb enough to poke and prod it to assess its level of deadness may quickly find themselves with a sudden increase in the level of pissiness of their pants when the snake’s movement sensors kick into action.

But don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom, because a snake’s venom loses its toxicity after its death. Except that’s a total lie, which means that getting bitten by a dead snake can make you just as dead as getting bitten by a living one, but add to the excruciating pain the severe humiliation, because who the hell loses a fight to a dead animal?

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“We vasectomied you after applying the antivenom. Everyone agreed it was the most ethical choice.”

Well, a Washington man known as Anderson, for one. The 53-year-old and his son tag-teamed a rattlesnake outside their house and pulled a Walking Dead on it with a shovel, only to have the head rear up and bite him when he went to check out the success of their mission. In his own words: “When I reached down to pick up the head, it raised around and did a back flip almost, and bit my finger.”

So what we’re telling you here, we guess, is that a severed snake head not only refuses to die, but its svelte new bodiless form can perform freaking acrobatics to get at you with its poisonous bits.

#5. Octopus Tentacles Don’t Know How to Quit

Say you’ve always had a burning curiosity to know what it would feel like to chew on Cthulhu’s face. Hey, we’re not here to judge. Anyway, here’s what you do: You travel to Korea and order up a nice heaping plate of sannakji.

Here’s what you’ll get:

In case you’re smart enough to entirely avoid clicking on videos in a Cracked article about zombie animal parts, the main ingredient of sannakji is extremely fresh (it doesn’t get much fresher than “still squirming”) sliced-up octopus, usually served with sesame seeds and a tasty dip — presumably tasty enough to help you forget the fact that your food is not only moving, but actively trying to escape.

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Or possibly using up your minutes.

If you’ve ever wanted a food that fights you on its way down your throat, this is the food for you. Also, if you’ve ever wanted a food that fights you on its way down your throat, please get help and stay far away from us.

So, What Makes This Abomination Possible?

First up, you need to understand just how well-developed an octopus tentacle actually is.

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“Cooler than your lame-ass arm.”

Say you want some food. Your arm is likely going to be the limb you rely on to help you achieve this goal, but it’s incapable of doing anything on its own — your brain has to supervise the movement of your arm every step of the way. To put it another way, your brain is the Michael Jordan of your body, and all of your limbs are the obedient, supportive and essential Scottie Pippens.

Yes, art department. That’s exactly what we were talking about.

Now let’s say an octopus wants some food. The only command issued by the octopus’s brain is “FOOD NOW” — the tentacle already knows what it needs to do in order to fulfill that goal without any further input from mission control. The movements of the tentacles are controlled by the tentacles themselves, which means there’s no need for the brain to still be connected in order for those movements to happen. This is because more than half of the neurons in the central nervous system of an octopus are located in its tentacles.

In fact, James Wood, a leading octopus expert, says that the tentacles are able to process information themselves, with little of that information ever reaching the brain.

In that video above, do you remember watching that sucker latch onto the plate in a last-ditch attempt to save itself from mastication? Here, let us remind you:

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You’re welcome.

That sucker doesn’t care that there isn’t a brain telling it what to do. It’s just doing what it would do anyway — in this case, trying not to get eaten. Or perhaps actively trying to kill you, as in the case of the six or so unfortunate sannakji eaters who die every year as the result of an unchewed suction cup deciding it’s too young to be digested and latching on as some poor sap attempts to swallow it.

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Watching it writhe in the sauce is damn near pornographic.

So … anyone up for sushi?

#4. Frogs Can Swim, Croak and Fight, Brain or No Brain

As those of you with ticklish feet are only too aware, if something unexpectedly brushes against your foot, your foot will automatically move away from whatever’s touching it. Whether or not you then punch whatever was touching it in the face depends on just how ticklish you are.

The exact same withdrawal reaction can be seen in frogs, except the frog doesn’t even need to have a head in order for the reaction to happen. Don’t believe us? Check it out:

There you have a video proving that a decapitated frog is able to dance a jig upon the demand of not-at-all-evil scientists. It’s like a crossover event between Michigan J. Frog and whatever your biggest fear is. That’s fairly damn impressive on its own, but let’s face it, there’s only so much any creature without a head can do. So what happens if you leave the frog’s head intact but take out its brain, you ask?

Well, thanks to the “let’s chop out its brain and see what the hell happens” approach to science taken by 19th century neurologist David Ferrier, we can tell you. A headed but brainless frog actually behaves very similarly to a frog with its gray matter perfectly intact: If you turn it upside down, it will right itself; if you pinch its feet, it will hop away; if you put it in water, it will swim to the side and climb out. And perhaps most disturbing of all, it will even croak contentedly if you stroke its back.

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Frogs 1, Highlanders 0.

So, What Makes This Abomination Possible?

The first factor that results in frogs’ zombielike tendencies is the power of the reflex reaction, which fires the necessary electrical impulses that cause a muscle to expand or contract. These reactions bypass the brain — going back to the human foot moving away from an unexpected tickle, you don’t think, “Argh! Something’s tickling my foot and I really must move it,” you think, “Argh! My foot just jerked, what the hell was tickling it and does it have a face I can punch it in?!”

But it’s important to note that this automatic withdrawal action will not continue if a human doesn’t have a brain — we simply cannot survive without our gray matter, because our behavior relies so heavily on input from the cerebral master of our central nervous system. Even breathing, which we don’t need to consciously control and could be considered a reflex action, is regulated by (and therefore reliant on) our brainstem.

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Otherwise known as the designated driver to our permanently drunken consciousness.

So this is where the second factor comes into play: the relative simplicity of a frog’s anatomy. The lack of brain results only in a lack of spontaneity, and Ferrier noted that if energy can be artificially supplied, the frog will continue to respond to external stimuli for an indefinite period. So all the brainless frog needs is energy and the occasional scientific prod in order to act like a regular animal — indefinitely, or at least until science gets bored with poking a zombie amphibian. (Which will never, ever happen. Science lives for that shit.)

What’s even more interesting, though, is that studies have shown that a frog sans brain will react more consistently than one with a brain, which suggests that the brain, while it doesn’t control these impulses, may actually suppress them. Frogs could coldly and effectively run shit if their pesky brains weren’t getting in the way.

Oh, and by the way, frogs aren’t the only creatures for whom heads are an optional accessory …

Most of us have become completely numb to the weirdness of video games. From the 1970s on, it’s been like “So he’s a yellow circle being chased by ghosts while he eats? Seems pretty straightforward.” Yet there has always been an underground video game scene where the truly messed-up stuff lives. You’ll find it in Japan.

That’s where they have games like …

#6. Takeshi’s Challenge: The Game That Hates You

Via Wikipedia

In 1986, the company that created Space Invaders teamed up with Japanese actor, director, comedian, poet and badass “Beat” Takeshi Kitano to create a game for the Nintendo Famicom based on his ideas. The only problem? Kitano hated video games, and apparently decided to use this opportunity to make sure everyone else did, too. Oh, and reportedly he was drunk during the single meeting where they came up with the game, so there’s that.

If you ever select the second option, Kitano flips you off and the cartridge wipes itself.

Takeshi’s Challenge takes place in a city where everyone hates you, but that’s OK, because you hate them, too: The game gives you the ability to repeatedly punch everyone you come across into a bloody pulp, from defenseless women and old men to violent cops and yakuza. You even have the option to punch the password menu, which results in a “game over” screen before you even start the game.

The only way to make progress in Takeshi’s Challenge is by quitting your job, divorcing your wife and getting drunk until you pass out, but they never give you any indication that this is your mission — the game assumes that these are the things you’d normally do anyway. Once you’ve done all that, you get to the karaoke section, where you literally have to sing into the built-in microphone in the Famicom’s second controller until your audience gives you three consecutive “greats,” which can take over half an hour. Or, you can say “fuck that” and go spend your money on something else.

Judging from all the punching options, we’re suggesting a good psychiatrist and a lawyer or two.

Anyway, once you’ve passed the karaoke challenge, everyone in the bar will start punching you. If you survive the beating (that is, kill everyone), an old man will hand you a blank piece of paper that needs to be exposed to sunlight for an hour if you want a map to appear. And then you have to do exactly that: choose the “expose to sunlight” option and wait exactly one hour without touching the controller. If you so much as press a button during that hour, you have to do the karaoke challenge again.

A testament to how much the game hates you: It’s pretty much the only thing in the game you can’t punch.

The map, it turns out, shows directions to a treasure island in the Pacific, so naturally you have to take hang gliding lessons and fly there yourself while UFOs shoot at you. Assuming you can master the sadistic hand gliding controls (it’s extremely easy to crash into the ocean), reach the island, find the treasure and complete the game, you will be rewarded by … a black screen with Kitano’s face and the words “The end.”

We take it back — this may be the greatest thing in the history of video games.

That’s it. However, if you wait five minutes on that screen, you unlock a special secret message from Takeshi Kitano himself:

An ending like that would have made Final Fantasy XIII worth playing.

That’s from a fan translation of the game, by the way (it never made it to the U.S. for some reason), but yes, it’s accurate.

#5. LSD: Dream Emulator

Via Vgboxart.com

LSD: Dream Emulator is a 1998 Japan-only PlayStation game that simulates what it’s like to be in a dream … if you’re in the habit of eating spicy food and watching Twin Peaks before bed every night, that is. Otherwise, how do you explain this shit:

Did we say spicy food? We meant mescaline.

Oh, now there’s something totally normal. The fingerprint face sideways vagina man dream.

The game is based on a dream journal kept for over 10 years by the member of the developing team we are most afraid to meet. It consists of a massive open world like Grand Theft Auto, if GTA were filled with inexplicable things rendered in Mario 64-type graphics. There is no dialogue whatsoever — the only actions you can perform are walking, looking and shitting your pants in terror.

“Probably shouldn’t have chased that mescaline with opium.”

Every time you start the game, you appear in a different location. These locations range from bright-colored psychedelic places filled with bizarre objects and characters:

If you have a religious debate here, it undoes creation.

To dark, mostly abandoned landscapes:

Mostly.

Bumping into anything or anyone will cause the screen to fade and teleport you to another random place. After a while, you might start seeing the same places again, so the game keeps it interesting by doing things like replacing doors with women’s faces or filling the walls with eyes that slowly follow you as you walk past.

Each dream lasts 10 minutes, at which point you’re sent back to the main menu and given the option to start another one. However, there are also more abrupt ways to “wake up,” like falling off a cliff, coming across certain objects … or running into the Grey Man, a faceless gentleman in a black raincoat who can show up anywhere in the dream world and is the only one who can kill you.

In real life, we mean.

The only objective here is to explore this dream world until you either get bored or your actual dreams turn as terrifying as the game, at which point it becomes redundant (once you’ve been Incepted, it has fulfilled its purpose). Also, apparently the LSD in the title stands for “Lovely Sweet Dream,” but you already knew that.

What else could it possibly stand for?

#4. Mister Mosquito

Via Wikipedia

Mister Mosquito was the first game in what the gaming industry probably hoped would be the brand new genre of mosquito simulators, but for some reason it didn’t really catch on. As the eponymous Mister Mosquito, you fly around a typical Japanese family’s house biting people, sucking their blood and generally annoying the shit out of everyone while trying to avoid getting squashed or sprayed.

The 1890s prequel to this game had a higher body count than every GTA combined.

Your mission in Mister Mosquito is to fill and hide little tanks of your victims’ blood throughout the house, like an insect version of Dexter or something. The idea, essentially, is to help the mosquito store blood to survive the winter while being as much of a dick to the humans as possible. The game was released for PlayStation 2 in 2001, but it didn’t do very well in any market … except Japan, where it was actually a huge hit, for some reason.

Ah, we understand, now. Sucking the blood of a sleeping teenage girl. Gotcha.

Oh, right: It’s also a pervert simulator. The family consists of a mother, a father and the obligatory attractive teenage daughter, who you can follow around and watch as she sleeps, exercises or takes a bath. All of this without her knowledge, of course, because if you’re caught trying to bite her, you’ll be killed.

And if you’re caught playing this game, your name will be put into a government database.

Assuming you decide to actually play the game instead of just using it to stalk the daughter from afar, there’s also a “Battle Mode” that you go into when the humans catch you flying around, where “To calm them, the player must hit a number of pressure points, relieving them of tension” (because obviously, we all know how relaxing being pestered by a mosquito can be).

And finally, if you complete all the levels, you’re treated to a special cut scene where the humans are taking a family photo, despite having their faces covered in horrible mosquito bites. The photo is then further ruined by the unusually large mosquito photobombing them (because, again, you’re a dick).

But it’s mostly about the creepy voyeurism.

Every once in a while, we ask a writer we enjoy to fill in for us. This week, we’ve asked James Renner, author of The Man from Primrose Lane, to speculate on how writers with balls would end some of our favorite TV shows.

Ending a beloved TV show is tricky business. The challenge of capping off a successful series has made bantha poodoo of some of the best writers in the biz (Larry David famously flubbed Seinfeld‘s finale by shipping his characters off to prison; David Lynch gave his fans the finger by locking Agent Cooper in some backward-talking dwarf purgatory at the end of Twin Peaks).

The key to a good send-off is closure, with a twist. Executed properly, it can be the Prestige of the magic trick that was the show’s story. We remember the good ones because of how they left us in the end: M*A*S*H (the war ends, everyone ponders the nature of identity in a world without conflict); The Sopranos (cut-to-black! Tony is so relentless he can’t even recognize his own demise).

As House prepares to wrap it up, here’s some suggestions for how some of the best shows currently running can end things with a little dignity.

#5. Games of Thrones Is Dungeons and Dragons, Literally

Word of warning: Game of Thrones is the crack of the television world. If you haven’t started watching it already, just jump down to #4, because you might talk shit about how your friend is literally getting the shakes on Sunday evenings as the anticipation of the next episode overpowers his body and how it will never happen to you. But the second you start, it gets its hooks in ya. She’s a foul temptress.

No, no. “Foul temptress,” not “The literal embodiment of evil with tits.”

Much like that kid who sat behind you on the bus, explaining how the Black Lotus kills Juggernauts in Magic: The Gathering until you had to tell him, “Goddammit, James Renner! Enough already!” Game of Thrones doesn’t make a ton of logical sense.

We’ve got knights and kings, so it’s medieval Europe, right? No. There’s dragons, too. Oh, so it’s like Lord of the Rings or something, a twisting of history using Jungian archetypes? Nope. There’s zombies living up North. Oh. OK. Another planet, then? Wait, they all speak English. Look, let’s just call it an alternate reality.

This is how Hillary might have ended up if she hadn’t married Bill.

Also, everyone is sexing each other. Like, all the goddamn time. Somehow, in a world where you have to gather firewood to make it through the winter, people still have time for the old in-and-out every night. And every woman has giant breasts. Saturday Night Live even made a joke about how it seems like the show is being made up on the fly by a 14-year-old nerd who has never touched a boob.

And then there’s the opening of the show, which shows us a three-dimensional model of the show’s universe as a three-dimensional model. That seems like a pretty cynical grab at the show’s core demographic — people who carry 20-sided dice around with them — unless it’s a subtle hint at a larger truth.

THAC0. Fortitude save. Tarrasque. You’re welcome for the shout-out, nerds.

The Execution

Jon Snow is having sex with the bare-breasted she-beast of the Barrowlands when the demon spawn of the Haunted Forest arrives to murder him. Snow deftly withdraws his Black Lotus, which he taps for three mana points, allowing him to release his Juggernaut, defeating the demon and restoring peace to Winterfell.

The camera pulls back to reveal that scene from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial where everyone’s sitting around playing Dungeons and Dragons. Turns out the game they’ve casually been playing while Elliott goes to get the pizza is the story of Game of Thrones, told by their 14-year-old dungeon master. Elliott returns with the smashed pizza, his brother calls him “penis breath” and then we fade to black.

“Seriously, man, tone down the incest. My parents can hear us.”

#4. Dexter: Dexter Is Executed

Hey, guess what? Dexter is a bad guy. A really, really bad guy. Sure, he mostly goes after other killers (mostly — am I the only one who remembers the guy he killed in the bathroom just for being obnoxious?), but his vengeance has made him the most prolific serial killer in history. And he knows that, eventually, he must answer for these crimes.

Every damn episode of the show is about Dexter almost getting caught. For six seasons, the writers have been playing the role of Lucy van Pelt to our Charlie Brown, and every season, right when we believe Dexter is about to be caught, they pull the football.

He’s barely even trying anymore.

Ha ha, real funny, writers. You got us. Again. But if you don’t give us the football in the end, we’re going to do like Charlie did and wear your skin like a Lucy suit.

The Execution (as it were)

Angel Batista stumbles upon Dexter as he’s about to make his 100th kill in a now strangely depopulated Miami. Because he’s surrounded by incriminating evidence, Dexter is tried and convicted of the murders actually committed by the sicko he was about to dispatch. Meanwhile, every other cop in his department is fired for being fucking blind.

“This all comes out of nowhere.”

Florida, as it turns out, is a big fan of the death penalty (which begs the question, why the hell didn’t Dexter move to someplace without capital punishment? You know, like Hawaii?). Dexter is strapped to the gurney (which, come to think of it, looks suspiciously like the table Dexter straps his victims to) and put to death.

A second later, his sister, Debra, appears with evidence proving that Dexter did not commit the murders for which he was executed. Realizing that they have put an “innocent” man to death, the governor abolishes the death penalty.

Debra gradually overcomes her grief by falling in love with the staff of a popular comedy website.

In the end, Dexter’s death serves to end the killing spree of another mass murderer … the state of Florida itself.

#3. House: House Dies from Complications of Sarcoidosis

The Foreshadowing

Heading into the finale, best friend character Wilson appears to be the only character whose life is in danger. For a show that has threatened to kill its lead character more than once, this feels like a cop-out. And a missed opportunity, since they’ve already written themselves the perfect murder weapon.

No.

In every single episode of House, one of his assistants mentions sarcoidosis as a possible diagnosis, but it never turns out to be what’s actually wrong with the patient. Sarcoidosis is such an obvious inside joke in the writers’ den that there’s a Facebook page devoted to it: It’s never sarcoidosis, but they always think it is.

For House, sarcoidosis is the ultimate way to go out, because the disease itself is an unanswerable question. Sarcoidosis patients’ bodies basically go batshit insane — their immune cells clump together and gather inside organs to have immune cell parties while slowly shutting down all the body’s basic functions. To this day, nobody really knows what the hell causes it.

It’s the Moriarty of chronic inflammations.

The Execution

While listening to the Who in his office, House suddenly begins to vomit blood. His team rushes him into ICU, where they begin a battery of tests. House works feverishly (both literally and figuratively) to figure out what the hell is wrong with his own body. Try as they might, nobody can put House back together again. He dies on the gurney. Of sarcoidosis. The one thing nobody treated him for. Because it’s never goddamn sarcoidosis.

Look, we all have screwed-up priorities sometimes — tell us you haven’t at least once skipped class or work so you could, say, watch an all-day Frasier marathon. But as we like to point out, some people seem to be training to win the gold in the screwed-up priorities Olympics. For example …

#6. To Get Rid of a Wart, a Man Blows His Finger Off With a Shotgun

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For Yorkshire resident Sean Murphy, the painful wart on his finger was a source of frequent irritation and distraction, like being perpetually attached to a wacky sitcom neighbor. He tried everything he could think of to get rid of it, but after five years the wart was still there, constantly barging in uninvited and trying a new get-rich-quick scheme every week. Clearly it was time to get out the shotgun.

Via Telegraph
“Shotguns are like the Swiss Army knives of … uh, guns.”

That’s right: After “no amount of creams, ointments or doctors’ appointments” helped, Murphy decided it was time to take things to another level. He just so happened to have run across a 12-gauge Beretta shotgun that had been responsibly disposed of underneath a hedge, and Murphy had decided to keep it rather than alert the authorities because, hey, free shotgun. So, Murphy sat down with his new boomstick and, after a lot of careful deliberation, drank a whole shitload of beer. Then, after some much less careful deliberation, he took aim and blew the wart into oblivion … along with the finger it was attached to.

Murphy was apparently surprised to lose his entire finger in the incident, and blamed the result on the gun’s recoil. You know, instead of the copious amounts of alcohol in his system, or the fact that trying to shoot a wart off of a finger with a 12-gauge shotgun is like trying to … actually, there is no comparison we can come up with crazier than this. In fact, from now on when trying to demonstrate overkill, we’ll use the phrase “Like trying to remove a wart with a shotgun.”

Via Telegraph
Then again, do you see any warts in this picture? Then problem solved.

The consequences didn’t end there, though. Since the British legal system doesn’t accept “finders keepers” as a defense against illegal possession of a firearm, Murphy found himself facing up to 15 years in prison. Fortunately, his lawyer was able to argue the sentence down to a fine and community service, which Murphy presumably will not be fulfilling by performing charity banjo recitals.

But if you think that losing his finger would get Sean Murphy down, you don’t know Sean Murphy. According to him: “The best thing is that the wart has gone. It was giving me a lot of trouble.” And in his defense, here’s what his finger looked like before he decided to vaporize it:

Via Telegraph
Holy shit, what did he do — finger bang a witch?

See, that’s covering, like, 3 percent of his finger there.

#5. Woman Goes into Labor in the Middle of a Skyrim Presentation, Stays to Watch

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The birth of a child is one of the most magical and important events in any person’s life. For most people, that is. Other people apparently just cross their legs and squeeze real tight so they can sit and watch video games.

Such is the case of Stevi and her fiance, Chaz, who attended QuakeCon (a video game convention) while Stevi was uber pregnant. But the baby wasn’t due for almost another whole month, and Stevi just loved video games so friggin’ much, so what could it hurt, right?

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“What’s with all this kiddie crap? I told you chucklefucks that my baby needs an Alienware.”

Right. So Stevi and Chaz settled in to watch a demo for the as-yet-unreleased Skyrim (you may have heard of it — it was kind of a big deal), and when the Frost Dragon appeared onscreen, Stevi got so excited that she felt a contraction. At first she thought nothing of it, seeing as the kid wasn’t due yet and it might have just been false labor, but when the contractions continued, there was no longer any question — it was time for a tiny new game nerd to enter the world.

Time to drop everything and hightail it to the hospital! Right? Not exactly. You see, Stevi and Chaz are hardcore gamers … so hardcore that they decided they’d stick it out for the entire half-hour presentation. Contraction after contraction, the pair toughed it out in order to get an eyeful of Tamriel, the Dark Brotherhood and the Bosmer, which, if you’ve never heard of them, let us inform you, are totally worth ignoring the birth of your own child for.

Via Elderscrolls.wikia.com
“Honey, looking at that map, do you get the feeling that we are just complete fucking children?”

Wait, no. No, they’re not. But as Chaz explained later, they “stayed for the rest of the demo because [Stevi] is a trooper and loves Skyrim.” Once the presentation finished, Stevi and Chaz finally decided to get their asses to the hospital, where Stevi gave birth to a healthy baby girl, whom she (no shit) named Atari Lynn.

Our advice to little Atari: Just open with this story whenever you meet someone new — we find it’s easiest get those pity looks out of the way right off the bat.

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“I can’t even get her to look at an Xbox. All she wants to do is homework.”

#4. Teen Sells a Kidney for an iPad

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At some point in his life, every man has seen an awesome toy like, say, a brand new Ferrari, and facetiously said something like, “Oh yeah, I’d give my right nut to have one of those!” Well, as far as we know, nobody’s actually gone out and chopped off half their manhood for a new sports car, but there’s one kid who did something arguably even more idiotic for something only marginally less likely to increase his chances with the opposite sex.

We’re referring to a teenager from China, known only by his last name, Zheng, who really wanted an iPad 2. The only problem was, he was lacking the cash to buy one, being both a teenager and in China. So, like most teenagers in need, he turned to the best source of help he knew: the Internet. After negotiations with Nigeria’s finest royalty presumably fell flat, Zheng came across an advertisement that promised to pay handsomely for something of his that he really wouldn’t miss. Just, you know, a goddamn kidney.

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“Hey, if you’re willing to trade in your sphincter, we can throw in a couple of BlackBerrys.”

Now, this is the part where most of us would get nightmarish visions of waking up in a motel room bathtub filled with ice, with half a day missing and a nice new jagged scar for our troubles. But not our friend Zheng, oh no: This teen took one look at that ad and he signed himself right up for major surgery. So that he could get an iPad.

If you’re thinking this is where Zheng ran into a roadblock because he needed something like, oh, we don’t know, maybe “parental consent” or perhaps “a psychological evaluation” in order to sell off a major organ, you’re wrong. You see, in China, selling your organs is apparently so easy, a child can do it. So Zheng went on down to the hospital and sold his kidney, just like that, and returned home with his shiny new iPad (and a laptop to boot), which immediately made his mom suspicious.

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“Wait, where is your sister?”

When she asked the boy where he’d gotten the money for the loot, Zheng instantly fessed up. The fact that this was also about the time he started feeling pain from complications from the major freaking surgery he had just put himself through probably was another reason for the quick confession.

Zheng’s mom was understandably livid, but when she demanded restitution from the hospital — preferably in kidney form — she was denied. The kidney thief didn’t work for them. It turns out the hospital had rented out their operating room to a shady private individual because, really, why not? The police were also of no help, and it looks like Zheng now has to live with his choice for the rest of his life. But hey, on the upside — Angry Birds!

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“YEAH! Finally! Wait, why is it turning off? I just charged the goddamn thing!”