Category: Mon Valley Miscellany || By

I'm with PittGirl on the "Bodies" exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center. Call me an ignorant, small-minded fool, but seeing muscles and tissues unspooled and on display turns my stomach.

And no, I'm not swayed at all by the endorsement of former Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht, J.D., M.D., L.S./M.F.T., the man who Doug Hoerth calls "one of the nation's leading introverts":

"I think it's fascinating. As much as I've been told about how wonderful it is, I'm truly impressed," Wecht told center Director Joanna Haas and exhibition medical adviser Roy Glover, who accompanied him on the tour of nine galleries filled with about 200 body specimens and 15 full cadavers preserved with silicone rubber.


Wecht walked away from it with a new sense of awe.


"It makes you think about the marvelous, incredible structure of the human body, its complexity, the way in which all of these things function and the interrelationship of the organ systems," he said.

The opinion of Pittsburgh's one-time leading pituitary gland salesman notwithstanding, I can think about the "marvelous, incredible structure of the human body" without looking at 24 feet of human entrails.

To me, there is also something vaguely unsettling about gawking at someone's most private parts, even if the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh has concluded that it's OK by them, ethically speaking.

If you went, more power to you. But I have a feeling you're going to have a hard time looking in the meat case at Giant Eagle for a while.

. . .

Speaking of Wecht: Looking for information on the "Bodies" exhibit, I discovered that Our Guy Cy has a blog, but it hasn't been updated since August 2006. Does this mean Cyril Wecht has run out of things to say?

. . .

The War's Over For God's Sake!: Have you taken a walk through Barnes & Noble or Borders lately? They already had entire sections devoted to nothing but World War II books.

They now also have an entire rack of magazines about World War II.

(Why, by the way? What new information is breaking about World War II that requires a monthly or quarterly magazine?)

I come home and turn on the TV, and there's Ken Burns' damned World War II documentary running on PBS (it's already on sale on DVD).

And if I turn on the History Channel any time of the day or night, chances are they're running something about World War II. (The red "H" in the corner of the screen doesn't stand for "History." It's for "Hitler.")

ENOUGH! ENOUGH WITH THE WORLD WAR II NOSTALGIA!

I think a lot of you people secretly admire the Nazis, and are hoping that maybe, in one of these documentaries, Hitler will win.

Stop it! If I see you with a book, magazine, TV show, board game, playing cards, obscene sampler or toilet-seat cover commemorating World War II, and you didn't actually live through the war, I'm going to sieg heil right in your face, and to hell with der Fuehrer!

. . .

And Another Thing: If you put up orange twinkle lights, cotton spider webs, and giant inflatable ghosts for Halloween, you're an idiot.

A jack o'lantern? Fine. A cardboard witch on the front door? Knock yourself out.

But decorating your house for the month of October is twisted. Stop trying to turn every single holiday into Christmas. Get some other pointless hobby.

Put up a website, for instance.

. . .

Time to Cut Back to Decaf: A few times a week, I stop at my neighborhood Shop'n Rob to get a cuppa coffee and a tasty, delicious doughnut.

Often I have to wait behind someone who spends 10 minutes futzing around with coffee flavorings and special creamers.

If you have to add cinnamon, chocolate, nutmeg, caramel, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme to your damned coffee, let's face it: You don't really like coffee. Just buy a Coke or a Pepsi instead. Seriously.

So get out of my way. If I'm stopping at the BP station at 7 a.m., I really, really need my coffee. You'll be lucky if I don't hit you with my cane.