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It’s Poe-etry in motion….

This week’s cool/creepy science breakthrough comes courtesy of researchers at the University of Minnesota.

They’ve been able to grow a live, beating heart in a jar.

On the downside, the position of night janitor has been vacant for the last six months…

Can you imagine being all alone with a bucket and mop at two-thirty in the morning and all of a sudden a heart in a jar starts beating? Minimum wage and a second-rate HMO don’t even come close to covering the kind of nightmares that experience would cause.

I’d turn in my resignation as soon as I stopped screaming hysterically.

All I’m saying is, I’d quit in a heartbeat. (zing!)

And if you think the idea of a heart beating by itself in a jar is creepy, just wait until you hear how they accomplished it.

First, the researchers took a rat’s heart and put it in a beaker. If your gag reflex hasn’t distracted you, you’ll notice this means they first had to have a rat. Not a cute little white mouse, but a garbage-eating, Plague-carrying, nuclear-attack-surviving big, gray, surly member of the vermin family.

Next, they had to find Patrick Swayze because only Dalton can rip the heart out of an animal while it is still breathing. Swayze didn’t want to do it at first. He didn’t want to be type cast, but when the rat burned down Red Webster’s store and threatened the woman he loved, he really had no choice.

“I want you to be nice..until it’s time not to be nice….”

Okay, so now we have the rat heart in a beaker.

The researchers then “used detergents to strip the rat heart of its own cells, leaving behind a white, three-dimensional scaffolding of connective tissue.”

This genetic engineering breakthrough brought to you by new and improved Tide. Now with rat cell stripping action!

For the next step, the researchers infused the scaffolding with cardiac cells from newborn rats. This procedure sounds a lot like one of those construction jobs where they put that foam insulation stuff into a building.

Just like on a real construction project, there were two researchers working, five others whistling at girls and sixteen who were on the Teamster’s payroll but weren’t actually on site.

The end result, however, is being termed a major step toward growing organs to be used in human transplants.

It won’t be long before you’ll be able to drive through Minnesota and see field after field of kidneys, livers and hearts. You’ll even be able to stop at a roadside stand with a painted wooden sign that says: Fresh Pancreas - Just Picked!

It’s staggering to think of all the good that could come from this kind of scientific advance. Oh, sure, we’ll be able to save some lives but, more importantly, you’ll be able to scare the bejeezus out of bratty little kids at Halloween.

It’s not all good news, though …

Getting tickets for the Telltale Heart tour at the Edgar Allen Poe mansion just got a whole lot tougher.

Awarded to us by The Cult of Qelqoth