Take pictures. It's a lot less work.

I was cruising around on the web looking for a picture of that dude from Office Space who got hit by the truck, so I did a quick search on "body cast."

What came up was not something I would have expected, nor something I even knew existed until last night. What I found was this:



In case you're wondering what it is, it's something called the Proud Body Belly Cast. From what I can gather, it's some sort of plaster body cast for pregnant women to keep a memento of their "bump" (I think that's what the kids are calling it these days.)

The tagline for the kit actually says, "Just Love That Pregnant Belly? Now you can keep it forever when you make a pregnancy belly cast using our kit!"

Now, I've talked to many a pregnant woman, and in my experience, "keeping it forever" is really not one of the things any of them wished they could do. Getting out a chair without peeing a little bit -- yeah, that they wished they could do.

So I'm looking at this thing, and something about it seems oddly familiar. It just screams to my subconscious, but for the life of me, I can't place it.

Is it someone I know? I check the boobs. Nope, don't look familiar. Besides, I've never known anyone who did anything like this.

But still, it was bugging the shit out of me.

Then as I was driving to work this morning, I realized who it reminded me of:



Go ahead. Tell me it doesn't look like Homer Simpson trying to push his way out of Springfield and into the land of 3D. If you've ever seen an action figure of Homer, you will know exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm glad that's out of the way. It would have bugged me for weeks.

But back to this mold making process. There's something about this that I just don't understand. I can see where -- to a certain set of excited parents-to-be -- it might be a fun way to kill a lazy Sunday afternoon, but what the hell do you do with this thing afterwards?

Hang it on the wall like some sort of priceless African mask?

Maybe slap some straps on it, paint it red, white and blue, and let your husband use it as an apron at the next July 4th cookout?

Personally, what I would do is wait until I had a really big party and then I'd flip it over and use it to serve salsa, sour cream and tortilla chips. You can figure out what goes where without my help, I'm sure.

So for about $35 bucks you get: 5 rolls of premium-quality casting material, a Tube of Vaseline, a Drop cloth, a pair of Nitrile gloves and a supply of Sanding screen. You also get full directions in something like 5 different languages.

Let me tell you, I've used less raw materials to put up sheet rock after major water damage. I can't even begin to guess what kind of mess this whole procedure would make, but if drop cloths and sand paper are necessary, you might want to just take a few shots with the digital camera and call it a day.

Something else is wrong with this picture. I would guess that there would have to be two people involved -- but think about it. One of them is concerned enough about the chemicals involved to be wearing gloves -- however, they have no qualms about blissfully slathering some sort of hot plaster concoction on the completely naked, extremely sensitive, freshly-greased body parts of their significant other. I don't get it.

Oh, well. I'm sure that somewhere in the world there's someone who thinks it was the best money they ever spent. Besides, I'm firmly convinced that all "first-baby" pregnant women are crazy in the head. They'll buy (and eat) just about anything while in that state.

I'm willing to bet that if someone does this casting deal during their first pregnancy and goes on to have more kids, at some point they'll be looking at this thing and thinking, "You know, I'll bet if I cut a few handle-holes in that bitch, it would make a kick-ass laundry basket."