With the NHL entering the 68th day of the lockout, teams are probably more desperate than ever to earn a little coin on the side, and it might seem like the Toronto Maple leafs reached that tipping point back in October. At a recent auction, 112 random items from the Maple Leaf Gardens were sold to the highest bidders, and sure, you can say that all sports franchises auction off stuff like chairs and banners and whatnot, but it’s fun to pretend like an NHL team is desperate and broke.

But in fairness, this auction actually occurred because a private collector named Sherman Cunningham decided it was time to get rid of all of his Leafs clutter that included an original, one-of-a-kind 1967 Stanley Cup banner. Oh, and he also had a toilet from the locker room, because you wouldn’t want a locker room toilet?

Cunningham paid $3,600 for the toilet 12 years ago, so how much did this porcelain poop container mature over the years? It sold for $5,300 to 55-year old lawyer Jim Vigmond. What the hell do you do with a $5,300 toilet anyway?

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We don’t often get to talk about art around these parts, and that’s a shame, because I like to fancy myself one classy son of a female dog. After all, I’ve used the bathroom at the Louvre. And speaking of bathrooms and art, a Taiwanese art student recently answered the age old question: “Is urinating considered art?” The answer? You bet your golden showers it is.

While going to the bathroom one day, Wong Tin Chuen noticed some blood in his urine. While that would make me scream like a battered child, Cheun thought to himself, “Hey, that looks a little like Iron Man’s helmet!” So did Cheun go to the hospital to have his abdominal pains, dehydration and bloody urine examined? Of course not. He went shopping for a new toilet.

He took about two months to find a toilet bowl with a similar oblong shape to the outline of Iron Man’s face. Then he was eating edible pigmentation and successfully produced red, black and green urine. He arranged the colored urine to make it look like the character, and used his saliva to create foam for touching up. He needed to keep adding spit to his work while waiting for the judges to get to him during the contest. And of course, his artwork had produced a foul odor at the exhibition. (M.I.C. Gadget via a delightful attempt by Google to translate the China Times)

“Why on Earth would he do this,” asked every sane person who doesn’t possess a predilection to play with his own urine. Because Cheun won $400,000 for his new “blood urine” art…

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