A look at completed listings shows the cheeky tchotchke selling for a high of $182.50. Several sold for around $100 using the "Buy it Now" option.

If you're hoping to get your hands on one, act now. Many of the listings are set to expire today.

Catalonia has a rich culture, distinct from the rest of Spain. It has bestowed upon visitors the restful beaches of Barcelona, delectable mar i muntanya ('sea and mountain') cuisine and, of course, tiny statues of little pooping people placed in nativity scenes at Christmas.

Confused? Then read about the caganer, a traditional statue that shows a peasant, ahem, returning food to the earth in the most time-honored way possible. They've been around for hundreds of years, and only recently has pop culture made an incursion into caganer construction.

From the Wikipedia entry: "The Catalans have modified this tradition somewhat since the 1940s. In addition to the traditional caganer design, you can easily find other characters assuming the caganer position, such as nuns, devils, Santa Claus, celebrities, athletes, historical figures, politicians, Spanish royalty, and other famous people past and present, including Pope John Paul II, Salvador Dalí, prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Princess Letizia and even Osama bin Laden."

Sadly, I couldn't find you a picture of the caganer Osama bin Poopin (although you can buy the President and the Pope).

Yet I thought I heard someone say "athletes" ... so I sought out what was available, and found one blogger's jaw-dropping if meager collection of caganers here. What leaps out at you about me about these pictures -- other than the obvious "Where is Najeh Davenport?" -- is the color of the discharge in question.

Remember in Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Welcome to the Monkey House," where all the males urinated blue because of genital-numbing pills they were forced to pop? It seems these statues are taking related medication, or the caganer's diet is rich in beta carotene. That scat is colored like Bobby Kielty's hair.

Furthermore, the caganer canon sadly appears to not include many athletes we'd recognize in the U.S. Spanish forward Pau Gasol, who plays for the Memphis Grizzlies, and Ronaldinho are basically it.

Miraculously, the available statues don't include any athletes from the Twin Cities. In honor of the upcoming holiday season, I set out to rectify this oversight. Pictures after the jump.

You're welcome, Vikings fans.

For what, you ask? After watching Sunday's shameful drubbing at the hands of Green Bay, the mood among my friends grew somber. We'd watched the Future, the Franchise, the Purple Jesus, leave with a knee injury. Was it serious, I wondered out loud. "It's the Vikings," one friend remarked disgustedly. "We're cursed. Its a torn ACL, and he's done for sure." We agreed that the only way to prevent this was to attempt the rare reverse jinx, where we plan for that eventuality and treat it as a foregone conclusion.

In this case, I agreed to prepare a post featuring 10 of the worst ACL injury videos I'd ever seen. It was the only logical course of action. It would prevent the worst. It was The Right Thing To Do.

I went about the task with only a loose criteria: was it gruesome to watch? Will it make you grab for your own knee? Not all would have to be gross: there are some injuries that, because of the situation, just seemed to fit. I boiled all these factors together into a stew of grisly images and dark humor, and came up with the content after the jump.

The outcome was as we'd hoped. Adrian Peterson's injury was a lateral collateral ligament problem that will keep him out for week, but will not require surgery.

So: thank me now. Because you may be cursing me after you watch some of these. Ready to bury your heart (or at least your stomach) at wounded knee?