I learned two things today:

"Toilet balls" (a.k.a. having genitals so enormous that they fall in the toilet when you're taking a dump) is a real thing that affects many people. The United States Patents and Trademarks Office will let you patent pretty much anything. And I mean anything.

Case in point, Coral Springs insurance executive Vladimir Laurent. The proud owner of U.S. Patent #9,145,667B, which, according the USPTO website and some startlingly anatomically correct technical drawings in the South Florida Business Journal, is a sanitary product to "prevent the male genitalia from touching the walls of the toilet while in use."

An artists rendering of "the shield." South Florida Business Journal

It kind of works like those raised houses on stilts you see in the Florida Keys, except instead of keeping flood water from touching your home and possessions, it keeps shit-water from your testicles.

What's that? That's not a problem that needs fixing? Well, "toilet balls" might seem like an unnecessary invention to your average raisin-ball-sized Joe like yourself, but Laurent claims it affects a lot more men than you might think. He said the idea came to him after he became sick of his own gigantic balls stewing in his toilet bowl as he was sitting on the throne. (Gross.)

Although I don't doubt the problem might exist, I just hope Laurent's sketches, which appear to show a gargantuan pair of balls taking up half of a toilet bowl, aren't to scale. Because if they are, and your dick and balls fall that far below the water line while you're taking your morning No. 2, you don't need to patent a dick-and-ball catcher. You need a hot-tub-sized crapper.