[UA] Here's an easy one.

[Gregory Paul Stolze]

At 07:11 PM 11/17/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>>The phenomenon is not as rare as one might think: healthy people 
>>deliberately setting out to rid themselves of one or more of their limbs, 
>>with or without a surgeon's help. Why do pathologies sometimes arise as if 
>>from nowhere? Can the mere description of a condition make it contagious? 
>
>http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/12/elliott.htm

Holy crow.

1) When I was very young, a woman visited my mother who was missing four
fingers on (I believe) her left hand.  I couldn't stop staring at that
smooth plane of skin.  Even now, I can remember how she held an Oreo cookie
with just her thumb.

2) See "Eat it All" -- which literally came to me in a dream.

3) I'm gearing up for a new WW project, in which I was asked to come up
with a signature character.  My first thought was a man paralyzed from the
waist down.

And yet, I have no desire to lose any of my limbs.  

Maybe this is some kind of backlash against the very comfort of our
culture.  It's certainly plausible that an urge to seek challenge could
make its way into the genetic code.  It's not hard to imagine survival
advantages in that...  When one is raised in perfect comfort, perhaps the
idea of making life more difficult becomes appealing -- even to the point
of pathology.  If, indeed, one can claim that the desire to have one's leg
sawn off is "sick" while the desire to have one's nose reduced is not...

-G.
The Greek Underworld kicks ass. It's like "Six Flags Over Psychotic
Depression," and Cerberus is the Ultra Twister.
                        - L. Fitzgerald Sjöberg

http://www.waylay.com
http://www.thehungersite.com/index.html


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