[UA] Train Guy

[David M Jacobs]

At 04:40 PM 17/04/02 -0400, WingedCoyote at aol.com wrote:

>Did anybody else read the latest Harpers magazine? It's got this story 
>about a guy who got stabbed in the back with scissors when he was a little 
>kid (by another little kid), and he got better, but ever since he's been 
>obsessed with transit. Started skipping school to hang out in the subway. 
>He's been arrested some huge number of times for impersonating a conductor 
>and taking over subway cars. Thing is, he kicks ass at conducting trains. 
>Better than the guys who are supposed to do it.

Several years ago, I read about this schizophrenic guy who removed one of 
his own kidneys.  He spent a good couple of months scouring borrowed 
medical textbooks, and when the day came, he doped himself up on stolen 
morphine, sat a kidney diagram in his lap, bent over and performed an 
autonephrectomy.  He stitched himself up, but apparently passed out from 
blood loss soon thereafter; somebody found him and he was taken to hospital.

When the doctors examined him, one was heard to say, "If this guy wasn't a 
fucking whacko, I'd put him through med school myself, and snap him up as 
soon as he graduated.  I've worked with some of the best transplant 
surgeons in the world, and they aren't a patch on this guy's surgical 
technique."

Needless to say, don't try this at home, folks.

I could understand why the subject of the Harpers article might have a 
thing for trainspotting, had he been stabbed in the head.  A few years ago, 
somebody found a strong correlation between damage to the left temporal 
lobe of the brain and the development of bizarre fetishes.  A classic 
example of this was a patient who'd fallen off a chair whilst changing a 
light globe, hitting his head on the way down.  Lo and behold, he developed 
a thing for... wait for it... paperclips.  (I don't even wanna know how he 
manifested his innermost desires for office stationery.)

And people look at me strangely when I tell them that the world is a 
bizarre and slightly scary place.



David M Jacobs
dmjacobs at zipworld.com.au
http://www.zipworld.com.au/~dmjacobs/
ICQ UIN: 17027598

"'Kevin,' David interrupted, 'what the Germans should have done
was show the Russians a dead cat and ask them to explain it.'

"'That would have stopped the Soviet offensive right there,' I said.
"Zhukov would still be trying to account for the cat's death.'"

— from Valis, by Philip K Dick


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