Word: geeks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...fire eater ("I will amaze you by rubbing the burning torch over various parts of my body and anatomy"), a tattoo artist and human pincushion. The sword swallower put away a 10-in. blade ("I'll ram it down my bread basket and tickle my belly button"). The geek (lowest operator on the lot, a man who pretends to eat live animals) tore the head off a live chicken and ripped at the flesh with his teeth...
Natural freaks-the Blue Man, the Half-Man-Half-Woman, the One-Eyed Man et al.-are carnies, and treated as equals. The conditioned freaks are barely tolerated as "gaffs." Among the gaffs, the "geek"-usually an alcoholic who earns his bottle by biting the heads off live snakes and chickens-is the lowest form of carnival life. The Jungle Girl, who must crawl around a cage of snakes and make animal noises, is only a little higher. But sometimes the jungle girls can double usefully as "sticks"-employees who pretend to be tips in order to attract others...
Another instrument which crowds the cabin of the Atlantis bears the unprepossessing name of Geomagneticelectro-kinetograph (affectionately known as the "geek") and measures temperatures difference in the water by exploiting changes in the earth's magnetic field in a long wire loop dragged behind the boat. Using the principles of this instrument, the Institute experimented last fall on the current that runs through the Florida straits by hitching up electrodes on either end of the Western Union cable that runs to Havana and measuring the potential between the ends. Calculation with the potential gave the amount of water that flows...
...announcement by Oilman James Wymore of Salina, Kans. gave shock-resistant Hollywood a jolt: his daughter, Cinestarlet Patrice, 23, was going to marry her leading man Errol Flynn, 41, who has been saying for quite a while that he would marry Rumanian Princess Irene ("The Geek") Ghica, 20. Flynn, now in the midst of a court squabble over alimony payments to first wife Lili Damita, had a characteristically playful comment to make on Patrice, who is very nearsighted: "All I'll have to do is hide her glasses and she'll never be able to find...