Word: masochist
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...sado-masochistic mehod is a remnant of the do-it-yourself craze. The masochist uses small earrings with a spring which can be adjusted to vary the amount of pressure on the ear. By clipping on these earrings and adjusting the springs, the masochist can pierce her own ears at her own rate of speed. A problem may arise, however, if the earrings are knocked awry during sleep; a piercee might awaken to find that the holes in her two ears don't match...
...insect whose bite is only cured by musick"; a cassowary is not a bird of prey; and only a jack pudding or zany would believe that pygmies are devoured by cranes. Whether today's lexicographers are wiser is another matter. Johnson may not have known what a masochist was (the eponymous Herr von Masoch had not yet been born to give his name to those who find pleasure in their own pain), but Lexicographer Johnson had a word for the type of man: he was a "seeksorrow...
...healthy, we arrive at his radical critique of culture. The prevailing ideas of society, he writes, rationalize the sickness of the majority while emphasizing the neuroses of the minority: "The exhibitionist is in the same class as all those other people labeled with the final 'ist,' the sadist, the masochist, the fetichist. They are in essence the same as ourselves, who call ourselves healthy; the sole difference is that we allow our desire to play only where custom permits, while the 'ist' is out of date...
...thesis, and believes that the Turks never suspected the identity of their captive; if they had, they would never have let him escape. The reason Deraa was a turning point in Lawrence's life, Nutting argues, was the horrifying discovery that he was at heart a masochist. For years Lawrence had indulged himself in private scourgings in the desert to toughen himself. "Pain," wrote Lawrence, "was a solvent, a cathartic, almost a decoration to be fairly worn." Lawrence confessed that under the Turkish whiplashes and bayonets "a delicious warmth, probably sexual, was swelling through me." This realization converted Lawrence...
...Brothers will discuss why men get tattooed ("an ancient symbol of manliness, used by masculine men as an amulet, or by feminine men to attract attention"), why people are late ("rebellion against authority"), why some wives are extravagant ("She really wants to be refused; she's a masochist"). Not among the questions so far: why women become psychologists...