I read a lot.  I admit it.  I'm a hopeless word junkie, forever looking for the next rush only a choice combination of letters can give.
     Today I got so high, it's a wonder I can still type well enough to pass the joint, so to speak.
     First came the oddly soothing knowledge that the genesis of the Pokemon craze dates back to 1996 and Nintendo's release of a Pokemon game.  It's now a $7 billion industry. 
     Then came the news that Ohio State University's 77-year-old Ohio Stadium is currently undergoing a 4-year renovation.  Workers are now in the process of lowering the playing field 14 feet so that seating may be increased from 89,841 to 96,000-98,000.  Total cost:  $187 million.  That's about $18 per resident of Ohio.  Like, wow, man.  I feel like I'm positively floating atop a sea of spit-warm inanity....
     Then I learned that Mercedes-Benz has come out with a $51,000 station wagon.  Isn't that hallucinogenic?  The first American station wagon came out back in 1923, a descendant of what were called "depot hacks" - taxicabs made to haul passengers and luggage to and from train stations.  Personally, I'll take a "depot hack" over a magic mushroom any day.
     And then I find out we just might be able to improve our sex lives by cutting off a foot or two.   
     Some days it just doesn't pay to try to out-weird the universe - not even with the help of LSD....

     This last bit of potent word heroin was mainstreamed into my eyes courtesy of the book I'm reading now - Phantoms in the Brain by Dr. V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee.  It was an unexpected by-product of Dr. R's research into the phantom limb phenomenon many amputees experience.  Seems that while examining one unfortunate fellow who had lost an arm in a motorcycle accident, Dr. R discovered that touching a Q-tip to the man's face resulted in the man's feeling as if the Q-tip was being touched to his lost fingers.  
     Well.  It turns out that the area of the brain which receives signals from the face is very close to that area which receives signals from the fingers.  Dr. R's theory is that when a sensory area of the brain stops receiving the signals it normally does because of amputation, adjoining areas take it over - with curious results.  
     After he published his data, both males and females who had lost a foot started calling him to say... well...  to quote one woman: "Every time I have sex I experience these strange sensations in my phantom foot."
     Or as a man put it so memorably: "I actually experience my orgasm in my foot.  And therefore it's much bigger than it used to be because it's no longer just confined to my genitals."
     Turns out that if you touch your fingers to your forehead and walk them to about  the center of your hairline your lucky little digits will be right above the areas of the brain which receive sense data from the genitals and the feet.  They're very close.  Closer than most sisters.  When one loses the sense data it needs, the other is only too happy to share.  
     The moral of the story is clear: Are you bored?  Frustrated?  Strangely unsatisfied?  
     Just hack off your foot and let nature take its course....  

     I can hardly wait for the movie version to come out.