I Would Just As Soon Not Slice Up My Arm And Set It On Fire

“A decade ago, in Boston for her 35th birthday, she paid a call on a body-modification artist. Ms. Hamilton wanted what’s known as a ‘slash and burn.’ She selected a spot on her right arm to be ritualistically cut, dabbed with alcohol and set aflame. ‘It’s sort of like a tattoo except 5,000 times more painful,’ she said. ‘And when they cut you, my God, they cut you.’”
 — I really like the monkfish liver at Gabrielle Hamilton’s restaurant, Prune. She seems like an interesting person and, judging from the recent excerpt in the New Yorker, her new book Blood, Bones & Butter could be very good. And I am a wimp. But still, OWWWW!!!! Why would anyone choose to do that to themselves?