Originally Posted by Elmira Swift

Ok. A pickled woman??

The whole historic preservation thing has its ups and downs - if it was up now, I'd have a job since that's what I went to school to do.

A pickled woman, in other words a contortionist(sp?) in a bell jar.

That sounds very cool indeed!

It's something different to go to. The regular circus never appealed to me much.

There are freak shows here, where there are contortionists and fire/sword eaters, but they seem to shy away from the deep south where I live. When I started getting tattooed a few years ago, I checked out a body modification site, and a few of the members perform in those shows. It's pretty fascinating! Was there any fluid in the bell jar?

It's one that's made of a slight greenish yellow glass to make it look like it has.

Was this a traveling show? That sounds really fascinating!

When I was little, I enjoyed going to the circus to see high wire acts and the animal tamers. Now, I think I'd prefer to see something like what you're describing.

They go round the whole country and do a few festivals. They've been going for 14 years after starting out at Glastonbury, one of the places where the biggest festival in the country takes place.

I've seen the same show twice and because they change round people it's not the exact same show.

My mother said she would go to the freak shows that were attached to fairs when she was growing up. She said they were really boring, that like it would be the freak sitting there watching TV. That would have been the 50's though, at the end of the old age. The new ones are probably fun and theatrical. But, I just love the mental image of the guy sitting there all freaky looking, watching TV all "go away, kid."

Most of the original freak shows where just based on the appearence of people, especially the victorian ones.

Now adays it's more what they can do, although in some places there are still ones like the original ones.

One thing I want to know is how you find out you can walk on knives without slicing you feet open.

Vertically placed knives? D=?

Blade side up, so you're walking on the blade all placed on a stand to hold them in place.

I want to know how people find these things out do they just deiced ''today I'm going to walk on knives'' or ''today I shall eat a light bulb''.

Something that's more mind over matter is one thing, but the lightbulb eating kind of thing, I dunno, I think some people are just compelled to do things like that.

I'm pretty sure they must use sergical spirit on their feet to harden the skin or else it'd just slice your foot open and if you slip you're going to slice your toes off.

Things like hanging off meat hooks in your back it's been proven that all you have to do is keep your mind on something else and the pain doesn't bother you.

Suspension - the hanging from hooks in your back thing - is not as deep tissue as I first thought it was. Knew a few people who did it, and it was like a spiritual thing for them.

Eating lightbulbs/glass and walking on knives - I dunno.

It just looks really deep when they put the hooks in. Especially before the person is suspended.

I think it goes pretty deep into muscle, but not beyond that - not into/passed bones.

It looks worse when you see people putting the hooks in because they really have to force them in.

Yeah.... in fact, I winced when I read that because I remember what that looks like. Spit, blood and mucous are my big gross-out issues.

Alot of people gross out at the sight of blood.

I know, and wish I didn't because I think that if I could handle that, I would have gone into one of the nursing tech programs instead of cosmetology. The worst that can happen with hair is that you can cut yourself or set someone's hair ablaze with chemicals!

When cutting someone's hairs you have to avoid their ears round the cartilage bit seeing as that's the bit that bleeds supprisingly much.

I've had a few friends buggar their hair up when they've tried to strip out dye before. They ended up going ginger and I'm supprised no one has has a serious reaction to the dye seeing as some friends don't even bother skin testing it.

It's funny to me that red/ginger-haired people don't care for that color. It's one of the hardest colors to get with color. My natural hair color - cuz you know it ain't a natural shade irl - is a light brown. For a person my age, I have very few gray hairs - my mom was almost entirely gray by my age. Anyhow, when I was much younger, I dyed it black. The color I used had a green base to it - some have red - so when it started to fade, my hair looked more green. We had to use a color stripper to remove it. It's a very obnoxious process to remove color, but there are products out there that can do it without lightening your hair too much. Bleaching/lightening my hair takes forever, and we can usually get it down to orange - not yellow. I look like a parrot.

I've been put off using chemical based red hair dyes after my sister dyed her hair red then it went burnette and finally ginger.

I use mainly vegtable dyes when going unnatural colours, it started because I could not find a blue dye other than in vegtable and seeing as I'm not alergic to any vegtables I can use that dye straight off without having to skin test.

Do you have to lighten your hair first before using those dyes or is it naturally light enough so you can just deposit it straight on and have the effect you're looking for? I didn't realize there are vegetable-based colors out there. I'm familiar with henna, but that's about it.

I'm betting that when I get back to school next month, I'll be sporting some obnoxious shades since we all experiment on each other.

I have to bleach my hair before I dye it to get a really bright colour. I could do it without bleaching it but it'd be quite dark.

I only use chemical dye on the back of my hair with chemical dye at the back. That's mainly because I have it a dark colour so the front stands out more.