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  • an organism that engages in autophagy.

    …evil in the form of two rather appalling manifestations: a cannibal and an autophage. He notes that our attention is immediately captivated by one…while the other is largely overlooked. One possible explanation for this, he suggests, is that we have no place to put the notion of a person who consumes his or her own flesh; this is a form of being with the self that we cannot really conceive of.
    Territories of Evil, ed. Nancy Billias, 2008

    March 25, 2014

  • is skin flesh? if you chew off someone else's hangnail, are you a cannibal?

    March 25, 2014

  • In parts of Asia I used to see women sucking snot out of a child's runny nose. Just saying. There's some kind of nexus between eating and affection, care, bonding.

    March 25, 2014

  • from the autophagy page on Wikipedia, I went to a link that said there is disagreement as to whether things like nailbiting amount to autocannibalism. Pathologically speaking, that is. If you want to be super literal, yes, eating skin would make you a cannibal while hair and nails would not (since it's not "flesh" in the normal sense).

    March 25, 2014

  • I am clenching my invisible balls at that image, not that 'snotsucker' wouldn't be a fun band name. Disconcerting care practices

    clearly picking one's nose isn't pathological and barbequing oneself or another is, but it seems more like a spectrum than a line. Mammals, at any rate, enjoy eating regenerable aspects of the body - breastfeeding, licking wounds, the whole amniotic process, golden showers, chewing off flaky skin parts, etc.

    March 25, 2014

  • Just like hauling in thick fettucine with pesto, really.

    March 26, 2014

  • Ew!

    March 26, 2014

  • phagephase?

    March 26, 2014

  • "And then you're in the man from Mars

    You go out at night, eatin' cars

    You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too

    Mercuries and Subarus

    And you don't stop, you keep on eatin' cars" - Blondie, Rapture

    March 26, 2014

  • This is perfectly grotesque, and I thank you all very kindly.

    *wanders off to make a-snotty-list*

    March 26, 2014

  • I think I'd need more than one suck to completely evacuate one of my kids' nostrils when they're snotting full-on.

    March 26, 2014

  • Madmouth's spectrum intrigues me. "Ovo-lacto" vegetarians eat milk and eggs, but not flesh. Do we need an equivalent distinction for cannibals and autophages?

    March 26, 2014

  • (And brackets around "snotting," please.)

    March 26, 2014

  • You mean like, "I'm a muco-lactic cannibal - I eat snot and breastmilk, but not my own, and I don't do flaky skin-parts"?

    March 26, 2014

  • Exactly. I'm thinking there's an untapped market for muco-autophages and muco-cannibals wanting to try vegetarian options: soy-boogers, for example. Okra might work, too.

    March 26, 2014

  • mucilagenous alternatives for your mucosal pathology!

    March 26, 2014

  • Muesli!

    March 26, 2014

  • Stop looking at me sideways. I am not going to bring in neti pots here.

    March 26, 2014

  • See also snottygobble.

    April 10, 2016