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The most widely known period of cargo cult activity, however, was in the years during and after World War II. It was around this time that Fish developed a desire for masochism. He took cotton balls, soaked them in alcohol, and set them on fire in his anus. He also hit himself repeatedly with a nail-studded paddle. He also shoved needles into his body. He used to say that he loved things that were made by his fellow man, that bore the imprint somewhere of someone’s labour. He would place these between his rectum and his scrotum. Normally, he would remove them afterwards, but soon he began to insert them so deep that they were impossible to take out. Later x-rays revealed that Fish had 27 needles lodged in his pelvic region. he said that it made him feel free and electric. Indeed, this enabled him to eventually liberate himself, his widowed and sexually famished landlady, whom he marries in order that he might offer it in sacrifice for other like bodies : ” Since the end of the war, the airbases were abandoned, and cargo was no longer being dropped. Manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons, and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers. In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and created new military-style landing strips, hoping to attract more airplanes.
