Is "marionetting" real?

November 2, 2006 7:49 PM

In Ryu Murakami's book "Coin Locker Babies", he describes a bizarre practice known as "marionetting". I can't help but wonder if this is real. And whether it is or not, what would happen if you tried it.

Here is the description from the book:

It's called 'marionetting' and they say it's crazy! You take some surgical floss and wrap one end up inside a capsule; then you swallow the thing and it unravels on the way down until you get it out the other end with a nice little enema. It takes about seven meters of string - isn't that incredible? - but when you've got it all the way through you can do all kinds of amazing things with it.

So, can such a thing be done? The closest I could find was a yoga practice "Vastra Dhauti" - which if I read right only goes down to your stomach.

posted by anonymous to health (17 comments total)

See Crumb. His brother "flosses" regularly.
posted by Pollomacho at 7:59 PM on November 2, 2006

I don't know the answer but I do know that in the movie Crumb, R. Crumb's brother described doing something that sounded pretty similar to this.
posted by jessamyn at 7:59 PM on November 2, 2006

I was going to save this for my stand up routine but... a few years ago, my dog ate a 10-foot gauze bandage. It was in a roll when he ate it--so, like a short, fat, squishy sausage, only white. It wasn't like that when it came out. And it came out over days.

I wasn't able to pull it out for fear of ripping out his insides so I had to basically follow him around outside with a pair of scissors and wait for him to... doodle ... and then snip it off. My dog is brown. So was the bandage when it came out. You have never seen children scream and run so fast to their parents as when they're reporting on the mean man who's chopping off the dog's tail. You have never seen a dog so confused as one who's racing around trying to shake the thing out from its ass that just won't shake.

So... I don't know if the marionetting is real, but I know that there are some things you can swallow which can come out intact, regardless of how long they are.

For the record, my dog didn't seem any healthier post bandage-shitting. It was the most embarassing 3 days of my life. (Well, there was that time he shit out a condom while I was hitting on some hottie, but I'll save that for the appropriate Ask thread.)
posted by dobbs at 9:04 PM on November 2, 2006 [15 favorites]

I knew a cat (Tractor - for his purr) it happened to, after eating the string from a roast. Apparently it's not uncommon for pets, and you must never try to get the string out by tearing as you can rip the intestines. Tractor survived the event, even with the help of his owner, and became known as pull-start Tractor.
posted by b33j at 9:05 PM on November 2, 2006

Sounds dangerous to me. Our vet told us explicitly not to let our cat swallow string (as she had a habit of doing), since it can cause intestinal rupture.
posted by Popular Ethics at 9:06 PM on November 2, 2006

I have heard of this as a technique for cleansing the colon.
posted by generic230 at 9:08 PM on November 2, 2006

Wouldn't the acids in your stomach burn through the string?

Could this be done in one ear and out the other, via the nasal cavity by way of the Eustachian tubes? I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I know there's some kind of connection between your nose and your ear.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 9:14 PM on November 2, 2006

This is not a good idea. My cat nearly died after swallowing ordinary sewing thread. Basically peristalsis pushes the thread in one direction and the irritation from the thread causes vomiting, which pushes the thread in the other direction, which means the thread saws through internal organs. The cat lost about six inches of intestine and was lucky there was no secondary infection, which is a big risk whenever the intestine is punctured.
posted by Violet Hour at 9:53 PM on November 2, 2006

I have known two cats and a dog who died from eating long stringy things like that. I wouldn't fool around with it.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:55 PM on November 2, 2006

ssFlanders, I know you can do it (safely but very painfully) with dental floss up the nose, horked until it comes down into the back of the throat, then pulled forward out the mouth.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:57 PM on November 2, 2006

It can't be done with the ears, unless you have two ruptured ear drums, the Eustachian tubes are on the opposite side, see.
posted by borkencode at 11:01 PM on November 2, 2006

There is a video of some frat boy who did this somewhere on the internet - I can't find it on Google but it has been mentioned on MeFi before. From what I recall it was gross as hell but didn't seem to do any serious damage.
posted by greycap at 11:19 PM on November 2, 2006

The closest I could find was a yoga practice "Vastra Dhauti" - which if I read right only goes down to your stomach.

Also, this is a piece of cloth, and not a thread. I don't doubt that it's practiced regularly in some circles, though.
posted by anjamu at 12:21 AM on November 3, 2006

Previously
posted by Sallyfur at 1:37 AM on November 3, 2006

Let me preface this by emphasizing that I am not the original poster, and am only making this suggestion based on the fact that I, too, have read Murakami's Coin Locker Babies.

Potential health benefits aside, I think our anonymous friend is actually asking about "marionetting" as a sexual practice. The character quoted in the [more inside], a prostitute if I recall correctly, goes on to describe how the thread eventually emerges from the anus and can then be tugged upon, the resulting sensation making the subject dance about like a marionette.

I doubt that I have anything further to contribute to this thread, so I will withdraw before the remarks about eponysteria begin.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:09 AM on November 3, 2006

My dog swallowed something long and stringy last weekend. She's had 2 surgeries this week, lost 1.5 feet of small intestine, and was at one point given some not so good odds of survival (she's doing better now).

When something long gets caught in the intesting, the result is similar to pulling on the 2 strings on a hood - it crumples up on itself and the string can cut in badly.

Maybe there is a way to do this safely, but I'm really just not seeing it based on my recent experience.
posted by thejanna at 7:28 AM on November 3, 2006

i've only heard of the practice through the Crumb movie and one comp. religion class in college (so, filter that memory through a hangover) but as i recall it involves swallowing one end of a cord or thin cloth ribbon, sitting around in contemplation for a few days waiting to pass it, then sitting around contemplating for a few more days waiting to pass the other end. it's a week or so of not moving around a whole lot, specifically because (as thejanna puts it) it would be like yanking on both ends of a drawstring.
posted by sonofslim at 9:11 AM on November 3, 2006