Horace Miner's Body Ritual among the Nacirema is a really strange thing to read. Josh showed it to me a while ago, and I guess it was written by some well-known sociologist. If you didn't see it already, read the word Nacirema backwards.
The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose... The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners...
