The Poetic Schmidt Sting Pain Index

[WickedEve]

I was reading about Synaesthesia when I ran across the Schmidt Sting Pain Index.

The following information is from Wikipedia:

Synaestheia is the neurological mixing of the senses.
Also, Synaesthesia is an often-used poetic device. In a familiar example, Andrew Marvell characterized the fruitful and serene atmosphere of the garden as

Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade
( —"The Garden")

While reading the pain index, I was already picking out pieces I'd like to use in some future poem. Talk about finding poetic inspiration in odd places. I love "Light, ephemeral, almost fruity" "Hot and smoky, almost irreverent" "Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric" and "Pure, intense, brilliant pain."


Schmidt Sting Pain Index or The Justin O. Schmidt Pain Index was created by Justin O. Schmidt, an entomologist. Having been stung by almost everything, Schmidt created (on his own time) an index to compare the overall pain of insect stings on a four-point scale.

1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of Hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).
4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel.

 

[Angeline]

From Lewis Turco's The Book of Forms:

The nature of allegory is to speak about one subject in terms of another, allowing the subject to become new again, making it clearer and sharper. The heart of allegory is metaphor. Metaphors go one step further and equate two dissimilar things. A=B. There is no hedging: "The sun is a coin"--the sun is the tenor or subject of the metaphor, and the coin is the vehicle of the metaphor, the predicate nominative that bears the weight of the language equation. Here, the obvious point of similarity is the roundness of both coin and sun. Ambiguity is the allowance of overtone and connotation by context. Some tropes are inherently inclusive, as for instance synesthesia, which means talking about one of the senses in terms of another--"Monday morning smells blue" (scent-sight), "I could taste her sweet whispers" (taste-hearing), "He touched me with his mind" (thought-touch).

I don't know about the bees though. I stepped on two bees, simultaneously, with my bare feet once. I was five. My mother yelled at me for going outside barefoot.

My mother's voice hurts my feet?

 

[WickedEve]

My mother's voice hurts my feet?

You know that needs to be a line in a poem. lol

 

[Angeline]

You know that needs to be a line in a poem. lol

I'm saving it for my 17-volume epic poem entitled My Mother and Why I'm Neurotic.

 

[champagne1982]

I'm saving it for my 17-volume epic poem entitled My Mother and Why I'm Neurotic.

by the famous anal retentive, Fanny Yerass.

 

[Angeline]

by the famous anal retentive, Fanny Yerass.

Shh! That's Agnes's secret pen name.

 

[Tathagata]

I don't know about the bees though. I stepped on two bees, simultaneously, with my bare feet once. I was five. My mother yelled at me for going outside barefoot.

My mother's voice hurts my feet?

" You ever been bit by a dead bee?, Whatdya do? Why didn't ya bite 'em back?"

http://www.dacre.org/stills/webb/Bog0166.jpg

 

[mojo_cat]

An ex of mine had that. He's an electronic musician, and while his music wasn't exactly to my taste, it was bizarre and beautiful to hear him describe it while it played. I wrote "lyrics" to one of his songs and he got very angry; he said the song itself was already a poem!

"The Man Who Tasted Shapes" is one of my favourite books on the subject, if you are interested in reading more.

 

[Angeline]

" You ever been bit by a dead bee?, Whatdya do? Why didn't ya bite 'em back?"

http://www.dacre.org/stills/webb/Bog0166.jpg

Stop with the bringing it up already. It was very traumatic, I'm telling you.

And please excuse my Yinglish. I've been reading Sholom Aleichem.



Namaste'

 

[flyguy69]

...
1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of Hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).
4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel.

This is hilarious!

I must add, however, to 4.0+ the threatened sting of the the bumble bee. While it may not suggest intollerable pain, one must imagine a 10-year-old in a park backing slowly away from the bee to avoid the sting until he steps over the edge of a rock outcropping and plunges several feet until striking his head on the sandstone wall, requiring a trip to the emergency room and staining the rock for months of review by all of his peers.

 

[WickedEve]

This is hilarious!

I must add, however, to 4.0+ the threatened sting of the the bumble bee. While it may not suggest intollerable pain, one must imagine a 10-year-old in a park backing slowly away from the bee to avoid the sting until he steps over the edge of a rock outcropping and plunges several feet until striking his head on the sandstone wall, requiring a trip to the emergency room and staining the rock for months of review by all of his peers.

LOL
That does need to be added.
Oh no! Not your kid. Or you many, many, many, years ago. Many.

 

[flyguy69]

LOL
That does need to be added.
Oh no! Not your kid. Or you many, many, many, years ago. Many.

Me. And no cracks about my addled math skills.

 

[WickedEve]

Me. And no cracks about my addled math skills.

I bet it happened to you just last summer. Grown man scared of a bee.

 

[flyguy69]

I bet it happened to you just last summer. Grown man scared of a bee.

That bee may have had a gun. i couldn't know.

 

[anniebug's man]

What about the sting of a hornet in the callous of my foot? No pain, but: foggy, cool, flash like stoned, unconscious, while driving a tractor.

am

 

[flyguy69]

What about the sting of a hornet in the callous of my foot? No pain, but: foggy, cool, flash like stoned, unconscious, while driving a tractor.

am

Is that why the damned things keep tipping over on farmers?

 

[Angeline]

What about the sting of a hornet in the callous of my foot? No pain, but: foggy, cool, flash like stoned, unconscious, while driving a tractor.

am

I barely heard the bee's sting inebriate my foot?

Eve, I think this concept of synesthesia has been forever tainted for me with bee musings.

 

[anniebug's man]

Is that why the damned things keep tipping over on farmers?

Oh yes, I am sure. That was during my farming days.

 

[flyguy69]

Oh yes, I am sure. That was during my farming days.

No wonder there is so much tension between the farmer and the bee man.

 

[anniebug's man]

I barely heard the bee's sting inebriate my foot?

Eve, I think this concept of synesthesia has been forever tainted for me with bee musings.

Let me tell you if it's 30C and 98% relative humidity, very inebriating. Almost like Iowa ditchweed

 

[anniebug's man]

No wonder there is so much tension between the farmer and the bee man.

Not so sure we can pin it on that. Hornets and bees are like George Bush and Jack Cafferty

 

[flyguy69]

Not so sure we can pin it on that. Hornets and bees are like George Bush and Jack Cafferty

And I was about to break out in a chorus from Oklahoma!

 

[anniebug's man]

And I was about to break out in a chorus from Oklahoma!

You make it sound like hives....oh shit I guess hives it is

 

[flyguy69]

You make it sound like hives....oh shit I guess hives it is

I can feel the music swell...