Daniel Kraft: A better way to harvest bone marrow

Can you really be double-jointed The freight cars with the hand-painted advertisements splashed across their sides have rolled to a stop and their occupants have disembarked: elephants, clowns, a strong man, trapeze artists, a bearded lady and other self-styled oddballs. The carnival has arrived in small-town America. As people enter the gates, various barkers compete for their attention and their dollars. As a family with young children decides what to see first, some of their neighbors emerge wide-eyed from a small tent. Inside, a performance commences that seems to defy logic and reality. As the show continues, it seems as if the performer is made of rubber, and not bone. ­As spectacularly strange as the show is, it's not entirely unique.