My apologies LKDOG. I was actually wondering if Steve may be possibly suffering of an advanced form of Degenerative Audiophilic Chorea (DAC), which in my view may very well affect most Audiogon inmates, including yours truly of course.
Sometimes erroneously referred to as Audiophilia Nervosa by some British audiophiles and unrepenting tweakers, DAC is an extremely debilitating hereditary condition. It was first identified and discussed in 1989 by a team of European neurologysts, audiophiles and tweaks lead by Gavronsky and Pugnetti of the Pio Istituto Don Gnocchi in Milano.
See: Aloysius Q. Schmaltzenstein Gavronsky, Dr. Luigi Pugnetti et Al. Environmental triggers and sex-linked predisposition in late onset adventitious Audiophilic Chorea (Acta Medica Refutata, vol 35, No. 4, pp. 435 - 459. Appenzell, 1989).
The authors describe DAC as a acute disturbance of the central nervous system, usually having an onset in very early middle age and characterized by involuntary muscular movements, uncontrollable usage of credit cards, increasingly severe and expensive delusions, disastrous lapses of financial common sense, and general progressive cognitive deterioration, accompanied by often mewlings, drewlings and ritualistic genuflection and prostration in front of any gleaming audio component.
DAC attacks the cells of the basal ganglia, clusters of nerve tissue deep within the brain that govern coordination, as well as the cortex, which is expected to govern common sense.
The onset is insidious and inexorably progressive; no treatment is known.
Psychiatric disturbances range from personality changes involving compulsive purchase or modification of audio equipment, in the abscence of which the sufferer experiences apathy and irritability, to manic depressive or schizophreniform episodes when away from one's High-End Audio System for any significant amount of time.
Motor manifestations include flicking movements of the upper extremities, hands reaching uncontrollably to one's back pockets towards any credit cards and compulsive signing of any audio-related sales slips, a lilting gait whenever in front of high-end audio stores, and motor impersistence (inability to sustain a motor act such as tongue protrusion), unless ever-more-frequent and progressively expensive and unjustifiable upgrades to the patient's audio system are applied.
In 1989 the gene responsible for the disease was located by Schmaltzenstein-Gavronsky and Pugnetti; within that gene a small segment of code is, for some reason, copied over and over.
Expert genetic and audio consultant counseling is extremely important, since 50% of the male offspring of an affected parent inherit the gene, which inevitably leads to the disease if the subject is exposed to any high-end system worth of such an appellation.
An autosomic recessive form of the disorder likely also exists, but is very rare, according to the scant epidemiological studies of DAC, as far less females than males are affected. The prognosis is rather bleak. Sufferers invariably end their days divorced, in dept, indigent, increasingly semicatatonic, with a silly grin on their faces, while immersed in a permanent REM state, dreaming of evermore extravagant system upgrades.
