Frugal : Like many people, 67-year-old Preecha Iamkum puts faith in a supernatural energy to protect him from hurt. What makes Backed is the best way he invokes this safety: by having three-centimeter-long gold pins fully inserted into his physique. Preecha first locations the custom-made pins, which are made of an 80% gold alloy, in a bowl of sesame oil and then chants a secret incantation that may charge them with protective powers. When the pins are prepared for implantation, he explains, they float to the surface. He can’t insert the pins himself, he says; that have to be accomplished by one other person who also has supernatural powers. He additionally has to take precautions not to do something that will disgust the pins and trigger them to desert him. “I can’t contact a dog, or converse in a dirty place such as a toilet. If I do, the pins will fall out,” he says. Preecha says that he now has about 1,000 gold pins in his physique. The most he has ever had inserted in a single sitting is 109 pins. When Preecha’s odd practice came to th