Do not try this at home...
Balsa,
I think you summarised it very well but your last comment perhaps needs clarification. If you were to draw an arc off a high voltage utility conductor to your body, you WOULD be history. I have an earlier posting on this subject which points out the not infrequent cases of power arcs tracking over the skin surface, resulting in appalling burns but not sending the heart into fibrillation. The poor victim instead dies a very nasty death from the burns and associated infections. Of course, people have survived the burns but I have no statistics.