Hello, Meet My Parasitic Head

Last night I was going to watch some show about a baby born with another baby's head attached to the baby's head. I mean, like conjoined twins, if you're conjoined twin just had a head and a bit of torso that ended before the bellybutton. The Boy was horrified, so I recorded it, and I hope to find out if the Head had a brain or not. I don't believe it did just from the few minutes I managed to squeak in before The Boy realized what was going on. It seemed to be a totally parasitic entity. Just draining life out of the fully formed baby. Hello, this is my parasitic twin head. You may stare, she doesn't realize you are being rude, and therefore is not offended. Science! Gross and amazing.

Speaking of more oddities created by nature. Let's discuss the cymothoa exigua (aka: the tongue-eating louse/parasite). Wikus, who is always thinking of great things to send me, sent a link that discussed six disgusting parasites. It had our good ol' friend the guinea worm (we are both fascinated by that little guy), and at the top of the list was cymothoa exigua:



Say hello to your new friend! Isn't he great. Sure, he looks disgusting, and you think that fish could not possibly be happy with that thing in his mouth; but that is where you are wrong! The fish doesn't even care. He thinks his life is just hunky-dory. He has no clue that his tongue has rotted off and been replaced by an ugly, mother-fucking parasite. It's not exactly a symbiotic relationship, in that I don't feel the fish gets anything out of having a parasite in its mouth. However, to the fish, he still has a tongue. The parasite acts like a tongue, and therefore dimwitted fish is none the wiser! The parasite gets direct access to everything the fish eats, and the fish just gets to go about his regular business.

The c. exigua can't replace a human tongue, but if you nab one and hold it, you may get a pretty nasty bite for your troubles. If you want something really gross to happen to you, go play with a bot fly.

I realize it is a bit weird that I know about so many disgusting things, but I find it is pretty normal because a) science is really cool, and b) my body is pretty gross with all the mucus it can produce, practically on demand. My allergies are so bad right now; I wake up every morning feeling like my eyes have finally exploded. I drink a Coke and take a shower, and manage to get through most of the day until I fall asleep for 3 hours on the couch. So it goes.

One more thing, if I haven't bitched about this yet, please know that I am one of the few people out there who does not fall for this end-of-a-decade crap. There was no year 0; years are counted 1-10, not 0-9. We still have one more year to go before you give us your best-of-the-decade list. Stop being in such a hurry to get to the end. If the sources out there are to be believed, we're all going to die in 2012 anyway. Stop rushing things! It makes me antsy. I still have so much lazing on the couch to accomplish!