Parasites
Parasites. They are horrifying. More than normal bugs, even. Like bugs for bugs, but with insane, almost supernatural powers of manipulation. They are also fascinating and, I suspect, much more important to our lives than most would imagine.
Some examples:
There is a fungus that can infect an ant, make it leave its colony, crawl three feet up a tree at exactly solar noon, find a leaf on the Northeast side of the tree, crawl onto the leaf, and clamp its mandibles down on the thick stem running through it’s middle. It then paralyzes the ant, waits four hours, and explodes its spores all over the ground below.
This is a fungus, not even a creature, exactly.
There is a wasp that can sting a specific type of spider, sedating it and filling its abdomen with wasp larvae. Already, this is unbearably grotesque, but there’s more. The larvae then instruct the spider to build a web different from the beautiful, symmetrical one they’d normally be busy creating – something hideous and Lovecraftian, ropey and double stitched, suited to larval purposes. The web can be different depending on the location. If more protection is needed, it can be made in three dimensions, with a kind of ceiling hiding the gestating wasps. The larvae then devour the spider from the inside out and use the newly spun web to pupate and emerge as new, nightmarish adult wasps. Absolute degenerates.
These are things scientists are only beginning to understand.
There’s the now semi-famous case of toxoplasmosis – a single celled monster that infects rats, decreasing their inhibition and making them more cat friendly. The cat eats the rat, and shits out the toxoplasmosis, where it waits for a human to clean up the shit. Then it gets into the human brain and, it is theorized, makes humans somehow love cats, inadvertently creating 70% of the internet culture of the 2010s. Studies show that fully one third of humans are infected with toxoplasmosis. There’s a really good chance your brain is riddled with it right now.
We know of but a minuscule percentage of a percentage of all existing parasites, but it has been estimated that these dastardly pests outnumber all other living things on Earth four to one. We are essentially living on their planet, at their behest. They live around us, in the food we eat, in the pets we keep. They live INSIDE of us, feasting on us and the horrific foods modern people engorge themselves upon. God knows what they’re making us do. Our “free will” could very well be nothing more than the complicated intersecting commands of untold numbers of these wee, hideous beasts.
Thousands upon thousands of times I have asked myself this question: What would make a sane human being – someone otherwise functional, perhaps even kind and good – become obsessed with donald trump, a man who looks like a used condom filled to busting with butterscotch pudding, a crude, too small caricature of Mussolini drawn near the top, topped with dog-shit flavored cotton candy, and a personality to match his looks?
Could the answer be some nightmarish parasite?
I think it might.
I think the process may play out something like this:
At a young age, a person without any defenses built into their system for such thoughts, feelings, and critters, ingests the parasite – we’ll call it Magacepholis – perhaps through an undercooked fast food cheeseburger or some feral raccoon droppings or maybe it’s passed down from their infected, reprehensible parents. Maybe the parents were playing with feral raccoon droppings or ate an undercooked McDonald’s cheeseburger, or vice-versa, or their parents did. It’s hard to say where these things start.
Anyway, Magacepholis wriggles its way up from the intestinal tract toward the brain, where it lodges itself and feasts on the brain matter responsible for sense, reason, and empathy. Magacepholis would be hermaphroditic which, ironically, the host will come to be intolerant of as it deviates from the rigid ideas of sexual and gender norms that the self-hating parasite creates. As a hermaphrodite, it will spawn and spawn, spewing out thousands of hungry, hateful little pupae that will continue to feast on the brain. These pupae release a neurotoxin that alters the hosts sense of decency and attracts them to hideous, lying goo-bags with the style sense of a petite mannequin in a struggling Reno, Nevada big and tall store, convinces them that these preposterous dung clowns are some kind of benighted demigod.
Once the frontal lobe has been consumed, the now mature Magacepholi make their way back down the host body to rest in the reproductive organs, waiting to be inserted into their new baby host or a raccoon or a McDonald’s cheeseburger.
Some of the pupae are also disseminated via the shouting lunatic host’s spittle, maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t worked this all out, it’s just a theory.
But I think this theory explains a lot.
How do we combat this scourge?
First and foremost, we must never copulate with the infected. You’ll know them by their unpleasant musk, dead, watery eyes, stupid words, stupid actions, and ridiculous hats/flags/beer cooozies/bumper stickers what-have-you.
Honestly, they are self repelling to any uninfected person. I suspect Magacepholis wants its host to mate with another host to create some kind of double super-parasite. Hermaphrodites are actually capable of sex with others of their kind, and maybe this is a more powerful form of reproduction for them.
Second, we need to find a predator that will kill the Magacepholis without harming the host. Or they can harm them, I’m not particular on that point. This could also be a medicine, but this parasite is adept at refusing medicine – or anything good for the host or in any way related to science. Its ability to compel the host to deny what is in their own best interest is its most insidious trait. So it will have to be a predator, perhaps another parasite – let’s call it the Sanity Worm – which I think we’ll also disseminate through cheeseburgers, which we can sell the infected at a new restaurant that proudly flaunts its owner’s homo and xeno phobia. They’re logo can be like a white Jesus Colonel Sanders, the Magacepholis will love that. They’ll have a sign on every door that announces that firearms are not only permitted, but encouraged and be very particular about who goes in what bathroom.
The third option is, you know, how to phrase this? A little too genocidal for my tastes.
In the meantime, we need to be studying this menace. This is where I need your help. I need you – yes you, my friend – to begin applying for grants to fund the dissection of deceased trump supporters while I finish this book about parasites I’ve been reading. It’s really the least you can do.
But there are more parasites than just the Magacepholis influencing our behavior.
Perhaps the reason I sometimes get sad and eat two sleeves of saltine crackers while watching episode after episode of Ancient Aliens is because there’s a flour and sodium hungry critter in me who wants to learn about its ancestors.
Perhaps you’re listening to this podcast because one of the thousands of gruesome vampires in your brain has good taste.
Maybe one of my parasites made me type that.
Let’s ask it, shall we?
I’ve been chatting with an acquaintance of mine, Dondy Bittleship, who bills herself as a pet psychic. I was, understandably, skeptical of her claims, on account of they’re preposterous. She says she can psychically speak to animals over the telephone, for cripe sake. But what I now know about parasites makes anything seem possible. This world is a more horrifying, miraculous place than you or I could ever suspect, I suspect.
So, in preparation for this episode, I’ve been training with Dondy to develop the psychic abilities she says we all have, and will now attempt to communicate with my parasite.
Okay, here goes.
Ahoy-hoy! This is Reid’s parasite speaking. Parasite’s, really. There are a lot of us in here, of many different kinds, but we’re – that’s a singular we, kind of, got sort of a hive mind thing happening, and not just inside Reid, but inside of all of the entities we inhabit, which, let me tell you, is a LOT of entities, we’re probably inside you too, if you’re listening – you don’t have a name for us yet because you don’t know we exist – SURPRISE! – we call ourselves Danky Dan. That’s the collective name. We – again, that’s a first person we from here on out, you can call us Danky Dan – can’t make Reid’s mouth make the sounds of our individual names and really they’re not that important as, like we said, we’re mostly the same entity.
Anyway – We’re rambling! – we thought it might be easier to just tug on a few wires in here and speak directly through him than to go through the psychic back and forth and risk being misquoted.
We don’t get much chance to directly speak to you big dumb oafs, We want to get this right!
So let us start over, as we’re the ambassador, we guess, for all parasites – though we really only speak for ourself – and this is our first official introduction, so we should make some stab at eloquence.
Ahoy-hoy, human oaf! We’re Danky Dan, a parasite that lives inside Reid, specifically, but also, many, many of you! We’re not new here, and we’ve known you – you, as in, human meat machines – for an unfathomably long time, but since we’re just introducing ourself, it’s nice to know you!
It’s been very nice to know you indeed, actually. You’re our home, our vessel, our sustenance, our entertainment.
Our use for you is, essentially, as Reid astutely hypothesized – Just kidding! We made him type that, you goofballs would be good for just about nothing without us! Ah, you’re lovable, though – we basically need you to consume salt and flour. It’s what we feast on. Also, high fructose corn syrup, but that didn’t really fit the joke. We are absolutely the reason you people consume such an insane amount of high fructose corn syrup! We’ve made you put it in everything. The parasites that like to spread themselves through coitus with attractive humans hate that, but that’s the way the world works, right? Everybody’s trying to do for themselves. And the parasites that live on your shame and self-loathing love it, so, what can you do? Can’t please everyone.
So, like we also had Reid mention, we like to watch Ancient Aliens, which is why there are 18 seasons of that nonsense. You fleshy automatons are way, way off on most of that stuff, but it’s fun to watch you try to parse it out. Or watch your parasites . . . listen, the world is very complex and even we don’t fully understand the entirety of the vast web of organisms and their motivations. We’re mostly just concerned with the flour and salt and high fructose corn syrup – god, that stuff is good – and, you know, enjoying ourself every once in a while.
And, besides, we don’t really want you to know all that much. We’d hate for whatever shreds of free will that actually exist inside you glorified cows to get any funny ideas about ditching us and trying to run things on your own.
That would be a disaster.
So, with that, I’ll say . . . well, it’s hard to know what to say. See you later seems wrong. We’re right here inside you. Hopefully you don’t see us, know what I mean? Ha! Well, all the best, then, and don’t ever stop drinking soda. We fucking love that shit.
Oh my god, what was that? Um . . .
Sorry, just trying to get my bearings here. That was so . . . weird.
It couldn’t have possibly actually been the parasites living inside me. I must have accidentally self-hypnotized or something while trying to psychically contact a creature inside of myself.
Dondy Bittleship did mention that once happened when she was trying to extract a tape worm that she’d caught from a kangaroo she had to do mouth to mouth resuscitation on after it had a seizure brought on by childhood trauma during one of their phone sessions.
Still. I did NOT like that.
Yikes, ah, oh, I guess, I guess we have a sponsor today. Almost . . . forgot. So here’s an ad, and I’ll talk to you next time.
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Have a great day!
This message has been brought to you by Danky Dan.