While not an official contributer to 'Of Two Minds,' Shelley's sidekick is an African Grey parrot named Pepper. His heros are Irene Pepperberg, Alex, and Rachel Carson. He spends his time learning Mandarin and writing the Great American novel.
Click here for the secret to quick easy weight loss
Category: Health • Humor • Weird
Posted on: March 24, 2008 12:24 PM, by Steve Higgins
That's right - No exercise - No Dieting. Just sit you your couch and EAT EAT EAT!
For $29.95 We'll come to your house and introduce this friendly parasite to your digestive system.
Once you've lost all the weight you need to you can just have expensive and painful surgery to remove your cute new pet. You can then keep him in a little jar and show your friends how much he's grown and prove to them what a good mommy you are to your new cute little parasite.
-via neatorama and I met a possum-
Medicine & Health
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
With the amount I can eat, I've always wondered if I am raising a family of them.
Posted by: Aaron | March 24, 2008 8:25 PM
Umm. "No baths."
What is the history of baths and weight loss, I wonder? Sweating it off, like in a steam bath?
Ugh. I just added to the grody-ness of this picture.
Posted by: The Flying Trilobite | March 25, 2008 11:29 AM
Yes, disgusting, but considering that humans have lived with parasites forever and medicine has been dealing with them for millennia getting a bunch of worms does not seem that bad compared with the relatively new and dangerous weight-reduction surgeries.
Posted by: Ina | March 25, 2008 12:43 PM
Hopefully you can lose enough weight before the tapeworm burrows it's way into your brain.
Posted by: David | March 25, 2008 2:07 PM
Actually, tapeworms dont burrow into your brain, that only happens if you eat their eggs. Then you can get the cists in your brain.
I am just wondering what did they have in the jar, though. I don't think it would make a difference if you ate the adult tapeworm, because it would probably be dead in the jar or die in the stomach. And it doesn't seem as though they were selling cists found in cow meat.
Posted by: briofita | March 25, 2008 5:22 PM
Tapeworms.........what a great idea for losing weight.........also as a family pet
Posted by: Vectorpedia (Rick) | March 27, 2008 6:24 PM
The tapeworms that burrow into the brain are the juvenile stage, though usually that's if they go amiss; they're generally aiming for muscle. The adults are found only in the digestive tract, but not of the same animal....
The lifecycle goes something like this. An adult tapeworm, happily latched onto some poor sucker's intestinal wall, produces a bazillion eggs and self-fertilizes them. In the normal course of things, the eggs are then passed out in the host's feces. Eventually, another animal will eat them -- usually an herbivore grazing on the grass that the feces landed on sometime previously. In the gut, the tapeworm eggs hatch. Any which succeed will burrow into the animal's flesh and wait for it to be eaten by a predator. If it goes amiss, it might wind up in the brain, but the juveniles usually aim for flesh, presumably because it is likely to be eaten more quickly.
This is when the next stage occurs. The tapeworms mature and latch on to the digestive tract of their new host. They will then consume whatever food happens along their way, meanwhile producing bazillions of eggs and sperm to fertilize them, and the cycle repeats itself.
Parasites are strangely fascinating to me.
I understand the "medicinal tapeworms" were sometimes juvenile tapeworms swallowed live, and sometimes were total bunk that claimed to be tapeworm eggs but did absolutely nothing.
The Wikipedia article on fish tapeworms (which are a different species) contains the oh-so-pleasant fact that they can live for up to 20 years.
Posted by: Calli Arcale | April 3, 2008 4:55 PM