e Cestodes share the same basic body plan. As
I am the presidential parasite, I like to consider myself unique,
but (alas) that is not the case. What’s our plan? All of us have a
scolex, sometimes colloquially referred to as the “head" and a
brain inside that head (more about this later). We also have a
“neck," and one or more proglottids, which are sometimes called
“segments," and which are the source of the name “tapeworm,"
because they look like a strip of tape.
Our proglottids are each capable of reproduction (containing
both testes and ovaries—we’re hermorphadites!), and, as they are
very flat, they tend to wave inside our host’s large intestine
like a long pennant. I like to joke that I symbolize the American
flag, and as my host’s common refrain these days is “Freedom is on
the march,” my body is an apt metaphor for the type of “freedom”
my president is reproducing (especially in the Middle East).
All cestodes have a nerve ring in the scolex with lateral
trunks passing through the rest of the body. Ours is a lonely life
because we have no eyes to see, no olifactory organs to smell, no
mouth to chew and taste, and no hearing. We are, in effect, worse
off than Helen Keller, also quite a liberal mind and effective
author in her own right! In other words, we are a Conservative
Republican’s worst nightmare.
George W. Bush’s nightmare became real after 9/11/01—the day he
injested me. How did it happen? Zolanda Pitcairn, age 7, handed my
host a barbeque sandwich, in which I was hiding (in my proglottid
or, as Marx would say, “proletarian” form) inside the meat. Little
Ms. Pitcairn was an intermediate host, in and of herself, as the
Emma E. Booker Elementary School was home to many of the
lower-class students of Sarasota, Florida. Zolanda and her fellow
students were happy to have the president read to them that day,
and Zolanda was simply showing her appreciation, in the middle of
the reading, by handing George her sandwich. I, of course, was
also quite grateful, as this was the beginning of my very
personal relationship with the leader of the Free World,
as he couldn’t help but take a bite of that sandwich.
We tapeworms have no digestive tract. We literally “soak up”
the digested foods of our host through our skin. Miraculous, isn’t
it? We are also almost never detected, and there are many millions
of us inside our hosts, who die, never knowing we were there; we
were there, however, hanging on for dear life, our suction cups or
jagged teeth plunged into our host like a Chinese Silkworm missile
(that also, coincidentally, can release “bomblets” of weapons of
mass destruction upon an ususpecting population).
From birth, we tapeworms play an insidious role. Fertilized
eggs quickly develop into adventurous embryos. They exit the
host’s system through feces, usually diving into nearby water
supplies. Animals or humans then ingest the baby worms. It’s easy
to assume that the embryos then develop into full-grown worms, but
they don’t. The undeveloped worms bore through their host’s
stomach lining and slip into the bloodstream. Veins and arteries
act as an almost limitless highway system, transporting the worms
to any major organ or muscle!
Usually, we tunnel into large muscles or the liver, but we have
been known to dig into brains, spinal cords and lungs. Once the
embryo finds a home, it encases itself in a fluid-filled sack
called a cyst. We don’t break out of our cyst until the flesh of
our host is eaten by another animal. And that’s how you end up
with a tapeworm in your gut. And that’s how I became the
presidential parasite.
Tapeworms also have another sense that more than compensates
for our lack of four: we communicate through our brain waves.
Indeed, our technology was, at first, limited to communication
between each other, as we emitted our waves, which easily passed
through our hosts’ flesh and through to the “transceiver” brain
inside the scolex attached inside another host. Using our
proglottids, which act as long antennae (some of us reach lengths
of over 30 feet!), we were able to specify where a good “virgin”
host might be located, and we were also able to discuss what our
hosts were telling us about “life” on the outside.
Then cometh the New Millennium. One of our more inventive
comrades accidentally began to communicate with a computer! That’s
right; we had suddenly, like a Wi-Fi eavesdropper, hooked into the
most informative data base of human information in the history of
the world! In point of fact, did you know that the first known
computer “bug” was officially called a “tapeworm”? Ironic, isn’t
it?
And, so it is that even though my host, George Walker Bush, the
President of the United States, has never done any information
searches on the Internet (in fact, his wife reads to him at night
before they go to bed), I, on the other hand, have become the most
learned tapeworm and computer worm in the world! This predicament
is both a paradoxical, existential dilemma and the possible key to
saving most of the world’s population. You see, not only can I
receive information from the transmissions coming over the Top
Secret computer networks that my host is quite often around, but I
can also transmit to them! Ah, now you finally understand
my innate power and the source of all my suffering!
Tapeworms, like their hosts, experience psychological
disorders. For example, I am continually seeing myself as the
functioning conscience of the president. In my estimation, George
is the true parasite, and I am the free thinker!
Let me explain further, lest you consider me delusional. George
Walker Bush was born into a family that has always kept him safe
from the harsh realities of existence. He never had to get his own
clothes out in the morning, he never had to cook for himself or
even shop for himself. His family put him through school (where he
performed very poorly, I might add, as these were the days
before Harvard and Princeton gave out all-As to
all students), and this was where he performed the
“parasitic” role of cheerleader for the Yale Bulldogs football and
basketball teams. His family also put him into the Texas Air
National Guard, which was then (unlike today’s National
Guardsmen) a safe haven from the dangers of the real
combat going on over in Southeast Asia. His family also bailed him
out of one failed business venture after another. He just couldn’t
get anything done correctly. He didn’t have the brains
for it. He did, however, have something that we parasites find
most rewarding. He had connections! Now can you see how I
work with my host? He is my vehicle—my body, if you will—and I am
his, albeit hidden, brain!
estodes of the world unite!” These were the
words by which I began our declaration of independence from our
hosts. We were in a survival mode, as we saw what these so-called
“leaders” of the eight great industrialized nations in the world
were up to. The “G-8,” as they called themselves, was nothing more
than the propagator of what one intellectual Princeton University
philosopher had recently called, “Bullshit,” and most of the world
was suffering because of it. Since much of our formative larval
time is spent in one type of feces or another, the analogy of the
good professor was not lost upon us.
We know what the G-8 represents to the world. It is another
form of parasitism, or “an interaction between two organisms, in
which one organism (the parasite) benefits and the other (the
host) is harmed.” These men represented the parasites of the
world, which were creating the backlash of the majority of victims
in the world, including we true parasites, who have never
caused harm to our hosts. Yes, there are some few parasites who do
cause the death of their host, but the more intelligent amongst us
have decided to take action against these human parasitic
leaders.
Please visualize what the Law of Nature really says:
“Nothing will be taken without giving something back of the same
or better value.” However, since the rise of Globalization, the
transfer of wealth and power has increasingly ignored this simple
dictum of our collective existence. We now knew it was time to
“turn the tables” on them, or we would never survive.
Their meeting was in Scotland, at some exclusive golf game
resort, and this would be the site of my “grand plan to take back
Nature.” Since we controlled the insides, and they controlled the
outsides, we had to determine a way to change the rules so that
we can control them. The demonstators against
this “globalization movement” of the G-8 had thrown many musical
“fests” the week before this main event. They sang and danced and
preached their disenchantment with the poverty of Africa, the AIDS
epidemic, and the increasing subjugation of the poor by the rich.
This was all well and good, but the G-8 leaders would not allow
any of these demonstrators to come within a mile of their physical
beings. Thus, it was up to us to penetrate their bodies!
I had finally discovered through my Internet research the way
to protect us from their drugs. We were able to develop an
immunity through the use of certain steroids, sometimes used by
their professional athletes to hit many homeruns and to run and
swim much faster than their counterparts. These athletes, who were
also inhabited by cestodes, became the human transmitters of our
new vaccination serum. Through the Internet, we knew where to go
to collect our “fixes,” so to speak. The cestodes inside the
atheletes would send many hundreds of proglottids out into the
water supply, where humans would injest this serum, and we would
become immune to their killer drugs! After years of developing our
immunity, it was finally time to make our move to take back
Nature!
I was growing at a prolific rate inside George. In fact, he was
beginning to lose weight! At the same time I grew and spread my
segments to the freedom outside, I also began communicating with
the only man who could help me carry out my plan: special advisor
to the president, Karl Rove—human parasite extrodinaire!
My emails to him were over the president’s top-secret network,
and I was posing as the president! What genius! This was going to
be the first phase in the plan. I sent my communication about two
months before the meeting in Scotland. I called it the “Gandhi
Diet,” and here was my message to Karl:
“Hi Karl, I’m going to tell the other leaders at the G-8 that I
am making a personal statement about world poverty. I am fasting,
just the way Mahatma Ghandi did. That way, the folks back home
will know I’m all for the poor folks in the world. What do you
think, Karl? Is it workable?”
One thing I knew about my host, the president: if Karl Rove
thought something was a good idea, then he would agree to it. He
had done it when he lied about Iraq’s WMD; he also followed Rove’s
orders about outting that blackmailing CIA officer’s wife in the
press. And, George would certainly do it this time.
When Rove next saw George, my president was down to one hundred
and five pounds.
At first, Laura Bush had all the White House cooks fired. She
thought the food was making her husband ill. George thought he
might have cancer, so he had every physical check-up known to
mankind but to no avail. None of the Bethesda doctors could find
anything wrong with him. George was looking gaunt, according to
those around him, his cheeks were sunken in, and his legs began to
look quite “twig-like.” Meanwhile, my segments were growing and
growing, each and every day.
“Mister President, I think the idea is great!” said Rove,
wrapping his pudgy arm around my host’s jutting shoulder blades.
“Idea? What idea is that, Karl?” asked George, obviously
unaware of my previous communication.
“The fasting before the G-8 meeting in Scotland. It’s a stroke
of genius! The liberal press will eat it up, if you’ll pardon my
expression!” Rove laughed, and poked the president between his
protruding ribcage.
As I had expected, not wanting to sound like he was “out of the
loop,” George immediately replied, “Oh yes, the fasting! Of
course, that’s why I’m getting so skinny.”
“Yes, you’ll make a statement about world poverty and how we
need to start free enterprise all over Africa and the Third World
to bring them out of their despair! It will be a magnificent coup,
George. How did you ever think of it?” Rove said.
“Actually, I think it was my daughter, Jenna’s, idea. She
thought I should show some kind of empathy for all these folks
demonstrating for hunger inside Africa and all those other
countries,” said George, getting into the lie as if he had thought
of it first.
“Africa is a continent, George, but, never mind. Keep up the
great work! You’ll be the hit of the summit meeting!” said Rove,
turning to go. “But, remember. We really want to sell the
Central American Free Trade Agreement. Maybe you can work
that into this fasting thing, too.” Karl then drew close
and whispered into George’s ear, so that I could barely make it
out, “You know, the starving kids in Central America need to
work more to put food on the table!”
y host, the president’s, speech at the G-8
meeting was a great success. At 85 pounds, dripping wet, George
was a figure right out of Dachau. And, as he spoke in his usual,
oxymoronic doublespeak, I was busy sending my proglottids out his
arse (as Shakespeare would say) and into his pants, where
the segments would drop down his legs and onto the floor of the
luxuriously carpeted room, where, later, a cleaning person would
sweep them up, getting many embryos on her hands, and then
(because the hotel was over-working its few staff members to save
money!), she immediately began preparation for the dinner hosted
by the Queen of England. Guess what she was in charge of
preparing? Yes! The meat! Our tiny hatched eggs would soon be
burrowing their insidious way into the victuals of these “masters
of the human race,” and then into their bloodstream! The
Revolution had finally begun as Karl Marx said it would—from
within!
very revolution needs an anthem, and we chose
a song by a vegetarian group I found on the Internet called “The
Black-eyed Peas.” Tell me if you can see how appropriate these
lyrics are to our cause:
Everybody, everybody, let's get into it.
Get
stupid.
Get it started, get it started, get it
started.
Let's get it started (ha), let's get it started in
here.
Let's get it started (ha), let's get it started in
here.
Let's get it started (ha), let's get it started in
here.
Let's get it started (ha), let's get it started in
here.
Yeah.
Lose control, of body and soul.
Don't move
too fast, people, just take it slow.
Don't get ahead, just
jump into it.
Ya'll here a body, two pieces to it.
Get
stunted, get stupid.
You'll want me body people will walk you
through it.
Step by step, like you're into new kid.
Inch
by inch with the new solution.
Trench men hits, with no
delusion.
The feeling's irresistible and that's how we
movin'.
Isn’t art wonderful? With music, we finally had an existence
outside ourselves! We, at last, could control them, our hosts. The
Queen’s dinner was quite a success, as new Cestodes were “getting
it started” inside the honorable Paul Martin (Canada), Jacques
Chirac (France), Gerhard Shröeder (Germany), Junichiro Koizumi
(Japan), Vladimir Putin (Russia), and Tony Blair (Great Britain).
To what purpose? You’ll soon find out!
The powerful of this world now had their own religion:
computers and the Internet. They “believed” in this technology the
same way the huddled masses believed in their primitive Nature
Gods. Ergo, it made sense to us that they would believe our new
policies if we spoke them on their own religious turf, so to
speak, and we did just that.
The leaders of our “free” world were losing weight, pound by
pound, and they, of course, were searching for some meaning to
their collective plight. It came in form of top secret emails. I
won’t recreate each email verbatim, but let’s just say we were
telling them that we were in control of their drastic weight
reduction and that President Bush was a fraud, a deceit and a
liar. We also told them, since we could control whether they lived
or died, it would be much to their benefit to do what we told them
to do. In fact, we pointed out, we could cause the entire human
race to start “thinning out” and there would be nothing they could
do to prevent it.
What did we tell them to do, you might ask? This is the key, is
it not? It is what makes every human aspire to leadership. It is
what every powerful dictator or terrorist dreams about every
night! We were in control of how things were going to get done all
over the world.
First, we told these leaders that their private corporations
would begin to “literally” start serving the poor on the planet.
Each wealthy country would send out “ambassadors of food” to every
starving country, and spend whatever expense, do whatever it took,
to make certain every empty belly in Africa, Asia, South America
and India was fed and provided with the basics of mortal
existence. Also, we pointed out, if any war lords, or other human
militant terrorist groups, decided to get in the way of this
humanitarian effort, they, too, would begin to starve, very
quickly, until they would be too weak to pull a single
trigger!
The next months were like a miracle happening on this earth!
The leaders of the great, wealthy nations of the earth began
assembling their technological might with one purpose in mind: to
feed the dispossessed. Caravans of aircraft, vehicles, trains,
ships and any other mode of transportation began delivering the
latest biotechnology to the underdeveloped nations—free and
without political restraints—and the results began to show almost
immediately. Former President, Jimmy Carter, was leading the way
with his group. He believed we were “voices from God,” and that we
“should not question the will of our Creator.” The Hindus said
that the Internet was part of Indra’s Net, and that our
communications came directly from the Cosmic Trinity of Vishnu,
Krishna and Brahma. Whatever the reasons, we were on the move!
The money began to shift away from the richest to spread out,
like a magnificent fan, to embrace the dispossessed of the world.
Every time some greedy power-monger became belligerent, we would
begin shrinking him from inside, and he became as meek as a
roundworm. We at last thought we had saved the planet, but then
“the worm turned.”
This new, peaceful lifestyle began to create more and more
vegetarians. And, with this phenomenon, our “Achilles heel” was
exposed! The humans began to see that the vegetarians were not
being controlled by us! As a result, the greedy leaders began to
practice the vegetarian lifestyle. Soon, the tide began to change,
and militant vegetarian groups began to crop-up like rotten
tomatoes. Slogans and banners soon swept the nations and a new
“movement” for freedom started. We tried to get into their bodies,
but as long as we had no intermediate, carnal host to deliver our
eggs, we could not control them!
Today, the vegetarians rule the world, and they rule with an
iron fist. The same nationalist agendas are in place, the same
nuclear weapons, and the same greed. My host, George W. Bush, has
been arrested, along with many other “flesh eaters,” and we are
serving out our time in prisons all over the world. I no longer
starve George, as he is as powerless as I am. However, I detest
his constant whining about “his daddy,” and about how “Karl Rove
was responsible for all this.” The truth of the matter is, my
fellow Cestodes, ignorance is not bliss!
[END]
© 2006 Jim Musgrave - Contributor's
Bio
