Anyone who has Googled dorky key phrases ("raptors," "brain worms," "converting bedroom into playball pen")has probably stumbled upon this comic. For those who haven't, please meet xkcd.com -- we'd be crushin' on this guy if we so weren't certain he exists only in two dimensional code.
An insect of unknown ancestry recently stung my eyelid. My, like most's, first instinct was to overreact. Who wouldn't assume that the bug in question was a braconid wasp, and that rather than simply stinging me, it was laying eggs in my shutter lens with its massive ovipositor? My entomological hysteria was relieved when a Benadryl and bag of frozen peaches made the swelling retreat. But now that I've realized my worst fear: becoming a parasitic incubator, I can't stop reading about others who actually have.
It works like this: Someone eats undercooked pork and develops tapeworms. Those tapeworms lay 250,000 eggs each. The swine swallower then prepares food for others, without washing her hands, peppering the diner's dish with tiny tapeworm eggs. Those eggs are small enough to pass through stomach lining and enter the blood stream where they search for a warm, safe place to grow. Your brain is prime tapeworm real estate.
Once there, they stretch out and get comfy -- munching on your cerebral lining. This can go on for years until they take one bite too many and you start noticing symptoms of their incessant snacking. A leg goes numb. An eye goes out. You can only talk backwards like a David Lynch character -- what evs. That's when surgeons explore, expecting to find a tumor, and find worms in your brain.
