I think enough people know by now that tapeworms are no good (even if they are all-natural). Who knows? Maybe as biotech develops, someone will find a way to create a symbiotic relationship with tapeworms instead of a parasitic one.

Now for a tapeworm story.

I used to date a girl from a region of rural Vietnam close to the Cambodian border. Really girly girl, but also knew how to forage for all kinds of edible plants and could easily out-fish me and was much better at climbing trees. Badass bombshell.

She told me that when she was a kid, she used to really love this one kind of sausage because where she grew up, it was pretty rare that she'd get to eat it. One day, they were having a party or something at her house and she saw that they would be eating that sausage. She got too excited to wait and so she stole little bit of it and ate it . . . before it was cooked.

Months later, she started getting sick and kind of bloated. Now, there are a couple ways to get rid of tapeworms. The easiest is to take pills, which kill the tapeworm (not to mention a bunch of other stuff that lives in your guts). It's pretty effective, but also kind of expensive, especially if you come from the sticks. The traditional way, is to sit in a tub of body temperature water so that the worm comes out. If you don't know, tapeworms can get pretty big, as in, 12m is not unheard of.

So, she sat in the tub of hot water to let it come out. The thing is, tapeworms are very delicate creatures and being worms, if any part of it breaks off while still inside, you are still infected. The solution? To remain absolutely still as meters and meters of parasite crawl out of your ass.

I guess she lost as much weight as the tapeworm weighed.