|
{god's ugliest children} maggie moody Spring is here and the birds are chirping extra loud. Maybe they're trying to warn you of an oncoming storm that could ruin your lovely bike ride. You brought a poncho, so it’s going to be alright. Everything is going to be okay, you think. The rain is melodic and it smells pleasantly sentimental, moist and earthy. Perhaps the rain drops are washing homeless blood off the sidewalks, or watering your budding rosebushes - a small inconvenience for the sake of bike riding, but otherwise completely welcome. Walking down the sidewalk following an afternoon shower, you think, “My, there's a lot of tree-debris and small branches on the ground.” Then, much to your dismay, you realize you are surrounded by God’s most ugly creation--Worms. If you’re anything like me, you will be screaming like you’re trying to walk across a bridge of hot coals, shaking your fists at the sky, cursing the heavens because the worms are fucking everywhere. Like inside you and shit. On the ground and shit. In space and shit. In your food and shit. In the fucking sky, dangling from a bird’s beak. And shit. Consider the flatworms for a moment. Some don’t have an anus, but others have many anuses. For the assless ones, they just poop through their mouths. As if you could tell the difference anyway. Some species of these flatworms are born hermaphrodites with two dagger-like penises, white and pointy. They look like butt zits ready for the harvest. And since neither worm wants to be the mom, because pregnancy totally sucks (even for spineless invertebrates), it’s a race to see who can poke the other first in a battle called ‘penis fencing’. It’s sort of like a race to see who rapes the other first. Most worms would rather be deadbeat dads than have to carry the worm babies. It’s much easier to send a monthly allowance of good dirt than to teach a worm to love himself. Or “herself.” Mom and Dad will never know. Evidently, it can become violent and there is a clear concept of winners and losers in this duel of mating. Bob and weave until you strike with semen! En garde. And then the mom is the loser. Touche. Otherwise, I think most worms just have sex like normal hermaphrodites with five hearts; that is weirdly and with crushing shame. You can learn basic facts about worms on the absurd children’s site, The Adventures of Herman: Getting to know squirmin’ Herman from “head” to “toe.” It’s an autobiographical story about the redeeming qualities of teenage wormhood. I repeat, autobiographical. For instance, “Just imagine how you would feel if someone said they could not tell the difference between your head and rear end. (It’s so embarrassing and I get a little sensitive about that.)” Herman uses his playful personality and sense of humor to brainwash our children into thinking that worms are people, too. It’s fucking unacceptable. Or else watch Dune again. The gigantic sandworms burrow under the desert eating everyone and everything, shitting out the “spice” that is the key to the universe? “Walk without rhythm and you won’t attract the worm,” they say. If not for the sand snakes, watch it because it’s a great David Lynch film, and Sting has the role of a lifetime. Aristotle said, “Worms are the intestines of the earth.” Mostly parasitic in nature, God planted these tubular tracts of grossness on the earth to do the dirty work of decomposing the dead and providing illogical weight-loss remedies. Earthworms. Tapeworms. Mealworms. They all make me want to puke in my panties. I can just picture them now. A towering pile of squirming orgy trying to penis-fence each other inside your lower intestine. If you fast for a few days and dangle a fork of hot dog outside your ass, we might be able to coax the fucker out. Simply thinking about this as a possibility is way more traumatic than accidentally googling something unsavory like leprosy, and it’s almost as traumatic as searching for images of harlequin babies. (Don’t do it.) As a gardener, I understand their importance in the aeration of our soil and as a fisherperson, they can be used as great bait. I’d rather chew through my whole backyard myself, or learn to fish with my bare hands than deal with this nonsense. They are blind and deaf, and besides the bookworms who masticate entire volumes of encyclopedias, they are dumb. I think God should think seriously about what he has done. I’ve heard it said that if aliens were to choose a species on Earth to study, they should pick the worms because they are considered to be the median on a scale of complexity, humans being the most complicated. Thus, the only logical solution I have to offer: the aliens suck up all the worms with lasers and use them to research our planetary make-up and use these biological findings to present us with a lovely alternative, something cute that doesn’t remotely resemble a millipede, silverfish, or nemotodal ancestor. And in the meantime, the worms could wear cute fur jackets that make them look like miniature orangutans (before they hit puberty). Then we train them not to invade the bodies of animals and humans, teaching all worms that the life of a parasite is bad karma and simply won’t make you any friends. Perhaps we could spend some government money to bribe squirmin’ Herman to jump on board with the anti-worm campaign and use his teen angst to promote the end of his entire phylum. Or else, you know, pay the writer who is writing in the voice of a fictional worm to make some use of his time. Either way, I have zero tolerance for these nightcrawlers and since they aren’t making the precious spice mélange on planet Earth, they must be banished. Banish-ed! P.S. I don’t actually believe in God. Stay tuned for library pests and the cosmopolitan cigarette beetle who dines on rare manuscripts, chocolate, and other things of cultural interest, also known as ‘bookworms’. |
