Well, you know, someone once said life is a terminal illness transmitted sexually. I, for one, got a kick out of the fact that the parasite was acquired in the “Virgin” Islands (cheesy, I know)! 😉
Classic Onion perspective-shift humor, and very well done. And yet: not quite as funny when a distant acquaintance makes a point of giving the article to your partner who’s visibly hosting one of those parasites after not a small amount of effort and who can’t seem to get away from people telling her how the process of extruding that parasite will be dominated by the threat of being given convulsive drugs, paralyzed, and eviscerated. (Just to keep the metaphor going). People are inconsiderate shits sometimes, you know?
hmmm…for some reason i don’t think calling a child a woman loves and wants a parasite is funny. sometimes i have thought onion stories are funny, but this one sort of turned me off. then i was silly enough to browse their website further, and i found this video about the “probable rape of a missing girl” and almost puked… http://www.theonion.com/content/video/missing_girl_probably_raped
i don’t think calling a child a woman loves and wants a parasite is funny. Children aren’t parasites under any circumstances. A fetus is parasitic, in the sense that it is taking resources from the host without adding anything to the host’s ability to survive (if you ignore that little detail that it does, of course, add to her reproductive success) regardless of its status as wanted or not. Anyway, I called my wanted fetus a parasite for most of my pregnancy. It all depends on how twisted your sense of humor is, I suppose.
I’m another pregnant person who often talks about her parasite. Especially now that I’m eating like a teenage boy. I can see how others would be offended, I suppose, but I personally loved it.
Yeah, like so many things, a lot depends on who’s saying it and who’s listening. To me, it reads too much like the constant vibe from doctors that pregnancy is a disease; I can imagine other people reading this as a way to lighten up from all the deadly seriousness that people put on pregnancy.
Right, I just think it’s funny because it’s a surprising and oddly sensical way of describing a pregnancy. And as for the probable rape news story you mention Rachel, that’s again a matter of sense of humor. I thought it was funny because it mocks the fascination that cable news networks seem to have for the grisly details of violence towards women; a fascination that borders on perversely erotic. Twisty Faster has a post a month or so ago about a newspaper that almost thrilled in describing the details of a woman’s rape, and cable news does it too. For the people in that video to wildly speculate about the details, well, I think it’s good satire.
hmmm…for some reason i don’t think calling a child a woman loves and wants a parasite is funny Oh, I do. I think it’s funny as hell. It takes a certain amount of self-delusion for a woman, while pregnant and contemplating delivery, not to think that our method of reproduction is the stupidest thing since the manure waffle.