The goddamn Guinea Worm is back!  After having been essentially eradicated in Africa where they had plagued the continent since Biblical times, this nasty parasitic sonovabitch has suddenly resurfaced…but not in Africa.  Nope.  Thousands of miles away, way the hell over in Vietnam!  Impossible, you say?  So do I!  But according to some Vietnamese doctors, that’s exactly what’s going on.
Have I ever told you about the Guinea Worm, dear reader?  This pernicious parasite infects humans through contaminated drinking water as larvae, make their ways into the abdomen, grow into adults, and mate.  Then, when she She-Beast is ready to deliver, she makes her way rather aggressively south, down toward the legs and feet.  Keep in mind that an adult female Guinea Worm is 2.5 -3 feet long.  Yeah.  And but so anyway when this evil awful thing gets ready to deliver, she very aggressively heads toward the nearest surface (out the side of the thigh or calf, sometimes out of the bottom of the foot), and comes bursting through the skin, pissed off, jaws snapping…imagine it, reader….fucking horrible.
Anyway, this whole bursting-through-the-skin thing apparently causes the owner of the leg skin to feel an intolerable, searing burn at the worm exit hole, and the burning pain sends most mortals running/limping for the nearest body of water (and in Africa, there was maybe a pond for a village to use for everything, including drinking water).  So whomever jumps into the village water supply and at that very moment, the Worm squirts it’s larvae into the water, so now anybody who drinks from that pond will be infected with worms.  Which they were.  It was not uncommon for entire villages to have myriad of these hateful things hanging out of their legs, causing excruciating pain, and all they can do is drag themselves, limping, crawling, or being carried, to whatever sort of doctor is around.  All the doctor can do is go to each worm, wrap it around a pencil, and pull the worm out without killing it, usually no more than an inch a day.  And the pulling of the worm somehow causes the already excruciating pain to get even worse.
It’s the absolute worst.  But somehow, through the miracles of modern western medical science, the Guinea Worm was thought to have been eradicated and made extinct.  But now, here comes Vietnam wanted to get in on the action.  Apparently investigations are ongoing to determine if what they have there is actually a Guinea Worm, some sort of new Asian parasite worm, or maybe something else entirely.

N.P.: “Hoochie Koochie Lady” – Elf