don't try and steal this idea, or i WILL sue you.

tapeworm diet

Now he wasn’t at all tired, and he plopped down on the couch to see why Janus was so excited about this show. He searched through the numbers until he found the Cultist Culture Channel. They specialized in all sorts of odd shows, from the slightly comedic to the downright offensive.

The theme music for the Starlet P. Horns Show came on. There was a black man sitting on the street with a guitar singing it.

“She used to be in raunchy movies,

‘til she got fed up with *Beep*

now she has her own TV show

and it makes the censors sick

so sit back and grab a cold one

cause the show’s about to start

now its time for us to brainwash you

with fine comedic art”

Starlet was blonde, of course, but she was only pretty in that fake, Los Angeles sense. The opening skit was a spoof of those late-night diet infomercials.

“Are you fat? Do you have trouble tying your shoes? Is your belly so big you can’t even diddle yourself properly? You need…the Tapeworm Diet! Here is Starlet P. Horns with a satisfied customer.”

Starlet was standing in an African village next to a starving woman with flies buzzing around her head. “You’ve been on the tapeworm diet for seven years now, how has it improved your life?”

The deathly skinny woman said something in her native tongue, which included a string of indiscernible words interrupted every now and then with tongue-clicks.

Starlet grinned back at the camera. “See! Another satisfied customer.”

The scene switched to a room with a “doctor” sitting with his hands folded. “The Tapeworm Diet is a pill-free, all-natural alternative to the traditional diet. Once the tapeworm is ingested, the pounds just melt away, with virtually no effort from you, the dieter.”

He continued. “Once the parasite lodges itself in your intestines, you have complete freedom to eat whatever and however you want!”

The scene focused on a very skinny woman who looked like the skeleton of a soccer mom. “Ever since I went on the Tapeworm Diet, I’ve noticed a lot of heads turning. Before, people would try to avoid looking at me because I was morbidly obese, now they just gawk in disbelief. In fact, I’ve lost a hundred and twenty pounds. Thank you, Tapeworm Diet!”

The scene shifted again, this time to a computer graphic of a large person, with the digestive tract visible. The animation showed a tapeworm go into the mouth, hook into the intestine, and get bigger and bigger while the person got thinner and thinner.

The doctor chimed in again. “The great thing about this diet is the cost-effectiveness. Instead of having you buy our expensive food, or buy costly pills which are actually speed, you just rent the tapeworm from us, making low monthly payments of $19.95.

“You could spend hundreds of dollars on one of those fake diets, or even waste countless hours of your life with pointless exercising, but with this diet you don’t have to do ANYTHING. We actually ENCOURAGE you to eat as much as you possibly can.”

The camera focused again on the soccer mom. “With some diets, after a few months, the weight comes back. With this diet, you actually lose MORE weight as time goes on!”

The announcer cut in. “Indeed. With some of those OTHER diets, you can lose your will-power to eat cardboard food, or lose interest in exercising. With the Tapeworm Diet, you CAN’T quit! Let’s hear some more testimonials!”

There was a rail-thin little girl who looked maybe 10 or 11. “On the playground, the kids used to call me piggy…now they call me twiggy! Thanks Tapeworm Diet!”

Now the focus was on a pimply teen-age guy, and there was a ‘before’ picture on the screen next to him where he was massively fat. “Before, I used to get no sex from the ladies. Now I get all the sex I want, that is until I pass out from malnourish—“

Hastily the announcer’s voice came on again. “Act now, before we run out. If you order within the next twenty minutes, we will even throw in free head lice to eat the unwanted skin flakes from your scalp!”

The screen showed a cartoon image of a smiling tapeworm with googly eyes and a phone number was flashing under it. The speaker gave his final pitch. “Cheaper than liposuction, easier than exercise, and far more effective than praying to some God to be thinner, the Tapeworm Diet…ORDER TODAY!”

Damien switched off the television, and blinked. He wasn’t sure if he had really just seen what he thought he did.

“Time for bed,” he said quietly to himself.