I have pubic lice in my mailbox

May 7, 2008 9:34 AM

Like sea monkeys in your pants! Entomological blogger Bug Girl (previously) debunked a web site touting the benefits of giant Japanese non-biting genital lice as personal "pets" (they just live happily in your underwear. It’s so COOL! They grow, and have families. You can feel em living and crawling around!). She dismissed it as a hoax. So the site's author sent her a sample.
posted by Turtles all the way down (60 comments total)

That (sample link) is probably the most revolting thing I've ever seen.
posted by datacenter refugee at 9:37 AM on May 7, 2008

You need to lead a less sheltered life.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:41 AM on May 7, 2008 [2 favorites]

No. No no no no no no no no no.

Am I making myself clear?

Fucking en fucking oh, NO.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 9:41 AM on May 7, 2008

because I know someone has to.. DO NOT WANT.
posted by ninjew at 9:42 AM on May 7, 2008

If they didn't bite, how would they feed.

Also, I was expecting the experiment to be a little more *ahem* hands on.
posted by drezdn at 9:43 AM on May 7, 2008

and don't wash your crotch for about a week
posted by CautionToTheWind at 9:45 AM on May 7, 2008

In terms of "disgusting and/or disturbing things I've seen on the internets," on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give that about a 2.5.

That's merely gross. There's stuff out there that makes me seriously want to seriously unleash a lot of Ebola and cleanse our whole species from the planet.

Also LOLJAPAN.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:46 AM on May 7, 2008

and don't wash your crotch for about a week

I'm not sure how many pubic lice there are in the wild, but I wonder if they magically appear for anyone that would go that long without washing their crotch.
posted by drezdn at 9:46 AM on May 7, 2008

Lice lice baby
Lice lice baby
All right stop scratch a bit and listen
Lice is back with my brand new invention
Something grabs a hold of me tightly
Crawl lil' critters daily and nightly
Will it ever stop yo I don't know
Turn off the lights and watch 'em grow.
Lice lice baby
posted by Floydd at 9:48 AM on May 7, 2008 [14 favorites]

That hair that was in that envelope? That really is pubic hair. It was either his (his name is Matt) or his girlfriends pubic hair. They take the bugs off their own snatch and into the envelope. Snip snip. He lives ‘near’ New York. Goes to school ‘near’ Atlanta. A reporter from the UK interviewed a group of them re: fetishes. He drives a Beamer. There is a bunch of them into this. He charges the buck to cover postage and to weed out folks that aren’t really serious. But mail isn’t the only way they deliver their… package.

Hmm. Lovely.
posted by ArkhanJG at 9:48 AM on May 7, 2008

There's stuff out there that makes me seriously want to seriously unleash a lot of Ebola and cleanse our whole species from the planet.

Also LOLJAPAN.

An interesting juxtaposition, as most of the "OK, time to cleanse the species" stuff I've seen was out of Japan.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:49 AM on May 7, 2008

> If they didn't bite, how would they feed.

IANAEntomologist, but I think many types of mites feed on dead/sloughed skin cells, preferring it to live tissue. Maybe these are similar.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:49 AM on May 7, 2008

This is one of those posts I bookmark for use later as a prank. Sort of like a rickroll, but much, much worse.
posted by DMan at 9:49 AM on May 7, 2008 [2 favorites]

"Hey! Baby! Come back! I bought these, I swear! I... look, here's the receipt!"
posted by katillathehun at 9:51 AM on May 7, 2008 [9 favorites]

Science is fun again.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:58 AM on May 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

I seem to remember that Jean Genet goes on a bit about the pleasures of crushing genital lice with his teeth in his novel Funeral Rites.
posted by Kattullus at 10:01 AM on May 7, 2008

It's nice to know that you can still get the crabs, even if the Dead stopped touring.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 10:02 AM on May 7, 2008 [2 favorites]

what
posted by verb at 10:03 AM on May 7, 2008 [2 favorites]

Pest of the web, for sure!
posted by TedW at 10:04 AM on May 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

So nobody read the part where she explains that there are no actual lice in the photo?
posted by ook at 10:12 AM on May 7, 2008

wut
posted by sir_rubixalot at 10:19 AM on May 7, 2008

So nobody read the part where she explains that there are no actual lice in the photo?

Nothing but sand and pubic hair. Not that it makes it any better, of course.
posted by tommasz at 10:26 AM on May 7, 2008

Totally bugging out.
posted by adamms222 at 10:29 AM on May 7, 2008

> Lice lice baby

That might explain the baggy pants and funny dance.
posted by Kabanos at 10:31 AM on May 7, 2008

Metafilter: nothing but sand and pubic hair.

I hate myself for that.
posted by dirtdirt at 10:34 AM on May 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

But, is it art?
posted by wabbittwax at 10:35 AM on May 7, 2008 [4 favorites]

This is funny and gross at the same time. I wonder if she's going to try them on for size.
posted by msaleem at 10:43 AM on May 7, 2008

Okay. So what's the name of that creeping tingling sensation in every fucking pore of my body that I get when ever I look at bug pictures? There has to be some medical name for that, other than the creepy crawlies.
posted by Pastabagel at 10:43 AM on May 7, 2008

That sound you’re hearing is a million people unchecking “Pet Lover” from the match.com advanced search box.
posted by bondcliff at 10:46 AM on May 7, 2008 [2 favorites]

The letter is funny.
posted by fire&wings at 10:48 AM on May 7, 2008

Just when I think I've seen everything on the Internet...
posted by geeky at 10:56 AM on May 7, 2008

IANAEntomologist, but I think many types of mites feed on dead/sloughed skin cells, preferring it to live tissue. Maybe these are similar.

Although you might think of both mites and lice as "small bugs", mites are part of the class Arachnida, and so would be closer related to spiders than to pubic lice, which are insects.

Pubic lice are part of a group known as "sucking lice" that have specialized mouthparts for sucking blood. I don't think the could survive on dead skin cells. There are some other "chewing lice" that will feed on feathers, hair, or skin, but these are restricted to birds and animals. That might be what bugger is mailing around, but they wouldn't survive on humans, since lice are usually specific to the species of their host.

(I learned this in school, not from any personal experience.)
posted by Kabanos at 10:57 AM on May 7, 2008

Okay. So what's the name of that creeping tingling sensation in every fucking pore of my body that I get when ever I look at bug pictures? There has to be some medical name for that, other than the creepy crawlies.

Formication. With an 'm.'
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:10 AM on May 7, 2008 [3 favorites]

While this is disturbing, I think it's disturbing for an ENTIRELY different reason than "omigod, actual pubic lice being sent through the mail!"

No -- I'd bet that this is someone who's got a VERY specific fetish -- he gets off on spreading his pubic hair around -- and has found a VERY unique way of expressing it.

but still, yeah, eew.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:17 AM on May 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

That letter cracked me up, especially the request for photos. What a smoooooth operator.

Other people's unusual sexual fetishes can be quite startling. My favorites are like this guy's, where the line between sexual desperation and involved practical joke gets really hard to detect.
posted by Forktine at 11:21 AM on May 7, 2008

No lice in the envelope? At all?

Bugger.
posted by beelzbubba at 11:21 AM on May 7, 2008

I have a tank of sea monkeys on my desk here at work, and now I'm afraid they're looking at my crotch.
posted by JanetLand at 11:23 AM on May 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

It never occurred to me that there could be people with delusional parasitosis who enjoy their condition.

Assuming that these "non-biting lice" really don't exist - which really does seem to be the way to bet, at thousand-to-one odds - then that's what we're seeing here. And we're also, apparently, seeing this benign form of delusional parasitosis being passed on, to however many people believe in the "love bugs" thing.
posted by dansdata at 11:27 AM on May 7, 2008

I believe you have nailed it, dansdata. My first thought was a manbeef or bonsai-kitten type "product" that only exists to foster outrage, but that doesn't square with actually sending out sand and pubic hair scrapings and insisting that there are nits as well.
posted by yhbc at 11:36 AM on May 7, 2008

So–I put the “specimen” in a sealed tupperware container with a moist towel, set it on my plant warming pad (since lice are triggered to emerge by moisture and heat), and took them to work with me the next day. Where 2 graduate students were fascinated, and 1 was pretty much traumatized by the whole concept and probably tried to autoclave herself after I left the lab.

[Also, a tip: if you walk into your new workplace brandishing a container of putative pubic lice and sand, you may want to provide a more detailed back story than "I bought them on the internet." Just some advice.]

So. Great.
posted by rtha at 11:37 AM on May 7, 2008

oh god oh jesus oh god oh jesus oh god oh jesus oh god oh jesus
* runs around waving hands
posted by boo_radley at 11:41 AM on May 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

Formication. With an 'm.'

Wow. You weren't kidding. I looked it up just in case, and now I have a new favorite word.
posted by arcticwoman at 11:45 AM on May 7, 2008

Lice?! Oh, you meant RICE.
/classic joke [not L/R nondifferentialist]
posted by not_on_display at 12:01 PM on May 7, 2008

Forktine: Other people's unusual sexual fetishes can be quite startling. My favorites are like this guy's, where the line between sexual desperation and involved practical joke gets really hard to detect.

Not really that hard.

from lovebugs.net/faq.html [which deserves a read. If you like cleaning up vomit from your keyboard. The pictures weren't even slightly gross; this is.] : It's so wrong in a right way. I just can't explain how erotic it is. It makes you feel like you're different but in a good way... It's something you have that nobody else does but you can give it away and still have it. Kind of like love... PLus, when go down on someone, they're like right in your nose. Its so wild!

Practical joke. Seriously. And I'll bet he was laughing his ass right the fuck off when he read her "scientific report" on his pubic hair. This is clearly gross-out for its own sake.

I'd like an update when he posts all the photos he's received, though. If he's gotten any.
posted by Viomeda at 12:08 PM on May 7, 2008

cuz those poor people got pranked bad...
posted by Viomeda at 12:09 PM on May 7, 2008

I really, really wish that she had written something about working in a lab with a DNA-scanning machine, and that they were going to put that pubic hair DNA into the federal sex-crimes database. Because really, if you go sending people your pubic hair clippings along with some sand, you probably deserve at least a little scare once in a while.
posted by Forktine at 12:38 PM on May 7, 2008

Like sea monkeys in your pants!
posted by Turtles all the way down

Eponysterical?
posted by rokusan at 12:52 PM on May 7, 2008 [3 favorites]

Clearly this is an elaborate scheme by the website owner to get people to open envelopes filled with his own pubic hair. Well played sir, well played.
posted by drezdn at 1:06 PM on May 7, 2008

Although you might think of both mites and lice as "small bugs", mites are part of the class Arachnida, and so would be closer related to spiders than to pubic lice, which are insects.

We used to joke in my Entomology class about how we just needed to find some pubic lice to bring our total of orders and families collected up to the required number. This one guy actually did it though. Not in my year, alas, but in recent memory. Supposedly one of his friends donated the specimen.
posted by Tehanu at 1:14 PM on May 7, 2008

Clicked sample link first. Oh god. Read through thread. Breathed sigh of relief. On a scale between Chocolate Rain, Goatse, Tubgirl, and 2G1C, this orbits between Rain and Goatse.
posted by cavalier at 1:22 PM on May 7, 2008

Oh, and crap:
I discovered that someone just “outed” me as the author of this blog, using my real name. I know a lot of people suspect they know who I am–but I have tried to always maintain plausible deniability[etc]

Bug Girl goin away :p -- as of yesterday. Stay classy, internet.
posted by cavalier at 1:30 PM on May 7, 2008

See, I figure just about any sex act would seem like an elaborate prank if you weren't familiar with it. Think how many kids react with flat-out disbelief when they find out how babies are made.
posted by nebulawindphone at 3:07 PM on May 7, 2008

Is this something you need genitals to understand?
posted by Dizzy at 5:43 PM on May 7, 2008

:(
posted by flotson at 8:10 PM on May 7, 2008

I thought we had to wait a week between lice posts, which are sort of like goal posts, but smaller.
posted by lukemeister at 8:43 PM on May 7, 2008

I HAVE NOW LOCATED THE SINGLE MOST NORMAL AND ACCEPTABLE THING EVER

IT WAS FOUND ON THE INTERNET, JUST AS EXPECTED

AFTER DEALING WITH THIS SINGLE MOST TYPICAL AND REASONABLE HUMAN EVER REPORTED, WE SHALL HAVE THE RESOURCES TO BLEND IN WITH UNERRING PERFECTION
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:54 PM on May 7, 2008

WTFingF?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:00 AM on May 8, 2008

I found this on New York Craigslist missed connections a few weeks ago:

so, once a month or so i mail my boyfriend a manila envelope containing a packet of my shorn pubic hairs.

i mailed them to you by mistake. i am sorry. it is so easy to misprint a number on an envelope.

you didn't need to mail them back to me with such a threatening note. i assume you are a guy, but i couldn't really tell because the point of the pen had been stabbed through the paper and through most of the one or two words you wrote in response.

this is a tough city. things happen.

hey, so you get a mysterious envelope in the mail some evening, and an ashtray's worth of fire-ant red pubic hairs falls out on your shoes. deal.

Brillliant.
posted by nasreddin at 3:50 AM on May 8, 2008 [4 favorites]

I, for one, welcome our new lice overloards...
posted by tadellin at 7:57 AM on May 8, 2008

oops - "lords"
posted by tadellin at 7:57 AM on May 8, 2008