July 12, 2004

• The Pentagon has spent several million dollars on robotic-lobster research. Be afraid! Do you wanna know: Why wouldn't a lobsterman with shorts on want to meet a marine patrol officer? or How to hypnotize a lobster? Bet Our Bees could do better lobster poetry than this: I'm orange below and green above. My shell fits me like a glove. I have a long tail and two strong claws. But you'd never have to worry about my puny jaws. Yummy post, Wolof. Especially in butter.
• Hott.
• I am not to be deceived by the assertion That lobsters feel no pain, oh, dear me, no! In fact, I will only believe this nonsense If and when the lobster itself tells me so. Too bad for you who are born as lobsters That you make fine eating, For your doom it must inevitably be To be flung in water while it's quickly heating. And while you turn from green to red to very dead, You will have to listen while some lying human doth intone, "Do not worry for the lobster feels no pain," Something that only the lobster in the pot could possibly know.
• I love to eat lobster, one of the few animal fleshes I will partake of, because it is sooooo yummy, I just can't.. not eat... But I do feel terribly guilty about their deaths, and the fact they suffer. Because they must, surely?
• Om mani padme yummmmm!
• nostril, here's this on that from the American Lobster web site: Do lobsters suffer and feel pain when being cooked? Lobsters are invertebrates and do not have a complex nervous system like humans. They are similar to a grasshopper whose brain is small and consists only of a bundle of nerves. Because they are quite simplistic in nature they do not have the same threshold of pain as we do and therefore do not feel pain to the same degree as us.
• Hmm... I'm not altogether convinced, though, SideDish. I think lobsters have a decentralised nervous system: they may not have large brains, but in the literal sense they probably are rather complex. But who says complexity is the key, anyway? We have complex brains, but we don't have a good sense of smell; maybe our 'sense of pain' is actually duller than that of lobsters. Do lobsters have nociceptor cells? I don't know.
• someone once told me that when diving for lobsters one uses a "J" shaped hook to reach into the caves they live in and tap them on the rear to trick them into running out. They also said they "bark".
• I'm not totally convinced either, SideDish. Thanks for making me feel better about it, tho.
• IMHO Bees has answered us with his art. That is an excellent little poem, even by his high standards.
• I was once at the grocery store, and they had these pathetically cheap clip art photocopied brochures by the lobster tank with smiling lobsters on them. The brochures were full of all these absolutions and rationalizations regarding the lobsters and how they feel little/no pain, etc., so people wouldn't feel guilty about killing them. It was then that I named this desire to downplay lobster pain in order to lessen human guilt, and it was henceforth known as...lobstaganda. People amaze me with their stupid guilt over this. If they can't handle killing the lobster without being lulled into self-denial by a pamphlet, then they should leave the lobster alone and become a vegetarian.
• If you feel squeamish about killing and cooking lobsters, remember the words of Food God Alton Brown: ...a lobster is a bug. And if you can stomp a roach or smush a spider just for crossing your path, you shouldn't get too teary eyed about sending a lobster to sleep with the fishes, especially if you're going to eat it. Now how do it keep from being squeamish about eating it?
• I don't, eat it. It looks like a giant sea roach to me. I think the Rastafarians are right in not eating anything that lives in the ocean but doesn't swim. Although I have a conflicted relationship with oysters. I half love them and I half want to vomit them back up. Makes for an interesting dining experience.
• thanks for the picture, Daniel :P BTW why is the thread named "Jayne Mansfield"? Not that she wasn't sick hot.
• Not that she wasn't sick hot. Well, I think she was a dirty cow.
• that's hilarious!
• "People amaze me with their stupid guilt over this. If they can't handle killing the lobster without being lulled into self-denial by a pamphlet, then they should leave the lobster alone and become a vegetarian." Oh, I wish I had your sagacity and wisdom. I wish I had the ability to view these things in such neo-Manichean manner, but the reality is much more complex. These little fuckers taste soooooo gooooood... especially with the marinara sauce I make, my old mucker. It would be easy to make the choice, were they but a giant woodlouse, a large cricket with the flavor of a boiled walnut, but no! These things are heaven to the taste buds, and homage to the tum. When, O wendell, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that tasty seafood sauce of yours still to mock us? etc. Have you ever dropped a large green clackity lobster into a seething pot of boiling water? Seen it writhe for seconds in the cauldron of scaulding life-death? Heard the mammal-mimmick squeal of steam from it's carapace as the flesh is cooked, even while neurons still fire in it's admittedly tiny, wart of a brain? Learned the painful lesson of putting in tail-first? Has it never struck you how awful a manner of death this is? No, they are a little more significant than 'bugs'. We don't eat bugs (most of us) because they taste foul, seem fouler, and smell worse. Lobsters are a different thing. Besides, I never saw these fucking clipart pamphlets of which you speak. I'm worried about the fact that the lobsters are being killed in nasty ways and we really don't have any objective way of understanding how much pain they experience. This does indeed disturb me much more than crushing a cockroach. But it might surprise you to find out, that I, and many others of my ilk, even worry about the cockroach. I surely shall not give up eating crab, lobster, shrimp. But I shall not give up my concern over their level of discomfort in death. Perhaps this adds to the taste? I'll face my fate in Gourmande's Hell.
• And, lest that above screed seem like an offensive rant, I will make it plain, that my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek. Until the next time I get a lobster.
• Shortly after I moved to the east coast some years ago, the sales manager in Boston whom I supported decided to reward my hard work with a lobster dinner on the hoof, er claw - live lobsters and clams, plus really good clam chowder. Even though it was supposed to be a surprise, his admin. warned me to be on the lookout so it wouldn't sit on the porch for hours. The styrofoam, dry iced box arrived, and I opened it to find two huge lobsters, which I put I put in the sink. My daughter and I couldn't resist making quasi pets out of them We would stroke them on the back and refresh their water, and they would wave their rubberbanded claws around, By the time I needed to cook dinner, we had imagined that they had personalities. We may have been doing serious lobster abuse, but it got us all through the afternoon. (We're from California, so what do we know?) Dinner time loomed near, so I put a big kettle of water on to boil I was getting pretty nervous about having to actually kill my own dinner and I lost all judgement. When wisps of steam began to appear, I tossed the first lobster into the pot, but the water wasn't hot enough to kill it quickly, so it tapped on the bottom of the pot for what seemed hours. It did eventually cook, and the second one benefitted from my learning experience. I served the first one to my daughter, but she had a hard time eating it. I, on the other hand, really enjoyed the second one. And, does anyone else here really like tomali? Mmmm! Lobster custard.
• After copulation, the female huddled in a corner of the shelter while her new shell hardened. In exchange, she left her old shell as a postcoital snack for the male. He began nibbling a few minutes after dismounting �the lobster equivalent, perhaps, of edible underwear. This reminds me of a couple of dating experiences that were best forgotten.
• How to kill a lobster So, do you begin cooking with a live lobster or a dead one? Certainly it should still be alive within a matter of minutes prior to cooking. While plunging the live lobster into the pot will surely be fatal, the thrashing tail is likely to cause burns from the boiling water or at least a mess. From a scientific standpoint, the muscles toughen with the shock of hitting the boiling water, which means more chewing for the diner. If you go for the plunge method, put the lobster in head-first which should kill it pretty much instantly. Some cooks are concerned about humanity issues of cooking a live lobster. Killing the lobster just before cooking is the preferred method. Putting the lobster in the freezer an hour before cooking will do the trick. Quicker yet is to plunge the tip of a sharp knife straight down right behind the lobster's eyes. Some say the world will end in fire. For lobsters, ice is nice. /mangled Frost
• Blue Horse, Food God Alton said basicly the same thing in my link... Actually there are only two methods recognized by the Geneva Convention. The first one is instantaneous and if I were a lobster and somebody gave me a choice this is the method I would choose. Take a chef's knife, a big heavy one, and place the point right in this crack down the head, right behind the eyes by about an inch. [ominous music] Hmm. Okay. Uh, if you think you're up to it, put the knife right in that crack and then push straight down to the board and chop forward and thus bifurcating the head. The bug will be dead instantaneously. No fuss. Now if you don't feel you're up to it, well, let's chill. Fifteen to twenty minutes in here [freezer] and they won't feel a thing when the time comes. That's what the experts say. I'm not a lobster so I can't say. But I do know that it will slow down their metabolisms significantly and numb them to the point that they won't even move when you get them out. By the way, you don't need a lid here. Despite that scene in Annie Hall, lobsters are not terrestrially inclined. And that reminds me of a couple of dating experiences that were best forgotten. Ice is nice? Well, Gandhi is dandy But Snickers are quicker Snot is not. /mangled Ogden Nash
• Great fat cock-lobster or dainty hen! Bring my armoured lovelies out again, Who cause immoderate appetite in men (Men often willing to rationalize A lobster-death or ten before their greedy eyes). Some callous, calloused be And say these cannot suffer; Still others shed a tear and weep -- And call for melted butter!
• Lobsters are lovely creatures. They are delicious. They are my favorite food, and I eat them often. I am spoiled. My business shares a roof with several thousand pounds of live lobster, on their way to all parts of the globe. The reasons why people take such care to ensure a lobster's painless death has always baffled me. I have even seen in an English cookbook a very detailed diagram on how to locate a lobster's brain, in order to dispatch it quickly with an icepick. It seemed to me the culinary equivalent of the Defense Missle Shield, i.e., hitting a bullet with a bullet. Nearly impossible to do correctly. And if you split a lobster with a knife as suggested by Mr. Brown, then the creature is only good for baking, probably a slower death if you didn't hit the nerve. To put a lobster in the freezer for 15 to 30 minutes? Who's is to say that freezing to death is any more or less painless than boiling to death? I know 15 minutes in a freezer is deadly for a lobster. The gills will freeze. A slow death will ensue. I'm sure that we are squeamish about the method of death for these creatures because they are the only animated creatures we might bring home to kill in our own kitchens. The animation must play a part, because who winces when an oyster is shucked? Fresh oysters are alive when you eat them, too. But they never move. Maybe it's that the lobsters protest by scrabbling against the boiling pot for a few seconds, before moving on karmically. Who ever had to hear that noise from their chicken breast or hamburger? Not many, as those creatures are killed far from your home and days before. The enjoyment of any meat means death at some point. If you eat meat, poultry or seafood you should be very aware that there is death involved and that it is necessary for your nourishment. All of us should deal honestly with that fact. I should say that I am in real-life a seafood dealer to Boston restaurants, and a former stern man and gillnetter out of Green Harbor, MA. I have cut the throats of many live sea creatures, felt them struggle in my hands, and then sold them by the pound. I did these things even while I was struggling with vegetarianism and Buddhism. Vegetarianism lost. I don't want to be callous and I can't say that all of the fishy death hasn't made a mark on me, but to live as an omnivore is to kill, whether it's a carrot or a cow, a chicken or a lobster.
• P.S.- Loved the poem Beeswacky! and: Heard the mammal-mimmick squeal of steam from it's carapace as the flesh is cooked, Nostril, you are a true gourmand. For Bluehorse: The muscles do tighten up, but will relax with proper cooking time. 12 minutes per pound should do it.
• "I don't want to be callous and I can't say that all of the fishy death hasn't made a mark on me, but to live as an omnivore is to kill, whether it's a carrot or a cow, a chicken or a lobster." I strongly agree. But I want to point out, that we can harvest these creatures in a way that lessens the pain they experience. Or, I should say, we don't have to kill chickens by throwing them into a wood chipper, n'est pas? I don't eat most meat because I've seen the way large animals like pigs & cows are harvested. These are smart creatures, by no means primitive, and their deaths are horrible, painful, traumatic. Nevertheless, I don't think people should stop eating them, I just think we can find economic and non-cruel ways to harvest them. The transportation of cattle alone (an industry I have some aquaintance with) is cruel and wasteful. Lobsters are not sentient. I can agree on that. We can't avoid killing things. I'm not a good Buddhist, I've killed mice, rats and millions of ants recently. By the way Kuu.. wanna send a crate or two of king crab my way? mmmmm hehe! cheers! Beeswacky: "great fat cock-lobster" is a phrase I shall savour and use regularly. I thank you. Keep up the poesy, my good fellow. /bow
• If only I'd seen Great fat cock-lobster before signing up . . .
• I don't like putting my cock-lobster in the freezer. It sticks to my beer mugs, which is annoying and painful.
• Nostril, there are a lot of semi-vegeterians out there these days (me included), who will only eat truly free range meat. Whole Foods is a great source of this meat, and Niman Ranch, which while really, really expensive, is truly free-range. As for the poor lobster, ever since I saw my first lobster tank in the store, I found it hard to eat them.
• MonkeyFilter: Great Fat Cock-Lobsters.
• I finally got a minute to read the whole article, and I must say, nice find Wolof. He talks about lobster biology, lobster fishermen, Maine, PETA, vegetarianism.... intelligent, insightful guy.
• But I want to point out, that we can harvest these creatures in a way that lessens the pain they experience. I never understood that sentiment. In the end, they're still fucking dead.
• I'm surprised shawnj - the actually process of going from not-dead to dead is irrelevant? I cannot help but think avoiding unnecessary pain to creatures, even ones to be eaten, is a good thing, be they mud-bugs, chickens, or piglets. This perspective entails, at least for me, the awareness that food does not actually originate in tidy sytrofoam containers at the supermarket; that food must be carefully husbanded otherwise is will stop growing on trees. Not to go all Buddhist on you, but I do see a connection between a sense of blind entitlement to easy consumption and the distance we have from the actual life and death of animals that are eaten.
• Not to go all Buddhist on you as well, but the ends of being humane and the ends of being effficient both are the same, you have a dead organism (What's the first precept again?). And personally, when you talk about Karma based off of those two acts, I could see a case made where they would both receive the same amount of negative Karma. Which is why many Buddhists eat only fruit, nuts, and some vegetables. I am sure that when they did this, they did not think that eating an apple was killing off zygotes. My point here is that everyone who even contemplates this idea of humane treatment knows that food isn't created out of thin air. They know that no matter how much they make a ceremony out of a meal, it's still the killing of another organism. Showing respect is like asking for forgiveness for an act you're about to commit - you know that there are consequences, so you might as well try to work around them. Remorse and guilt are to be avoided in the Buddhist's mind. Negative karma awaits for all of us who take the lives of organisms. We might as well do it as efficiently and with as little fanfaire as possible. I'm sure that the animal doesn't care whether or not you thanked your God for the offering, but I'd bet the farm that he cares quite a bit about the method with which he is going to die.
• down with factory farms!
• sorry - I meant literally I didn't want to sound Buddhist, for approximately the reason you point out (killing is killing no matter the manner). And I absolutely didn't want to bring God into it, but just to express surprise at what I thought you had said: that ethical and or humane treatment is an unnecessary sentimental sop because in the end, they're all dead anyway. I agree heartily than the fanfare is beside the point, but do think that that is just my perspective on the spiritual issue, separate from the ethical one. Nonetheless, I think that humane slaughter and efficient slaughter are not by necessity the same, and that Corson's point was that they can and should be.
• So... I was this thread, when I saw a link to this thread, where I saw this comment. Nostril, I owe you an apology.
• you sick f. . ohh . . right. /retract
• Don't eat the green stuff.