Wait, eating them kinda sorta takes away their ability to make a pearl for to hang on my sweetie’s pretty neck, doesn’t it?
Waste of a good pearl factory, if you ask me.
Only if it’s noticably moving and has something resembling a face.
Look, You, this is no laughing matter.
The shells should always be closed when you buy them. That’s why they have to be shucked - although I’m surprised they survive the shucking (if that is indeed true).
Shucking should not be fatal, as it only severs the adductor muscle from the shell.
Survive? :dubious:
I have had kawakani a couple of times, which are most certainly alive, crawling river crabs. You eat them by popping them in your mouth and biting them before they bite you.
They are said to be an aphrodisiac. In my experience, that is true - they work on the date who is mighty mighty impressed by the eating task, and having been told by the waitress that the crabs are in fact an aphrodisiac, gets the hint.
If you’d asked me yesterday, I’d have tried an oyster on the half shell. Now, no way in hell. If there is *any *chance that my food might have even a *vague *awareness of, “fuck! I failed!”, then it’s not a tasty good time. I have enough of a complex without wondering if my food is thinking negative thoughts while I eat it.
Cool! More for the rest of us!
They can’t think; they don’t have brains.
They are alive, but pretty much in the same sense that plants are alive. This opinion is backed up by the Wiki article on oysters. To wit:
[bolding and parenthetical comments mine]
Wow, I had no idea oysters were alive when I ate them. Well, actually, I suspect this may be one of those things I knew at one time and then managed successfully to forget.
Years ago when I was still nominally vegetarian, I used to justify eating sushi with the utilitarian argument that I LOVE eating sushi and how much fun could a fish possibly have? I don’t suppose a bivalve can have much utility in its life at all (and no less an authority than Peter Singer agrees with me!) but to eat them alive . . . !
Luckily for me (or my conscience, at least) I live pretty far inland. We have “oysters” on the menu here in the Rocky Mountains, but they ain’t seafood! (And the one time in my life I was drunk enough to want to try them, the restaurant was all out.) Next time I get a chance to eat a real oyster I’ll hopefully have managed to forget this fact again.
At the height of his popularity, the chicken earned $4,500 USD per month ($50,000 in 2005 dollars) and was valued at $10,000.This is not helping my self-esteem.
Suburban Princess: Ooh! This one’s still wiggling!
Oyster: [Wilhelm Scream as Suburban Princess eats it]
Suburban Princess: Tee hee hee! 
Cool - self-vetting foodstuff! Good oyster!
One can also apply a soaked napkin to the oyster, at which point it should name the leader of your local Al Quada cell. This establishes, not only that the oyster is alive and safe to eat, but that you have exhausted its stock of useful information before consuming it.
Then off to the mastication and the acid bath!