Posted on behalf of my sister, who is a bit too shy to register at the moment.
Dear Sender,
I love to eat lobster, I really do, but the lobster I get is ordered properly: From a Menu!
It does not arrive at my door, unbidden, in a box, packed with stinking seaweed and waving its claws demanding immediate attention. Oh wait, apparently it does and did last week. Eeeeww! I was appalled by it! Adding to my discomfort was the tagline from the company that sent it: “From our Cove to your Stove.” Again–eeewww!
I’m happy cloaking myself in the delusion that ground beef really does come from cellophane packs in the grocery store. How do you think someone in Maine would like to receive a special chicken dinner from America’s heartland, complete with a live chicken and instructions on how to chop its little head off?
Thanks for the thought, but next time a simple card will do.
The sender might assume that you are capable of less than murder. Perhaps you could “hire” it done. Then you might get charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Or you could just “hint” to a close friend or relative that you like lobster. What the person does to them might not be your fault.
As to what a Maine person(what does one call them?–“Maniacs?”) would do with a live chicken, I would think that they are a hardy breed, and would as soon whack the head off of a pullet as to look at it. Sunday dinner here we come.
The tagline “…cove to…stove” was clever. You’re obviously dating the wrong guy. He hasn’t picked up on your signals that you wouldn’t like what he sent. Flush him.
Kindly forward the bug to me. I’ll be happy to ensure that it is properly attended to.
I don’t have a cite handy, but lobsters are a lot closer to cockroaches than they are to any animal, including fish, hence calling it a bug. You’re not upset at the thought of stepping on a roach, are you? So don’t worry about boiling a lobster.
If you really want them to go gently, pop them in the freezer for a few minutes pre-boiling. They’ll essentially go unconscious in the cold, then you can pop them into the hot water. By the time they warm up, they’re cooked.
Sure, they belong to the same phylum. They only differ by class, order, family, genus and species, making them practically cousins - just like humans and their close relative the python.
I had a kid at one of my tables last week plead with the mom that she wanted a live lobster from the tank for her dinner. Her excuse she gave her mother was not that she was hungry, but that she wanted to see it die. Go figure.
My blond friend and I went out to dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant last year…while we were looking at the menu, she noticed the tank in the middle of the restaurant, which held live lobsters for the patrons to choose for their dinner. She was so upset at the thought of someone killing the poor things, she snuck over to the tank and took all of the lobsters, and hid them in her bag.
After we ran out of the restaurant, we parted ways. She told me later that she went to the forest, and set them all free!!
(I did mention she was blond, didn’t I?)
Ok…I really did not think I would have to write a disclaimer here, but:
Please note the dual references to “the blonde”
Please note the at the end of the post
Please note that lobsters DO NOT LIVE WELL IN THE FOREST!!!
Please note that this was a joke, it was not intended to alarm or worry any fellow dopers.
I used to work at a restaurant that had one of those claw-games, just like the ones at the grocery store where you try to grab stuffed animals, only you grabbed lobsters.
And you’d be amazed at the number of people who’d dump $10, $20, even (once) $90 into that stupid game! (It was $2 a play, and the lobsters were usually smarter than the claw, so you rarely caught them.)
I think the most vivid memory of that game, though, is the time a little five-year-old girl played it, and managed to catch two lobsters at the same time…when they were brought to her table a few minutes later, steaming and bright red and accompanied by garlic butter sauce, she just about lost it. Screaming, crying, and throwing a fit b/c nobody had told her the lobsters would die.
She thought she’d caught herself two pets.
Her parents didn’t seem to care, though; they ate well that night.
I, for one, never thought you should play with your food. And we got several angry letters from PETA about that game.
Ok, that cracked me up :).
Fortunately I’ve always had others to do my lobster and crab killing for me – my mum gets given an esky of lobsters (around 50) every time she does work on an island in the South Pacific so although we’ve usually got a freezer full of them I’ve never actually had to kill one!
As a minor hijack, persons from Maine used to be known as Downeasters (aka “a Down East man…”). Not sure what the origin is beyond that it’s an old sailing term.
