PETA sidles up to lobsters

[Walsingham]

PETA applaud release of lobster from restaurant. A spokesman describes the lbster as a "noble old-timer".

 

Excuse me, but I don't care if the lobster is 160,000 years old. It's a lobster. Precisely how much nobility can you get into a lobster? Even if it could, how do they know that this lobster is noble. I bet it helped nazi u-boats sink shipping in its day.

[Morgoth]

So, because he's some 140 years old his life gets spared, while his younger bretheren get cooked alive? This is unfair!

[Gorgon]

140 sounds a little chewy.

 

Anyway humans are sentimental like that. There is a difference between eating a 200 year old turtle and a, what, 6 month old chicken. For some reason it is also worse to eat a dog or whale than a pig. It the only conclusion is that it's racism, or in this case ageism.

[Walsingham]

So, because he's some 140 years old his life gets spared, while his younger bretheren get cooked alive? This is unfair!

 

Good point. He's lived his life. If he was truly noble he would have offerred to trade his miserable hide for a young lobster with a bright future.

[Enoch]

The definitive consideration of the ethics of the cooking and eating of lobster, by the recently departed (and fantastically talented) David Foster Wallace:

 

Consider the Lobster

 

Edit: The pagination on Gormet's site makes the footnotes a pain to read, so here's a .pdf of the original magazine pages.

Edited January 10, 2009 by Enoch

[Deadly_Nightshade]

[Tale]

So, because he's some 140 years old his life gets spared, while his younger bretheren get cooked alive? This is unfair!

It's unfair, yes, but it's damned cool.

 

Lobsters potentially can live indefinitely, barring disease and injury. It'd be amazing just to see how long a some particularly old lobsters can live before we kill and eat the dang thing.

 

According to the wiki article, they grow throughout their lives and the largest one on record was twice the size of this 140 year old.

Edited January 11, 2009 by Tale

[Walsingham]

Then we are agreed that the lobster is not in fact noble, and is a prehistoric sea insect with the morals of a Marseilles guttersnipe? If so, I suggest we petition the Royal Navy to depth charge the bastard's new home until he is killed.

[Llyranor]

I'm going to hunt down that lobster and eat it.

[Trenitay]

Do you happen to own a submarine with special lobster-catching equipment made to catch this lobster?

[taks]

i've always heard that as lobsters get larger, the quality of their taste goes down. large freshwater trout taste worse with size, too. maybe it's due to the fact that they are garbage men of the sea, i.e., the longer they live, the more crap they eat that eventually degrades the taste of their meat?

 

taks

[Killian Kalthorne]

That is right. Remember, PETA stands for People Eating Tasty Animals. A 140 year old lobster doesn't sound too tasty.

[Gorth]

Considering how unpleasant being boiled alive is, a 140 year old lobster should know better than letting itself get caught.

[Hiro Protagonist]

The idiots at PETA have come up with another brilliant idea. PETA's push to rename fish 'sea kittens'

[Deadly_Nightshade]

The idiots at PETA have come up with another brilliant idea. PETA's push to rename fish 'sea kittens'

 

[Gorgon]

Animal rights is a laudable enterprise, too bad these PETA nincompoops ridicule it so.

[Trenitay]

I'm not up to date on my fish populations. Are fish becoming extinct? Are lobsters becoming extinct? Is PETA even a credible group? Do they do anything worthwhile?

[Walsingham]

PETA do more to discredit animal rights than anything I could do in my whole lifetime. When it comes to anything I can pan-fry with shallots and soy sauce, I'm a goddamned Nazi; if I can kill it before it kills me, then it's going in mah belly.