Lobsters are Buddies

It's as if she knew. When Em was maybe three years old, I made a comment about eating lobsters, and she insisted that you couldn't eat lobsters. Why?

'Lobsters are buddies,' she said. 'They live in the water.'

Target had a lobster pond, and she liked to go check them out. It's logical: Why don't we sell pets in the same section of the store as food? I even have a friend who bought an enormous frog at a Chinese market as a pet. The Chinese market guy could not believe they'd spend $8 on a frog and not eat him.

Couldn't I take the lobster out of the tank, boil him alive, then eat him?

'NO! Lobsters are buddies.'

Aside from the obvious cannibalistic thing (and I remember reading somewhere that lobsters tend to cannibalism, that if you don't rubber band their claws, they'll eat each other in the lobster pond at target), the kosher laws have always been a mystery to me.

I mean, everyone has foods they prefer not to eat. My list is pretty short, but what on earth is it about shellfish? I tend to think that these primitive codes have a basis in survival. It's probably not very economical to raise pigs in Palestine, and if it uses more resources than it yields, it'd stand to reason that custom would proscribe eating pork. Without the kosher law, some guy would get rich and eat pork as a status symbol, something like that. As opposed to merely owning slaves, which wasn't against the rules. Or have several simultaneous wives ages thirteen to seventeen. Creepy, but not scripturally banned. Go figure.

Some of the combination things, I don't know, maybe mixing dairy and meat (isn't that one of the rules) had to do with sanitation, a situation that in that time and context invited food poisoning. Dunno. Maybe it's all irrational and arbitrary. Unaccountable would say all relgion is irrational and arbitrary. In fact, it's an article of faith with him...the irony!

But shrimp? What the hell? Did the Levites have some sort of insight into the cholesterol content? Did they just know that if Jews figured out how to make Cajun Angels (shrimp wrapped in bacon, grilled with butter and barbecue spices) that they'd have to figure out how to set up a cardiology practice in a nomadic desert dwelling society? Maybe it was only once the Jewish Homeland of New York City was established that cardiology for fun and profit came into play.

Uh-oh, the Thought Police are getting ready to ram the door. I just made a comment some would claim was anti-Semitic. But I adore New York City. I'd move there in a heartbeat if Frau Lobster didn't detest the place. And I want one of those hats I saw the Hassidim wear. What do you call those hats? And is it some sort of cultural affront for a Goy to don one of those hats? Not that it'd necessarily stop me, but if it's offensive, I'd like to at least know.

And the withdrawal from the 'settlements,' that's an amazing bit of progress, and from a regime that I didn't think was capable of anything but more attrocities against Palestinians. I've suggested before that the best way to peacefully resolve Palestine is to give Israel a new location: Nevada. Then pull all foreign aid to the Zionist regime and give the Israelis airpane tickets. I suggested Nevada because it's a dessert and the Mormons next door could give them a good example of how to run a theocracy that isn't so Apartheidy. And there's plenty of room in Nevada.

And I have to wonder how different the century might be if the early Zionists in favor of Uganda as a homeland had won. It was a real consideration. It couldn't have turned out any worse than what's happened with Palestine.

But this New York thing: what better way to gentrify the Bronx than to bring millions of Israeli Jews in? Take the shittiest neighborhoods in NYC, I guarantee you the average Israeli Settler has seen tougher. In a couple of years, it'd be like Manhattan.

The other great thing about New York is assimilation isn't just optional, it's practically impossible. How the hell do you 'assimilate' into 8,000,000 people from 12,000,000 cultures?