Lobster Sayings Quotes

...in real life I always seem to have a hard time winding up a conversation or asking somebody to leave, and sometimes the moment becomes so delicate and fraught with social complexity that I'll get overwhelmed trying to sort out all the different possible ways of saying it and all the different implications of each option and will just sort of blank out and do it totally straight -- 'I want to terminate the conversation and not have you be in my apartment anymore' -- which evidently makes me look either as if I'm very rude and abrupt or as if I'm semi-autistic and have no sense of how to wind up a conversation gracefully...I've actually lost friends this way.

I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years

When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on.

He's all right. His hair is cute." Jonas froze, his lobster fork halfway to his mouth. " Oh my God, you're in love." "I'm not in love." "'his hair is cute'? You never say anything nice about anyone. Coming from you, cute hair is a mating call." " I talked to the guy for thirty seconds. And then he waved at me while i was in the tank." "Holy fuck, you're getting married, aren't you!" " Will you simmer. I certainly am not.

I want to be able to listen to recording of piano sonatas and know who's playing. I want to go to classical concerts and know when you're meant to clap. I want to be able to 'get' modern jazz without it all sounding like this terrible mistake, and I want to know who the Velvet Underground are exactly. I want to be fully engaged in the World of Ideas, I want to understand complex economics, and what people see in Bob Dylan. I want to possess radical but humane and well-informed political ideals, and I want to hold passionate but reasoned debates round wooden kitchen tables, saying things like 'define your terms!' and 'your premise is patently specious!' and then suddenly to discover that the sun's come up and we've been talking all night. I want to use words like 'eponymous' and 'solipsistic' and 'utilitarian' with confidence. I want to learn to appreciate fine wines, and exotic liquers, and fine single malts, and learn how to drink them without turning into a complete div, and to eat strange and exotic foods, plovers' eggs and lobster thermidor, things that sound barely edible, or that I can't pronounce...Most of all I want to read books; books thick as brick, leather-bound books with incredibly thin paper and those purple ribbons to mark where you left off; cheap, dusty, second-hand books of collected verse, incredibly expensive, imported books of incomprehensible essays from foregin universities. At some point I'd like to have an original idea...And all of these are the things that a university education's going to give me.

I never liked lobster in my life, and mainly because I’d never tried it. On my eightieth birthday I tried it. I can’t say I’m greatly excited over lobster still, but I have no doubt as to its taste now, and I don’t fear it. I dare say death will be a lobster, too, and I can come to terms with it.

I wanted to say something to cheer her up. I had a feeling that cheering her up might be a lot of work. I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, it’s like some kind of brain surgery, and you have to tweak exactly the right part of the lobe. Except with talking, it’s more like brain surgery with old, rusted skewers and things, maybe like those things you use to eat lobster, but brown. And you have to get exactly the right place, and you’re touching around in the brain but the patient, she keeps jumping and saying, “Ow.

So you make this deal with the gods. You do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and the whole works? And nothing bad will ever happen. Right.' Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction. A rain dance even more so. I thought I might finally have offended Loyd past the point of no return, like stealing the lobster from frozen foods that time, to get myself fired. But Loyd was just thinking. After a minute he said, 'No, it's not like that. It's not making a deal, bad things can still happen, but you want to try not to cause them to happen. It has to do with keeping things in balance.' In balance.' Really, it's like the spirits have made a deal with us.' And what is the deal?' I asked. We're on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: We know how nice you're being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests.' Like a note you'd send somebody after you stayed in their house?' Exactly like that. 'Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry, I hope it wasn't your favorite one.

In ways that certain of us are uncomfortable about, SNOOTs’ attitudes about contemporary usage resemble religious/political conservatives’ attitudes about contemporary culture. We combine a missionary zeal and a near-neural faith in our beliefs’ importance with a curmudgeonly hell-in-a-handbasket despair at the way English is routinely manhandled and corrupted by supposedly educated people. The Evil is all around us: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers and bursts of voguish linguistic methane that make any SNOOT’s cheek twitch and forehead darken. A fellow SNOOT I know likes to say that listening to most people’s English feels like watching somebody use a Stradivarius to pound nails: We are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled at Everyone Else.

Jesus. Why'd you do that?" "That motherfucker slapped me!" "And you just kill him?" "You never motherfuckin' hit a woman!" "How could he have missed you dedication of feminine virtue, especially when you keep saying motherfucker?

Lobsters," Aithinne says again, just in case I misheard her, and I rather hoped I had. "I hear they're biologically immortal," she explains, "and exempt from greed. And they're funny looking, so I've decided they're my favorite... what do you think of a lobster for a pet?" Aithinne asks suddenly, as if she's thought long and hard about this.

The wince and muffled oath he gave when he stepped into the water got a laugh out of her. “It’s not that hot.” “If I had a lobster, we’d boil it and eat it.” “You set the temp.” “So I did, and now, with no lobster in sight, we’re boiling my balls.” He’d set it for her, she thought, so she could soak in the heat and the scent, turn off her mind with some relaxation program. She thought of what she’d overheard him saying to Mira, how he’d looked. He needed this as much as she did.

When the people who were responsible found out what had happened to Chad and Bobby, they shrugged it off by saying that’s what the deserved for harvesting lobsters…yeah, a five-year-old really deserved being blown to pieces over seafood. I hate extremists with a passion. They get so wrapped up in their cause that they think nothing of killing anyone who doesn’t agree with them. (Syd)

And I was alone, had been for a while, and might be for a while, but it no longer frightened me the way it had. I was discovering something terrifyingly simple: there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I was discovering this in the way, I suppose, that everybody does, but having tried, endlessly, to do something about it. You attach yourself to someone, or you allow someone to attach themselves to you. This person is not for you, and you, really, are not for that person--and that's it, son. But you try, you both try. The only result of all your trying is to make absolutely real the unconquerable distance between you: to dramatize, in a million ways, the absolutely unalterable truth of this distance. Side by side, and hand in hand, your sunsets, nevertheless are not occurring in the same universe. It is not merely that the rain falls differently on each of you, for that can be a wonder and a joy: it is that what is rain for the one is not rain for the other. Your elements will not mix, unless one agrees that the elements be pulverized--and the result of that is worse than being alone. The result of that is to become one of the living dead. The most dreadful people I have ever known are those who have been "saved," as they claim, by Christ--they could not possibly be more deluded--those for whom the heavenly telephone is endlessly ringing, always with disastrous messages for everybody else. Or those people who have been cured by their psychiatrists, a cure which has rendered them a little less exciting than oatmeal. I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach--or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years.

When I was in my early 30s and appeared on CNN, Oprah, 20/20 and Entertainment Tonight, my loved ones didn’t say, “Good job!” My loved ones said, “The camera adds more than 20 pounds.” One detail-oriented aunt said “Not for nothing, but don’t wear red. You look like an ad for Red Lobster.

The old marchioness had him tracing down bed hangings and carpets for her. Send that. Be here. To her, all the world was a menial. If she wanted a lobster or a sturgeon, she ordered it up, and if she wanted good taste she ordered it in the same way. The marchioness would run her hand over Florentine silks, making little squeaks of pleasure. "You bought it, Master Cromwell," she would say. "And very beautiful it is. Your next task is to work out how we pay for it.

Guv’ner,’ says Phil, with exceeding gravity, ‘he’s a leech in his dispositions, he’s a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his twistings, and a lobster in his claws.

It's a kind of heresy to say so, but I think our race has made forms more beautiful than what was here before us. Sometimes god's handiwork is crude. There is no more ugly thing than a lobster. There's not much pretty about a caribou. It has an ungainly walk and its touchhole voids droppings when it strains in harness. Was there a straight line on earth before we drew one?

Dearest Reece, I know you think it improper, or at the very least imprudent, for us to write to one another, but I don't care.There are too many rules as it is and they would choke me if I let them. Between corsets and lessons and curtsies and etiquette, I am hardly myself, and that is how they want it. They would prefer we all dress and talk and think (or not think) alike, like paper dolls. I do not wish to be a paper doll. Surely you can see that I am stronger than that.I don't give a fig for the scandalbroth or the gossipmongers. Let us remove to Paris, where no one knows us to care and where they dine on scandal with eclairs every morning. You will say again that it is impossible but I refuse to believe it. I know with every touch of your hand on mine, with every stolen kiss, that nothing is impossible. Perhaps love isn't meant to be simple. Perhaps this is merely a test, such as Psyche went through to prove herself to Cupid. Would you have me count lentils, beloved? And as you claim I have the most to lose, I pray you will let me decide for myself what it is I want and need. Which is you. Not silks or lobster soup in crystal bowls or diamonds around my neck. Just you. You say again and again that you love me. Prove it.

Waaant equity," hisses the alien intruder. "You can't be Pamela Macx," says Pierre, his back to the wall, keeping the sword point before the lobster-woman-thing. "She's in a nunnery in Armenia or something. You pulled that out of Glashwiecz's memories - he worked for her, didn't he?" Claws go snicker-snack before his face. "Investment partnership!" screeches the harridan. "Seat on the board! Eat brains for breakfast!" It lurches sideways, trying to get past his guard.

Nana and Pops were waiting in the living room. They had their recliners pushed in front of the couch, the only place available for Cole and me to sit. The moment we were in position, the interrogation began. Pops: Plans for the future? Groaning, I dropped my head in my hands. He'd kicked things off with Justin the exact same way. Guaranteed, he'd end the same way. Cole: College, law enforcement. Nana: Oh, I like him better than that other boy already. Pops: Good, that's good. Now finish this sentence for me. When a girl says no, she means... Yep. Exactly the same. Cole: No. And that's that. I don't push for more. Nana: Another excellent answer. But here's an even tougher sentence for you to finish. Premarital sex is... I should have let the zombies have me. Cole: Up to the couple. What happens between them is no one else's business. Sorry, but not even yours. Both Pops ans Nana blustered over that for a minute, but they soon calmed down. I, of course, blushed the most horrifying shade of lobster. (That was just a guess.) However, I found Cole's answer exceptional. Pops: That's fair enough, I guess. So how do you feel about drinking and driving? Cole: I think it's stupid, that's one thing you'll never have to worry about with me and Ali. I never drink, and if she does, I won't take advantage of her. I'd bring her home. I'll always look out for her safety, you have my word. "I won't be drinking, either," I said. "Ever." Nana: Aren't you just a breath of fresh air? Pops: He is. He is indeed. I think I was as impressed with him as my grandparents were. Underneath the muscles, scars and tattoos (which my grandparents couldn't see, since he wore a long-sleeved shirt) he was a really good guy. And because they were so impressed, they let us go with no more fuss!

He sighs and wiggles around in his chair to get comfortable-it's going to be a long night. Watching humans play pretend for two hours doesn't exactly flip his fin. But he can tell Emma's getting restless. And so is he. Just as he nods off, a loud noise pops from the screen. Emma latches onto his arm as if he's dangling her over a cliff. She presses her face into his biceps and moans. "Is it over yet?" she whispers. "The movie?" "No. The thing that jumped out at her. Is it gone?" Galen chuckles and pries his arm from her grasp, then wraps it around her. "No. You should definitely stay there until I tell you it's clear." She whips her head up, but there's an almost-smile in her eyes. "I might take you up on that, pretend date or no. I hate scary movies." "Why didn't you tell me that? Everyone at school was practically salivating over this movie." The lady next to her leans over. "Shhh!" she whisper-yells. Emma nestles into the crook of his arm and buries her face in his chest, where she returns frequently as the movie goes on. Galen admits to himself that humans can make everything look pretty real. Still, he can't understand how Emma can be afraid when she knows they're only actors on the screen getting paid to scream like boiling lobsters. But who is he to complain? Their convincing performance keeps Emma in his arms for almost two solid hours. When the movie is over, he pulls the car to the curb and opens the door for her just as Rachel instructed. Emma accepts his hand as he helps her in. "What should we call our new little game?" he says on the way home. "Game?" "You know, 'Have some Lemonheads, sweet lips!'" "Oh, right." She laughs. "How about...Upchuck?" "Sounds appropriate. You realize it's your turn, right? I was thinking of making you eat a live crab." She leans over him. He almost swerves off the road when her lips brush his ear. "Where will you get a live crab? All I have to do is poke my head in the water and tell them to scatter." He grins. She's been getting more comfortable with her Gift. Yesterday, she sent some dolphins chasing after him.

It might be instructive to try seeing things from the perspective of, say, a God-fearing hard-working rural-Midwestern military vet. It's not that hard. Imaging gazing through his eyes at the world of MTV and the content of video games, at the gross sexualization of children's fashions, at Janet Jackson flashing her aureole on what's supposed to be a holy day. Imagine you're him having to explain to your youngest what oral sex is and what it's got to do with a US president. Ads for penis enlargers and HOT WET SLUTS are popping up out of nowhere on your family's computer. Your kids' school is teaching them WWII and Vietnam in terms of Japanese internment and the horrors of My Lai. Homosexuals are demanding holy matrimony; your doctor's moving away because he can't afford the lawsuit insurance; illegal aliens want driver's licenses; Hollywood elites are bashing America and making millions from it; the president's ridiculed for reading his Bible; priests are diddling kids left and right. Shit, the country's been directly attacked, and people aren't supporting our commander in chief.

prepubescent relative to collect your excellence-in-filmed-sodomy prize?—are met with bemused shrugs), “but I’m here to thank you on his behalf, and to say that I taught Jim everything he knows.” [Enormous audience laugh and ovation, single spasmodic shudder from hunched ABC Radio lady.]

Say, kiddies! Today we're studying Wacky Geography in Mid-World. You see, boys and girls, in Mid-World you start in New York, travel southeast to Kansas, and then continue along the Path of the Beam until you come to the Dark Tower...which happens to be smack in the middle of everything. First, fight the giant lobsters! Next, ride the psychotic train! And then, after a visit to our snack bar for a popkin or two...

My idea is not to try and charm you with subtle psychological observations. I have no desire to draw applause from you with my finesse and my humour. There are some authors who employ their talent in the delicate description of varying states of soul, character traits, etc. I shall not be counted among these. All that accumulation of realistic detail, with clearly differentiated characters hogging the limelight, has always seemed pure bullshit to me, I’m sorry to say. Daniel who is Hervé’s friend, but who feels a certain reticence about Gérard. Paul’s fantasy as embodied in Virginie, my cousin’s trip to Venice … One could spend hours on this. Might as well watch lobsters marching up the side of an aquarium (it suffices, for that, to go to a fish restaurant). Added to which, I associate very little with other human beings. To reach the otherwise philosophical

I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, it's like some kind of brain surgery, and you have to tweak exactly the right part of the lobe. except with talking, it's more like brain surgery with old, rusted skewers and things, and maybe like those things you use to eat lobster, but brown. And you have to get exactly the right place, and you're touching around in the brain, But the patient, she keeps jumping and saying ow.

John Ziegler is not a journalist-he is an entertainer. Or maybe it's better to say that he is part of a peculiar, modern, and very popular type of news industry, one that manages to enjoy authority and influence of journalism without the stodgy constraints of fairness, objectivity, and responsibility that make trying to tell the truth such a drag for everyone involved. It is a frightening industry, though not for any of the simple reasons most critics give.

I picked up the large lapel button richly worked in purple, green and yellow plastic. 'January 1997,' it announced, 'Day of Visionaries.' Beneath the slogan was a portrait of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. And next to him, sharing the billing as it were, was a same-size picture of our newly elected President. And below was the official logo of the inauguration committee. I’m sorry, but that’s too much. Much too much. I can tune out the Chief Executive when he drivels on about building a bridge to Newt Gingrich. I can be shaking a cocktail or grilling a lobster when he intones that 'nothing big ever came from being small.' I can be receiving a telephone call in a foreign language and still keep up with him when he says that the future lies before us, and the past behind, and that we must light the torch of knowledge from the fountain of wisdom (or whatever). As Orwell once remarked, after a point you stop noticing that you have said things like 'The jackboot is thrown into the melting pot,’ or 'The fascist octopus has sung its swansong.' Motor-mouth and automatic pilot and sheer flatulence and conceit supply their own mediocre, infinitely renewable energy. But this cheap, cheery little button turned the scale. It’s one thing to be bored, or subjected to boredom. It’s another to be insulted. This is a pot of piss flung in the face. What does it take to get people disgusted these days?

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with his golden feet? I reply, the ocean knows this. You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent bell? What is it waiting for? I tell you it is waiting for time, like you. You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms? Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know. You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal, and I reply by describing how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies. You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers, which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides? Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on the crystal architecture of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now? You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean spines? The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks? The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out in the deep places like a thread in the water? I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its jewel boxes is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure, and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the petal hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl. I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead of human eyes, dead in those darknesses, of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes on the timid globe of an orange. I walked around as you do, investigating the endless star, and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked, the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

We follow the tail-lights of Jerry’s Kia to Red Lobster for dinner, another brightly lit American chain island in a car-park ocean. Walk through the front doors and before you’re shown a table, you meet the inmates: a tank of condemned lobsters awaiting execution, little rubber handcuffs around their immovable claws, walls of cloudy Perspex dividing up their prison cells. They stare up at us, unblinking. ‘Pick one,’ says Jerry, grinning. I stand there, Caligula in a cagoule, choosing which one is going to die. They crawl over each other to get a better look at us.

Or is it the opposite-that the US has moved so far and so fast toward cultural permissiveness that we've reached a kind of apsidal point? It might be instructive to try seeing things from the perspective of, say, a God-fearing hard-working rural-Midwestern military vet. It's not that hard. Imagine gazing through his eyes at the world of MTV and the content of video games, at the gross sexualization of children's fashions, at Janet Jackson flashing her aureole on what's supposed to be a holy day. Imagine you're him having to explain to your youngest what oral sex is and what it's got to do with a US president. Ads for penis enlargers and Hot Wet Sluts are popping up out of nowhere on your family's computer. Your kids' school is teaching them WWII and Vietnam in terms of Japanese internment and the horrors of My Lai. Homosexuals are demanding holy matrimony; your doctor's moving away because he can't afford the lawsuit insurance; illegal aliens want driver's licenses; Hollywood elites are bashing America and making millions from it; the president's ridiculed for reading his Bible; priests are diddling kids left and right. Shit, the country's been directly attacked, and people aren't supporting our commander in chief. Assume for a moment that it's not silly to see things this man's way. What cogent, compelling, relevant message can the center and left offer him? Can we bear to admit that we've actually helped set him up to hear "We 're better than they are" not as twisted and scary but as refreshing and redemptive and true? If so, then now what?

Pigeons wrapped in the leaves of vines. Oysters in crisp pastry cases. Whole Gloucester salmon in aspic. Yarmouth lobsters cooked in wine and herbs. Glazed tarts of pippin apples. Paper-thin layers of buttery pastry spread with greengages, apricots, peaches, cherries, served with great gouts of golden cream. "Well," I say, "it's gruel for us tonight, with a smidgeon of salt and pepper." Whereupon he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a twist of greased paper, and opens it. Immediately I smell the tang of heather honey. "For you, Ann." In his grimed palm sits an oozing chunk of honeycomb as big as a plover's egg. I clap my hands in delight, my tongue waggling with greed. As we eat our gruel I make the clots of chewy wax last as long as possible, pushing them around and around my mouth, pressing them against my molars, sucking on them 'til they slip sweetly down my throat.

I always think those people fortunate who are content to stand, without question, by the ten commandments, knowing exactly how to conduct themselves, and propped up by the hope of Paradise on the one hand, and by the fear of a cloven-footed devil with pincers, on the other.... But we who answer Why to the crude Thou Shalt Not, are like sailors on a wintry sea without a compass. Reason and instinct say one thing, and convention says another. But the worst of it is that one's conscience has been reared on the Decalogue, and fostered on hell-fire—and one's conscience has the last word. I dare say it's cowardly, but it's certainly discreet, to take it into consideration. It's like lobster salad; it's not actually immoral to eat it, but it will very likely give you indigestion.... One has to be very sure of oneself to go against the ordinary view of things; and if one isn't, perhaps it's better not to run any risks, but just to walk along the same secure old road as the common herd. It's not exhilarating, it's not brave, and it's rather dull; but it's eminently safe.

At once, Raj set about finding some dry clothes for Ben and the Queen. However, all he had were his unsold costumes from Halloween. “This is your size, Your Majesty,” said Raj, handing her a lobster costume. “One has never dressed as a lobster before. What fun!” she said, taking the costume behind the card carousel to change. Next, Raj picked up one of his princess outfits. Before he could say a thing, Ben snapped, “NO!” “What do you mean, no?” asked Raj. “No means no! I am never, ever, ever dressing up as a princess!” “But you would look so pretty!” Raj implored. “NO!” “Well, the lobster outfits are too big for you.” The Queen reappeared with hers on. “Red is so your colour!” remarked Raj. “Oh, why thank you, Mr Raj. Now come on, Ben. You can’t stay in those wet things – you will catch your death of cold!” “But—” “No buts, Benjamin! Put it on! That’s an order from your Queen!” Ben harumphed and disappeared behind the card carousel. Moments later, he reappeared awkwardly. He was dressed as a princess with the grumpiest look on his face. “You know I said how pretty you would look as a princess?” began Raj. “Yep.” “I was wrong.” Then,

Have a culminative look at just one snippet from Ipolit's famous "Necessary Explanation" in The Idiot: "Anyone who attacks individual charity," I began, "attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity. But the organization of 'public charity' and the problem of individual freedom are two distinct questions, and not mutually exclusive. Individual kindness will always remain, because it is an individual impulse, the living impulse of one personality to exert a direct influence upon another....How can you tell, Bahmutov, what significance such an association of one personality with another may have on the destiny of those associated?" Can you imagine any of our own major novelists allowing a character to say stuff like this (not, mind you, just as hypocritical bombast so that some ironic hero can stick a pin in it, but as part of a ten-page monologue by somebody trying to decide whether to commit suicide)? The reason you can't is the reason he wouldn't: such a novelist would be, by our lights, pretentious and overwrought and silly. The straight presentation of such a speech in a Serious Novel today would provoke not outrage or invective, but worse-one raised eyebrow and a very cool smile. Maybe, if the novelist was really major, a dry bit of mockery in The New Yorker. The novelist would be (and this is our own age's truest vision of hell) laughed out of town.

So to avoid the twin dangers of nostalgia and despairing bitterness, I'll just say that in Cartagena we'd spend a whole month of happiness, and sometimes even a month and a half, or even longer, going out in Uncle Rafa's motorboat, La Fiorella, to Bocachica to collect seashells and eat fried fish with plantain chips and cassava, and to the Rosary Islands, where I tried lobster, or to the beach at Bocagrande, or walking to the pool at the Caribe Hotel, until we were mildly burned on our shoulders, which after a few days started peeling and turned freckly forever, or playing football with my cousins, in the little park opposite Bocagrande Church, or tennis in the Cartagena Club or ping-pong in their house, or going for bike rides, or swimming under the little nameless waterfalls along the coast, or making the most of the rain and the drowsiness of siesta time to read the complete works of Agatha Christie or the fascinating novels of Ayn Rand (I remember confusing the antics of the architect protagonist of The Fountainhead with those of my uncle Rafael), or Pearl S. Buck's interminable sagas, in cool hammocks strung up in the shade on the terrace of the house, with a view of the sea, drinking Kola Roman, eating Chinese empanadas on Sundays, coconut rice with red snapper on Mondays, Syrian-Lebanese kibbeh on Wednesdays, sirloin steak on Fridays and, my favourite, egg arepas on Saturday mornings, piping hot and brought fresh from a nearby village, Luruaco, where they had the best recipe.

When they had gone less than a bowshot from the shore, Drinian said, “Look! What’s that?” and everyone stopped. “Are they great trees?” said Caspian. “Towers, I think,” said Eustace. “It might be giants,” said Edmund in a lower voice. “The way to find out is to go right in among them,” said Reepicheep, drawing his sword and pattering off ahead of everyone else. “I think it’s a ruin,” said Lucy when they had got a good deal nearer, and her guess was the best so far. What they now saw was a wide oblong space flagged with smooth stones and surrounded by gray pillars but unroofed. And from end to end of it ran a long table laid with a rich crimson cloth that came down nearly to the pavement. At either side of it were many chairs of stone richly carved and with silken cushions upon the seats. But on the table itself there was set out such a banquet as had never been seen, not even when Peter the High King kept his court at Cair Paravel. There were turkeys and geese and peacocks, there were boars’ heads and sides of venison, there were pies shaped like ships under full sail or like dragons and elephants, there were ice puddings and bright lobsters and gleaming salmon, there were nuts and grapes, pineapples and peaches, pomegranates and melons and tomatoes. There were flagons of gold and silver and curiously-wrought glass; and the smell of the fruit and the wine blew toward them like a promise of all happiness. “I say!” said Lucy. They came nearer and nearer, all very quietly. “But where are the guests?” asked Eustace. “We can provide that, Sir,” said Rhince.

There are several reasons for this. For one thing, it’s not just that lobsters get boiled alive, it’s that you do it yourself—or at least it’s done specifically for you, on-site. 14 As mentioned, the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, which is highlighted as an attraction in the festival’s program, is right out there on the MLF’s north grounds for everyone to see. Try to imagine a Nebraska Beef Festival 15 at which part of the festivities is watching trucks pull up and the live cattle get driven down the ramp and slaughtered right there on the World’s Largest Killing Floor or something—there’s no way. The intimacy of the whole thing is maximized at home, which of course is where most lobster gets prepared and eaten (although note already the semiconscious euphemism “prepared,” which in the case of lobsters really means killing them right there in our kitchens). The basic scenario is that we come in from the store and make our little preparations like getting the kettle filled and boiling, and then we lift the lobsters out of the bag or whatever retail container they came home in … whereupon some uncomfortable things start to happen. However stuporous a lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when the lobster’s fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature’s claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming 16 ). A blunter way to say this is that the lobster acts as if it’s in terrible pain, causing some cooks to leave the kitchen altogether and to take one of those little lightweight plastic oven-timers with them into another room and wait until the whole process is over.

Fiona said. “I wonder if he had a big insurance policy on Prudence?” “Ed didn’t mention that to me yesterday, but it didn’t really come up in the conversation either. He claims he was at Cutty Marina when she was killed, so he has an alibi I can check.” “Josiah claims to have an alibi too. Says he was out lobstering and his deck hand can verify it.” “Okay, I’ll check into that,” Jake said. “Let’s just get on with searching this area.” They put their heads down and started looking. Fiona pushed the leaves around with her feet disturbing a few little orange fire newts that were hanging around underneath. “There’s lots of newts here. Do you guys think one could have just crawled into Prudence’s mouth on its own?” “That would be quite a coincidence, wouldn’t it?” Jake asked. “Yes,” Morgan answered. Then she laughed.

They say he has made a fortune selling lobsters and renting houses to the summer people.

As Peer Insight’s Tim Ogilvie observes, being true to a cause often requires making tough decisions and sacrificing at times. “When you come to the point where you can’t serve both the bottom line and the cause, one or the other must suffer,” says Ogilvie, pointing to the Whole Foods supermarket chain, which stopped selling live lobsters for an extended time until it found a supplier that did humane harvesting. “Those are hard choices, but when you opt for the cause over the bottom line, employees can see that, and then they believe in the company and the cause even more.

near-deserted parking lot, both buildings looking freshly painted and hopeful for a marina in which there were no yachts. The biggest boat moored at the dock looked to be a forty-footer. Most of the others looked to be lobster boats, aged and constructed of wood. A few of the newer ones were fiberglass. The nicest of those was about thirty-five feet long, the hull painted blue, the wheelhouse painted white, the deck a honey teak. She paid attention to it because her husband stood on it, bathed in their headlights. Caleb exited the car fast. He pointed back at her, told Brian his wife was not taking things well. Rachel was happy to note Caleb limped even as he speed-walked to the boat. She, on the other hand, moved slowly, her eyes on Brian. His gaze barely left hers except for the occasional flicks in the direction of Caleb. If she’d known she’d end up killing him, would she have boarded the boat? She could turn around and go to the police. My husband is an impostor, she’d say. She imagined some smarmy desk sergeant replying, “Aren’t we all, ma’am?” Yes, she was certain, it was a crime to impersonate someone and a crime to keep two wives, but were those serious crimes? In the end, wouldn’t Brian just take a plea and it would all go away? She’d be left the laughingstock never-was, the failed print reporter who’d become a pill-addicted broadcast reporter who’d become a punch line and then a shut-in and who would keep the local comics stocked with weeks of fresh material once it was discovered that Meltdown Media Chick had married a con man with another wife and another life. She followed Caleb up the ramp to the boat. He stepped aboard. When she went to do the same, Brian offered his hand. She stared at it until he dropped it. He noticed the gun she carried. “Should I show you mine? So I feel safer?” “Be my guest.” She stepped aboard. As she did, Brian caught her by the wrist and stripped the gun from her hand in the same motion. He pulled his own gun, a .38 snub-nosed revolver, from under the flaps of his shirt and then laid them both on a table by the

You should explore the world," I said, tears springing to my eyes for no rational reason. "Do dangerous things. Ignore the fuck out of conventional wisdom. Walk on fire. Treat everyone with kindness because people are the only things worth holding on to. Live without regrets because there is no time for that shit. Never forget the way home, and leave a trail of breadcrumbs if you have to. Love, and get your heart broken, and say fuck it, and love again and then again. And whatever you do, never pass up an opportunity to get married on a lobster boat under a full moon with Jupiter and Mars as your witnesses.

I didn’t get a chance to say it earlier,” Delia said in a whisper loud enough to be heard…well, almost two stories up on a rope ladder anyway, making Kerry wince a little. “We really do like him. We’re happy for you.” Kerry wanted to hiss who’s we? but refrained. As far as she could tell, Cooper had spent the past three days befriending every man, woman, and lobster in Blueberry Cove. And every single one of them had managed to find a moment to tell her so. She was happy--truly--that everyone liked him but not surprised. He was a likeable guy. And she was equally happy folks were happy for her. Now she just wished they’d butt out and let her get on with being happy with Cooper. She managed to give Delia a little salute with half of one hand while still clutching the rope, and Delia gave her another enthusiastic wave, eyes sparkling. Kerry waited until Delia had scooted on back toward the café before turning her attention to the trapdoor. And almost had her second heart attack when she looked up, only to find Cooper staring down at her, his chin propped on folded arms, meaning he was lying flat on the balcony deck. He smiled and lifted his fingers in a little wave. “Nice of you to drop up,” he said, a smile curving his lips but the glittering light in his blue eyes telling a different story. His voice was deep and just a shade rough, which made her skin tingle in delicious anticipation. “I got waylaid by another of your throng of supporters and well-wishers so you only have yourself to blame.” “So I heard,” he said. “I’ll be sure to thank her later and tip double the usual when we order breakfast in tomorrow morning.” “Awfully sure of yourself, mister.” “Finish climbing that ladder and I’ll be happy to explain the source of my confidence.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Or, better yet, I’ll show you.” “Well, if I’d known there was going to be show and tell, I’d have gotten up here sooner.

Saffron, how are you?" Logan asks and he sounds genuinely interested. How am I? Small talk, right. I rest my hip on the table and give my back to Logan as I look down at his date. "Would you think it odd for a man to come to a small town and proceed to not speak to you for six months?" Her perfect lips form a grin. "Everyone or just me specifically?" "You, specifically." Her eyes light with humor. "Yes, that is odd." "Odder still for that man to then take you to bed and blow your mind with sex for almost twenty-four hours before ditching you and then staying off the radar for a week?" The humor has left her gaze now, but she answers anyway. "Indeed." "So what would you think when that same man shows up at your place of employment with a beautiful woman and attempts to engage you in small talk?" Her eyes leave mine for Logan's, but I don't miss the emotion in her gaze. She's mad. "Exactly." I turn and give Logan my full attention. "So how am I, Logan?" I pull out the chair next to him and sit down. "I could pretend to be a cool, sophisticated woman and lie to you and say I'm fabulous, but that just isn't me. What I am is hurt and more than a little pissed, so the idea of making small talk with you is repugnant to me, unless that talk is centered on what I'd like to do to you. For example, I'd love to reach for that dull butter knife and stick it in your eye, giving it a hard turn just for good measure. The idea of strapping you to a man-sized lobster trap and throwing you into the ocean holds a great deal of appeal, as does the thought of running your ass over with my car, repeatedly. I could sit here all day making small talk about that, or you could just shut up and order some goddamn lunch.

It interests me that there is no end of fictions, and facts made over in the forms of fictions. Because we class them under so many different rubrics, and media, and means of delivery, we don't recognize the sheer proliferation and seamlessness of them. I think at some level of scale or perspective, the police drama in which a criminal is shot, the hospital in which the doctors massage a heart back to life, the news video in which jihadists behead a hostage, and the human-interest story of a child who gets his fondest wish (a tourist trip somewhere) become the same sorts of drama. They are representations of strong experience, which, as they multiply, began to dedifferentiate in our uptake of them, despite our names and categories and distinctions... I say I watch the news to "know". But I don't really know anything. Certainly I can't do anything. I know that there is a war in Iraq, but I knew that already. I know that there are fires and car accidents in my state and in my country, but that, too, I knew already. With each particular piece of footage, I know nothing more than I did before. I feel something, or I don't feel something. One way I am likely to feel is virtuous and "responsible" for knowing more of these things that I can do nothing about. Surely this feeling is wrong, even contemptible. I am not sure anymore what I feel. What is it like to watch a human being's beheading? The first showing of the video is bad. The second, fifth, tenth, hundredth are—like one's own experiences—retained, recountable, real, and yet dreamlike. Some describe the repetition as "numbing". "Numbing" is very imprecise. I think the feeling, finally, is of something like envelopment and even satisfaction at having endured the worst without quite caring or being tormented. It is the paradoxically calm satisfaction of having been enveloped in a weak or placid "real" that another person endured as the worst experience imaginable, in his personal frenzy, fear, and desperation, which we view from the outside as the simple occurrence of a death... I see: Severed heads. The Extra Value Meal. Kohl-gray eyelids. A holiday sale at Kohl's. Red seeping between the fingers of the gloved hand that presses the wound. "Doctor, can you save him?" "We'll do our best." The dining room of the newly renovated house, done in red. Often a bold color is best. The kids are grateful for their playroom. The bad guy falls down, shot. The detectives get shot. The new Lexus is now available for lease. On CNN, with a downed helicopter in the background, a peaceful field of reeds waves in the foreground. One after another the reeds are bent, broken, by boot treads advancing with the camera. The cameraman, as savior, locates the surviving American airman. He shoots him dead. It was a terrorist video. They run it again. Scenes from ads: sales, roads, ordinary calm shopping, daily life. Tarpaulined bodies in the street. The blue of the sky advertises the new car's color. Whatever you could suffer will have been recorded in the suffering of someone else. Red Lobster holds a shrimp festival. Clorox gets out blood. Advil stops pain fast. Some of us are going to need something stronger.

When people thank you for a gift or a great favor you must never say it is nothing. That makes the gift or favor seem very mean. You should say very kindly: ‘You are very welcome,’ or ‘I am very glad I could be of service.’ You don’t get any credit in this world if you are always belittling yourself. Now I, for instance,

The Good Book says never to cast your pearls before swine.” “Yes, well, it also says never to eat shellfish, and I had a cracking huge lobster last night.” He barked out a harsh, caustic laugh that did nothing to soften the pinched lines of worry casting his features into stark and savage relief. “I don’t know whether to be delighted or infuriated with you.

He’d been excited to learn that Morrigan actually lived in a hotel. “Do you order room service every day? I would order room service every single day. Lobster for breakfast and cake for dinner. Do they leave chocolates on your pillow? My dad says all the fancy hotels leave chocolates on your pillow. Does it really have its own smoking parlor? And a dwarf vampire?” “Vampire dwarf,” she corrected.

Singleness is not a curse thrust upon us. It’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s not an insult or a weapon to be hurled at us, as our society unfortunately often does, particularly when it comes to social media. You wouldn’t believe how many times people have disagreed with something I’ve tweeted or posted and have retaliated with “Oh, so THAT’S why you’re still single!” in an effort to hurt me by using the area of my life in which they think I am the most vulnerable. And, you know what? Singleness is an area of my life where I am vulnerable, because I don’t understand it. Not being coupled up at age forty-one makes no sense to me, and sometimes it causes me great distress and worry and anxiety to consider the fact that I might never be coupled up. But . . . not being coupled up doesn’t mean that I am lacking or deficient or romantically challenged. It simply means that I haven’t found the right person (or my “lobster,” as Phoebe Buffay would say). We have to stop blaming ourselves and carrying around the weight of feeling broken and screwed up simply because we haven’t yet found love. It’s simply not true. Certainly, we all have room for growth and are all flawed and imperfect in our own unique ways, but that is true for everyone who walks this planet . . . not just us single folks.

Not as rabid a fan as, say, Nicholson Baker, but I do believe that The Poorhouse Fair, Of the Farm, and The Centaur are all great books, maybe classics. And even since ’81’s Rabbit Is Rich—as his characters seemed to become more and more repellent, and without any corresponding sign that the author understood that they were repellent—

When it comes to communication, his facial expressions give me all the evidence I need to know what he’s thinking. This game is child’s play for us. Watch and learn. *Mentally cracks knuckles* Staring Keller in the eyes, I speak very slowly as I say, “Love of my life.” “Lobster mitten,” he shouts. My brows turn down. Lobster mitten? Where the hell did that come from? I shake my head and move my lips slowly. “Love . . . of . . . my . . . liiiiiife.” “Love myself.” “Ooo, close!” I say. “You got the first one but not the second part. Really pay attention.” “You’re speaking too fast. I can’t tell what you’re saying.” “I said you got the first one, not the second.” “What?” “First one.” “Firstborn?” “No.” I shake my head. “First one!” “What? First myself? First lobster? First mitten?” “No, not first.” I shake my head and hand. “Love is good. You got love.” I give him a thumbs-up. “Love glove?” His nose cringes. “Oh . . . a condom? We don’t use condoms,” he shouts so loud I swear the footmen can hear him. I press my hand to my forehead and take a deep breath. “Okay, starting over.” I erase the air to indicate a new slate. I then hold up my hand and show four fingers for four words. “Four lobsters?” “There are no lobsters!” I shout, tossing my hand in the air before reaching over and plucking his headphone off his head. “No lobsters, forget the lobsters, for the love of God!

Suppose, let’s say, you’ve got a candidate who says polls are bullshit and totally refuses to tailor his campaign style to polls, and suppose then that new polls start showing that people really like this candidate’s polls-are-bullshit stance and are thinking about voting for him because of it, and suppose the candidate reads these polls (who wouldn’t?) and then starts saying even more loudly and often that polls are bullshit and that he won’t use them to decide what to say, maybe turning “Polls are bullshit” into a campaign line and repeating it in every speech and even painting Polls Are Bullshit on the side of his bus… . Is he a hypocrite? Is

While biting into the flesh of an oyster, I felt myself losing it. I had drunk a lot, but it wasn’t the wine that was making my head spin. In seeking the life that leads to absolute space, I get drunk. But I always stay on the edge of the mystery. No, this evening I was losing it out of pleasure because the flesh of the oyster is a delicacy that makes you shiver. You might say it is the treasures of the mother-of-pearl sparkling on your tongue. And that oyster, which the waitress had told me was a grand cru from Normandy, melted in my mouth like a dissolving sea jewel. Eating oysters is a sacramental act, I told Pointel, who grunted. He swore only by the lobster.

Some of the people who dealt with Borislow say he reminded them of Donald Trump. As it turns out, the two were friends. Borislow brought the team to Mar-a-Lago for Easter Sunday in 2011—back when it was still just Trump’s golf club for rich people and not a place where the president of the United States held meetings with world leaders. There, the players of magicJack mingled with Trump and Rudy Giuliani, who were there eating caviar and lobster. But for all of Borislow’s money and the promise it would save the cash-strapped league, all it did was make things worse. When the league sanctioned magicJack for failing to meet basic requirements, he ignored it. That happened over and over until the league finally took points away from the team, affecting their place in the standings. He still ignored it.

As we sometimes also say about elements of fashion and etiquette, the way you use English “makes a statement” or “sends a message”—even though these statements/messages often have nothing to do with the actual information you’re trying to communicate.

They say suicide is a permanent solution to temporary problems—

CRIMINOLOGY Every year, chemical pesticides kill no fewer than three million farmers. Every day, workplace accidents kill no fewer than ten thousand workers. Every minute, poverty kills no fewer than ten children. These crimes do not show up on the news. They are, like wars, normal acts of cannibalism. The criminals are on the loose. No prisons are built for those who rip the guts out of thousands. Prisons are built as public housing for the poor. More than two centuries ago, Thomas Paine wondered: “Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor?” Texas, twenty-first century: the last supper sheds light on the cellblock’s clientele. Nobody chooses lobster or filet mignon, even though those dishes figure on the farewell menu. The condemned men prefer to say goodbye to the world with the usual: burgers and fries.

I knew Michael had to be right about the argument that would come later because Mom didn’t say anything about us being gone or even ask where we’d been. In the kitchen, Dad had the extra cheerfulness he got with us when Mom was angry at him. He let us each drop a lobster in the boiling water. He had to hold Alec so he’d be high enough not to get his hand splashed. Their black antennae whipped back and forth against the sides of the pot before disappearing.

Why then," he says, suddenly turning to me and folding his arms across his chest, "did your mother study in France? Why did you study in Italy? Which I presume you did because you know as well as I do that no culinary education is considered complete without an international apprenticeship." His voice is smug, his mouth curled in a half smile. "Wait a minute," I say, feeling suddenly compelled to defend American culinary tradition (not to mention my own expensive and, in my opinion, extremely comprehensive education at the Culinary Institute of America). "I studied in Italy because I cook Italian food. My mother studied in France because in the late 1960s there was no other option. But that certainly doesn't mean that there isn't a rich and varied culinary tradition in America today. Stop at a roadside barbeque in Texas, eat a lobster roll in Bangor, Maine, order a fried egg on your Primanti sandwich in Pittsburgh, for heaven's sake!

Yeah, but life can't be fascinating all the time.' 'Oh, honey. Mine is. If it gets boring for longer than two weeks, I make adjustments.' I smile right into her eyes. 'And it's paid off because I now live with Houndy, who is a lobsterman, and the thing about him is that he could talk to me for four days straight without stopping about lobsters and their shells and the different tides and the sky, and nothing he ever said would bore me because the language that Houndy uses is really speaking in is all about love and life and death and appreciation and gratitude and funny moments.' Her eyes flicker, and I see in her face that she knows exactly what I mean. 'I feel like that when I"m at work,' she says softly. 'I work in a nursery school, so I get to spend my days sitting on the floor with three-and-four-year-olds, talking. People think it must be the most boring thing in the world, but oh my God! They tell me about the most astonishing things. They get into philosophical discussions about their boo-boos and about how worms on the sidewalk get their feeling hurt sometimes, and why the yellow crayon is the meanest one but the purple one is nice. Can you believe it? They know the personalities of crayons.

Any you’d recommend? I wouldn’t mind a lobster roll.” “I’m vegan.” This word had become ubiquitous and absurdly trendy. She supposed there were a few young women with anorexia who kept to this diet, but otherwise it had to be lip service. “I have a theory, Clarke. Want to hear it? There are no male vegans. There are men who say they are to appear more sensitive to their girlfriends or anyone else they’re hoping to lure into bed with them. Once they’re on their own, they’re in a drive-through line at Burger King.” “McDonald’s,” he said.

That is the lesson we learn from the Old Testament, Israel’s story. God meets the ancient Israelites as they are able to understand him—as a warrior who slays his enemies, human and divine; a deity who is appeased by the blood of animals; a God who commands that eating lobster and bodily discharges make one “unclean,” and considers virgin daughters spoils of war and the property of their fathers. And just when it seems this is all there is to say, God also meets the Israelites in unexpected ways, in crisis, in exile, and he is on the move, challenging his people not to limit his actions by their perceptions. On the pages of the Old Testament we see the ancient sages and storytellers pondering a God who won’t sit still long enough to have the cement of people’s perceptions dry around him.