I live in Maine, Land of Lobster. We catch it, we eat it, we export it, we celebrate it with festivals. Hell, we’ve built an entire tourist industry around it.
The one thing we don’t do with it? Relieve menstrual cramps.
Yet someone, somewhere thought they should.
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Meet the Menstruation Crustacean.
Jesus wept.
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Lobsters are a lot of things…. long lived, bottom dwelling, quick swimming, and delicious in drawn butter.
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But cuddly?
Cuddly doesn’t make the top ten.
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Yes, this lobster abomination can hold tampons in its claws.
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Something I have to admit I’ve never seen ours do.
Gather round boys and girls, it’s time to scientifically examine what happens after we die with select excerpts from book #3 in my ever expanding Mary Roach collection.
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You loved Stiff. You were pleasantly revolted by Gulp. So let’s pull back the veil of death and ponder the age old mystery.
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Important questions, all.
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In case you’re wondering… reincarnation nation is India. And since they have the highest number of people who claim to be born again, that’s where Mary began her research.
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This does not bode well. Cheese vagueness is a terrible thing.
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Au contraire Mary. I think the P.P. designation is damn near perfect.
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If that’s not definitive proof of reincarnation, I don’t know what is.
In reading this book we learn culture and religion have a lot to do with the acceptance of past lives, as this ancient Hindu text demonstrates. Live a good life? You will be rewarded. Live a bad life? Well… that’s where things get interesting.
My girlfriend and I went shopping last week and were excited to discover a new Cajun seafood restaurant had opened in South Portland. Mouth watering for shrimp ettouffe or crawfish gumbo, we entered The Shaking Crab.
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Why was the crab shaking? I have no idea. But the place being nearly empty at the height of the lunch hour should have been our first clue something wasn’t quite right.
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Six dollar drinks went a long way to calm our suspicions…
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Though the Cajuns I’ve known wouldn’t be caught dead drinking a watermelon-tini.
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Giant plastic crabs were everywhere. As were plastic starfish and randomly placed hanging plastic water bubbles.
All the waitstaff were Asian. 9/10ths of the customers were Asian. The scent of the room was reminiscent of an Asian kitchen. The menu? Not an ettouffe, Boudin, or jambalaya in sight.
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Though you could order “coleslow” and “braccoli ”. (These appeared twice, spelled incorrectly both times.) I didn’t bother taking pictures of our meals, they were just typical fried seafood baskets as the only other choices were giant plates of steamed things in a plastic wrap bubble you had to crack, and we didn’t feel like making a mess. I did try to catch a shot of one being delivered to another table, but missed.
Imagine a giant Jiffy Pop balloon encircling a metal dish, only its clear plastic instead of foil. It was an absolutely bizarre presentation of what I’m assuming was meant to be a crawfish boil.
I lived down south. I had Cajun friends and neighbors. I’ve sucked heads. Whatever The Shaking Crab meant to be? It sure as hell wasn’t Cajun.
I may be speaking for myself, but a good Camembert does more for my soul than Jesus ever has.
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Why did I ever stop drinking lemon drops? A recent visit to our favorite restaurant found me sitting next to two women of a certain age, one of whom was celebrating a birthday. They were drinking lemon drop martinis, so I did as well. It’s all about solidarity.
Remember the rat who showed up and dug a tunnel to our wood shed. The one whose demise I sadly had to hasten? He’s been gone for quite some time now, but it seems another pesky rodent has taken over his ratty super highway.
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Yes. It’s her. The red bitch we’ve been evicting for the past year and a half.
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It shouldn’t surprise me.
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She’s a resourceful little witch.
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But it does make me wonder how she disposed of the previous tenant’s remains …
Why is it that technology designed to make our life easier always turns out to be a right royal pain in the as?
Yes, I typed ass… but autocorrect switched it to as. In addition to being annoying, my autocorrect is also a potty mouth censor. And fur the duration of this pist, I will be leaving the changes it makes to prove my point.
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That helps somewhat. To be honest, it’s the only reasonable explanation why every single time I type “for” it comes up fur.
And “post” is changed to pist. (Pist. That isn’t even a word! Which it damn well knows because every time it makes the switch the word comes up underlined. WTH?)
“Doesn’t” ? That’s changed to Durant. (Who is Durant? And why dues he keep wanting to appear in my pists?)
Dues! Geesh, that’s a brand new one. Clearly I have angered the autocorrect Gods.
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Yes, I know I can turn off the option in settings. But there’s a twisted part of me that’s stubborn enough to want to win the battle. If I disregard the changes often enough maybe, just maybe…that little drunken elf will sober up.
I live in Maine and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say we hate CMP. Central Maine Power is the primary electric company in my area and if you want to start a bar fight? Loudly state how much you admire them.
Prices rise on what seems to be a daily basis and every time a wombat sneezes in Australia? Our power is knocked out.
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This does not endear the company to the natives and the fact that everyone’s bill will be going up by 1/3rd starting in February… guarantees I’m going to be one very angry native.
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Of course CMP has sent extremely polite letters to all their customers stating it’s not their fault, that they only deliver the power and we should be mad at the suppliers instead. But the last bill I received looked a lot like this…
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So as far as I’m concerned CMP can suck it.
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P.S. Just received my new bill. It went from $216 to $324. As predicted, I am not happy.
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Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 