Lobster sex
Filed Under Lobsters
So, you’ve heard the one about the woman who tortured a lobster she was using as a sex toy, unfortunately prompting it to defecate mud shrimp eggs which hatched and made like Aliens, except with sea monkeys instead of Giger? Well, if not, now you have.
Needless to say, Snopes heard the tale, and offers a rather perfunctory debunking. Intrepid reporter Dan Savage eviscerates the story more thoroughly.
Oddly, neither of them mentions one of the least believable details: the idea that an emergency responder would vomit at the sight of mud shrimp.
“Lobsters” by Charles Stross
The first chapter of Charles Stross’s Accelerando originally appeared in Asimov’s as a story titled “Lobsters.” It does, indeed, involve lobsters.
The novel is available as a free e-book, distributed under a Creative Commons license, as well as in not-free electronic and dead tree formats.
Accelerando excerpt:
Moche lobster
Filed Under Lobsters
The Moche people of Peru inhabited coastal valleys. They were primarily farmers, cleverly diverted rivers to irrigate their crops. Perhaps due to the proximity and importance of water, their deity (a charming fellow known as the Decapitator) was sometimes depicted as a sea monster.
Not having developed television or a written language, the Moche had a lot of time on their hands. Based upon surviving pottery, they were pioneers of masturbation, fellatio, cunnilingus, and anal sex, in between more ritualized sessions of vaginal sex for purposes of procreation. Animals were also depicted in art; the lobster sculpture below dates to about 200 CE.
Human sacrifices may have appeased the Decapitator and encouraged rainfall…at least, until the sixth century. Thirty years of floods, followed by thirty years of drought, did not bring about the collapse of Moche civilization, but it did incite social unrest from which the Moche could not recover.
The lobster sculpture (which I can’t help thinking might, depending on scale, double as a sex toy) currently lives in Lima’s Larco Museum. The museum boasts an impressive collection of pre-Columbian art. It was also among the first museums to include its entire collection in an electronic catalog.
Lobster Week
Filed Under Lobsters
I enjoyed Squid Week last summer, so I’m now kicking off Lobster Week. Because crustaceans need love, too, and like squid they are delicious.