I was once so enchanted by the products of this structure and the values it rested upon its pristine white pillars, but these years of thoughtful reflection (even in an era where I benefit from it greatly) have left me disillusioned.

The Lobster

There was an ugly town that was made up of the most undesirable of any people: the impoverished and the enchained. They had foods in abundance, foods that were bought or caught in cheap bulk, foods deemed… ugly.

The lobster was this food, the slop of the poor and stupid. Thrust upon a dying man in his cell was this shelled nightmare, and he would have no other option but to eat it. Despicable, rotten. Carried home in a dingy white barrel were the dull red monsters, the lid barely detaining their struggling strength. Feed a family of however many, it didn’t matter–what were children who were destined to be denizens of the prison industrial complex?

And pray tell, how do the children of families wealthy and beautiful, who find themselves bored in the monotony and loneliness of upperclass social expectation, completely change the connotation of such an ugly food with only their mere presence? Well, you see–it is fun to play poor. It is fun to take a busted rock from the hands of shriveled, dirty woman, scoff at her, then tie it up and string it upon your pretty neck. It is fun to mock the boy who makes cream cheese and Cheeto casseroles with his lumpy potato cookies only to turn around and host a fun “Wh*te Tr*sh” dinner party with your well-off friends. It is fun to grace these despairing backroads, turn them into a hallowed hall–a site of import of these wonderful poor foods–with or without any inkling of a bad intention. And well you see, and listen close, when a beautiful person who has money eats your captured monster just for the thrill of it, all of a sudden it is no longer for you or your imprisoned neighbor–

it is now theirs.

The lobster is exotic, a delicacy, shipped to places that can spend, spend, spend for it, shipped from places that get poor, poor, poorer still from it. And when it’s all said and done, the rich and beautiful will become apathetic to it; the lobster is still largely theirs, and no matter whatever the indifference, the only thing that matters is it is no longer yours. Your evil monster turned upperclass delight has left you dumber, poorer, and hungrier than ever before.

This is not a work of fantasy. It is speculative, embellished reality. Lobster.

~Sammicakes