Pittsburgh's Pinchy the Lobster

"See ... together we weigh 300 lbs. According to my driver's licence, I weigh 130 lbs. That means you weigh ... ... 460 lbs. Oh! good!"

--Homer on a scale with Pinchy

Granted, Pittsburgh's Pinchy is actually Bubba, a 22-lb. lobster that just turned up at Wholey's. The lede:

He could have survived two world wars and Prohibition. He also could have been dinner.

He's Bubba, a 22-pound leviathan of a lobster pulled from the waters off Nantucket, Massachusetts, and shipped to a Pittsburgh fish market.

And then there's this: from the ridiculous (PETA demanding the release of the lobster back into the Atlantic, which, as we can see, is obviously a safe place for Bubba) to the, er, ridiculous (the other PETA offering to buy Bubba for something like $350):

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent Wholey a letter asking him to work with the group to release Bubba back in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine.

Another group calling itself People For Eating Tasty Animals reportedly offered Wholey a hefty price for the lobster. At Tuesday's price of $14.98 a pound, Bubba would retail for about $350.

Apparently this Lobster Methuselah is destined for Ripley's Believe it or Not. It probably beats the ocean. That's a lot of weight to be dragging around the sea floor all the damned time, looking for food, miraculously avoiding traps, etc.

And while we're on the topic of lobster, I direct you to David Foster Wallace's hilarious essay, "Think of the Lobster," about the Maine Lobster Festival, which appeared in the August 2004 issue of Gourmet.