Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Okay...

That title is a complete fabrication, but it SOUNDS good right?

The truth is, PETA loves video games, they just make really crappy ones in which you're a stupid chicken trying to avoid all of the food industry cruelty so you don't end up deep fried and served with fries. Their games all have morals and messages and horrible skewed propaganda in which they make people who enjoy eating meat out to be the next coming of Hitler.

Who was, by the way, a vegetarian.

Still, lame ass games aside - PETA does hate a certain type of game that I've only seen a few times, but have played the hell out of every time that I've come across them.

The LOBSTER CRANE GAME!

For those of you unfamiliar with the Lobster Crane Game, it is like one of those stuffed animal crane games that they have sitting outside of Pizza Hut or Wal-Mart in which you insert 50 cents, and find out that the game is broken. The claw doesn't open, or only one side opens, or the machine does nothing but laugh at you in it's robotic light blinking language because you just gave it half a buck to sit there and do nothing.

Something that it was doing RIGHT before you got there, for free.

But instead of eventually dispensing a creepy and probably lead-filled Chinese made stuffed animal knock off of your favorite trademarked character, the Lobster Crane Game dispenses...

LOBSTERS.

Which as you may note are not cute by any definition of the word. They have huge claws, beady little eyes, and really weird mouths that you never want to see a close-up of if you plan ever sleeping again.

So if you're given a change to win one of these freakishly expensive morsels for a paltry two bucks outside of JD's Sports Bar in Colorado, you're going to take a chance on it. Right?

At least MAYBE for the chance to torment a lobster right before you eat it? Good, harmless, much deserved lobster torturing fun, right?

WRONG.

The "Lobster Crane" game is a cruel and heartless death machine, and it has to go. So sayeth the nut jobs at PETA. In fact, they even held a PROTEST outside of this guy's bar so that he'd get rid of the machine.

"JD's Lobster Zone machine turns torture and death into a game, pure and simple," said PETA Vice President Tracy Reiman."

Well....yeah.

Have you ever SEEN a frigging Lobster?

Look at that alien brain spider THING.

If you're going to eat it, you WANT it to have suffered at least a little bit before it died - kinda like Gladiators in medieval times. They don't get all decked out in spines and giant finger crushing death claws for nothing and it is an insult to pray for a lobster to die peacefully in his sleep. Lobsters are like the creepy stick-eyed Vikings of the water world and dying after a battle with a giant robotic grabber hand is like their greatest honor.

It's how they get to their lobster version of Valhalla. And who are WE to take that away from them because we don't understand their ways?

Lobsters are not cute and cuddly, and I promise you PETA - Lobsters do not give a DAMN about you or I. It has been scientifically proven that lobsters are out to get us, and have only developed those freakishly huge snapping pincers so that they can lob of a careless beach-goer's big toe in one quick slice. Right after brushing up against our leg as we swim so we freak out and start slapping girlishly at our half naked bodies.

Plus they swim all backwards and look like giant bugs just to freak us out.

In fact, EVERYTHING about a lobster SCREAMS "psychological warfare" and if they spend the end of their horrific toe-maiming lives in a giant novelty game before taking that final hot plunge into numminess, then so be it. As long as the evil things DIE.

Hell, I'm not even sure that the Lobster Claw Game *IS* a human device. Have you ever seen one set up? Filled? Restocked? No you haven't, and neither have I because the tanks kinda smell funny and you don't want to hang around them for too long because they lobsters just back into one corner and judge you with their soulless little lobster stares.

Still, you can't rule out that the Lobster Claw Game isn't some sort of crustacean "Thunder Dome" in which the little piggy toe biters aren't given a last chance to survive should they prove wily enough to escape. Because what you are thinking when you see these games is:

"Alright! I can get a LOBSTER for TWO BUCKS!"

What you are NOT thinking is:

"Wait. I have to stick my hand in the prize recovery box to GET that lobster I just won for two bucks....did....did it have those little rubber bands on its claws?"

And then it's just you against the little black push door of fate as you reach in and hope to god that you didn't get the Mad Max of ocean freak bug things. Because you'll never count to ten without taking off your shoes again.

Still, lobster Valhalla and pain boxes aside, Bar owner Dennis McCann folded.

He thought it was a stupid protest and didn't understand the point of a lobster shack being NICE to lobsters that they were getting ready to dip into perfectly seasoned vats of boiling water, but he took it down anyway. Probably just to get the dirty hippies out of his restaurant because the smell of hairy chick pits and unwashed vegans was grossing out the grizzled dock workers.

Me?

I would have dropped the price to play from two bucks down to one, and put up a sign saying "Please don't play this game because it REALLY pisses off the vegetarians who think that these death bringing alien cockroaches are cuddly".

...

....it would probably have to be in a small font.

-Coyote

((**UPDATE** Special thanks to everyone who has been hotlinking the "The Fire Poker" Evil League of Evil video application...well everywhere. It's been on Tech Comedy(Thanks Spyder), The Official EverQuest II Webpage (thank you Kiara :) ) The Avast Ye section on DrunkDuck (I knew you loved me Bongo) and now? Currently splash paged on Wonderflonium.

I'll keep updating as I find them, but thank you all. If I even qualify I'll...I'll...poke something. -Coyote))

**Oh, and check out Brasse's new comic... and why I will never hit level 20 as an Orc. We goof around WAY too much :)