You know, I wondered as I put the asparagus ends into it....

Before doing this make 100% sure that it is OFF. Ideally turn off electricity to it, but that may be impractical:

1) Shine a flashlight into it and see if something is stuck you could not see without the flashlight.

2) If you spot something, use an insulated or non-metal utensil to remove it.

Note: not sure even this is 100% safe, but as a major league klutz this has so far not killed me.

Check and see if there's a reset button on the side of the mechanism. That fixes some immediate ills.

Yes! Yay. Thanks.

Amy, it's indoor, but I guess regulations state that if there's lightning, they have to close until there's been none for 30 minutes. By the time they reopen (I haven't seen any more lightning in the last half hour, but more might be coming) it's too late for me, and even if it wasn't, lessons take over until 8 or so. And I left work early to avoid that!

It's what I get for crowing how I'd only not swum 2 days in almost 3 months!

Jesse, what did you put down it? Unless you were grinding up spoons, a disposal that quits probably needs looking at. But check your breakers.

I'm also of the "other people can do it" school. But I don't and won't eat lobster or crabs (no principles, I just don't like them.)

Thanks, Typo. I feel pretty comfortable sticking my hand in the disposal! But I also discovered that I can unplug this one easily, so that's good.

disposals

something else to add to the pro column for moving.

A lengthy comedy of tragic errors later, we had to boil it because nothing I could do to it would make it die.

Lobster have some kind of crazy primitive nervous system which means that they can feel pain even after being cut up, or so says David Foster Wallace. [link] That's why it wouldn't say die.

something else to add to the pro column for moving.

Indeed.

Lobester have some kind of crazy primitive nervous system which means that they can feel pain even after being cut up

Though "feel pain" is a debatable term for a creature without a frontal cortex. Lobsters flail if you try to kill them, but that doesn't mean they have emotions. (Hey, let's get into a philosophical argument over the definition of pain! Or not.)

I've only ever boiled lobsters, and the method I was taught (and the one used by my Mainer neighbors) was just to drop them into the pot alive and close the lid. You can stab them in the head with a chef's knife first if the sound of flailing lobsters in the pot bothers you, but it's really more for the cook's comfort than the food.

My sister-in-law's ex-husband once chased me around with a live lobster, because he was a dick (I was eighteen and a little uncomfortable about the snapping claws). I still ate it, even though it would have been more satisfying if his head had wound up in the pot.

My dad isn't a vegetarian by any stretch, but after years spent on his grandmother's farm watching chickens being killed, he won't watch any kind of horror movie.