Historic First

Usually, I choose to provide my thoughts purely in written form, but for today's post something a little more...visual seemed appropriate.

I went out with some coworkers last night and had 산낙지 (san-nak-ji), also known as "live octopus." This is technically something of a misnomer, because the octopus isn't actually alive, only very recently dead. Very recently.

When we arrived at the restaurant, I took a quick peek at the octopus tank:

Take note of the one on the far right. You'll be seeing more of it (him? her?) shortly.

And, well, let's let the video do the talking...

The obvious question, of course, is: how did it taste? And the answer, perhaps surprisingly, is: unmemorable. Apart from the shock factor of eating food which occasionally grabs onto the inside of your cheeks, most of the flavour from eating 산낙지 comes from whatever sauce it's dipped in. It's a strange experience, of course. Most of the food I'm used to eating bears little or no resemblance to its live state, so this is a profound difference. The cruelty question also comes into play, but I'm not really convinced that it's any worse to eat the freshly-amputated limbs of an octopus than to eat a McDonald's cheeseburger. This may, then, be an argument for vegetarianism, or it may simply be an argument to realize that life itself is a cruel and oft-dangerous proposition, and participants do so at their own risk.
Discuss.