A crab smoking a cigarette. To you this might sound like a funny intersection of human and crustacean; a comical delight destined for dorm room poster and tumblr blog. A viral image out of Philadelphia, however, paints a darker picture.

After a summer full of flight delays and disturbances due to pugnacious passengers, it's almost a relief that today's big air travel story involves a box of live crabs instead.

David Foster Wallace's famous essay "Consider The Lobster" explores unsettling questions about how much pain lobsters feel when we cook them. By law, that introductory sentence must be on this blog post, which is about new research into whether lobsters and crabs feel pain.

Last weekend, a family in Washington state captured this crab whose markings 100% resemble a sharpie drawing of former head of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.

Florence Henderson, who played Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch, is pushing her new memoir so naturally she felt the need to tell the world about the time she got crabs on a one-night stand. Back in the 60s, Henderson boned NYC mayor John Lindsay (both were married at the time), and he left her with a parting gift:

A Chinese businessman recently created a vending machine filled with live crabs. The machines will find their way into Chinese subway stations shortly. Not surprisingly, Stephen Colbert deemed it the "Craziest F#?king Thing I've Ever Heard" last night.

"Broadway Hottie of the Month" Marty Thomas is suing to have the identity of an anonymous Tweeter revealed, claiming the Tweeter defamed him. The Twitterer, "bwayanonymous", implied that Thomas had contracted crabs from some old Avenue Q queen. Oh, drama!

[Blue crabs head toward the city along the main seaside avenue of Cancun, Mexico, disoriented by ongoing public works along the road. I bet they're feeling pretty... wait for it... wait for it... pissed off. Pic via AP]

A stern Semitic father-figure could convince me to do pretty much anything, and in this case, I'm being taught how to prepare a soft-shell crab for po'boy-ification (it's not pretty).

It's so hard to reach out to people these days. How can I connect? I only have a cell phone, email, gchat, AIM, a personal website, Facebook and MySpace. But good news: Facebook is launching FBChat in two weeks. Finally, another medium for witty inside jokes! If you Facebook messages are primarily for getting laid, FBChat has the potential to spread crabs through UC Davis like whoa. Video demonstration after the jump.