A.C. Butcher, Leichhardt, Sydney, Australia

From Down Under comes this hellish vision: Hieronymus Bosch as butcher-shop kitsch, David Cronenberg as misguided come-on.

Far from horror at seeing her entire back half carved off, the cow feels nothing but delight at being hacked into thick, juicy, ready-to-grill steaks. She is downright giddy—her tongue wiggling in anticipation, her proud napkin waving like a flag. She obviously finds unremarkable the blatant one-to-one correspondence of her very body to a foodstuff requiring no further processing. "You are not a being," she is told. "You are mere food, alive not for yourself, but for us."

(Imagine how frightened—and offended—you would be on discovering that the invading alien horde does not wish to cook or skin—or even wash!—you before digging in. "I am not stuff!" you might squeak in your feeble language as the tentacles drag you toward a hundred stinking maws. "I am a human!") It's all so Law of the Jungle in its baseness. At least prepare the poor thing. But Bossie only wishes the procedure would hurry up a bit already. Time's a-wastin'!

Leaving aside for a moment the problems of scale (that knife is either about 4 feet long, or the cow is a foot high), there is the problem of psychological integrity. Namely, the sanity of the people who commissioned this, executed (!) it, and approved it. They have managed to create the quintessential explication of the entire Suicide Food movement, where every trope is taken to new heights of dizzying terror, where no act of barbarity is beyond the animals' eager acceptance. And for that, we thank those responsible. And pity them.

(Thanks to Dr. Spong for the referral.)