Saturday, September 29, 2007

Festival of Cruelty 3

To mark our 150th post, we embark on another installment in our lamentable Festival of Cruelty series. If this is your first time, we suggest you fortify yourself. These images are not suicide food, with their bizarre yet (purportedly) comforting outlook. They are altogether different, coming from a different part of the collective unconscious and performing a different role in the human vs. animal drama.

Truth be told, we almost admire the purveyors of these and related images, of what can only be called torturefood. Renouncing the hypocrisy that stifles the creators of traditional suicide food, they offer us an unchaperoned peek inside their savage psyches. The honesty is bracing. To live so truthful a life! But then we open a window, take a deep breath of fresh air, and come to our senses.

This stuff is honest in the same way hardcore pornography is. And so we retreat to the infuriating pleasantries of suicidefoodism. But not today. Today is for facing hell head-on.

Clinton, Montana Testicle Festival: Unvarnished hatefulness! If you are one of the blessedly uninitiated, a testicle festival—or, hilariously, a "testy festy"—is a sementastic ballabration of testicle consumption. Do you see the impotent rage in this logo? How they hate this steer for making them what they are: willful testicle-eaters. The steer must pay twice, first with his own genitalia and then with the remnants of his pride.





"Bacon is made of what?": The website refers to these two 4-H dames as Happy Pig Leaders, and we couldn't imagine a more apt designation. The pig on their T-shirts is horror-struck as he finally faces a world bent on his destruction, but the ladies are, indeed, happy. And what's not to be happy about? Not only do they get to indulge their every culinary whim, but the animals get to suffer as a result. Life is good!




Fat Boy's BBQ: Here's how Fat Boy puts it: "We pride ourselves on providing a quality family atmosphere in which to eat and work." And here, for all to adore, their family values are on display! Like we've always said, family values begin at home, where you can brandish a cleaver at a helpless piglet and mock his inability to escape the wicked blade.






Sigma-Chi Pig Roast: We don't know what barbaric school hosted this abomination, but we have to appreciate the toxic blend of callow youth and the absence of parental involvement. Is this really what the youngsters get up to nowadays? Ramming golf clubs down pigs' throats and out their anuses? Pure debauchery, and not the fun kind we look back on with fondness. No, this will surely be the cause of shame and hefty therapist fees a few years down the road.





Barbecue America's Beer-Butt Chicken: This chicken getting a beer enema is resigned to her hideous fate. She wishes only for a quick death.

Let's check in with Barbecue America about the situation:
"Whether tailgating at the big game or feeding frenzied fans at home, outdoor chefs will be the big winners and draw the loudest cheers when they prepare the hippest, hottest and most unique-looking bbq recipe of the season: BEER-BUTT CHICKEN.

Host of public television's Barbecue America, Rick Browne, the 'Godfather of Beer-Butt Chicken,' guarantees that the odd-sounding, but incredibly easy-to-prepare recipe will not only wow party-goers with its unique appearance, but with its lip-smacking, incredibly moist, and virtually unmatched flavor and texture.

'Nothing can top the flavor of Beer-Butt Chicken,' notes Browne, who has prepared the dish on national television for the Today Show and Regis and Kelly Live!, receiving rave reviews from both Al Roker and Regis Philbin. 'And nothing can top the looks on your guests' faces when you open that grill and show them beautifully browned chickens perched upon beer cans.'"

As you can imagine, and as the above quote and that priceless illustration suggest, this is all done with the utmost respect for the chickens.


Universal Food Chopper: The things it chops include coconuts, cabbages, carrots, apples, celery, loaves, fish, and—of course—pigs. The Universal Victim! What is so offensive is the look on the pig's face. These pigs are clearly not offered as further examples of the inanimate objects the device was designed to chop. No, one look at that face—the eyes wide with fear, the mouth distorted by panic—and we know that this is a living being. And it's receiving a handy chopping by the Landers, Frary & Clark chopper, peerless Inflictor of Pain!

4 comments:

Francois Tremblay said...

That beef testicles one is bizarre, to say the least.

Anonymous said...

They're all bizarre...and sickening. What's wrong with you?

Francois Tremblay said...

Gee, I don't think they're all sickening. That old-timey one is very elegant.

Anonymous said...

They forgot Human fingers