Delmarva Poultry Industry, Inc.

A still image doesn't do this banner from the Delmarva Poultry Institute's website justice. For, as a single, unmoving graphic, this is hardly remarkable. Yes, it's tragic that the dear little chick regards DPI without trepidation, indeed with keen and alert interest—with love? Sadly, we acknowledge that such mascots are not only uncounted, but also, we fear, uncountable.

When animated, the image reveals its true import. The chick steps gaily forward, kicks the farmyard grit from her feet, wiggles her wings, and then disappears. Thus is the suicidefoodist's mind made plain.

The brief film fantastique constitutes a poetic explication of the dream of the Movement:

In it, the chick is merely a portion in an inexhaustible supply of willing meat. (Oh, the rapture of the transformation from individual to substance!) She faces her fate with enthusiasm and then vanishes, making room for the next batch. She is destined to die, an indistinguishable innocent, never to be mourned, ever to be replaced. Automatically is she destroyed, and automatically is she reborn.

It's a suicide food miracle!

(Thanks to Dr. superweed for the referral.)

Little Pig Town BBQ

Living in the desert, with only the blistering sun for a companion and the empty wind for a lullaby, can drive even the soberest soul crazy.

So when your raw materials are a pig with a mental impairment, you're going to see some insanity fireworks going off. Which is what's happening here.

The saguaro-strewn badlands of Owasso, Oklahoma—a scant 10 miles from Catoosa, as the buzzard flies—are a crucible, a chrysalis from which one's own twisted self emerges. Further evidence of our little pig's "idiosyncrasies": in the glare of the sun's spotlight, he leans against a smoking barbecue. While smiling. With his legs crossed at the ankle. Slow immolation isn't a laughing matter, but the pig is practically giggling. This is not happiness, friends. No, not happiness, but happiness's false shadow. A phantom of desperation. An infected mind.

Through it all, through the agonies of thirst and loneliness—the cow skull. It is our Ham-let's Yorick. What the little pig hungers for is the same quiet dignity that the weathered cow skull exudes. That is his ideal.

Oregon Fryer Commission

Greetings from the Beaver State! The smiling chicken of the Oregon Fryer Commission wants you to enjoy everything Oregon has to offer. Well, not everything, maybe. Mostly he just wants you to eat some chickens.

Also affiliated with the Oregon Fryer Commission is Chicken Scratch University. (As of this writing, it is unclear whether CSU is an actual accredited institution of higher learning.)

Again, our smiling Oregon chicken—here beneath a scholarly mortarboard. As a figurehead, nothing could be more suicidefoodistically pure. The presence of the chicken reminds us of the fun we're having. What's college without a little slaughter? Come on—you were young once. (Of course, the chicken will be young forever, never to be granted a gentle old age.)

While the only "course" offered via the CSU website is "Chicken 101," electives include "Cutting Wings into Drumettes" and "Cutting Up a Whole Chicken." Having a chicken overseeing such chickenshit is de rigueur.

No, it doesn't make a lick of sense. And, yes, it is a cliché so basic (and so base) that it is practically invisible.

When the BMOC (Big Man of the Coop) isn't posing for brochures and teaching guts (literally!), he's out pressing the flesh and talking up CSU with the kids.

In this candid shot, he shows his CSU spirit (go, Fryers!) with three lads and (we assume) an alumnus. The chicken hats are another instance of the Ironic Aggressor Sublimation we have previously analyzed. They might also be props in a nasty bit of hazing.




















Addendum: Perhaps the former Wise Poultry chicken and CSU's chicken belong to some of the same professional organizations? But doesn't the Wise bird look a little more... serious about this whole academic business? Or maybe it's just the bowtie.









Addendum 2 (4/19/08): And then there's the alert prof from MBA Smart Chicken. A chicken with an MBA?

Sorrento Lions Club Boucherie Festival

It's a party in honor of butchery (boucherie), so naturally pigs are on hand to celebrate! Only in a world where suicidefoodism holds sway could that make a glimmer of sense. And yet we have endured hundreds of examples of this very worldview.

At the Sorrento (Louisiana) Lions Club Boucherie Festival, weary travelers can satisfy their hunger with any number of pig-based products. Roast pork and pig ribs, of course, but that goes without saying. And because this all takes place midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, relentless consumers can also indulge in (in ascending order of horror) pork jambalaya, boudin sausage balls, cracklins, and hog head cheese. Is it any wonder the pink pig has flipped his cap in ecstatic expectation? He knows that every last scrap of him will be put to "good" use, and really—isn't that all any animal needs?

In an almost unheard-of gesture, the Festival also has offerings for those "who cannot eat pork." We confess that we assumed such people would be excluded outright, and subjected, perhaps, to public humiliation.

The Festival features more than just foodstuffs crafted from guitar-playing pigs: art booths, carnival rides, a parade, and (brace yourself) a beauty pageant, wherein Miss Boucherie is crowned. That's right: Miss Butchery! We catch ourselves snickering, and then we grow silent, shamed by our own incomprehension.

And finally, also from the Festival's website, is this endearing, yet ghostly, image (see right). In it, a pig, possibly the joyeux strummer from above, beside a cajun chopping block.

Is he dead, the ax having already done its blessed duty? Or—as we believe—has he merely fainted in bliss at the prospect of arriving in that boucherie in the sky, there to be killed over and over, world without end?






Addendum: Among other prizes, Miss Butchery will walk home with a "septar" and "nice gift's" (sic).

Apple Blossom BBQ Challenge

What follows is a wholly speculative and fictitious transcript of the February 12 closed-door meeting of the Apple Blossom BBQ Challenge Committee. While this is entirely fabricated, we trust you will find it enlightening.

Art Grunewald (Executive Director, Apple Blossom BBQ Challenge Committee): I don't understand why this couldn't wait until the 16th.

Barry "Ches" Chester (Marketing Director, Apple Blossom BBQ Challenge Committee): Sorry, Art, but I am fired up! The designs were just couriered over from MID [Missouri Identity, the graphic design firm responsible for creating the logo and collateral marketing for the Apple Blossom BBQ Challenge].

AG: Okay, well, we’re here. Let's do it.

BC: Now, the kid—

Maureen Little (Treasurer, Apple Blossom BBQ Challenge Committee): He means Donny.

BC: The kid says these might be a little rough. He just wanted to get our feedback.

AG: Okay, okay! Can we see them already?

BC: Wah-la!

AG: What is the pig wearing?

BC: A leprechaun hat.

ML: Why is the pig wearing a leprechaun hat?

BC: Leprechauns. The Fighting Irish? You know!

AG: The Fighting Irish is Notre Dame!

BC: Yeah, so?

AG: So this isn't Notre Dame!

ML: Notre Dame is in Indiana.

BC: I think it works.

AG: How does it work?

BC: People love Irish stuff!

AG: Who says? I don't love Irish stuff!

BC: You like those biscotti at the Farron Street Café.

ML: Biscotti aren't Irish.

BC: What about St. Patrick's Day?

AG: What about it?

BC: You love St. Patrick's Day.

AG: It's not even in the right month!

ML: The ABBC is in May.

AG: And what does Ireland have to do with anything? This will just confuse everyone!

BC: That's where the apple comes in.

ML: There's a shamrock too.

AG: What is where the apple comes in?

BC: An apple in a pig's mouth says barbecue.

ML: Shouldn't it be an apple blossom?

BC: Our research shows that no one knows what an apple blossom looks like.

AG: Well, hell!

ML: It's a little gratuitous, don’t you think?

BC: How do you mean?

ML: The apple. It's like Donny just wanted to make everyone think of dead pigs.

BC: It's barbecue. What should everyone think of?

AG: Yeah, what? Leprechauns?

ML: I just mean, why do we need a smiling pig with an apple in his mouth, about to be barbecued?

BC: I don't understand.

AG: Why is he smiling if he's about to be barbecued?

BC: This is the Apple Blossom BBQ Challenge! It's the thrill of competition! The pride! It's all on the line!

AG: What the hell are you talking about?

BC: Abbie wants to win this thing!

AG: Who the hell is Abbie?

BC: The pig.

ML: Oh. Apple Blossom BBQ. A-B-B. Abbie.

BC: Yeah! It's cute!

AG: It's a girl's name!

BC: What about Abbie Herman?

ML: You mean Abbie Hoffman?

AG: Who the hell is Abbie Herman?

ML: He means Abbie Hoffman.

BC: He burned down some buildings in the 60s.

ML: He founded the Yippies.

AG: The internet thing?

ML: They were a left-wing youth movement.

AG: Why the hell is he on our logo?

BC: Maybe you should leave the marketing to me. It is my bailiff's wick.

AG: Your what?

ML: His bailiwick?

AG: What the hell's a bailiwick?

The minutes reveal that the meeting went on, much in this vein, for another 45 minutes. Of course, this is no more absurd than all suicide food-related business.

Pork B.B.Q. Buffet House

The Pork B.B.Q. Buffet House has it all: Korean writing, Chinese writing, a swank Vancouver address, generous hours, and willing pig entree/impresarios.

Indeed, two ends of the spectrum—the toddler and the debauched entertainer—urge you to eat pork. (We are reminded of the town pig/country pig routine from Ballard Meats.) This is a classic ploy, suggesting as it does a unanimity of thought. People, yes, but also pigs—all pigs, from the guileless to the jaded—give you their endorsement. So eat eat eat! You will offend them if you refuse their hospitality.

In this, the advertisement seeks to underscore the inevitability of the consumption of meat. To present it as a given, unassailable by virtue of its ubiquity.

And, lest you think that this Elvis business is an aberration within suicidefoodism, remember that the Movement, many-tentacled and grasping, can and will co-opt any subculture, any cultural reference, any touchstone of contemporary society. We have seen the "food" animal Smokin’ Elvises, as well as the Love Meat Tender beef-cattle farm. And that is all we need to see to know that we are up against a foe with shape-shifting skills straight out of a crummy science fiction paperback.








Addendum: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Smokin' Elvises.













Addendum 2 (3/12/08): Another Elvis reference!

Addendum 3 (4/18/08): More Elvis! This, from the Rock'n Ribs BBQ Festival of Springfield, Missouri.

















Addendum 4 (6/23/08): We wish we had never brought his up.













Addendum 5 (11/09/08): Yes. Greaseland (source).

Addendum 6 (9/25/09): Another sighting of Vegas-era Pig Elvis?














Addendum 7 (10/18/09): Pig Elvis or merely a generic porcine rock-n-roller? It's hard to say. Pro this-is-another-Elvis-pig: Jumpsuit with big, open collar; vaguely 50s-inspired hairstyle; blue (suede?) shoes. Con this-is-another-Elvis-pig: He's playing a gigantic electrified rib; Elvis wore nerdglasses?













Addendum 8 (6/05/10): Whatever.














Addendum 9 (6/08/10): Pig Elvis has a meat-guitar again. Just like the real Elvis.

(Thanks to Dr. Martin for the referral.)









Addendum 10 (5/06/11): The hits keep on coming. This here's an advertisement for the 2011 Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.




















Addendum 11 (6/30/11): Elviswine shills for TC's Memphis BBQ.

Portuguese Hunting Rabbit

It could well be argued that this is not, in fact, an example of suicide food.

The rabbit is not offering himself up to the brave rabbit harmers, after all. He is merely engaging in a bit of stomach-turning playacting. Perhaps his deep-seated self-hatred compels him to take on the appearance and mannerisms of his oppressors. And is this really so far removed from the drearily typical pig, cow, and chicken—denizens of Man's dominion—who caper and preen and help to guide the daggers in?

Whatever the proper diagnosis, this picture was so horrible it made our brain fall out. As soon as we reinstalled it, we knew that we had a duty to include this rabbit. To share it, to broadcast it to a world benumbed to all but the most outrageous outrage.

Our taxidermy patient has been posed in the garb of the hearty hunter, consisting of a belt studded with shotgun shells. And possibly a green hunter's hat and (slightly less possibly) red hunter's socks.

Whatever the rabbit's intentions, he clearly demonstrates a serious mental impairment. He has thrown in with the shotgunners who delight in removing his kind from the woodlands. And who knows? Perhaps, before he became the conversation piece you see before you, he himself may have been shotgunned into eternity.

And now he stands in mute testament to the life-changing (!) power of the hunt.

(Thanks to Dr. Nick for the photo.)

McDonaldland Hamburger Patch

Yes, this still is a dispatch from an Age of Hallucination: the Clown with Jodhpurs—we will not use his name here—and the headsmack of a world where every object is sentient. Add to that the hit of nostalgia you get (if you were born circa '66), and you might very well miss the big picture. The big picture is not red wigs, dancing "apple pie" trees, or milkshake volcanoes. (Good lord, but those were unsettling times!)

No, the big picture is the powerful statement this makes of the Doctrine of Inanimacy, one of suicidefoodism's lesser-known tenets. (The primary precept, of course, and the subject of most of our reports, is the Axiom of the Willing Victim. For examples of this, see just about any of our analyses.)

Simply put, the Doctrine holds that animals, being inert—mere blobs of matter—have no interests, and certainly no rights. (Rights? Ha!) Quailing at the thought of butchering a pig, say, is no more rational than second thoughts about scraping gum from the bottom of your shoe.

In McDonaldland, the Doctrine finds expression in hamburgers that grow like weeds. Literally. The twist here is that they are inanimate objects—plants—that can still want to be eaten. But that surreal point is just a pebble in the mountain of mindfuck that is this advertisement.

The way the Doctrine plays out in McDonaldland is not dissimilar to the "farm fresh" rhetoric so common in images of farm life. Rhetoric we have scarcely begun to document.

Free Range Dog Chews

Something new from the architects of suicidefoodism’s hollow bastion: animals who live to sacrifice themselves not to humans and their storied and boundless appetites, but instead to their animal companions!

Here we have a mocking parody of the truism that to declare some animals family and others food is an act not of reason, but of caprice. How blind we were! We have no doubt now that the airwaves and annals are replete with similar examples of suicidal pet food. If only we could have opened our eyes earlier and seen! Whole vistas of fresh horrors waited only for a glance!

And now that we have—at last—seen, we cannot look away. It is as if we have only now been told the story of War, of Pain, of Betrayal. We hunger for it, for the truth it tells of Man’s dark heart.

In this chapter, Free Range Dog Chews and Chicken Breast Wraps. Such a sense of equality this grinning, thumbs-upping chicken has. It makes no difference to him whether he winds up in a human or canine stomach! As long as he gets to die, he’s satisfied! If only we could all be so willing to see the commonalities shared by all life! And it’s not just chickens who possess this Alpha of wisdom, this first thought, this very Basis for Action. Cod also, and shrimp, and crabs feel it and know.

However, for all their adherence to the Movement's dogma, Free Range Dog Chews will not—can not!—be confined by its conventions. No! For even while they show us the delighted chicken and his merry marine martyrs, they commit the sin of Pride. Like heroes daring the very gods, they glow with hubris. Witness these of their products. They don't hide the ugliness of their enterprise beneath the now-familiar whitewash.

They are forging a new way. A sneering, arrogant way! They offer neither "treats," nor "morsels"—those cowardly anonyms. Instead, they are frank, bizarrely so. Lamb tracheas! Lamb hocks! Lamb lungs! Too powerful for lies, they proclaim themselves! Too powerful for lies? For the lies that lubricate the machinery of suicidefoodism's very world? How?










And then, this. This final statement. Lamb Pizzle Twists. Forgive them their one nod to propriety, their one uncharacteristic flirtation with euphemism. Pizzle. Are you unfamiliar with the term? (Are they banking on your ignorance?) A pizzle is a penis. These are "twists" made from the penises of lambs. (Better that you know.)












The lamb keeps on smiling! How could he not? Pizzle Twists are his ultimate degradation!




















Addendum (10/06/10): Now this newly discovered image really shows off the lamb's true feelings! Banished is the specter of the lamb's ambivalence. He is tee-totally, 100% on board.

















Addendum 2 (12/20/10): Another thumbs-upping critter happy to be some dog's dinner!