3-Headed Monster

It came from the foulest swamps of clip-art.

A hideous (and hideously cheerful) freak prepares to be cooked and eaten.

One barbecue readied for each of its heads, it shrieks happily while the coals glow.

Happy Halloween.







Addendum: Last year's Halloween post is equally spookifying.

Chicky's Wings & Spirits

We've finally found the perfect companion for the Caporal Kid, a recent cowboy chicken discovery! And it wasn't easy.

They've got the same perky attitude, even the same cute little boots. But they are approaching things from different angles. The Caporal Kid had more of the showman in him, and the showman—not to mention the banker, the laborer, and the schoolmarm—surely had some of him in them. (Applause.) But the Kid was down for rounding up the whole herd of "food" animals and delivering them to the plates and bellies of this great nation.

Chicky seems to be out for the birds, and the rest of those delicious, edible critters be danged.

For Chicky, it's all about the chickens. Chickens being eaten. By other chickens. By humans. Hell, Chicky'd probably be fine with chickens being eaten by turtles! As long as chickenkind winds up digesting in someone's—or something's—intestines, Chicky's square with the world.






Addendum: Or should we be reading this a different way? As in this long-ago post, are Chicky's customers being surreptitiously insulted, called a bunch of yella chickens?

Niku-Mansei

This venerable Japanese beefstitution is really more Bovine Nation in miniature than business dedicated to the art and science of preparing portions of cows for consumption. Why else would the logo bear this charming portrait of cows from a variety of stations and stages of life? The gentleman, the crêpe-making matron, the pram-pushing mama, the young sow with the parasol, the adorable tykes. It could be a scene from fin de siècle Paris!

The effect of the message is twofold: First, by presenting the entire Family of Cow, the animals in all their humanity, as it were, their status as injured parties is obscured. Their grievances are refuted before they can even be considered.

Second, by showcasing a broad swath of cow society, they further neutralize the animals' objections by making bovicide appear uncontroversial to all of cowkind. In fact, it is such a commonplace that thoughts of fear or horror never entered any of the cows' minds.






Addendum: This is the same strategy we saw employed by Sweetwater's seafood restuarant. "They don't mind," the images say. "None of them mind. Up and down animal civilization, they're all on board. So! Ready to order?"

Addendum 2: We're reminded of this papercraft from Japan. And (scroll down) who's that making a cameo? More cow-related papercraft—from Niku-Mansei! Small world!

Hühnermann

It's Hühnermann, Vienna's childlike chicken person!

Here he is, peddling a miniature chicken on a plate. Hey, it's not much of an accomplishment, really. Look around. Birds willing to sell out their kind are a dime schilling a dozen.

But that doesn't stop Chicken Man from feeling like the cat who betrayed the canary. No, sir. He's up there, giving us the ol' thumbs up, looking like he just fought a great battle. Well, maybe he did. We're sure that stabbing birds in the back is hard work. And it's not just birds, either. According to the sign, it's baby cows and fish, too!

Note of Grave Import: While this might be our first chicken wearing lederhosen, it's not our first food animal. That honor belongs to Hiya the pig, in two (!) of his many incarnations.

(Thanks to Dr. Melisser for the referral and photo.)

Ship Captain Crew BBQ

Just a couple of pirate-types at your service. While we've seen pig pirates before (here and here, for instance)—and even a chicken pirate!—we can say with swaggering piratical confidence that this is the first pirate cow and goat we've come across.

And speaking of confidence, get a load of these two! The cap'n, with his arms crossed over his chest, perfectly secure in the rightness of his eventual death, and the fork-wielding crewman—these guys have mastered the pose of inappropriate peace.

Of course, as pirates, they should be, you know, fighting. Resisting. Rebelling. Anything other than basking in their own sanguine victimhood!

But these are vagabonds on the high suicidal seas, remember. Aboard the ship Sacrifice, they consult their maps and steer into every bay that offers them the merest hint of getting killed and eaten. One day. One day they'll reach it.

Ables' Bar-B-Q and Steak House

We can hardly believe it either, but it's been three and a half years since we first checked in on the wild world of Barbecue Battling.

It started here, with these pigs staring each other down. Then we went here, and pigs (and a cow) fighting it out with barbecue implements. Finally, more than a year and a half ago, these fight-happy pigs got in on the act. And now, demonstrating that this is one sport that just won't die (even if its competitors will), these two go at it in Antlers, Oklahoma.

It's a pastime we aren't equipped to understand. Modern-day gladiators in kerchiefs vie for the opportunity to die. They thrust and parry, delighting in the infliction of wounds, their own and their rivals'.

Then, for the lucky victor, it's death and consumption! Sure, sure, the loser wins the same prize. But don't tell them that. It'll ruin their motivation.

The re-revised map of the Barbecue Battle Belt, which takes into account the location of Ables'. (Able's? Abels's?)








(Thanks to Dr. Megan for the referral and the photo.)

Giant Crab Seafood Restaurant

In any world bearing the faintest resemblance to our own, a monstrous crab stationed atop a restaurant door, eight-foot claws ready to clack trespassers in half, would serve as an efficient deterrent.

Who would come within 100 yards of the place? It would be the food-industry equivalent of a castle with a dragon perched on a turret.

The crab would have his way with the frightened hordes, the puny humans suddenly impotent, their hands full of useless weapons.

His laughter would rain down upon them all like ashes!

But we're not in the real world. We're in Suicidefoodland, where reason cowers in the shadows. And where a gigantic crab forfeits his own terrible power in order to welcome people to dine on crabs.

It's only the latest in the tiresome series of so-called submissive dominants, massive brutes who turn down the chance to destroy their attackers and instead submit to a longed-for victimhood. We've seen them many times (for instance, in this post from 2009). And now it's the crab's turn to forsake vengeance and honor. And sense. And crabs.

Wild Wings 'n Things

In his airplane—the perfect embodiment of a flight-challenged bird's yearning for freedom—the chicken experiences a startled joy at being alive and headed for death. It radiates from him.

Puffing above the clouds, the chicken finally feels what his longing heart has spoken of all these many years: power. The power to be who he wants, where he wants, how he wants.

And what he wants is for his wings to have—at last—purpose. (And if he can find a way for his, you know, things to have purpose too, well, that would be just fine.) He will fly his wings directly to you, hot with life's ebbing flame! The wings will be wild.

And he will fly evermore. In chicken heaven.

(Thanks to Dr. Pippi for the referral.)







Addendum: When he's not plying the skies in his magical airplane, Chickeman (sic?) hits the road in his prosaic van.

Brew-B-Q

One last party, a final celebration before leaving the cloister of college and entering the real world.

And what a change it will be! No more Friday night keggers. No more close-knit community of like-minded buddies. No more easy life of responsibilities so small they can be discharged even through the miasma of a hangover.

The journey they embark on is a solemn one. And while they're proud to have come so far and eager to set out and prove their worth as edible objects, they need one last bash to mark the milestone. Which is why the one pig is tending the barbecue (his own, if you get our drift), the cow's wielding the fork, and the chicken—the perennial short straw drawer—has died of zealous beer-bonging.

(Thanks to Dr. Pat for the referral.)

Hambones by the Fire

O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?

The magisterial might of suicidefoodism flicks aside the Reaper's feeble jabs.

Death? You thought death was enough to quench the animals' thirst to be consumed? They live for this stuff. Die for it. Whatever.

And so, although death has at last claimed the tattered mantle of the pig's mortality, he carries on. In nothing but bones, he shows up for work at 8:50 (thank you very much), ready to dish up the flesh of the recently deceased. (Perhaps even the meat formerly encasing his own soul!)

He'll be cooking pigs until hell freezes over. And when that happens, he'll just switch to pork sundaes.

(Thanks to Dr. Rick for the referral.)

Hutton's Sausage

Outside their factory in New Zealand, these sausages—forgive us, these sizzlers, as the ID label indicates—are demonstrating true dedication to an ideal.

Hunkering down in a giant frying pan, they beam, they wink to passers-by.

(Or, at least, we think they're winking. Could that be the gleam from their monocles, instead?)

One throws his arm around his brother, who is slowly, deliciously rendered, converting himself into his elemental essence. Thus, the sausages reenact the seasonless cycle of life death.

(Thanks to Dr. Michael for the referral and photo.)

Jughead and the National Buffalo Wing Festival

Forsythe P. (Jughead) Jones—icon of wholesome American gluttony—shows up to give us a textbook example of IAS, a concept we haven't delved into much since this piece from 2009.

By masquerading as a chicken whose life is devoted to dying (and who eats chicken and who has a chicken for a head), our eternal teenager is enacting a time-honored ritual wherein people assume the role of "food" animals.

With this purportedly humorous inversion—human and commodity trading places—Jughead endeavors to deflect some of the blame he has earned through a lifetime of relentless consumption. Oh, the uncounted burgers he has forced down his elastic gullet at Pop Tate's! But here, on the grounds of the National Buffalo Wing Festival, he imagines he has taken on the role of victim (the phenomenon is known, after all, as Ironic Aggressor Sublimation). Oh, of course it's a pose, one that underscores the total domination exerted by the human overclass.

(Thanks to Dr. Robert for reminding us of what was under our very noses the whole time.)









Addendum: There's also this, from the same issue, harkening back to a theme we've been tracking since 2007.

Pork Rinds, a retrospective

It's the quaintest obscurantism in the suicidefoodist canon: pork rinds. As though pigs are, what? Melons? Do melons smile like that? Dream or hope like that? Ha!

This rogues' gallery of fiercely oblivious spokespigs represents a soaring low-point in the annals of meaninglessness. Somehow—and we agree that this lacks a consistent logic—the sight of pigs extolling the virtues of their own fried skin is worse than pigs talking up their own cooked meat. It's more desperate. More depraved.

The very idea of pork rinds is so revolting, it's a wonder we haven't discussed them more often. In fact, the last time was more than eight months ago. So.

Welp! No more stalling.




























































The entire breadth of pigkind has turned out to support the proposition that their skin makes a convenient and appetizing snack. The top-hatted captain of industry, the dancing fool, the simple country soul, even the cowboy atop his docile flying buffalo—all pigs, from the lowliest to the loftiest, give the nod to pork rinds!







Addendum: If you can bear it, revisit our discussion of the most horrendously named product in the field of pork skin offerings. Yes, even worse than Microwave Pork Puffies (see above), but just by a hair.