Snapper's Saloon

With a little imagination and a whole lot of unpleasant warping of one's mind, any edible thing can become a violent, sexual trigger.

For instance, the Lobstress.

Granted, compared with hooter, it takes plenty of effort to turn snapper into a word charged with erotic possibilities, but it can be done!

Just picture gleaming chitinous claws, crimson claws that mock-snap your most delicate regions, and that lipsticked mouth looming above them, she's just laughing at you, her cruel, painted eyes smile, she strokes her hair, long earrings dangling and tinkling, and it's all you can do to lift her above the boiling water and pry those succulent claws apart, dunk her in, and slam the lid down tight, chest heaving, your face flushed with the heat from the stove, your fists clenching and unclenching in spasmodic rage.

But they saw! They saw it all! She forced you! It was all her fault! That lobstress didn't know when to let it go. She had to keep snapping, clacking again and again. That snapping never stopped. Playing, she called it. Playing?! Yeah, well, who won the game? Huh? Who won the game?

(Thanks to Dr. Mrs. Suicidefood for the referral.)

Team Bar-B-Quau

She is delight. She is grace. She is the embodiment of the solemn play that is life. 

The palm tosses in a summer storm, and still she sways, her hands telling the story of her unimportant birth and her wonderful, imminent death. The grass skirt flirting with her hips, her hooves twinkling in the sand, the ecstasy of movement—it all speaks of a joy, a gratitude. 

That the universe has blessed her with this tiny, fleeting, destined-to-be-unmourned-and-unremembered portion of existence! She can't contain herself. She must dance! 

Addendum: Another Hawaiian pig waiting to enact the most glorious rite ever. 

Virginia Pork Festival

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This pig of uncertain psychological, emotional, and physical make-up is a study in contrasts. Or, well, the same darn contrast we've seen so many, many times before.

Namely, the piquant contrast between living and dying.

On the one hand, he or she grabs life by the scruff of the neck and yanks. The hoisting of beers! The wearing of sunglasses! The carrying of sandwiches! The striking of awkward, unnameable poses! She or he is a one-pig celebration of life's undeniable charms, of the overflowing bounty of life's promise to us all. Live, pig, live! Drink every drop! Bask in every second! Wallow in every moment life offers you!

And yet.

And yet he or she indulges in a too-familiar search for death. For while dancing on the (invisible) table, the pig prepares to die. The pig seduces oblivion. Can you make out the tattoo on her or his arm? MOM inked above a ham?

Ponder that one some night when you can't stop thinking about the poor decisions you've made in your life.

Foies Gras Marie

A joyeux Tokyo Rose for the the worldwide war between Human and Animal, Foies Gras Marie purrs like a seductress. Telling you lies so blatant you have no choice but to surrender and believe, she flaunts her liver and the livers of her fellow ducks.

For reasons best known to their psychiatrists, the purveyors of foie gras—the gavageoisie—always, always, always make sure to draw your attention to the birds' throats.

The birds are taunting us. With their big bows, their bonnets tied so gaily beneath their chins, the loose ends snapping in the breeze, those damn, depraved ducks are taunting us.

They want us to remember their necks and to envision the feeding tube and the gunk it extrudes. They want us to picture it, to bear it in mind as we dine on the mush that used to be their livers.

And they laugh! They delight! They cackle! These waddling, paddling she-demons cackle!

(Thanks to Dr. Adrienne for the referral and the second photo.)

What We've Been Missing 6: a digression

From time to time, on stumbling feet made careless by regret, we visit the culinary heights we have forsworn. (Our most recent installment of similar bounty, from nearly a year ago, is here.) What riches could our tongue be sampling! What delights for the eye and palate! Instead of these clever morsels, to content ourselves with such paltry, dirt-grown fare. When we could be tasting all of this!

Like these swollen joints, these bloated, bulbous, stuffed, and ruptured pipkes!

Or this Hawaiian... stuff. It's called kālua pork, meaning that it's cooked in an underground oven. Special wood is burned in a pit, stones are added for heat retention, and the pit is lined with banana leaves. Then the meat is added, covered with more leaves, burlap, and sand, and the whole thing cooks for hours and hours.


When the result is as scrumptious (?) as the image to the left, it's clearly worth all the trouble.

 Presentation is everything.

The simplest things are sometimes the most tempting. Such as these slabs of canned meat fried atop a tough, rubbery skin of scrambled eggs and topped with viscous ketchup!

Leonard's Pit Barbecue

More aristocratic pigs tempting you to eat them.

We've seen them before (in both their pre-death and their post-living states), and they never fail to impress.

You see, even in these times of economic uncertainty, where the Average Joe looks upon the high priests of finance with richly deserved suspicion, the wealthy pig still commands respect. Still, they look to him, for guidance, for wisdom, for an example. And when the example he gives is one of utter self-abnegation… Well, it does contribute to the pervasive feeling of impermanence, the unmooring of our institutions, the weakening of our most celebrated beliefs.

Which, bizarrely, is Leonard's objective. He wants you to eat your betters. He wants you to strip him of his finery. To trample his striped trousers. To poke him in the eye with his own walking stick! To choke him with his spats and suffocate him with his top hat!

If you can't upend the System, if you can't avenge yourself upon the keepers of accounts, the repossessors and foreclosers, the buyers and sellers, the accumulators of wealth, then topple him!

Topple Leonard! Cast him down, down, all the way down!

Hog Time!

One crucifixion the hard way, coming up!

In this delightful art to be found at Portland's Hog Time! food cart, a peppy pig is willingly drawn into hell by a grasping area code.

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

Partners in Swine

So now the conceit is that the "food" animals aren't hopping into the flames out of love for us, because this is what they think we want.

It appears that the Partners in Swine are engaging in a reckless rampage of "slow grilling a mighty tender piece of pork" against our wishes, in violation of our laws.

Their striped convict get-ups suggest we are dealing with recidivist suicides at that! They were already locked up, then, in protective custody perhaps. But they escaped, to pursue their dream of dying.

They're not doing for us; they're doing it in spite of us?

The Local Grill & Scoop

Animals and the desire to leave it all behind go together like fish and ice cream!

This fish hugging his ice cream dish (if that is, in fact, what it's doing) is a perfect example. Instead of clinging to life, the fish clings to its favorite dessert... receptacle. Is that even what's going on?

All we really know is that the fish has something else on its mind besides a quick flop back into the water and the possibility of resuming a normal life.

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

Suicide Snacks: quickies 9

When the lengthy sermons are too much, we turn to our by-now-classic series of rapid-fire diatribules for relief. (Revisit the most recent installment, won't you?)

You tell 'em, duck! What, do those tofu-munching hippies think they're too good for your repulsive liver or something?




The swiggin' pig of Nashville, Tennessee doesn't do anything halfway. He lives life at full throttle, sometimes spending seven, eight hours a day down at the local tavern. And he dies full tilt, too.








A shrimp crossed with a Segway? It's the cuddliest version yet of half-animal/half-machine monstrosity.










Yes, yes, it's not about meat. It's a rare example of dairy-related business. Still, it's remarkable because it's like the cow's innermost thoughts and feelings will not be repressed. The cow's undeniable gratitude at being used shines out, through bone, muscle, and hide.

Septemberfest Wild Game Cook Off

And here you thought only those effete playthings, those (snort) domestic animals, dreamt of self-annihilation. We've told you over and over that it's all animals! From decadent livestock to the beasts cursed with boundless freedom, all the animals long for the end.

Take this rugged fellow. Fresh from the forests that team with abandoned creatures, his coat still redolent of Nature's neglect, he made his clumsy way to the bright lights of civilization.

There, to tend the grills, to hold aloft the savory morsels bequeathed by the proud animals who have already succumbed to their dearest desires. And one day—dare he dream?—he might find himself upon those dutiful tines.

Fischer Family Farms Pork

The Fischer Family Farms pork pig is practically a member of the family.

That he shifts so easily and readily from category to category—on the left he's a sentient being, on the right a delicately ruffled chunk of meat—is only part of his charm.

Separating them is a gossamer thread. Each self, each half of the whole, can regard the other with grace. "Hello, Brother Who Shall Be," says the living pig. "Hello, Brother Who Once Was," says the dead one.

Like you, we are reminded of this dramatic representation. Before and After shots of this kind are always sobering. For us, at least. For the pigs, they are merely confirmation of the rightness of life, a validation of The Way of Things. Which is why the Before pig here is quietly pleased with his situation. Here, alive and smiling; there, dead and sliced by practiced hands. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Dusty's Barbecue

This has been kicking around our files for years, and it's now obsolete. Dusty's went out of business in 2009, but this image is still instructive.

It demonstrates the same gambit employed by Niku-Mansei and others: by showing a cross-section of pig society—the child-pig holding a balloon, the middle-aged pig playing badminton, and the senile pig buggy-whipping passers-by—it intends to put the best possible light on the consumption of pigs. "The complete spectrum of pigs lives in harmony with the concept of their own inevitable destruction," it announces, "so why shouldn't you? And here, enjoy this old-timey portrait."

Pig society cries out with one voice: Being eaten is right, natural, and expected. It's suitable for the young and old, the mild and the crotchety.