Christmas City Competition BBQ team

It's a Christmas tradition in these parts: Santa hitches the flying pigs to his magic barbecue and takes to the skies.

At every house they pass, Santa frees one of his wonderful pigs, who tumbles down the chimney, incinerating himself in the fireplace. Oh, don't worry! These are miracle pigs; they regenerate endlessly, until every home on Earth has a dead pig of its own!

Which is why the pigs are every bit as jolly as Saint Nick. On this night, they get to die eternally (well, a billion or so times each), again and again, reconstituted above the rooftops and readied once more for death.

Ho ho ho!

Take a moment to visit the ghosts of suicidefood Christmases past—2010, 2009, and 2007.

Suicidefood Book Report: Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher

In this, our fourth suicidefood book report, we continue our tradition of dabbling at the surface of books we haven't fully, completely finished. Or perhaps even begun. (Reacquaint yourself with our previous reports: Animals Make Us Human, Endgame, and Punk Farm.)

Our subject this time around is Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher  (Tricycle Press, 978-1582463155) by Laurel Snyder, illustrated by David Goldin.

[Editor's note: It's possible—just maybe—that, in relying on a particular source, we may have misrepresented the nature of the book in question, as thoughtful commenters have lovingly pointed out. Integrity Laziness compels us to keep the following as originally written.]

According to the blurb at amazon.com, it would appear this charming picture book is actually a chilling tale of premature animal dementia (PAD). As they put it:

"Baxter desperately wants to experience Shabbat dinner, the special Friday-night meal that ushers in the Jewish day of rest. [...] When he learns that pork is a forbidden food according to Jewish law, he stuffs his face with kosher pickles and raisin challah, hoping to become kosher. He even tries, unsuccessfully, to become a cow."

And you're surprised that suicidefoodism lingers? That it spreads like illness? That it lurks in the forgotten corners of the cultural hive, waiting waiting waiting to regroup, to regrow, to re-emerge and conquer!

Baxter—dear, foolish Baxter—wants so badly to experience everything the humans experience that he thinks nothing of attempting to make himself edible. The adorable string of misadventures he embarks on have at their center a trusting pig's desire to make himself the centerpiece of their holiday celebration. Not, you understand, to finagle an invitation, but to make his very flesh suitable for his hosts' consumption.

(Thanks to Dr. RandiJM for the referral.)

Pleasantville Pig Out

Compare if you will the name Pleasantville with the gruesomely spot-on barbecue-related town names we've seen in the past, like Boiling Springs Lake and Hardball Farms. While those toponyms put it all out there—the pain, the anguish—Pleasantville is coy. Pleasant. Does this look pleasant?

The pig in his barbecue grill jail, the flames swelling at his back—that's pleasant?

Well, for him, it probably is. We lost our heads for a minute. This isn't one of our scheduled Festivals of Cruelty, wherein the animals are truly terrorized and hounded to the brink of death and beyond.

This is party time. The animals are honored guests, proud for the chance to die and experience the oblivion they've spent their lives pursuing.

Mainely Grillin' & Chillin'

Lobster: Say, when you think about the Raitt Homestead Farm's Mainely Grillin' & Chillin' Country BBQ State Championship, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

Pig: Hard to say, Lob. I guess the grilling? Or maybe the chilling?

Lobster: They're both important aspects of the G&C festivities, that's for sure. But aren't you forgetting something?

Pig: No, I don't think...

Lobster: Come on, Pig. What's the best part? The Reason for the Season?

Pig: Um...

Lobster: There's the grilling. The chilling. And the...?

Pig: The killing!

Lobster: Now you got it!

Pig: If it weren't for us getting killed, none of the rest of it would be worth a darn.

Lobster: Too true.

Pig: And the spilling. Spilling our blood?

Lobster: Sure, I guess.

Pig: And the willing? Like, making out your will?

Lobster: Yeah, but it's not like we own anything to give away. It's borrowed time all the way! We can't even claim ownership of our bodies.

Pig: There's the Adirondack chairs, too. Can't forget them.

Lobster: They make the chilling so much easier.

Pig: To us!

Lobster: To us!

*clink!*

Pig on the Pond

There once was a pig. There was a pond, too, but we're interested in the pig.

The pig had a dream. Unless you're three weeks old, you already know what the pig's dream was. The pig's dream was to get eaten. If he could bob around on an inner tube for a while beforehand, that would be gravy. 

So, the pig did what any pig with a purpose would do: He dedicated himself to the quest for culinary knowledge, enrolled in a pig-fattening class, and got himself fitted for a pair of swim fins.

All the pieces were falling into place. As he drifted off to sleep every night, he warmed himself with thoughts of his future, a future that offered itself to him like a big old plate of pig meat all dripping with, you know, "juice."

And after all that work… nothing happened. The pig floated from one end of the pond to the other, and no one so much as stabbed him with a fork.

Now, the average pig would have been so discouraged he might have given up completely on the idea of being killed and eaten in a superfluous festival of carnivory. But this pig was no average sacrifice. 

He didn't quit. 

No, he redoubled his efforts.

He got himself an advanced degree in Dying Studies and tried again. 

He'd give them something to shoot for. (And, hell, maybe even something to shoot at. He wasn't going to rule out anything!)

Slathering himself with BBQ 30 (ha ha?), he mounted his inner tube and took to the pond once more. Who could resist such an educated pig? He had achieved the pinnacle of academic excellence! He had finally become somebody. Just in time to become nobody.

(Coincidentally—we can only assume—the 2011 Pigs on the Pond event was designed to raise money for schools.)

Uncle Piggy Smokey Grill

We can't be sure, but Uncle Piggy sure seems like a pig with a terrible secret.

We don't pretend to know all the details, but if we had to hazard a guess, we'd say it involves his eating all the stuff you threw on the grill a few minutes ago. (See him patting his belly?)

And then there's his, well… His personal issues. It's not exactly well known outside the world of suicidefood, but cannibalism and his own impending demise have joined forces to inflame inside him an unquenchable paraphilia.

His shirt's already off, and he crosses his legs provocatively. He wants you to want him. He is making bedroom eyes at you from atop the grill. Oh, he'll make you cry Uncle.

And with that, we're off to see our therapist. Until next time!

Ethical Nutrients Fish Oil

Do you know what makes fish happy?

Swimming, maybe? Spawning? Satisfying other crude biological imperatives?

Maybe it's the simple act of being, of possessing a functioning body, of existing as an example of life, colorful, beautiful, graceful, a scintilla amid creation's great dazzle.

Or maybe you don't believe fish are the sorts of things that can experience happiness?

Well, both views are wrong. What makes fish happy—very happy—is peddling fish oil for people to take by the spoonful. It makes them (the fish, not the people) dress up in Carmen Miranda drag and give in to life's clarion call: Dance! Make merry! Shake your fins and die!

(Thanks to Dr. Mel for the referral.)

BBQ Trophies

You are looking at a bunch of true believers. This Unholy Trinity has fully embraced their status as food. They have totemized themselves, solidifying their very objectness.

The point is that these animals have so thoroughly assimilated the very concept of their own worthlessness that they can appear—excited, eager, with fond wishes for a future constituting more of the same—as living embodiments of others' desires to eat them.

They do not merely offer their blessings on an endeavor dedicated to their destruction; they ratify the worldview and priorities of their destroyers. And so the cow represents herself as beef and the pig as ribs. They are just (temporarily) living stuff.

It is a curious phenomenon, this use of the animals' agency to reaffirm their lack of agency. Curious, but altogether commonplace.

Then again, it should hardly surprise us when animals this warped fail to appreciate the difference between prize-winner and prize.

Henderson Chicken

From where does the Henderson Chicken chicken derive his sense of identity and purpose? It's not a trick question. In fact, the answer is the same one we've found approximately seventy-seven jillion times: The bird has placed all his (?) eggs in the basket labeled "I am edible."

Oh, the chest-swelling pride!

He suppresses a satisfied tear when he remembers the legend rippling beneath him: Once you've tasted our chicken, you'll want more!

You know—you just know—when he first saw that motto he called everyone he knew and gushed. "Our chicken! They called me their chicken! They really love me!" That's right. Someone finally believes in him. For an insecure chicken, that means the world. Something has plucked him from the obscurity of his fellows, his indistinguishable coopmates. He is a chicken of distinction.

Oh, and he might be saluting, too. But don't hold us to that.

Absolutely BBQ

Don't be distracted by the wild-eyed cowboy with the tongs and the flags. (What's he up to with his French and UK flags? Full disclosure: We don't care.)

The real story, as always, is the pig. The pig with the smile, the inviting eyes, and the spit rammed the length of its body. Whatever goes on around it, no matter the cultural significance of the celebration of which he is the centerpiece, the pig has simple needs easily met: hot steel, hot coals, and a hot old time. If only we all had such humble requirements! If only life were so accommodating to us as it is to pigs. It's almost as if the entirety of existence—the very Way of Things—were set in order specifically with the needs of pigs in mind.

And we thought we occupied the center of the world's turning! It's the pigs! It's all for them! Don't envy them their satisfaction. One day we'll all be just as dead.

Byrd'z Bar-B-Q

Can we all agree, once and for all, that the attitude on display here is not what is usually intended when the phrase "with an attitude" is deployed?

Yes, the leather jacketed chicken affects an air of carefree cool. Yes, there are sunglasses involved. And yes, the letter Z has long been recognized as an orthographic signifier of rebellion.

But where is this would-be disrupter? The bird is in the fire, making not the slightest effort to escape! He positions himself just so, to ensure even cooking!

Attitude? While we agree that it demands no small degree of toughness to hold one's ground even as the flames cook one's flesh, it's a toughness in service of maintaining the status quo. No matter the cost.

Guerrila Q

Even though we've seen this kind of "food"-animal-as-radical-smasher-of-the-system before, we still don't get it.

Look at El Jefe here. The Castro-esque cigar, the Che-esque beret, the revolutionary's bandoleer made of pig ribs… It's sad, really.

Sad that he thinks he's, you know, accomplishing something. Standing up for a principle. Fighting an oppressive regime. Instead of what he's actually doing: Joining the struggle to be eaten. In the streets, we suppose.

It's not exactly the stirring stuff of romantic myth-making.

Addendum: And here's the (even less logical) kinder, gentler version of the barbecue-themed freedom fighter.