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.)

Special Report: Pig Logo Exposé 11

We're ready to dive back into the world of recycled pig logos. Review, won't you, the last time we indulged our inexplicable penchant for RPE (Repetitious Porcine Emblemology).





























































































(From left to right, by row: Lillie's, Northwest Tennessee Battle of the Pigs BBQ & Car Show, Get Your Pig On; Gourmet Grills, Holy Smokes BBQ Festival, In Hog Heaven BarBQue; Shawn's Smokehouse BBQ, Que-by-the-Sea, Pork U; BBQ Pit Boss, Louisiana State Championship Bowie BBQ Duel & Festival, Microwave Pork Puffies; Greet American BBQ Tour, Bixby BBQ 'n Music, BBQ Bonanza; Eagle BBQ Cook-Off and Spudfest, Giggly Pig BBQ Team, BBQ Throwdown.)

The hallmarks of the breed are the burly forearms and intricate nostrils. True, some examples of Burly (as he is hereby designated) are missing those two f-hole nostrils, but all appear to boast forearms of Popeye proportions. He also always (so far!) sports a bandanna or an apron. Unless those are overalls. It's clear that somewhere in his evolution, Burly split into two variants: the elbow-on-the-bar glad-hander and the dimwitted cowboy.

We'll be watching this one.

Addendum (12/16/11): And here are Burly specimens #19–22.

Don't think this is actually Burly? We admit it's not a perfect example of the form. But look at the curlicue nostrils. Never forget the curlicue nostrils.

Suicide Medicine: a digression

We've seen the victims of clothing, sports, hunting, trapping, whaling, and pest control stick up for the institutions that did them in. And now it's medicine's turn.

Rushing from his graduation ceremony at upstate New York's Taconic Farms, Inc. (motto: "We’re dedicated to providing the quality animal models and services that can help you accelerate your research and improve your position in a competitive market"), the Rattus norvegicus subject has just been awarded the degree that will allow him to be experimented on and killed. His eyes sparkle with visions of a future dedicated to the promise of anonymity. He will receive a number—such as 6621-M—but never a name. Never an identity, apart from his disease model or phenotype. Never any consideration save what the law requires. And that's just how he wants it!

Let the rats dallying with their social sciences, their arts, their literatures—their soft world of the inexact and impractical—concern themselves with matters of the self. With signifiers and identity.

Our rat deals in Science! The quantifiable and repeatable. The impersonal and numerical! Science is the master to whom he is happily enslaved! The heady march of Progress! Where they strive for the future, those peerers into microscopes, he'll be there, contributing his tiny portion to Truth!

(Thanks to Dr. Eugen for the referral and to Seymour Miles for the photo.)

APSA

The self-loathing is staggering. The sheer force of the self-abnegation is almost holy in its purity.

We are unfamiliar with the educational jurisdictions involved, but we can only assume that the process of becoming a diplomate in Pig Sciences is time-consuming, if not grueling.

How many hours must this pig have logged studying, researching, attending lectures? Imagine the discipline, the sense of purpose and sacrifice!

And through the entire program, burning like a candle, his one thought, as though his mind had been crafted solely to carry it and house it: I will be killed! Not "Alas! I am to be killed!" But "As God is my witness, I will be killed! Efficiently! Mercilessly! Scientifically! And my demise will slicken the ramp that leads my kind down, down, down! Down into death!"

The APSA is explicit in their mission: to benefit the pig industry, which is something far different from benefiting pigs.

The graduate's expression reveals not a hint of ambivalence. Untroubled by the (brief) career path he has set his foot upon, he knows the end he craves is near.












Addendum: Oh yes, we've seen his kind before.

Festival of Cruelty 6

Post #300 is our excuse to venture into the no man's land of suicide food's evil first cousin once removed. The dwellers on this withered branch of the family tree see no need for the conventions that keep carnivory's darker truths at a comfortable psychological remove. Continually, we are compelled to return to this rotten vine and hope that careful study and familiarity will inoculate us from its toxic effects.

(Get in the sewer and review the previous installments of the Festival of Cruelty: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.)


Hatfield Pig Roast: When Hatfield Pig Roast roasts a pig, the pig stays roasted. They want the worthless swine to feel it, to experience every moment of the pig-roasting process in all its smothering torment. And look at him! What can we say but Mission Accomplished! The pig, wearing a… trench coat (?), gulps his last breaths, his life reduced to a hellish race for death.






Buck'n Chicken: That ol' buckaroo is having the time of his life! Yes, sir! And why shouldn't he? The freakish chicken-monster he has captured and broken is practically drunk with panic. That's like marinade to these people. By "these people," we mean wild chicken riders.






Funny Farm BBQ: They eat animal "children" (for instance this charming tyke), so why not mentally imbalanced animals? Still, as natural and wholesome as it is to exploit the suffering and credulity of reality-deprived lunatics, we can't help feeling a twinge of regret. Just a twinge, mind you, for we are lulled by Funny Farm BBQ's slogan: "Good meat, good smoke, good times." Sure enough, the pig looks happy. (Of course, the pig's mind supplies him with a never-ending parade of candy-colored hallucinations, many involving drunken bishops and giant squids made of pure sound.) The chicken and cow look happy, too. Do they know what they're doing, or are they merely acting out their demons' wishes?





In a Biskit: The denuded corpse of a chicken rises from his fresh grave, intent on spilling his hatred for the living upon the earth. And what caption accompanies this ghoulish rampage? "Alive with flavour." Good one, Kraft conglomerate!

(Thanks to Dr. Amy for the photo.)





University of Missouri Meat Lab: The very best thing about this image—apart from the sado-sexual overtones of the hazing/paddling—is that we found it at a site dedicated to something called Gentle Doctor Benefit! (They raise money for veterinary students at the University of Missouri.) We confess that we wonder about their gentleness if this depiction is associated with them.

Professor Fish

Pontificating from his ivory tower, Professor Fish typifies those big city academics who deign to tell us peons how to life, what to believe, who to be.

Oh, and it's not just fish! No, no, it's also pigs and cows!

With their noses in books and their heads in the clouds, these brainiacs are utterly divorced from the real world. The world we actually inhabit.

Of course, this appeal to authority has as its goal the subversion of critical thinking: If the best and brightest among us, those whose lives are dedicated to the discovery and transmission of knowledge, if they say it is so, it must be worth attending to.

But talk about absent-minded professors! Even those who never made it past 8th grade can identify a flaw in the good professor's theory. As he stands beside his thesis—flower of his intellect—we see a tiny little contradiction. Eat fish and, therefore, live longer. But for the fish, the simple proposition is refuted. When you eat fish, the fish do not, of course, live longer. They live no longer.

Not exactly a tenure track.

(Thanks to Dr. Portigal for the photo.)







Addendum: We are actively seeking other faculty members of Suicidal Animal departments from halls of higher learning around the globe. Especially any examples other than fish, pigs, and cows.

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?

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!