Bacon is the New Black

Naturally, this T-shirt design is associated with an earnest, high-end butcher.

The studied attitude of cool, the nod to fashion—these mark the modern, artisanal dismantler of carcasses no less than they mark today's pig.

And just when a gluttonous nation's obsessive and forced-smile-hilarious dedication to bacon was becoming tiresome, the enterprise is rescued by a pig who's given up on living.

The pig knows it temporarily houses this generation's It Meat, and he capitalizes on it. But remember, pig: You don't own bacon; you borrow it from your butcher.

Ogeechee Meat Market

BACKSTAGE RIDER

COW must be provided with the following:

1 pair sunglasses (Sunset Boulevard style);

1 cowbell-type bell, copper or bronze (no tin), collar to be made of leather, preferably from carcass of COW's children or other family members;

Furthermore:

All meat market employees will address COW as "Hey, You" or "Beef Face";

In the event that live transport is required, any and all trucks must be filthy and unventilated;

In keeping with COW's status as a beloved celebrity, only high quality knives, cleavers, chains, and buckets may be used in the slaughter and dismemberment of COW. (Equipment need not be cleaned prior to use.)

COW appreciates your cooperation.

Gusto Packing

Not since famed self-hating cow Elsie fretted about humans and their love lives have we seen livestock with such weird priorities.

This pig—this paragon of gusto!—lobbies on behalf of a butchery concern that boasts of its ability to produce six million pounds of pig meat per week.

And why does he do it? What is the altar he throws himself upon? What star guides him into his afterlife?

It's all in the name of your potential for racking up sexual conquests. No, we don't understand why a pig—even a suicidal one—would give two grunts about what humans get up to in the bedroom. (Of course, we're not even addressing the dubious conclusion the pig draws in the first place.) It's enough to know that the thought of giving you your jollies gives him his. Your capacity for scoring means the pig's life—and, more importantly, his death—has meaning. Sort of.

Anonymous Disemboweled Pig Butcher

As we did in the case of God Burger, we must disagree with the Internet's arbiters. They might know their business, but they don't know suicide food.

Failblog calls this a misfire. Hardly! It is perfection, effortlessly capturing the ethos of an entire repulsive way of life!

It's not just the pig's face, which, in its undeniable rapture, conveys the proper reverence for self-gutting.

It's also the sausages he pulls from his abdominal cavity, as though his anatomy were configured solely to provide his customers with maximum convenience. He opens a sterile slot beneath his apron, locates the sanitary sausages, and withdraws them. It's a simple procedure blessed by an unseen technology, as far from Nature's gory designs as anything in Suicidefoodland.

And they call it a failure. It's a masterpiece!

Clouet Gourmet Charcuterie

This demure sow is having a special moment. Yes, she lost a leg to the forces of butchery, but what a pittance to trade for fulfillment of such magnitude and dignity!

Not only has her left ham-bearing member been exalted as one of "the finest parts," but she gets to live and limp to see the day! It's like the dream of watching your own funeral to hear how your friends and family eulogize you. She discovers that they think she's splendid and distinctly edible!

As weird as we feel saying it, this is our sixth example of a peg-legged pig. (See another one here.) It just goes to show you: if an idea is horrible enough, more than one person will have it.

Boucherie Rober

For some cows—amateurs!—a brand is enough. Those charmingly cryptic symbols seared into tender flesh and signifying the animals' status as object are sufficient. For some.

But not for le boeuf Rober.

He has so completely given himself over to his butchers—meat, bones, and soul—that his entire body is now a billboard advertising his thinghood. He even dressed up for his special rendez-vous!

It's as though the only interesting thing about him is the identity of those in total control of every aspect of his circumscribed life.

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

Rick Curtis Quality Meats

This mural is the very essence of sanguine. Bloody, yes, of course. It's painted on the wall of a butcher's shop, for crying out loud. The implication of blood is everywhere. The thing may as well have been painted with blood.

But, no. We mean the collegial scene. The gang is so darn cheerful, so content with their lot. The whole bunch is satisfied and easy-going, from the chicken getting ready to attack the dangling string of sausages to the pig enjoying sexual harassment at the hands of a malicious, grabby sheep. The butcher and the steer—look at the way they've flung their arms over each other's shoulder. These two, inexplicably, have managed to form a real bond of friendship.

We say inexplicably because the steer, in his living form, couldn't have been around much longer than the time it took to pose for the mural. We wouldn't have thought he could have made much of an impression on the busy butcher. Then again, the steer does look to be a character, what with his cosmopolitan ear- and nosering and his country-gentleman wheatstraw.

That they all—well, the four-legged and feathered among them—will be, you know, gone before you know it is hardly enough to dampen the mood. These are quality meats, of good character, made of strong stuff. They know their place. More than that, they take obvious pride in knowing their place. There they go, smiling, blushing, cavorting, sexually harassing, right up the end.

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

The Pink Pig Company

This pig is the picture of good cheer, pictured atop his pink background, so indicative of rosy health. He's happy, happy being so plainly equated with the food they intend to make of his flesh. Yes, just look at that quality pig pork. Impressive—isn't it?—how much abuse, how many insults the "food" animals bear, smiling all the while.

If someone referred to you as "meat," how would you respond? Think of it! "You're dead meat!" someone says. It's hardly complimentary. No, it's another way of saying you are merely experiencing the interval before your approaching death and your return to pure matter. No longer will you matter, for you will be nothing but matter. What does it mean to be treated like a "piece of meat"? It means, of course, to be treated as inanimate, a thing possessing no agency, no will, no intrinsic worth, only whatever value someone else sees fit to assign to you. And what of the bane of the single-but-hopeful, the "meat market"? Who wants to go there, where all romantic possibility is reduced to its meanest elements?

None of these implications would bother our pig in the least. Nope, he's meat and proud of it. Or, well, as proud as meat can be.







Addendum: Familiarize yourself with Terry Bisson's sci-fi nightmare "They're Made of Meat" for a tangential take on this theme.

Browns the Butchers

A proud tradition of sheep stomach stuffing and boiling, haggis represents all that is Scottish.

However, this disembodied sheep's stomach is English, the tam o'shanter notwithstanding.

He wants you to eat him and his fellow, um, muscular digestive organs in a weird and punishing tribute to the heritage of the people who killed the sheep who previously housed him.

Funny isn't it—and we don't mean funny ha ha, we mean funny completely screwed up—that the stomach, good old Gastro, is depicted as an animal-like quadruped. He even has a tail! (Unless that's just his darling little pyloric canal.) It's as though the sheep's absence means the haggis ordeal is simply too far removed from anything resembling a cute little animal. This is unacceptable! Thus, the personified stomach, an entity we can hardly believe we haven't invoked before.

La Table du Terroir

We don't want to tell the Academie de Suicidefoodisme Français its business, but "terror" in French is terreur, not terroir.

And what word could describe this tableau of butchery better than terreur?

Les amis, together even after their death and decapitation, favor us with the rictus of dismal joy. It's as though they have chosen to descend from their heaven to haunt the boulevard, to coax the hungry and demented. Or maybe this is simply their way of watching the final act of their lives' drama: not their release from the prison of life (O, blessed moment!), but the intimacy of their own consumption.

C'est la mort!

(Image source.)

Winelands Pork

Winelands Pork is a South African outfit that prides itself on its status as "an export approved abattoir specialising in the slaughtering of pigs."

And they're not the only ones with pride! Their pig spokesman is just busting! He's not the public face of any old pig-killing bunch, you know. This one specializes/ises! They "adhere to strict hygiene protocols." And he's in good company—they have the capacity to slaughter up to 4,000 pigs a week!

Why, they even have an "onsite… veterinarian [to] ensure that the abattoir functions to the most strictest of standards as required locally as well as internationally." The pig's got a private physician! To guarantee that he and his chums are killed and butchered properly. No wonder he's grateful!

He can sleep easy, knowing that his humans are always thinking about him, seeing to his needs and comfort, making sure his essence doesn't contaminate the human food supply. (A frequent cause of worry among pigs!)

Sidenote: Do slaughterhou—pardon us. Abattoirs. Do abattoirs commonly have vets on staff? And do veterinary credentialing bodies have anything to say about their docs performing in this capacity? The way, for instance, the AMA has rules about physicians participating in, say, torture?

(We can't say for certain whether this is the vet, snapped while tending one of his patients.)










And just for laughs, here's another Winelands Pork pig. Dude: only 32.98 rands for a kilogram of vark skouer of boud tjops? We'd be happy, too, to know that our meat was on offer at such a resonable price!

Embutidos Pellico

The sporting life in the north of Spain is strange business. Banish from your mind the carefree enjoyment of Nature’s splendors, the thrill of testing one’s limits, the homely pleasures of fresh air soothing too-long pent-up lungs. None of these holds sway among the adventuresome pigs of that realm.

Their personalities work differently from yours. Hunched from the evil influence of a slaver’s philosophy, their spirits seek only further horrors. And everything they see, every possibility they contemplate, is a challenge to their sickest selves.

Thus, the mountains become a theater of torment, as the pig uses his own intestines (or possibly a chain of embutidos-style sausages made from his flesh?) to scale the peaks. At the top, perhaps he will fashion them into a noose to cap off the outing with a flourish.

The whole scene is steeped in such ghastliness it’s hard for us to imagine it inducing anyone to buy sausages. Or anything at all to eat. In fact, if the world were sane, it would impel everyone to seek out a private corner in which to sweat and quiver.

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

Zagreb Butcher

It’s touching, really, the way the Croatian swine has put on his best outfit for his appearance at this Zagreb butcher shop.

In his smart, red bow-tie, he’s like the maître d’ welcoming you to your table on the killing floor.

And his eyes! Oh, his blue, beseeching eyes! How eager to please, his eyes, how eager to serve and be served!

Even suspended above the cremains of his fellows—his cured fellows shaped into multifariously knobbly tubes—he doesn’t lose his eagerness. His eyes plead with us for the opportunity to undergo the same transformation. From living thing to unrecognizable, insides-colored substance.

(Thanks to Dr. BJ for the referral and photos.)













Addendum: One detail that might have escaped your notice is the motif used for the tiny signs advertising specials and other delicious what-nots.

Now do you see them, circled to the left?

But of course! They too are pigs! So many opportunities to serve!