Smoke Wagon BBQ

We know we're looking at an allusion to the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. We don't know why, and we're too weary to puzzle out whether these three represent the Law (Wyatt and Billy Earp and whoever) or the Outlaws (the Clanton Boys and them).

What difference could it possibly make?

They're standing up for the interests of Smoke Wagon BBQ, which means they're standing up to be knocked down, whichever side they're on.

They stride through the dusty street, menace hooding their eyes. They tote their guns. By God, they will be put down.

Franklin's Battle of the BBQ

The Civil War is a contextual grounding of increasing popularity (see here and here), and we think we know why: Suicidefoodism takes war, with all its hatred and moral ambiguities, and nullifies it. "Hatred?" the Civil War imagery simpers. "What hatred?" If something as bloody and desperate as war can be brought under control, can anyone or anything threaten suicidefoodism's power?

Indeed, warfare's aggrieved parties, in this case a pair of pigs, shrivel not in hatred, but instead bask in the glow of amity.

They've laid down their arms. They've cast aside their suspicions of each other. Of the very system that brought them to this impasse. Are they not equals, sharing their status as commodity, the fact of their Thingness? Where they saw only an enemy before now they see a brother.

Hallelujah! Barbecue has wrung wickedness from the world! All that remains of a once-destructive institution is a proud and storied heritage of being eaten.

Hawg Shoot

Look into the mind of an animal made mad by a wicked world. Oh, the pig looks well-adjusted with his sportsman's cap and his good-natured shirt. But then you get to the gun, and you pause.

No, it's not that the gun renders him something other than decent. No, no, that's not it.

It's that the gun underscores the pig's utter debasement. Understand: even among humans devoted to the barbecue, the pig is trusted with a weapon. Why, they've gone so far as to name the shooting competition after him! The thought that the pig might look on them with even a twinge of animosity, let alone vengeance or—heaven forfend—hatred, is as foreign to them as the speech of the Turk. His potential for violence so far outside any conception of the world they could ever entertain, they see him—even armed!—as their inferior, their slave.

The pig's sense of self, his fire, his heart, his soul—they've all been so stunted, so shamed and tamed, that he'd sooner turn the gun on himself than seek revenge.

And well they know it.







Addendum: This shooting contest is a part of the same annual barbecue festival we've discussed before.

Festival of Cruelty 16

It's time. Every 50 posts, we leave the childlike world of illusion and visit the land of brutal truth. We turn our backs on the calming lie of complicit animals who are accessories to their own murders and face squarely an unending anti-animal sentiment. (Our most most recent visit was, as always, sobering.)

Whiskered Dog BBQ: For the crime of being born animals, the chicken and pig have been imprisoned, saddled with balls-and-chains, and then allowed to escape. And all of this, the whole sordid circus—the corrupt courts, the vicious penal system—exists only so that they can be chased down by a dog police officer on a motorcycle and a cleaver-happy little girl. Are we alone in wondering (again, again, and again!) why the animals have to be brutalized, tormented, and ridiculed prior to being slaughtered and butchered? Justice deferred is justice denied! Or, you know, injustice deferred is still injustice.

(Would you believe that two previous festivals of cruelty—this one and this one—also feature images of canine predators on motorized vehicles hunting down pigs and chickens? They might, in fact, have been created by the same artist.)


Jake Culpeeper's Cattle Company: Is Jake Culpeeper hiding his eyes, unable to confront his own cruelty?

No, we believe he is merely wiping away a single tear of mirth.

"Jump, cow! Lookit 'er go!"





Piping Hot: She must not only die. She must die a lingering death. She must die from a broken spirit, as much as from the severe burns, asphyxiation, or whatever trauma actually kills her in their enormous death chamber. The fans they have supplied are clearly intended as mocking imitations of mercy. Dying of thirst? Take this thimble topped to the brim with warm seawater. Dying of exposure to the freezing elements? Have a watchband. Starving to death? Here's a photo of a single kernel of corn. Likewise, the cow slowly dying within a makeshift torture apparatus.



Louie's Chicken Shack: Down at Louie's, they got a lumberjack/Quebecois fur trader who delights in hacking off the chickens' heads out back. They don't even have to pay him. He just shows up, sharpens the axe, and gets to it. When he's ankle-deep in heads, he wipes down the blade and goes home. It's a sweet deal for everyone.







Freestate Smokers: Free state, huh? They sure do have a sense of humor out in Maryland. It's not so free for the "food" animals. Sure, they're free to burst out of the smokers. They're free to be wracked with fear and anxiety. But mostly they're free to shut up and die.

Fat Albert's

Not only is Fat Albert a late inductee into the ranks of the copycat pigs (he's a member in good standing of the Overalls bunch and, down in the lower-left, a dead-ringer for this fellow), but he's also the barbecue equivalent of a talent agency!

The extravaganza he's put together is quite the spectacle! Albert is all about one-stop shopping!

From the, let's say, arresting wordsmithing ("Put the BOLD TASTE of the WEST in your CHEST") to the use of striking imagery, he's hitting the audience right where they live. We especially enjoy the porcine member of the Canadian Army. We're not sure how Albert was able to persuade him to serve as a (literal) poster boy pig—surely most soldiers need a villain to fight—but there he is, rifle at the ready. Do you think Albert let him know the gun's loaded with blanks?

Fat Albert provides a little something for everyone. Especially for pigs who have grown weary of living.

Loin Ranger Bar-B-Cue Company

Like some kind of unsettling worst-of-both-worlds mixture of this bovine lawman and these sell-out superheroes, the Loin Ranger patrols the West for wrongs to right.

Unfortunately, the injustices he aims to challenge are confined to matters involving substandard barbecue. In short, he wants to make sure you're eating his fellow pigs properly. And when all is finally peaceful across the land, when all the pigs are well and gently cooked at last, he will fire off a few celebratory rounds of his sauce-loaded sixgun and dismount right onto a grill.

"Who was that masked pig?" a bewildered townsperson asks. "Don't know," answers his companion. "But he left us this recipe."

It's a tough time for those who need a champion.






Addendum: The panel originally awarded this two nooses. But after an appeal, they tacked on a third for egregious punning.

Susquehanna Blue Smoke

The barbecue battle, the boxing match, and other examples of ritualized warfare are here made literal.

This is actual combat, with uniforms and weapons and everything. The animals, naturally, reenact the Civil War and recast it in terms of combatants fighting for their chance to be eaten.

These aren't hobbyists playacting. This is that most terrible of all institutions: the art of war. And the stakes couldn't be higher.

Who can claim the title of conqueror? Whose banner will be hoisted on the rubble of victory? Who is the finest food?

The Great Wallingford Wurst Festival

It's an annual event in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle. From near and far, the sausages come to be eaten.

For many, this is the culmination of a lifetime of striving and struggling. Like other so-called undead foods—creatures once alive as animals and given a temporary new life in burger, nugget, or wiener form—sausages want only to die again. Perhaps the first time caught them unawares.

As pigs, they were ignorant of the mechanism of their own destruction. As cows, they missed the stun gun as they approached. As chickens, they may have known nothing of the scalding tanks. But now, as sausages, say, they know. They have shed their innocence. A world-wise understanding was extruded into their casings along with them.

They see it coming this time around. Which is why the Great Wallingford Wurst festival sausage relaxes so intently. On the grill, his flame-retardant Hawaiian shirt like a second skin, he fans himself, relishing his long undoing. This time, he can enjoy it.

Previously, we'd peeked in on pig fantasy camp.

Now we travel farther down the road toward sheer mental breakdown and arrive at sausage fantasy camp. Whether as cowboys—every pork product's dream—or boffo show biz-types, the sausages are "living" "life" to the fullest. For now.

Until their second death, so sweetly longed for, is upon them.

Festival of Cruelty 14

The time has come again, regrettably, to leave behind the disingenuous sham that is suicide food, and stumble into a land of foulest honesty. We come here every 50 posts, for reasons we have long since forgotten, and stare goggle-eyed at the worst of the worst. For here we see beyond and beneath suicidefoodism's Big Lie. No one in this quarter bothers trying to make you believe the animals are complicit. Here they are not actors, but only objects.

(Visit our most recent foray when you're done.)

Chain Gang BBQ: For those of you already squeamish about the thought of exploiting prison labor, comes this piece of bad business. The pigs (surely sentenced to life) are herded into a work detail under the blistering sun. Behind them, they drag a new ball and chain: a hot, heavy, smelly barbecue.

No, we're not sure why the grinning warden is eating a bird's leg and not a rack of ribs.



Bringin' The Heat BBQ Team: After painting it with the blood of its offspring (we're assuming), an imp made of fire threatens to burn a pig alive. He's getting ready to touch the flame to the pig's tail, like setting a lit match to tinder, but the pig can hardly muster the will to care.





Miller's Bar-B-Que: Out there in southeastern Pennsylvania, they do things a little differently. When the nights lengthen and the stars dazzle, Manheimers like to plug in the ol' electric gun and chase themselves a chicken or two. It's a simple pastime that harkens back to a simple time. A time when a businessman could terrorize a bird without drawing dirty looks and jeers.



Angry Tom's BBQ: So is this what it looks like when Tom isn't angry? (When he follows his own advice, about forgoing wrath for barbecue.) Because—and we're not professionals—he looks a teensy bit furious. Maybe it's the way he's straddling his homing airplane, fork all agleam with malice, putting his foes to flight. We admit not following the scenario very well. Is the plane on the ground? (Was Tom grounded for rage-related reasons?) Are the cow, pig, and chicken running in the clouds?

See this post for a similar treatment of the theme—the fork-brandishing wolf chasing down his prey aboard a mechanical mount. Awfully specific, that theme.



Peg Leg Porkers: Getting drunk and risking your life for a good cause (?) by trying to stay one step ahead of rampaging bulls gets old. To inject a much-needed thrill into the spectacle, we recommend forcing a terrified pig—one with an inexplicable wooden leg—to take your place.

(Keeping score? This is the fifth instance of peg-legged pigs we've featured.)

Caporal Fried

One of the satisfying dismaying things about administering this archive is that so many of the bizarre things we see are old hat. A chicken playing at cowboy? Seen it. (Here and here.)

Still, what this sample lacks in innovation it makes up for in sheer, sixgun-firing pep.

This little feller is just so dad-blamed happy to be here, showing off his skills with a shootin' iron while he shows off his palatability when fried to a golden, saddle-leather brown. This is how the West was won, with exactly this kind of vigorous gumption.

Or, not won, maybe. Face it, if the Caporal Kid had been in charge, the West would have been consumed right down to the tumbleweeds—chicken, shrimp, fish, and all.

Mansfield Village Kid's Fishing Rodeo

Now this just ain't straight shootin'!

If we didn't know better, we'd think this Indiana fishing rodeo involved fish whipping out the ol' lassoo and snagging themselves a cow. Or something. (Remember Fish Tickle, a similarly misleading fish-related deal?)

See, because—stay with us here—this event does not actually give fish the chance to act out their lifelong dream of being cowboys. No, the fish rodeo gives them the chance merely to be the same old bottom-of-the-barrel victim they always are.

They don't buckle on the ol' gunbelt and prove their dominance in nature's arena. They're not active participants at all. They're objects.

In other words, they are the target, not the shooter.







Addendum: Yes, we are aware that the proceeds from this event are to be directed to a children's research hospital. That's charitable and kind. The imagery? Uncharitable and unkind.

Smokin in the Oaks

An exciting twist on the standard barbecue battle! Here, we see a mating ritual re-imagined: the pig awaits with gleeful dread the winner of the contest, for that is the man who will cook and eat him. (Her?)

It's knowing that he (she?) is the prize, the conquest—that's the thing. The knowledge that you've been selected to die and be eaten is the strongest aphrodisiac. Well, for depraved "food" animals.

Of course, the pig has given himself (herself?) a head-start and already languishes in the flames.

Are we alone in detecting some queasy sexual overtones? The men competing for the right to have their way with the porcine prize? The "mounted shooting"? It's probably just us. Our avocation has thrown reason into ruins.

United Egg Producers, a digression

Now, regardless of what a certain site would have you believe, we spend very little time bashing the free-range movement (or addressing it at all). While we insist that many free-range establishments are not appreciably different from their counterparts, we will stipulate that in some circumstances, animals are better off living under free-range conditions than those found on "conventional" farms. Moreover, speaking pragmatically, we concur that some free-range provisions or laws might be necessary steps on the way toward true change.

That said, let's take a closer look at the issue.

The United Egg Producers, proud prodders of chickens, explain the matter with an utter lack of bias!

And we're right there with them. Who was it who tried to peddle that free range malarkey to the chickens?

Freedom? The chance to rejoin the natural world, with its, you know, environments and, like, weather and puddles? What kind of monster would lie to a bird about the fictitious benefits of a freely ranging existence? It gives one pause.

All along, we knew that free range was a scam! Chickens are obviously better off in cramped cages, where they, um… Wait. What?

Sorry. We just… Hmm? Oh, um, where were we?

That's right: the evils of free range.

You see, chickens (like any sentient beings worth their salt) prefer not to be preyed upon. Though they find themselves outfitted as for war, with their GI rifles and helmets, they would rather be done with the whole bloody business.

Still, we confess we never knew they preferred a lifetime of imprisonment.

It's at this point where our credulity is almost (almost) strained.

Not wishing to be snatched up by a hawk? Fair enough.

Not wanting to get rained on? Well… maybe.

But fearing criticism for the oniony flavor of the unfertilized eggs your captivity was established to produce and profit from?

Then again, if the chickens say so.

All in all, a persuasive argument against free range. Like we've (not actually) always said, it's a hoax!

(Thanks to Dr. John V. for the referral.)