Frosty Morn Pigs: Update

You remember Frosty Morn, don't you? Besides the oddest sausage-related name imaginable (Frosty? Morn?), they are known for terror-delighting millions throughout the South for decades.

As we said long ago, Frosty Morn made its mark by employing a cunning strategy built on suicidal animals and a relentlessly repeated jingle. So significant was Frosty Morn that a second look is in order.

In the animated advertisement under discussion here, a meat elf instructs a class of pigs on the benefits of Frosty Morn ham. That is, he inspires them to grab their destinies with both hands, to rush headlong into their hickory-smoked future and dive into their sugar-cured doom.

Not, you understand, that they require much coaxing. They're practically prancing in expectant joy! These pigs are the aptest of pupils. They need very little convincing. Hell, they came to school pre-convinced that their lives are already spoken for.

Sing it over and over and over again!
(Meat Elf) Frosty Morn!
Sing it over and you sing it over again!
(Meat Elf) Frosty Morn!

The height of a piggy’s ambition
From the day he is born
Is hope that he’ll be good enough
To be a Frosty Morn!

(Solo pig, spoken) All Frosty Morn meat is government inspected.

For meat that’s wonderfully different
They tenderize these hams.
They sugar cure and hick’ry smoke
That’s Frosty Morn—yes, ma’am!

(Meat Elf) So everybody join in!

Annnd…

Sing it over and over and over again!
(Meat Elf) Frosty Morn!
Sing it over and you sing it over again!
(All) Frosty Morn!

It's almost charming how blatant they are. The repetition is no hidden technique. It's front and center! Sing it over and over and over again! Repeat it until you're ready to believe anything. A destructive absurdity will do as well as a consoling truth. A proposition's value depends not one scrap on its intellectual rigor, its logical consistency, its congruity with the facts. Instead, it depends on its ubiquity. And, of course, on the degree to which it leads animals to seek their own deaths.


(Thanks to Dr. Tom for the referral.)

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.

Hamstock

Behold the death of Youth!

Witness the silencing of Rebellion!

Hearken to the imprisonment of Freedom!

Coherence itself is pulped and quietly disposed of. Wait, did we say quietly? No, no! This is Hamstock, and there is nothing quiet about it. This is triumphal! This is the glorification—reverberating from the hills—of senselessness!

Woodstock, with its tawdry legacy of stickittothemannity, has effectively been erased from the history books, for now we have the amplified justice of Hamstock! Unlike those unruly peaceniks—some of whom were no doubt vegetarians—the pig sings no hymn to individuality. He is no unique blossom in life's garden. He is a cog in a meat machine, remarkable only for his uniformity. Along with the millions of his identical brethren, he makes music to accompany the end of his days.

World of Warcraft Plump Turkey

In the subculture that is World of Warcraft, skilled players can acquire a "vanity pet" known as Plump Turkey.

We have, until now, been immersed in our own noxious subculture, so this one has passed us by. As far as we can ascertain, players who "do" such-and-such are "rewarded" with a ridiculous bird who sacrifices himself at the first opportunity.

Where's the fantasy in that? Brain-damaged animals are everywhere in the real world. This planet is, apparently, littered with them!

This shows us, sadly, that the worlds of fantasy and reality have collided. Neither can remain pure any longer. Neither is safe from the other. When institutions fail in one, they fail in the other. Illness and corruption travel freely.

Suicidal life forms from other planets are already well known to us (as here and here). Now the contagion has spread even in the worlds of imagination!

All hail suicide food, the Universal Constant!

(Thanks to Dr. Kim for the referral. Plump Turkey table from warcraftpets.com.)







Addendum: The pigs of Angry Birds are also electronic gaming-related suicidal misfits. Not only did they steal the birds' eggs in a deliberate act of wanton destruction sure to bring vicious reprisals upon themselves. No, they have also made hams their totem! Look! They go to such lengths, erecting massive, Byzantine structures, all to house the hams that used to be their own! How do we know the hams are theirs? Look at them! The hogs have been reduced to spherical, limbless, hamless heads!

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.

Bodega González

It's like the world's most famous pig and this diabolical ham are having a suicide-off!

His hand on his hip—a casually spiteful gesture—he slices and slices.

Slivers of his long-ago-living flesh slowly fill the platter, and his leer only becomes more and more unnerving. Just who is he avenging here? Who is the target of his rage and self-loathing? Is he giving himself what he imagines he deserves, or is it all about you? Is he trying to show you just how much you've hurt him?

We could never hope to tease apart the tangled threads of his dysfunctional motivation, but we do know it's been a good long while since we've seen a ham with this much raw, seething anger.

Hall, Luhrs & Co. Corn-Fed Hogs

Walking foodstuff as Captain of Industry. It's a character whose time has come. Again.

This fine fellow, this stout-hearted and deliciously imperious chap, can buy and sell you. It is he who commands the armies of finance, the platoons of capital. It is his banner beneath which march the functionaries, the pocketed politicians, the bought-and-paid-for millions.

His striped trousers swell with importance. His waistcoat strains to contain his significant bulk. His monocle focuses his entire personhood into a single beam of excellence.

Forget his stock certificates. Pay no attention to the railroads he owns. Ignore his Baltimore tenements.

As he puffs his Cuban cigar, redolent of monetary exuberance, he is, foremost, unequaled in sweetness, in tenderness, in juiciness. His ham is of a uniform size, and therein lies his true worth. He is economical through and through, and when you taste his taste, you will know. You will know that he is a Hall, Luhrs & Company hog. And you will know that flavor, that singular HL&Co. flavor, is the One Criterion.

That is what lowers him from his worldly pedestal and elevates him instead into the Brotherhood of Meat.







Addendum: Remember these guys? Same deal.

Smithfield Ham & Yam Festival

Speaking of animals scraping by in these tough times (which we were only last year), this pig is willing even to share the bill with a tuber. Once the undisputed king of suicide food, the pig has been forced by economic circumstances to share the stage. His stage!

Oh, he keeps smiling and mugging. Look, the pig is a professional and a gig is a gig.

He puts on the bow tie, shows up to Smithfield (North Carolina) on time, and poses for the camera.

Sure, appearing with a vegetable sticks in his craw, but a pig's gotta do what a pig's gotta do. And if this is what he's got to do to make sure he gets eaten, then he's in. This isn't like the boom times, where a pig could assume he was in the spotlight and the crowds would pour in just for a chance to taste him. A pig at the top of his form had his pick of festivals to headline.

But these days… Can't be picky now.

First Hand Smoke

He comes from beyond the grave, a creature of vapor and dark pride, happily suffering the unwholesome light of the living, braving the poisonous, free air.

His plot has borne fruit! Or no, not fruit. Meat. His plot has borne meat. (One of the more horrid sentences we've committed in a long time.)

Beneath the inverted smile of the Arch, the pig had cast himself on the grill that he might be transformed. From the smokestack he rises, white-gloved, having made of himself a burnt offering, to bestow the gifts of his flesh.

It's downright holy! It's like every element of western religion crammed into a bastardized, new creed! And lo! The lion doberman will lie down with the lamb pig!

The ham! The ribs! Torn from a miraculously bloodless carcass, they drip with the potency of the once-alive, and the faithful dogs set upon them with gladness.









Addendum: The artist of this thing, whose work has been featured in these "pages" many times (most recently here), has a real flair for the unsavory. Could he be putting out even more influential stuff than the BBQ Logo King?

The Hams Are Coming!

Giant, man-sized Easter Bunny. Blue horse. Ranks of hamfantry marching over the hills.

Either we are suffering from an especially nasty fever or the suicidefoodists have upped their game.

Remembering that no one has ever lost money underestimating the suicidefoodist's ability to baffle and appall (to paraphrase H. L. Mencken), we believe the fever theory has little merit. Which means the Movement has unleashed its most hallucinatory tableau in a long time.

Whom do they fight, these military meats? And what of this knife-and-fork nation, beneath whose flag they make the noblest sacrifice? And, while we're asking questions, what the hell?

On the surface, it's all pretty straightforward: The hams are going to war and the Easter Bunny is warning us, Paul Revere-style. Yes, naturally, but, no, the hams aren't going to war—they're coming to surrender. They are unarmed. This army was trained only to lose, and they demand no adherence to the Geneva Conventions. They ask only that they be put on sale at some Trader Joe's somewhere, bought, and eaten.

The only medals awarded in this conflict are numerous Purple Heartburns.

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







Addendum: We can't help but be reminded of these parachuting lobsters.

Festival of Cruelty 9

Unfortunately, the time has come, again, to visit the hated realm, the land not of suicide food, with all its mythologies and lore of misdirection, but murder food. We travel there periodically to toughen up for our usual slog. (Please have a look at the previous installment of this recurrent feature.)


Jerry's Food Emporium (Saskatoon): We've seen this theme before, the metaphorical made literal. It used to be one of our favorites because it's a source of such withering humor. The last time we saw "pulled pork" expressed literally, as a living pig yanked apart, the presentation was a good bit lighter. It lacked the magisterial viciousness present in Jerry's chalkboard rendering. Stretched taut, belly positioned in the flames, the pig screams, the pain welling from a place beyond tears. Agony, as we know, is the finest tenderizer. (Thanks to Dr. Meagan for the photo and referral.)





The Crazy Rednecks' BBQ: Now these are rednecks. Or, you know, crazed butchers. It's easy to deduce their plan: they will catch up with the pig, hack him apart with eatin' irons (silverware), douse him in barbecue sauce, and dig in. No time for cooking!

Note: Crude though they be, they have nevertheless mastered the very un-redneck use of the apostrophe and the plural possessive! Of course, capitalization still gives them fits.









Warning: This exists.













Road Kill BBQ Sauce: It's funny because the raccoon got hit and run over by a car! And someone's going to eat it! And it's either still alive, face contorted in anguish, or it's dead and the look on its face is its deathmask. Either way, good times.

Reflect for a moment on the mind that finds in animals squashed flat by cars a source of hilarity. Or better yet, don't.







Who Are Those Guys? Competition Cooking Team: From the looks of this image, answering the question is a snap. Who are those guys? A bunch of creeps trying to scare a pig and a chicken to death.

Harper's Hams & Gifts

This sassy sow wants to take us on a journey.

Begin with the bedrock desire of all suicide food: to be killed and eaten. Oh, humble pleasures! And oh—if only that's all she wanted!

How we wish the world were always so simple, so unconflicted, in its sickness.

But look! She's taking it further.

Look at the raised-hocks posture, the beckoning gleam in her eye. She wants more than death and dissolution. She wants to be violated and then killed and eaten. It's the epitome of amoral living, a pathological disconnection from integrity, from the honoring of the self.

And, really now: does it make you think of buying gifts for your grandparents?

(Thanks to Dr. Becci for the referral.)