I Wish I Were an Oscar Mayer Wiener: a digression

For more than 45 years, a suicidefoodist earworm has been wriggling across the airways of the world. It involves stuff made from "food" animals, but the targets of its warped philosophy are... children. Human children. So enshrined in our collective unconscious is this message that it belongs with the Suicide Food Emeriti we honored in May of 2007.

What helps it rise above the dregs of advertising's sump is the flagrant insanity of its premise:

Beyond animals wishing to die so that they may find meaning in being eaten, this is children wishing—and lofting their wishes to a mindless pantheon—to be dead animals so that they may find meaning in being eaten. These kids, they've mastered the subjunctive mood (all that "I wish I were" stuff), but the basics of self-preservation and self-respect elude them.

"Oh, I'd love to be an Oscar Mayer wiener.
That is what I'd truly like to be!
'Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener
Everyone would be in love with me!"

So hungry are they for acknowledgment from a society blind to their existence that they would be transformed into animals, butchered, extruded into mildly seasoned meat products, grilled, and placed on buns. If that's what it takes to receive love at last, they'll do it!

In the classic commercial from 1965, one demented boy refuses to go along with the crowd of would-be martyrs. He has no wish to die, but he is soon bullied back into the fold.

Addendum: We assume you can find examples of this death march on your own. But how about a short video on the making of the jingle?

Franks & Toppings

Salmon: We're on, guys! We're on!

Cow: Hello!

Chicken: Welcome! We're the Franks & Toppings Boys, and we're happy you could come!

Salmon: And we're happy to bring you the Franks & Toppings message! Isn't that right, Chicken?

Chicken: You know it, Salmon! Franks & Toppings provides such a wonderful service to the folks in southeast Texas. It's a privilege to die, knowing we're so delicious—

Cow: Privilege to what?

Chicken: —and organic!

Cow: It's a privilege to what?

Salmon: You're stepping on his line again.

Cow: I know, I know, but did he say it's a privilege to die?!

Salmon: It is a privilege to die! That's why I hired someone to help me into this tux.

Chicken: Look, can I keep going?

Salmon: Keep going.

Cow: What's happening?

Chicken: That's right, Cow. We are lucky to die for such fine fare!

Cow: I didn't say that!

Chicken: Frankfurters, burgers, grilled salmon sandwiches, and more!

Cow: I never said that!

Salmon: And because it's organic, you can feel good about eating us.

Cow: You're sick.

Chicken: Good question, Cow. Yes, the talented cooks at Franks & Toppings will make your flesh even tastier with a wholesome selection of fresh toppings!

Cow: (sobbing)

Salmon: Get hold of yourself! Say the thing about grass-fed beef.

Cow: About…?

Salmon: Grass-fed beef! Like the picture!

Cow: Where the hell did you get that? I didn't pose for that! What the hell's going on?

Chicken: Ha ha! Good one, Cow. They should listen to our jingle!

Salmon: That'll get your toe tapping!

Cow: (teeth chatter)

Chicken: And your mouth watering!

Cow: Oh god oh god oh god.

Sexy Hot Dog Tattoo

Everything you thought you knew about the world is wrong.

You thought the world was built upon a bedrock of reason. Wrong.

You thought that, though people show remarkably poor judgment when determining what goes inside their bodies, they would nevertheless refrain from indelibly marking the outside of their bodies with something like this. Wrong.

You thought that, while hot dogs might indeed wish to be consumed—and thus achieve a pig's closest approximation of a second death—and while hot dogs can, in fact, be capable of assuming a sporty attitude, they could never represent anything resembling sexual beings. Wrong wrong wrong.

This very frank frank—permanently residing on the skin of an actual human being—pleasures herself through the application of edible lubricants. Her eventual consumption will be her most intense climax, the highest note to go out on.

Wrong!

Meat in the Middle

This barbecue battle (a ritual well-known to suicidal animals) isn't proceeding along conventional lines. Comparing this with some other examples of the form (here and here), we see one obvious difference: The pig is not approaching the sacred contest with the requisite solemnity. It's a breach of protocol that the cow will not tolerate!

The pig's heart is filled not with a trembling awe, the proper expression of religious fervor, but instead with… happiness. And in his inappropriate mirth, he has insulted the very basis of the animals' supposed worldview! Who knew one belly laugh could upend an entire way of life? It's the guffaw heard 'round the world, and the cow—presented here as the culture's Old Guard—can only look on in shock and annoyance.

The pig, doesn't he realize what's at stake? Doesn't he know that by their deaths, the animals renew their very world? Here he is, laughing at his funeral, seemingly unmindful of the import, the honor that has been bestowed upon him. Like a holy clown, he chuckles, so glad is he to die. As the Sacred Wiener made from his flesh is proffered, he neither prays in gratitude, nor kneels in humble acceptance. Nor does he brace for combat. No, the fool laughs! A decent pig would hide his joy at death's impending caress, a joy—let's be frank—as natural as it is mysterious. He would act out his role with a little dignity. To enjoy death, but not to overenjoy it. This is what is required.

Yocco's

We have too long neglected this living relic, but now he gets his due.

For 88 years, our inscrutable despot has ruled over a strange and sickly kingdom. Yocco glares at lesser men and meals, beaming out his hatred in waves as emphatic as exclamation points.

He cares not for your society. He cares not for your laws. Nor your morals. Nor the way things are meant to be. To him, all of these are contemptible and small.

On his splintered throne, he tells the tale of his murderous kingdom to a rapt and bunned audience. His frankfurter people know well the king's obsessions. With boots stolen off the feet of some elfin corpse, and a forklike scepter bearing a baby wiener claimed by divine right, Yocco spins a web of self-aggrandizement. Yocco is powerful. Yocco will see them all burn. Yocco is strengthened by their deaths.

One day, Yocco will be eaten by God!

(Thanks to Drs. Sam, Patti, and Ian for their long-ago referrals.)

Frank's for the Memories

At last, hotdoggers have entered the pun-filled wasteland heretofore inhabited exclusively by establishments affiliated with barbecue!

Hotdog? Frank? Frank Sinatra?

Thanks for the memories?

(This place is either trying way too hard or not nearly hard enough.)

Regardless, the entire display is uncomfortable. When a hotdog is outfitted with human body parts and the recognizable face of a dead celebrity, psychic turmoil is the only logical outcome.

Old Blue Eyes has returned from the dead in the form of a dapper extruded meat product who wants us to eat him while he croons to us through his flexible straw/microphone.

That's hardly in keeping with the Frank Sinatra we are familiar with.

Hotdog Queen

In all the time we've been observing the comings and goings of suicidefood royalty, we have never once seen a noticeably female monarch.

Until now.

This gives us the sociological opportunity we've been waiting for, the chance to compare the reign of female vs. male "food" animals. Or, in the case of the Hotdog Queen, undead food. (Recall that we never include hamburgers, frankfurters, and miscellaneous reconstituted foodstuffs among the ranks of true suicidefood. They are more like reanimated food, already dead, now "alive" again.)

Is a queen kinder than a king? Will she rule with compassion, rather than cunning? Will her people live beneath a banner of justice instead of the flag of empire?

Don't be misled by the queen's trampy casual costume, sunny disposition, and cheap, everywoman perm.

No matter how much more nurturing, caring, and tender she might be—how womanly—still she leads her loyal subjects straight into the bun. Her people are just as dead, and just as eaten, as those of any king.

The Cowboy Hotdog Stratagem

No sooner had we uncovered the bizarrest suicide food exemplar yet (a chicken prostitution ring) than we stumbled upon the Cowboy Hotdog archetype, a truly senseless new development.
















This most artificial of all foodstuffs, renown the world over as tubular repositories of slaughterhouse sweepings, nitrites, and miscellany, repackaged and repurposed as icons of authenticity! (Although, why is Mustard—he of the Last Stand—riding a motorcycle, and not a horse? Is this a strained homage to the annual motorcycle rally at Sturgis, South Dakota, a scant 85 miles away from the Custer National Cemetery?)

They welcome you to the by-now-commonplace ritual of their sacrifice and death with dancing, wheelie popping, and, um, vague gesturing.

With the kindly hospitality that tamed the Old West, they invite you in. To sit. Relax. Open wide. Eat.







Addendum: Please do compare the Cowboy Hotdog Stratagem with the Fancy Wiener Phenomenon.

Addendum 2 (10/29/09): Look, if an idea makes sense, it just makes sense. (This is the Clifton, New Jersey, Hot Grill frankfurter.)

Superdawg

For 60 years, this proud, simple, Cro-Magnon wiener has presided over Chicago. For 60 years he has glowered flirtatiously at his Jane. And for 60 years, his clear message has rung out:

Me super! Put me in mouth and eat!

As you may have noticed, there's something about superheroes that the suicidefoodists have trouble with. First there was that cape-wearing catfish mistaken for royalty, and now this. People, listen: superheroes do not wear crowns and they certainly do not wear Tarzan-style loin cloth things. (And he was even "inspired by the superheroes featured in the newly-created, popular comics of the '40's.")

Ahem.

For undead food—once killed, lingering still—Superdawg is a little full of himself. Doesn't he realize he's just an amalgam of animal parts, commingled like so many loose recyclables?

No matter. Having been stolen from his jungle home, he looms above Chicago. Biceps permanently flexed, he demands to be eaten.

Bonus picture: After a hard day of beckoning and posturing, Superdawg relaxes in civilization's plushest fer-nit-chur.






(Thanks to Dr. Ari for the referral.)







Addendum: The powerful Power Dogs power dog is no slouch either.

Klement's Racing Sausages

See, it's like the Colosseum:

Slaves, captured enemies, hapless desperadoes—all the refuse from society's unswept corners—they caper and are destroyed for our amusement.

From the far reaches of the globe they are brought. From the hinterlands and newly conquered territories they are hauled. (Pictured here, from left to right: The Hot Dog, The Polish Sausage, The Italian Sausage, The Bratwurst. Not shown: El Chorizo.)

Once here, they are made to run for us. To compete. To battle in the supposedly idealized realm of athleticism. So it was with the gladiators of old.

And how we cheer! (Well, maybe not we, but someone cheers.) Just knowing that this ambulatory foodstuff will run itself ragged for our dubious benefit, and then fling itself onto the fire—winner and loser alike!—adds another layer of festivity to the already-cloying atmosphere.

The artificial rivalry diverts them, prevents them from turning to us, we who applaud their lives spent in death's shadow. Their rage fanned and stoked, they create their own chains.

This is the big-time for these wieners. This is the nearest they will ever get to freedom. This too-brief sprint is the closest they will get to flight. We validate them for only as long as it takes them to round the bases. And then we allow them their crippled imitation of freedom for only as long as it takes to wolf them down. (Again, not we we, but, you know.)

Run, you sausages! You franks! You variously constituted, extruded meat objects! Dance!

The Fancy Wiener Phenomenon

We have discussed and dissected many strange happenings in the world of suicide food. From the Elvis-Pork Nexus to ungodly animal hybrids, we have traveled the warped byways of the human psyche with the eye of a clinician and the abandon of a gonzo journalist.

The theme of today’s report is startling only for how neatly it falls into place within the Movement’s fetid categories.


What first appears as outlandish as those salacious "food" animals eager to be ravished or near-endless streams of copycat pig icons comes into sharp focus after a moment's inspection.




Start with a pig (of course, with hot dogs and sausage it can be hard to know what-all is present). The pig wants to die for you. (Naturally.) Even after death, the pig wishes it could die all over again. (This is the essence of undead food, a topic previously covered.) But—yes, here's the trouble—hot dogs (and, to a lesser extent, sausages) are the mutts of the food world. Everything under the sun goes into them and they have a decidedly blue collar reputation. What's a dead, processed, casing-clad pig to do?

Work harder, that's what. And work harder they do. To overcome the prejudice against eating proletariat foods, the wieners, franks, and assorted links masquerade as society types dripping with good taste and cash.

Thus, the spats, top hats, ascots, and walking sticks. This strain of suicide food is doubly deceptive. Not only are we given the standard lie: the animals wish to die that you might indulge your every culinary whim. But we are asked to swallow a second lie: that they represent the finer things.

Furthermore, where they found frankfurter-sized garments and accoutrements remains deliberately obscure.

(Thanks to Dr. Portigal for the Gold Coast Dogs image. Dog House Sandwich Shop [the ascotted dandy] source.)






Addendum (6/01/08): Another wonderful example of the FWP! (Thanks to Urso for the photo.)

Jimmy's Grocery

The gentleman/cow says, "MOO MOO," but he imagines a world of wonders made more wonderful through his slaughter and sacrifice!

Behold the bounty he knows will come from his death: meat (sure), hot dogs (naturally), grapes (um...), apples (yeah, whatever).

He's living in a dream world, but what a dream!

With the butchering of one dapper animal, a cornucopia is made available, released from its accidental origins as the body of an inconveniently live animal.

We conjecture that this… thing is on his way to his own funeral. This accounts for his clothes (or, well, what passes for a full suit of clothes: collar, necktie, and lapels) and that unrestrained smile. He means to meet his destiny with a spring in his step and a song in his heart. Until that, too, winds up in the grinder.

(Image courtesy of interestingideas.com.)