Belson Pig Roast

These two pigs represent the alpha and the omega of suicide food. Above, the unnatural, anthropomorphized surrogate pig. He’s just like us, with his chef's hat and his bandanna of the damned and his penchant for eating pigs.

In Belson's Pig Roast Manual, he informs us that "The sight of a whole animal roasting over a fire is one that people can't help but enjoy." He envisions a continent-spanning string of roasting pigs.

In his fantasy, one could gnaw on a pig part, start walking, and find another pig part to eat before one was finished with the first. The railroad opened up the West, but Belson's would pave the whole darn country with intact animals roasting over fires!

Below this faux pig snuffles the poor doomed, realistic swine. He is ever on the bottom. Of the food chain. Of the relationship. He is the subjugated.

That the pigs—the “human” pig and his objectified inferior—are paired in this way shows the power of suicidefoodism to warp conscious thought and repel inquiry. Such a juxtaposition should render itself illogical, if not absurd. One pig, able to identify with us and our desires—foremost among them our need for "fun"—sacrifices his ostensible kinsman and reduces him to the status of barely-animate object.

After showing us a Potemkin village dedicated to a shoddy philosophy, Belson invites consumers to peek behind the façade. Even after seeing it for a sham—how can they not?—still they eat.

Bubba's Fried Turkey

Does this bird make you angry? Does he make you clench and unclench your fists? Are your teeth currently clamped together hard?

The bird is just so… unctuous. He practically drips with smarm. Unlike other suicidal "food" animals, he appears possessed by more than the typical death wish. Whereas other suicide food craves death, this guy is just so darn smug about it. "You know you're gonna eat me," his too-bright smile and lowered lids all but simper. "There's nothing you can do to keep from eating me. And loving it. It's turkey time!"

We have previously confessed bafflement about the underlying mechanism of suicide food. How does it work? Why are these images so commonplace? What does it say about us as a species that we (well, some of us) can be induced to eat dead animals in this way?

Are the images tranquilizers for overworked consciences? Do they exploit our fundamental sense of fairness? Do they trigger our inherent sociability?

Bubba's soon-to-be fried turkey presents the suicidefoodist with a different route to commercial success. In his case, the picture probably works because anyone seeing it will wish him dead.

Davis Poultry Equipment

This rooster is all man. In fact, he appears to have the power to accomplish any task he sets his mind to. He could lay low the rotten temple of factory farming. He could pledge himself to the chickens, to defend them and protect them.

And yet. He holds not the wrench of the saboteur, but the tool of the enabler. His is the banner of his master, not the flag of the oppressed. He has the capacity to bring the system down from the inside, then to rebuild it according to his vision. Instead, he strives to repair the system even as it creaks and falls around him.

But maybe—just maybe—the equipment manufactured and promoted by Davis Poultry Equipment and their hypermasculine mascot isn't as sinister as we've assumed. Maybe they design and build machines such as the Newborn Chick Tickler and the Feather Fluffer and the Warming Hug Provider.

No.

They do not.

Their product line, however, does include these tender devices*:

The Neck Skinner ("skin the neck while the neck is still attached to the carcass")

The Killing Machine ("designed for minimum wing damage")

The Outside Bird Scrubber (prevents "fecal failures")

The Turbo 250 Gizzard Machine ("monitor the machine from your desk")

The Stunning Machine ("made with high speed in mind")

The Gut Cutter ("cuts the intestines to an appropriate length")

Look again at the rooster. Do you understand now why he hides his eyes?






*Regrettably, all machine names and description excerpts are taken directly from the Davis Poultry Equipment website.

French Market in Bath, England

We never even knew we'd been dreading this: the John Waters approach to suicide food.

One need not be possessed of a cinematic imagination or a taste for the tasteless to see in the coil of sausage something transgressive. Transgressive and excretory. Be honest: you do see it, yes? The robust, meaty, spiraling turd?

(Bravo to the proprietors for giving us something new. After so many tiresome pairings of sex with violence, someone had the guts to pair meat with shit. That is fearless ingenuity.)

After the eye lingers—far too long, we know—on that feculent monument, the adorable pig comes into view. And what is in her hand? We know what it is meant to be—a length of "delicious" "sausage." No matter how we interpret it, the little pat she gives her thigh or backside (or whatever) suggests only one thing:

"Eat up! Plenty more where that came from!"

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








Addendum (2/10/09): Another instance of the same image (flipped). Must be a European meme. "I am delicious!" (Photo source.)

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.)

Domino's Techno Chicken

The perfect explication of a freakish philosophy. The chickens have been informed that their carcasses will be used to create something called a Domino's BBQ Chicken & Bacon Pizza. And what is their reaction? Do they weep? Do they plead? Do they flee? Do they fight?

In the cratered, post-rational land of Suicidefoodistan, such questions are met with incomprehension.

Why would the chickens object? Who, after all, would invoke normal responses, crafted by evolution's tireless tinkering? This—this pizzafication—is being done not merely to them or with them, but, never forget, for them.

Therefore, in the commercial dedicated to them, they do the least reasonable thing imaginable: they dance. At a disco. Saturday Night Fever-style.

They are celebrating their nihilism the only way a bird in a tragic, hallucinatory world can.

BBQ House

This bikini-wearing sow presents us with an example of we may term the Fallacy of the Natural Cause.

The Fallacy functions in two ways: by giving weight to the absurd notion that “food” animals die from natural causes and by blurring the line between the deliberate and the accidental or circumstantial. In either event, not eating the animal would be a tragic waste. It’s already dead and we dare not let its death be for nothing. (The Pig Roaster is the classic example of this ploy.)

In the case of BBQ House, the sun’s rays—life-giving, nurturing—are equated with the fires of the grill. What is the sow’s cause of death? Who’s to say? It would take Quincy to sort it all out. Let’s leave it for another day—the pork’s getting cold.

Where this image excels is in featuring a vulnerable bathing beauty as the subject. Notice that this takes care of two problems at once. It butchers two pigs with one chop, you might say. It sanitizes the experience by allowing us to imagine our meal in her prime, enjoying everything life has to offer, and it makes the pig's death look like an unforeseeable beach mishap.

Trebeker's Fresh Poultry Buffet: a hoax

Imagine it. A restaurant founded on the most barbaric principle: You pay your fee, collect a fistful of darts, and try to nail a chicken for the cook to fry up for you.

You need not imagine such a place, for Trebekers (named, improbably, after Alex Trebek) exists. Their prices are shockingly steep: the "5 Darts Meal" for a family of four is $44.95!

Says the Trebekers website of their operation:

Built upon a near decade-old family tradition, Trebeker's Fresh Poultry Buffet™ brings the thrill of the hunt to your table! While your mouth waters at the tantalizing aromas the fill the restaurant, our 100% organic farm-fresh chickens dance around your table in… patented Chickin-Pickin' Pens™ — just dart the one you want, and our highly trained chefs will prepare it to your specifications…. When you dine at Trebeker's Fresh Poultry Buffet™, the choice is yours! Our birds are… almost entirely grain-fed, and are bred specifically for Trebeker's by local zoogenetic specialists.

When we said that Trebekers exists, we should have said that it "exists." For—glory of glories!—this is a hoax, friends. Nothing but a bold bit of satire.

We will admit that our very first impulse was to buy into it. After all, we've seen some pretty sick stuff over the years. This impulse was followed seconds later by disbelief. "Wait a minute!" we said (in recreated dialogue). "This is too ridiculous even for us in all our jaded misery to believe. You got us, Trebeker's!"

A quick investigation revealed that the listed phone number and address actually correspond to a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Pacific Palisades, California.

And while we feel that we dodged a bullet (or a dart?) on this one, we are chagrined by what it takes for us to feel such relief: only that an utterly monstrous story be false. What of the true horrors we've catalogued here time and again? Suicidefoodism is grinding us down.

Nando's Big Chicken

Suicide Food enters the unpleasant world of "reality" television. (Now there's a marriage the world was clamoring for!)

Nando's Australia—the downunder wing of the East-Southern Semisphere chicken chain—advertises its fare in a commercial promoting a Big Brother-like television series.

In Big Chicken, poultry compete for the chance to be cooked and eaten.

As the peculiar, shaggy Nando's impresario says in the advertisement:

"Eight chickens. One hen house…. They are playing for the ooltimate prize: the winner gets a VIP trip to Nando's to be marinated in peri-peri for 24 hours, basted, then flame-grilled. Who will be Australia's favorite chicken?"

(Peri-peri, apparently, is Australian slang for "shame.")

Unsurprisingly, the gag isn't any funnier in Australia than in the rest of the world.

The punchline, if it can be called that, is that viewers will decide which of the chickens will be the winner/victim. It adds a certain Roman quality to the goings-on. To finish the fun, the "contestants" are profiled on a website. There, we learn that Ethel Chicken dislikes loud chickens, Mildred Chicken enjoys keeping fit, and Sheila Chicken doesn't care for chicken raffles.

Why can't they just eat the birds and be done with it?

(Thanks to Dr. Robert for the referral.)

Animals Save the Farm, a retrospective

We have here a perplexing trope that comes into sharp focus when viewed through the lens of suicidefoodism. Why should livestock work to preserve the farms that subjugate them? Why should livestock care so deeply that their masters get a fair price for butchering them? Why should livestock petition on behalf of the system that will ultimately kill them?

In the real world, of course, they do not. They should not. They could not. But in the through-a-glass-darkly land of Suicide Food, it makes perfect sense.






Yes, in this warped world, a turkey walks the picket line to insure that "his" farm, an establishment that will eventually kill him, stays in business; a snarling cow is downright ornery about the price fixing that hurts his owner's bottom line; and a smiling British pig with a stiff upper lip alerts us to the fact that "the pig industry is losing money every second."

These animals are proud to be property and they renounce any claim on their own lives. Freedom is a ploy, independence a penalty imposed on wild animals for their ignorance of the animals' proper place. These farm apologists, however, have embraced a cruel vision of civilization, one founded on their enslavement and death.

Cruji Pollo

Cruji Pollo—cruji is short for crujiente ("crunchy"), so that's Crunchy Chicken en español—is justifiably proud. He has carved out a new niche for suicidal animals.

Sure, we've seen shills trumpeting their superior flavor, patriotism, abillity to get drunk, promptness, and raw sex appeal as justification for your choosing them for your animal-consumption needs.

But here is the first to talk up his pleasing mouth-feel. Crunchy revels in the way his crisp skin will feel. In your mouth. While you're eating him. This dubious achievement is enough to make us cringe.

Even the letters are on fire, reflecting as they do the bird's desire to be crisped and made tantalizingly crunchy. He can't wait. With his knife and fork, and his apron, and his little hat, he is only too ready to dig in.

It's as though he thinks he'll still be around to sample himself and his oh-so-crunchy-skin (and bones?) when he has achieved the desired internal temperature and level of deadness. No, Crujito. It doesn't work that way.

(Thanks to Dr. Mar for the referral.)

Joe's Gizzard City

An excerpt from the unactual brochure of the Joe's Gizzard City Chamber of Commerce:

Welcome to the gizzardingest town this side of the Rio Grande! Other burgs boast the biggest birds, the tangiest wings, the crispiest skin. (Ulp.) But here in Gizzard City, we believe in specializing! We do one thing, and we do it the best! And that's gizzards. What happens to the rest of the chicken? Who cares! Let the raccoons have 'em! We keep the only part that matters! So come on down to Gizzard City and get gizzardized!

This chicken, this ambassador of Gizzard City (the only such city in the world, thank goodness), suffers the worst form of objectification. "Food" animals the world over are accustomed to being exploited. They are routinely equated with the substance of which they are made. But this! This goes beyond the familiar insult.

In this, we see the bird exalted for, and reduced to, one particular body part: the gizzard. (The ventriculus. The muscular pouch in the stomach of many birds and reptiles that grinds food, often with the aid of ingested pebbles or grit. Sounds delish, right?)

You, chicken, are not a living thing. Nor are you merely food for Man. No, you are a complex incubator for one small, rubbery morsel. You are an object valued only for a couple fleshy inches you provide.

And see? The chicken holds the gizzard (his own gizzard?) aloft on the tines of his fork, proudly, gratefully—how it gleams!—honored to have achieved some small purpose in this world. He reminds one of a sacrifice on the steps of a great and terrible Aztec pyramid, happy to see his dripping heart torn from his chest, knowing that the gods are well pleased.

(Thanks to Dr. Mac for the referral.)







Addendum: This representation—also taken from the official website—seems a little more realistic: the shock, the fighting posture, the natural desire to rake talons across the flesh of anyone who would relieve it of its gizzard. Not a suicidefoodistically pure image, but an honest one.