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.

What We've Been Missing 4: a digression

Truth be told, we only seem confident. Every few months, in the middle of the night, when the wind is full of questions, we wonder. We doubt. What if? What if we had stayed with the flock, living as the flock, eating as the flock? Oh, what treasures we could have savored!

And so, again, as we last did here, we embark on a tour of our own Gallery of Regret.

As always, the following dishes were all prepared by professional dish preparers.

We're not sure what this culinary mishmash is, but we're assuming Knuckle, Chicken Skin, and Month-Old Meat Surprise.










An ear in licorice gravy? A whole curried snout? A diseased lung?

No, silly, it's feijoada pig foot!









A wound on a bun.










Whatever this is, it doesn't appear to benefit from further inspection. In fact, it should come with titanium bun-locks. Those exist, right?

It's the Pits

Continuing the grand tradition of "food" animals who tend the machines of their own destruction, it's the It's the Pits Custom Built Pits and Competition Barbeque Team pig!

Your rig not drawing enough air? He'll be down with his acetylene torch in a shake.

He belongs to a larger movement, of course—the school of the Accomplice Animal, whose pupils we have encountered far too many times. These are the poor benighted creatures who are not content to sit idly, waiting for some schmo with a hatchet to get to work. So they hitch up the barbecue and drive it to you, or march into the fire, or hack the flesh from their own bones, or, as here, make sure your equipment is in top cooking order.

The only thing that could make more sense is, well, everything.

Poll-ette Hostess

Pollettes, for the three of you out there who somehow don't already know, are women involved in the promotion, and presumably the eating, of polled hereford cows.

How that leads to this thing is beyond us.

The cow, a stand-in for your typical Pollette, is the picture of domestic solicitude. All gussied up with her gingham bow, she oozes polite/poll-ette charm. As the fragrant steam from the slab of cow meat reaches her flared nostrils, her tongue peeks out. She is demure, but piqued: the steak she dare not taste—not yet, not until you have been served—lies bookended on her plate.

Will she finally give in, to the deliciously forbidden? To her truest nature?

Will the country gal enter into the wider world?

Will the bow, the pristine bow, come down?

(Thanks to Dr. Heath for the referral.)

Zum Spanferkel

To the suckling pig! No, that's not a call to arms; it's the translation of this sign. We find this pig troubling for more than the usual reasons. (Namely, that he is a party to his own death and consumption.) A suckling pig, you will recall, is a whole young pig suitable for roasting. Does this winking pervert look like a youngster? Do we see the suggestion of five o'clock shadow on his monstrously chubby cheeks?

In other words, is he selling out himself or his children? If the former, well, we've already met an entire world of similar degenerates. If the latter, he belongs to an exclusive club of those who would destroy their progeny. (There was this striking example, and this one too.)

And either way, you just know this pig will succumb, lured by the temptation of spending eternity (or, you know, a few reeking hours) lodged in someone's digestive tract.

Zum Spanferkel has more to offer besides a conflicted pig! They also have this:

"Have you had pig today?" the banner asks.

Yes, we know. But those trunked and droopy weirdos are meant to be pigs.

Trust us on this. We're experts.

Smokin' on the Suwannee BBQ Festival

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a cry for help.

What you're seeing is the dark side of suicidefoodism—it has a bright side?—where the rush to die is shown in its proper context. To wit, the substance abuse and psychiatric issues that result from the animals' insistence on making objects of themselves.

This hallucinatory scene, this tableau with the vertiginous color sense of Van Gogh, is the headiest we've come across in years. While the sun stabs the sky and the water teems and seethes, the "food" animals float toward their doom.

As evidence of the deep wound in their psyches, take note of the two white flags of surrender and the chicken's "We give up!" posture. These animals aren't escaping: they are meeting their butchers head-on. Of course, one look at the cow's spiraling eyes is enough to make us wonder whether the poor animals even know where they are.

Regardless, they made a pact and they're in this thing together. When the end comes, which it will, soon, they'll face it like heroes. Disoriented, psychologically damaged heroes.

Captain Hog's and Captain Ron's

From both ends of the maritime spectrum, the pigs are calling for their destruction!

The pleasure boaters waving to you as they speed by, the roar of their outboard the only thing loud enough to mask their joyous song. The working stiffs—you know they're true Sons of the Sea by the beard-with-no-mustache whisker configuration, not to mention the eyepatch—pouring themselves another mug of java as they prepare to push off for the day.

Taken together, these two captains represent what we could call the Argument from Opposites. (We've seen the gambit before—here, for instance, and in a less focused form here.)

This rhetorical stratagem insists that if representatives from both ends of some continuum support a given proposition, then the proposition is, by default, proven.

If high-born animals and proletariat animals agree that barbecue, for instance, is not a threat to them, but instead is a reward, then it must be so.

For don't they both smile?

Don't they both—don't they all, every sailor in Neptune's realm—find meaning and purpose in their stations, lowly or lofty as they may be?

Whether leaving from docks or the piers reserved for Peers, pigs want to die. It's just how it is.

With all the evidence that has been marshaled to support this position, there's just no point arguing.







Addendum (12/05/10): More pigs-and-boats fun! Don't panic: this one's got his own barbecue fork! Hang on, chicken—it'll all be over soon!

Big Bubba's Bad to the Bone BBQ

Now this is just sad.

Yes, yes, the pig does not appear to be suffering, exactly. And that horrible, idiotic grin could even be construed as happy.

As we have with other simpleton mascots, however, we are compelled to ask: Are we seeing the pig's authentic impulse or merely the exploitation of his obvious deficiencies?

Which brings up another matter. Who wrote EAT ME! on his flank? Is the pig literate? And if so, he must have dictated to some unknown scribe. (The pig is surely not limber enough to write on himself that way.)

Moreover, what kind of cowboy would want to pose for the camera riding on the back of a mentally disabled hog?

The whole thing is dishonorable, like making faces at a blind man or getting a kitten high.

Still, we have to admit that the Big Bubba's pig does not appear to be acting under duress. For whatever foolish reasons, he is right where he wants to be.

(Thanks to Dr. John for the consult.)

The Pulled Pork Mafia

This is the most faithful bastardization of a cinematic legend since the Blues Brothers-themed pigs we were briefly obsessed with in 2009.

When Don Cor-loin-eone here makes some poor schmuck that offer he can't refuse, what is the nature of the proposal?

The only thing it obligates him to do is eat the Hogfather or one of his lieutenants.

Of course, only in Suicidefood City could this scenario make sense: a ruthless, corpulent Brando-esque hog runs a criminal enterprise dedicated to the trafficking of dead pigs.

Swanson Chicken * Turkey

Penny the Hen has come to impart her up-to-the-minute wisdom.

On the surface, this would appear to concern nothing more than the advantages of canned and boneless birds and the ease with which their consumption can be described with metaphors drawn from the world of leisure. "Swing to Swanson boned chicken" (fore!), "Flavor is the thrill with Swanson boned turkey" (whee!), and so on.

Penny the Hen can swing a golf club, surf on a… thing (a lunch tray?), and leap a tennis net, all while envisioning the benefits of your consuming her family members curled in their tin tombs.

It amounts to a "new easy way to enjoy" eating chickens and turkeys, as Penny the Hen breathlessly announces!

In our modern push-button society, poultry will no longer force you to extract bone from flesh. Swanson insures that the birds are delivered to you "ready to serve." And Penny the Hen is their ambassador, envoy to the housewife! On the surface, yes. On the surface, a rousing testament to convenience. But look deeper.

Penny the Hen's own life, brief though it be, now has meaning. She knows freedom at last! The freedom to wind up in a can, her bones thoughtfully, efficiently, caringly removed.

Longhorns Saloon & Barbeque

Finally! Something that makes sense!

More than three years ago, we encountered a creature suffering from a similar complaint, which has since been codified as Induced Mutation Psychosis. (And since then, we also had occasion to meet the Chiggish and the Piscow.)

Briefly, IMP is the syndrome that artificially created beings develop when their unnatural genotype leads to decidedly poor self-esteem.

In the present case, the Bovog is shockingly ill-suited to carry on a meaningful existence. Quite the contrary. Facing his own destruction, he merely winks, as though he were in on the joke.

And who can blame him? Born a freak—a freak whose freakishness only made him a more desirable foodstuff—he never had anything to look forward to except his own death. Now that his destruction is imminent, he can finally experience a modicum of pleasure. In his place, would any of us behave differently?

Good Eats

This relic, an anonymous scrap of clip art, belongs in the Suicide Food Hall of Fame. (Which doesn't exist. But should. But not really. But whatever.)

Do you have the eerie feeling that you've seen this fat fellow before? That knowing smile, that canny eye, that awesome girth?

We suppose it's possible, but more likely you've run across his legions of offspring. Like a storied patriarch, he sits at the base of a great, ramifying tree reaching to the heavens and filling up the sky with his influence. He consecrates History's pillared firmament!

The Ur-Pig is the grand progenitor of an entire kingdom, a domain of living things destined for something greater than life, creatures whose aspirations can be told in a poem of two mighty words: good eats.

Those other pigs, cows, chickens, and sheep (and the rest)—if they have seen far and striven with valor for Death's vaunted trove, it is only because they have stood on the shoulders of Good Eats the hog.

David's Real Pit BBQ

This pig is working it. Desperate for the affirmation of death—the "food" animal's Great Validator—he ties on the apron, slaps on the hat, and sells, sells, sells!

If his unnatural hue and undeniable flavor aren't pulling them in and filling the seats, then he'll tout every amenity he can think of. We're assuming free wifi is only the latest in a long string of come-ons.

Look in his eyes. With every muscle, he pleads. It's his life on the line and he's savvy enough to know that if his employers go under, he'll have nothing to look forward to except living.