Eddie's Restaurant

In variously colored shirts, Eddie fully endorses his restaurant's many offerings:

Whether they be dispensed with pancake turners, presented on trays, or even magnified to the frightening proportions of comedic props and speared with ludicrous forks, Eddie is a proud supporter of the business.

His enthusiastic participation is a classic move to quell any pangs potential customers might experience. Eddie's clearly not disturbed by anything that goes down at the restaurant. He takes part in every aspect of the business: cooking, serving, new recipe sampling.





It's only when he contemplates seventy-five years of these goings-on that he begins to look a little nervous. They are never. Going. To. Stop.

We feel for the pig. He's a lifer. His whole livelihood is wrapped up in this place. What's he supposed to do? Turn his back and just walk away?

No, he's made a commitment. He's a stand-up guy. He's in this for the long haul. So he climbs aboard the fish cut-out… boat… thing and hoists the big 7-5 and hopes for the best. He's made it this far. Menu's due for a change. Sure, he can ride this out.

Right?

HappyTime Farms

The so-called Happy Meat phenomenon finally comes out of the closet. This place puts the word front and center. It's one big happy time down on the farm!

The cow is smiling to beat the band! Talk about your wholesome good time!

Bundle the kids in the car and head on down. Depending on the season, you can enjoy a pumpkin patch, corn maze, and hayrides. And don't forget the multitudes of grinning animals.

Please contain your confusion and alarm when you discover that not every activity there is suitable for the whole family.

This flier—a promotion for the same happy farm—was under windshield wipers in our actual neighborhood, on our very street:

Granted, the sheep look a little cheerful, we suppose. Nothing to rival the toothy cow from the website, but still. They appear happyish, right? In spite of the dissonance created by the very name of the establishment—happy time… slaugherhouse?—the sheep are at least bearing up well.

They're exhibiting stoicism, maybe, more than actual happiness. Or a gritty determination to meet the end with courage and nobility, perhaps.

Then again, could it be the grim acceptance of impending death? The misery of their fundamental impotence? The rage of the condemned?

Oh, but just look at us go on, with our anthropomorphism and our habit of making everything complicated. Let's just start over, shall we?

See the happy animals. They are happy. They will die happy. Good night, everyone!

The Powers of BBQ

An out-of-shape superhero is a reliable barometer of a city's quality of life. You might think that a flabby protector indicates that crime is rare and shenanigans are held to a minimum. Makes sense. Sure, things are so quiet, our costumed pig can afford to let himself go a bit.

Maybe. Somewhere. But not in Suicidefood City.

In that blighted burg, the one pig who could keep crime and corruption away has thrown in with the forces he's supposed to be fighting! Like Buttman and Rubbin' before him, Pig Powers has grown fat on his own treachery!

And he doesn't even have the decency to hide this from his public. Nope, his potbelly's on proud display. (The rigors of crimefighting keep honest superheroes trim, but he has no shame!)

What's worse, though, than a caped crusader on the take is one who directly betrays the populace that depends on his protection: the pigs whose barbecuing he has permitted. Or even—ulp!—benefited from! That they should be marched to the grills is of no concern to him. Nor, we suspect, is his own eventual death and consumption.

Suicidefood Book Report: Endgame

Suicidefoodism is not just for tobacco-stained hillbillies with paunchy overalls anymore. Now, even the most earnest earthies can claim the "food" animals are doing it all for us.

Take note:

[Smoked salmon] tastes so good. I return to the refrigerator, open it, pull out more salmon. It says… "Remember the bargain." I eat the food. Close the door. Try not to think about it.

I go back again. I remember the predator-prey bargain: If you consume the flesh of another, you take responsibility for the continuation of its community. I open the refrigerator. Eat more.

This time the salmon says something else to me: "I know you don’t like killing. If you help take out the dams that will help us survive. Then you can kill and eat all the salmon you'd like. We will even jump out of the water and right to where you are waiting. You won’t feel bad about killing us, because you have helped our community. We will gladly do this for you, if you will help us survive." (Emphasis added.)

This excerpt comes from Derrick Jensen's provocative Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization (Seven Stories Press, ISBN: 978-1583227305).

Of all the species of suicidefoodists, we find the pious, connected-to-Nature types the hardest to stomach. Their artisanal meats! Their eyewitness accounts of slaughter and butchery! The profound connections they imagine with the animals they carve up with reverent knives and forks! They have achieved a near-holy state that the mere vegan—with his perverse willingness to let the animals be—can never hope to understand. Once again enfolded within the embrace of life's fundamental forces, the "conscious eaters" are the true animal lovers.

For all of them, the message of the animals is never a straightforward, rational, commonsense one: "Don't kill me or my kind." No, it's always a message that allows the animal-carers-about to continue as before, making but a few concessions: buy your meat from this or that kind of supplier, support the removal of these or those dams, give thanks before you eat.

Why not tear down the dams, scrub the air clean, replant the forests and then—this gets tricky, so pay attention—not eat the fish, after all? To eat them on the grounds that you are only doing their bidding is pure solipsism. This "bargain" Jensen speaks of: who came up with that?

And this "community" the animals are said to hold in such regard? We say, how can there be a community with no individuals? "Kill me! Kill us all! Just spare our community!" In this conception, animals will sacrifice for a principle, thus showing themselves to be more sophisticated than most of us.

Regrettably, we possess the poisoned mind of the "civilized," but we can more easily imagine the gratitude of animals who have been spared our gory awe and left alone altogether. But for all of their honoring of animals, the neo-traditionals never seem to remember that animals have an interest in finding comfort and security. In using their healthy bodies. In being alive.








Addendum: Is anyone else reminded of those suicidal whales of yore?

Gold Wings & Ribs Festival

Can you imagine the dedication? The expense? The unremitting pain? How hard it is sometimes to live the dream!

Let us catalog the many elective procedures the pig underwent to effect his transformation from gentle snuffler to half-pig/half-machine helldemon:

• Ribs replaced with exhaust pipes.

• Ears modified into handlebar configuration.

• Saddle attached.

• Feet fused with standard motorcycle tires.

• Fire implanted into scalp.

• Tusks augmented.

• Tail insulated and re-coiled.

(And that doesn't even include the tattoo and steroids.)

All this, for the pleasure of being eaten! And not only that, but the pleasure of bringing the eatin' to you! Now, we've seen "food" animals so eager to die that they will bring the means of their destruction right to your door. But never have we encountered a pig who does it with such malicious verve! You will eat him if it kills you!






Addendum (4/25/10): Is this the kindler, gentler version of the surgically enhanced Fury Swine?

Cedar Hill Neighborhood Cook-Off

Cedar Hill, in (we believe) upstate Suicidefood, is a downright neighborly place.

They've got themselves a neighborhood cook-off, for one thing. For another, they've got the neighborliest host this side of… say, Cedar Junction.

You step right up, you tell the Ultimate Victim Neighbor what you crave, and, quick as a wink, he gets you taken care of. Ribs? Hotdogs? Whatever you like. Naturally, he steers you away from the burgers. And, not wanting to offend him by turning down the flesh of his fellows, you skip the beef.

We all know what the highlight of the event is, right? The pig impaling himself on the tines of his prodigious stabber thing? It's only the courteous thing to do.

Mr. Steak

He's not Mr. Steer. Or Fred.

No. He's Mr. Steak.

His identity is inextricably bound up with the foodstuff he will become. He only achieves his meager personhood in relation to his eventual death and consumption.

We feel for Mr. Steak. What might he have accomplished, had he been surrounded by people who cared about him, and not merely the meat from which he was made? Who could he have been?

His doom was foretold even at his christening.

Imagine an alternate ceremony:

When called into being, he is known as Black Beauty, instead. Or, say, Resolute. Or Glory. Even, yes, Fred. All of these would have made fine names for a steer with as much potential as Mr. Steak once had.

But no.
















He was branded from his earliest days, his thoughts crammed into a crate whose boundaries were defined by his death. Therefore, the goofy, brainless expression.

And the buttons and the plastic, um… puppets? Nothing is so trivial as to be beneath his endorsement.











Addendum: We know everything we need to about this poor freak.

Embutidos Pellico

The sporting life in the north of Spain is strange business. Banish from your mind the carefree enjoyment of Nature’s splendors, the thrill of testing one’s limits, the homely pleasures of fresh air soothing too-long pent-up lungs. None of these holds sway among the adventuresome pigs of that realm.

Their personalities work differently from yours. Hunched from the evil influence of a slaver’s philosophy, their spirits seek only further horrors. And everything they see, every possibility they contemplate, is a challenge to their sickest selves.

Thus, the mountains become a theater of torment, as the pig uses his own intestines (or possibly a chain of embutidos-style sausages made from his flesh?) to scale the peaks. At the top, perhaps he will fashion them into a noose to cap off the outing with a flourish.

The whole scene is steeped in such ghastliness it’s hard for us to imagine it inducing anyone to buy sausages. Or anything at all to eat. In fact, if the world were sane, it would impel everyone to seek out a private corner in which to sweat and quiver.

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

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.

Suicidal Eggs: a digression

Eggs, like dairy, are on the periphery of our mandate. Not animals, they are nevertheless linked to animals (obviously) and created by the same agrindustrial complex as meat. So while we haven't spent a lot of time on eggs (or dairy products, for that matter), they are ever on the edges of our awareness.

While chicken eggs aren't alive, nor are the supermarket versions the preliving form of some autonomous individual, still, this is troubling. For eggs—no matter their provenance—represent life. Beginnings. Possibility. The finite, precious, and potent force within us all.

But here, they're just props for an advertisement for cooking spray. And what little regard they have for themselves! They exist solely to be consumed. Or destroyed. Either way, they don't care. Life is cheap for eggs. They'll kill themselves out of spite if you refuse to eat them the right way.

Can you make out what the ringleader is saying? Her words pack the sting, the gleeful hostility, of a ransom note:

Cook me in PAM® or my friends will throw themselves at your house!

Don't you see? Everything craves death. Actual animals do. Their trimmed flesh and extracted organs do. And now we learn that eggs do as well. Everything, including eggs, longs for the sweet oblivion of eternity.

It even fills their dreams.








(Thanks to Dr. Natassja for the PAM referral and photo, and to Dr. Zena for the "dreaming billboard" referral.)

Demon Pig BBQ Team

A shot across the bow from the forces of suicidefoodism. The message couldn't be simpler. Or more chilling.

We are on notice. The Movement's reach has extended across the natural world and has entered, by means we do not care to know, the realm of the supernatural.

This is a warning. We are on the verge of a New Age. An era when all animals—the actual and the figmentary, those made from flesh and those brought into being through the blending of elemental forces—will demand their turn on the spit.

Even demons, in whom greed and violence well up like magma, even demons want to die for us. The door has been opened. What had been held at bay, what had been relegated to nightmare and dark imagining, is now in our very midst. And do not forget! Do not forget what power broke the seal, what power can control the beasts of Hell. It is the power of suicidefoodism.

Still we battle.

Suicide Snacks: quickies 5

When the ranting and sermonizing start weighing us down, we turn to these bite-sized morsels of bemusement.

Enjoy. (And do visit our previous installment of Suicide Snacks.)

This party is strictly BYOA. (Bring Your Own Apple of Death.)






Octopus ice cream is merely the latest mystifying emission from Planet Suicidefood. We would have assumed any self-respecting octopus would be affronted at the very existence of such a product. Oh, now we see. Self-respecting.












Smoker's or Stinker's BBQ Pit? We can't help but see the wavering stink lines, and the (approximate) nose-holding "P-U" gesture.










The steer is dead. The elements have stripped away every scrap of flesh. The sun has bleached the skull clean. And still! Still the poor creature wants to participate in the institution dedicated to its destruction. See the steer snort! Death is not powerful enough—not hardly—to quell an animal's desire to be destroyed.

Porky's Last Stand

Boy, they don't make last stands they way they used to. Time was, a last stand meant an all-out sort of affair involving firearms, hunkering down behind battlements, and the grim calculus of death. Well, those days are long gone.

Nowadays a last stand is a cheery event for the whole family. You get dolled up, bake a pie, and pose for the picture-taking man.

What are they last-standing about, anyway? Are they afraid they'll be left out? That they'll never fulfill their dream of being ground up into "specialty" sausages?

That would certainly explain their enthusiasm. They might not be the soldiers you want with you when the enemy's infantry is closing in, but if you're fixing to get sausaged, you know who to call.

And who can blame them, really? It's like there's an entire neighborhood of pigs in every bite of this stuff! Truly a cause worth fighting for.