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.

Au Pied de Cochon, Montreal

In the finest tradition of haute cuisine a pig lops off his head and displays it to a roomful of potential customers.

See, things work differently in the chi-chi restaurants populating Suicidefoodland.

In any other region a decapitated hog would be expected to put diners off their feed. But in this depraved district the ghastliest of ghastlies are tolerated so long as the muddied, bloodied beasts give the okay.

And this one isn't complaining! No, monsieur! Ever the serveur professionnel, he is thrilled to death. Literally! To death and beyond, in fact.

So delighted is he to know that his clientele will dine so well, dipping spoons, perhaps, into the congealing consommé of his neckhole, that not even his own grisly beheading can put out his fire.

Still, the waiter/entrée must be distracted (by joy, maybe?), for he's holding aloft his tete, not his pied. C'est la vie. As long as he's happy.

(Thanks to Dr. Chris for the referral.)

Festival of Cruelty 14

The time has come again, regrettably, to leave behind the disingenuous sham that is suicide food, and stumble into a land of foulest honesty. We come here every 50 posts, for reasons we have long since forgotten, and stare goggle-eyed at the worst of the worst. For here we see beyond and beneath suicidefoodism's Big Lie. No one in this quarter bothers trying to make you believe the animals are complicit. Here they are not actors, but only objects.

(Visit our most recent foray when you're done.)

Chain Gang BBQ: For those of you already squeamish about the thought of exploiting prison labor, comes this piece of bad business. The pigs (surely sentenced to life) are herded into a work detail under the blistering sun. Behind them, they drag a new ball and chain: a hot, heavy, smelly barbecue.

No, we're not sure why the grinning warden is eating a bird's leg and not a rack of ribs.



Bringin' The Heat BBQ Team: After painting it with the blood of its offspring (we're assuming), an imp made of fire threatens to burn a pig alive. He's getting ready to touch the flame to the pig's tail, like setting a lit match to tinder, but the pig can hardly muster the will to care.





Miller's Bar-B-Que: Out there in southeastern Pennsylvania, they do things a little differently. When the nights lengthen and the stars dazzle, Manheimers like to plug in the ol' electric gun and chase themselves a chicken or two. It's a simple pastime that harkens back to a simple time. A time when a businessman could terrorize a bird without drawing dirty looks and jeers.



Angry Tom's BBQ: So is this what it looks like when Tom isn't angry? (When he follows his own advice, about forgoing wrath for barbecue.) Because—and we're not professionals—he looks a teensy bit furious. Maybe it's the way he's straddling his homing airplane, fork all agleam with malice, putting his foes to flight. We admit not following the scenario very well. Is the plane on the ground? (Was Tom grounded for rage-related reasons?) Are the cow, pig, and chicken running in the clouds?

See this post for a similar treatment of the theme—the fork-brandishing wolf chasing down his prey aboard a mechanical mount. Awfully specific, that theme.



Peg Leg Porkers: Getting drunk and risking your life for a good cause (?) by trying to stay one step ahead of rampaging bulls gets old. To inject a much-needed thrill into the spectacle, we recommend forcing a terrified pig—one with an inexplicable wooden leg—to take your place.

(Keeping score? This is the fifth instance of peg-legged pigs we've featured.)

Jocko's Steak House

Yes, follow him. In doing so, you will be satisfying one of his dearest wishes: that he be eaten with great gusto.

This brutish coquette! The way he tempts and teases with the toothpick, dislodging imaginary gristle in leering testament to the way he hopes you will pick clean your teeth of his rubbery remains! His insinuating eyes! His languid pose!

He beckons with scarcely concealed erotic threat.

And through and beneath it all, a homely jocularity that calls to mind the golden age of burlesque. Jocko's is held, in the finest knee-slapping tradition of populist Americana, to stand for Jenuine Oak Coals Kooks Our Steaks. (Evidence.)

(Thanks to Dr. Kiki Maraschino for permission to use the image.)

Chipotle Revolución

Some revolutionaries burn with a fire only justice can douse. Some revolutionaries bristle with an anger only freedom can soothe. Some revolutionaries ache with shattered hearts only the truth can heal.

And then there's this bunch of luke-warm embarrassments.

El Pig's mild manifesto:

¡Viva la Revolución!

Okay pigs, it's time for us to get together and start fixing this system. We see the way that our pig friends get treated at the factory farms. And it's time we fight so all pigs can have the same rights we have!

No more tight, confining pens! No more antibiotics or non-vegetarian feed!!!!!!!!

We can do it!

Yours truly,
el Pig

We want equality, and we want it now!

P.S. Clear your calendars for next months (sic) talk-n-trough mixer.

Hardly the most rousing sentiment. He could call for anything on behalf of his imprisoned brothers and sisters. Anything at all. But he aims so low it's a wonder he bothers aiming at anything at all. The right not to be killed and eaten? Where is that on his list of demands?

Oh, we can understand the desire to end so-called factory farming. It's just that, when "fixing the system" means El Pig lodges a request for more comfortable shackles, we think his movement needs a new leader.

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







Addendum: You're reminded of these patsies, aren't you? And these, too? We understand.

Addendum 2: Another "food" animal revolutionary.

Suicide Medicine: a digression

We've seen the victims of clothing, sports, hunting, trapping, whaling, and pest control stick up for the institutions that did them in. And now it's medicine's turn.

Rushing from his graduation ceremony at upstate New York's Taconic Farms, Inc. (motto: "We’re dedicated to providing the quality animal models and services that can help you accelerate your research and improve your position in a competitive market"), the Rattus norvegicus subject has just been awarded the degree that will allow him to be experimented on and killed. His eyes sparkle with visions of a future dedicated to the promise of anonymity. He will receive a number—such as 6621-M—but never a name. Never an identity, apart from his disease model or phenotype. Never any consideration save what the law requires. And that's just how he wants it!

Let the rats dallying with their social sciences, their arts, their literatures—their soft world of the inexact and impractical—concern themselves with matters of the self. With signifiers and identity.

Our rat deals in Science! The quantifiable and repeatable. The impersonal and numerical! Science is the master to whom he is happily enslaved! The heady march of Progress! Where they strive for the future, those peerers into microscopes, he'll be there, contributing his tiny portion to Truth!

(Thanks to Dr. Eugen for the referral and to Seymour Miles for the photo.)

Piggin'-n-Grinnin' Bar'b'que

It's a concept you don't want to wrap your head around, we know. A lesson you don't care to learn. Succumbing not merely to their victimization, but to their continual victimization-in-increments, the pigs are thoroughly invested in this process. "Good pigs like us," they croon, "you don't eat all at once!"

(Awful as this is, we're wondering why we haven't seen it before.)

So they stand up there strumming and plucking—and rushing back to tend the fires beneath their severed limbs—to sing the praises of their dismembered and barbecued body parts. Never let it be said that the suicidefoodists are without their fine qualities: they have iron stomachs.

Drink in the horror. (A great advertising slogan for this place!) The two pigs are whittled away main course by main course until all that's left of them is an idea. And that lonely idea reverberates around the restaurant like a ghost, summoning up honorable appetites from the ashes.

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






Addendum: It hardly seems possible, but this is our fourth example of pig amputees.

Fishy Farm

Our favorite thing about this, apart from the appearance of overalls tailored to a fish's physique, is the way the fish happily takes to his role as crop.

The Fishy Farm, according to the official site, can be used to produce "herbs, vegetables, fish and crustaceans for dinner."

Vegetables, fish. Six of one, half dozen of the other. The fish isn't splitting hairs and neither should you.

And so the fish loads up his basket—he's been out harvesting, you see—and he takes his fellow produce and they all plunk themselves down on your doorstep. And then he waits, blushing a bit around the gills, for you to sample the herbs, taste the tomatoes, nibble the carrots. And, his gaze becoming insistent, he fidgets and seems to ask, "See anything else you like?"

(Thanks to Dr. Idji for the referral.)

Lamb Shanks at Hell Pizza

This huggable little fleecy-face has truly found himself.

And, to think, the only price for his happiness, his boundless, giggling joy—his fluffy-cloud serenity—was a couple legs. And hind ones at that.

Plus, now he has a cute little contraption for wheeling himself across the meadow!

And where did his unwanted, practically vestigial legs go? Why, to a New Zealand pizza chain, of course!

Talk about your basic win-win scenario: The lamb becomes an ovine/cyborg (the Lambtron 2000), and pizza customers get to dine on the legs of lambs!

(Thanks to Dr. Maria for the referral.)

Boucherie Rober

For some cows—amateurs!—a brand is enough. Those charmingly cryptic symbols seared into tender flesh and signifying the animals' status as object are sufficient. For some.

But not for le boeuf Rober.

He has so completely given himself over to his butchers—meat, bones, and soul—that his entire body is now a billboard advertising his thinghood. He even dressed up for his special rendez-vous!

It's as though the only interesting thing about him is the identity of those in total control of every aspect of his circumscribed life.

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

I'm a Hog for Que, Baby!

This ponytailed freak of nature represents the first sincere, full-blown hippie animal we've profiled! Bring on the marching bands, for we are making history!

(We've seen animal hippies before, sure, but none this genuine. This one, for instance, was the suicidefoodist equivalent of an undercover narc at a peace rally.)

This fellow is a (temporarily) living and breathing mass of discontinuities. Now, on top of the standard well-adjusted animals happy about the prospect of their imminent destruction, we can add the discrepancy of an ostensibly vegetarian creature (hippies are "all" vegetarians, right?) eagerly cooking—and hogging—meat. And just look at him! He's grinning and peace-signing like there's no tomorrow. (Which for him there might not be.)

It's true, though: The Grateful Dead's "Steal Your Face" symbol has never made more sense!

Nice Rack

Mix one part complacence in the face of unspeakable horror and one part fumbling, adolescent sexuality, and you've got... Well, you've got something altogether putrid. In this case, what you've got is this, this (forgive us) Nice Racks barbecue team.

The leering mascot, the surrogate for the pigs' consumers, is far too self-satisfied by the meager accomplishment of his paltry wordplay.

That wink, that obscene token of collusion, is the icing on the rancid cake. In its superfluity it reeks of submission, like a homeowner holding the door open for the burglars making off with his silver. As though these barbecue teamsters need permission!






Addendum: Are we just imagining things, or does our lecherous winker bear a resemblance to the Swine-o-Mite swine?

Revolution Barbecue

As you might expect of animals taking part in the suicidefoodist revolution, this bunch is a bit confused.

For one thing, they seem not to understand what a revolution is. Are we wrong that they appear intent on installing—and not dismantling—a monarchy? The pig's got a crown on and they stride beneath a banner proclaiming the birth of an empire.

Let's take a moment to consider this "revolution" they are fomenting. It clearly doesn't involve upraising the downtrodden or enfranchising the voiceless. Or breaking chains, walls, or despotic regimes. Or taking on the ruling class, the slavers, and connivers. Or granting rights and expanding possibilities. Or erasing the page of the past's lies and beginning a new chapter in history's noblest tome.

No. It's about putting the animals under the boot heel of the elites. (Power? To the pig?!) The grand march toward destruction! Surrender! Subjugation! The battle hymn of this revolution is a funeral dirge.

This is the Year Zero. To the fires! In you go!