Colman's Instant Beef Gravy

Things are different in Australia—profoundly, mystifyingly, adorably, offputtingly different—so there's no reason this should startle us.


But it does.


Because, to demonstrate the agreeable flavor of their meat-based food moistener, the Colman's Instant Beef Gravy people have introduced us to a beef paste-born bovine reincarnation springing forth from his sacred gravy boat. Look at him, freed from Death's grim shackles, leaping above the table top, destined to splash himself all over your plate! 


Of course, it's only what any right-thinking animal offered a second chance at life would seek out: not escape, but a quick trip back to the conveyor belt of consumption and nothingness.


Thus has suicidefoodism ever represented it. So eager are the animals to die that their most numinous vocation is not to die once, but to return to life to die again. The second death is sweeter, surely, because they rush into it with eyes open. Having already savored their own destruction, they hasten back to their utter negation, the no-time and no-place where they are finally at home.

And so Zombie Gravy the Bull soars. He cavorts and poses. He dances and sings. 


And what a song it is! For reasons we can't begin to explain (no, not even with all our big words and pointy-headed ideas), he croons "I like the way you moo!" He likes the way we moo? (We weren't aware we were mooing.) But you try arguing with a reanimated bull made of gravy.


See the whole thing for yourself. 


(Thanks to Dr. Julian for the referral.)

Big John's Beef Jerky

The jerky pushers puzzle us. Yes, all the True Believers, the Willing Sacrifices, the Kill-Me-Nows, the relentless martyrs—every self-peddling beast puzzles us. But for some reason, the pre-jerky animals (along with the pre-rinded pigs) just baffle us and give us the shivers.

There's something about the time investment implicit in the jerky-making process. Big John knows it's not simply a matter of killing himself and trusting that he will make it into the waiting mouths of his superiors. He has to rely on a more extensive procedure. There's the defatting, the marinading, the seasoning, the dehydrating, and the packaging. It'll be a while between his sweet death and his sweeter consumption, which is sort of a superdeath, the irrevocable made thoroughly unimaginable.

He has to be completely committed, and that level of certainty is a little off-putting.

One other thing strikes us about Bovines Who Would Be Jerky. As far as we can tell they are almost always hyper-masculine characters. Take the Rosie's Vermont Beef Jerky spokesjerk—the burly lumberjack we met almost five years ago. These animals are the manliest of the manly: muscle-bound, tuxedoed, boxing gloved, or bedecked in backwoods plaid. Like the foodstuffs they are destined to become, they are tough. Whether this reflects the aspirations of the jerky consumer or the essential nature of the animals in their benighted (i.e., living) form, we can't say.

Chickin' Pickin'

It's an allegory.

With pop-eyed abandon, the chicken pursues his own mortality.

The headless, skinless, footless chicken corpse scampers gaily ahead, leading the poor living bird further into the realm of delusion. You can almost feel how carefree the innocent cadaver is, with what solemn mischief it tempts the living.

Looking on from the stage, their role obscure, a pig and a steer.

Are they the judges of this macabre ceremony, this wretched game? Are they timekeepers of some kind, the sport's sacred adjutants? Are they waiting for their turn in the arena, their chance to confront their own imminent deaths?

No, we're not sure why we're trying so hard to make this rational either.

BBQ Trophies

You are looking at a bunch of true believers. This Unholy Trinity has fully embraced their status as food. They have totemized themselves, solidifying their very objectness.

The point is that these animals have so thoroughly assimilated the very concept of their own worthlessness that they can appear—excited, eager, with fond wishes for a future constituting more of the same—as living embodiments of others' desires to eat them.

They do not merely offer their blessings on an endeavor dedicated to their destruction; they ratify the worldview and priorities of their destroyers. And so the cow represents herself as beef and the pig as ribs. They are just (temporarily) living stuff.

It is a curious phenomenon, this use of the animals' agency to reaffirm their lack of agency. Curious, but altogether commonplace.

Then again, it should hardly surprise us when animals this warped fail to appreciate the difference between prize-winner and prize.

Lord of the Ribs

At first we weren't sure whether Tolkien's timeless epic translated well to the world of barbecue. We knew the chicken was Gandalf, the cow was cast as a man of the Second Age (Elendil, presumably), and the pig was some Second Age elf (Elrond or Gil-galad, we assumed), but it all felt contrived. Not as contrived as other barbecue-related stretches we've encountered, to be sure, but where were they going with this? If the One True Rib promised to enslave the free peoples of Middle Earth, then our protagonists want to destroy it? And that's going to sell pig meat?

Then we realized we were looking at it all wrong. We were seeing the details but missing the big picture. For what is J. R. R.'s tale about? Beyond the comings and goings of bearded weirdos and a bunch of business about a giant, evil eyeball, it's a story about brotherhood and sacrifice. Brotherhood and sacrifice? That's the hallmark of modern "food" animals!

It all made sense! Who knows more about sacrifice and selflessness than cows, pigs, and chickens? Who is better suited to hit the battlefield of Dagorlad—also known as the backyard barbecues of North America—and offer themselves up for their friends? In this respect, all the animals are Sam Gamgees, bearing all our burdens, long-suffering, never questioning our motives or intentions.

Epilogue: Five minutes later it stopped making sense again.

Festival of Cruelty 18

It's time once more to enter the shadow world of suicidefoodism, the world where no one's constrained by decency. They don't have to pretend that animals are complicit in their own deaths. It's a world we visit every few months, though we've long forgotten why. (Read up on the custom by checking out Festival of Cruelty #17.)

Rural Route BBQ: As every crazed hillbilly with a knife to brandish and a chicken to choke knows, terror is the finest seasoning.

Pig Chaser BBQ Sauce: Continuing the theme, the Pigchaser menaces pigs throughout Illinois. He's just so villainous, the way he pursues his panic-stricken quarry, sandaled and full of wicked glee. The entrailpreneurs of the various Festivals of Cruelty are no shrinking violets, meekly coaxing the "food" animals onto the coals. No, they tend to drift more into bloodthirsty Harold territory. They are hunters (of penned livestock), and they ask no one for permission!

Virginia Smokis Porkis: It looks like an innocent depiction of Man's brutal dominance over gentle Nature, but you couldn't be more wrong.

See, in the official state seal (no, this isn't the official one), Virtus, the Roman goddess of virtue, is shown triumphant over Tyranny. The legend beneath the vanquished despot reads Sic Semper Tyrannis or "Thus always to tyrants." In the Smokis Porkis (or "Doesn't actually mean anything") version, the role of the tyrant is played by a dead pig. So, like, take that, pig? You, um, tyrant?

Smokin' Up a Storm: It's no longer enough, apparently, to kill and butcher them the old-fashioned way. To satisfy a jaded public, ever more diabolical means of dispatching the animals must be dreamt up. In this case, it's some kind of weather-controlling contraption that has sucked up the cow, pig, and chicken. Within its artificial funnel cloud, it subjects them to punishing speeds and stunning jolts of lightning.

WTF? Smoke -n- BBQ: It would hardly be a Festival of Cruelty without some dog or wolf making life miserable for a pig or two. It's practically a tradition! No, seriously. Take a look at recent Festivals and see what we mean.

Holy Chuck Burger

Holy Chuck is working the symbolism hard. Both the sacrificer and the sacrificed, he is the perfect icon for a cruddy ethos.

Biblically speaking, whose head winds up on a plate? That would be John the Baptist. And who was responsible for that head finding its way there? Salome, step-daughter of Herod.

Both wrestle for a toehold within the figure of Holy Chuck. The innocent and the guilty. The accuser and the accused. The victimized and the victimizer. She who, triumphant, holds aloft the severed head, and the former owner of that head. All—each thing and its opposite—can be found in Holy Chuck. It's as though everything, every impulse and every impulse's obverse, ratifies the proposition that cows are to be eaten. Cows, which are, after all, sanctified stuff, holy chuck (the cut between neck and shoulder blade). She is simultaneously mere matter and the moral agent who transformed herself to mere matter, thus removing her own moral agency. It's a neat trick.

So eat! Engage in the sacrament of boviphagy. There's no way it can't be pure and good.

Addendum: It's Guidi Reni's Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (circa 1630), via Wikimedia Commons.

Off the Hoof BBQ Crew

Beneath a legend made of bone, gristle, and blood, they disport themselves. The pig and chicken, their faces bearing smiles that shade into idiotic grimaces, play on their madhouse jungle gym.

Is anything about this image natural?

The way the animals hang from the steer's horns, the way the steer, looking as though he's gone five rounds with a pugilist, lets them—we are seeing the final stages of life's miserly drama.

If we were to try to name their emotions, we'd say the pig displays jolly resignation, the steer glum incredulity, and the chicken sheer lunacy.

Are they hanging above steaming cauldrons? Are their unseen lower regions still there? If they were gone, having been gnawed or hacked off, would it only add to the animals' fun?

(Thanks to Dr. Lance for the referral.)

2nd Annual Holy Smoke BBQ

More nautical fun from Maryland!

Look at this scene of gleeful mayhem—all in the name of the 2nd Annual Holy Smoke BBQ of Easton, Maryland—and see how many adjectives come to mind.

If you're like us, awesome, cool, extreme, and crazy rise to the surface right away.

But keep looking. Concentrate. Ponder the mysteries of the universe, the inexplicable unfolding of things. Breathe. Wait.

Has it dawned on you? The most natural way to describe soon-to-be-barbecued animals enjoying the most enlightening thrills? The word that best describes these boating beasts soaking up the rays as though their lives weren't about to end in a spectacularly awful way?

The word, friends, is holy.

Suicide Snacks: quickies 9

When the lengthy sermons are too much, we turn to our by-now-classic series of rapid-fire diatribules for relief. (Revisit the most recent installment, won't you?)

You tell 'em, duck! What, do those tofu-munching hippies think they're too good for your repulsive liver or something?




The swiggin' pig of Nashville, Tennessee doesn't do anything halfway. He lives life at full throttle, sometimes spending seven, eight hours a day down at the local tavern. And he dies full tilt, too.








A shrimp crossed with a Segway? It's the cuddliest version yet of half-animal/half-machine monstrosity.










Yes, yes, it's not about meat. It's a rare example of dairy-related business. Still, it's remarkable because it's like the cow's innermost thoughts and feelings will not be repressed. The cow's undeniable gratitude at being used shines out, through bone, muscle, and hide.

Calf Club

We'd like to tell you all about this, but after reading up on it, we're still feeling a little dizzy. From the Calf Club's website:

Originally the day was known as Calf Club even though children exhibited animals like lambs and goats, but with fewer children now having access to 'farm animals' the day has become known, in some areas, as Pet, Livestock or Agriculture Day, with events for all classes of animals, pets and handcrafts.

LIC strongly supports New Zealand's dairy, beef, deer and sheep industries and recognises that there are young farmers who work hard each year to select, prepare and show young animals at these school events.

This website provides information and guidelines to help you and your child select, train and show a pet - and most importantly, ensure everyone enjoys the experience.

Okay! Did you spot it?

It's the seamless, oh-so-natural conflation of the categories pet and livestock.

Let's be fair: The organizers of this event explicitly encourage young people to take good care of their animals, to treat them kindly, to make sure they have proper food and clean bedding. It's clear they believe—and the kids feel it too—that the up-and-coming "farmers" form a strong bond with their (ahem) pets, a connection born of duty and affection. We would assume that many "farmers" find this a commonplace.

But to us, that adoring calf—with its serene smile and worshipful gaze—knows more than it lets on. For, whether destined for milking or "rearing" (that is, being raised for meat), it will not long be anyone's companion. Are we wrong to detect a trusting nature in the calf? Not a trust that it will always be—and have—a friend, but a bedrock faith in the entire administration that will see to its eventual disposition. From friend to food, the calf is in their hands. Where it belongs.

Quality Semen Tanks

"I finally have my own little bundle of joy product! Thank you, Quality Semen Tanks!"

So says Mrs. Cow, we can only assume, on cuddling her newborn for the first time.

She knows what lies in store for her offspring. She knows that for a she-calf, it's a life spent voluntarily offering up her milk and her own offspring. For a he-calf, it's most likely an adorable processing at the hands of hard-working vealsmiths.

Which is why she's so pleased with the product line at Quality Semen Tanks. Because that's what makes it all possible. The fulfillment of her too, too brief motherhood. The succession of babies dedicated to milking and vealing operations. The peace that comes from knowing her place. All of it concentrated in her love and gratitude for sturdy, well-made semen tanks.










Addendum: An outfit called Goode Cattle uses the same mom-and-baby graphic on their website. They go one better (or one stranger, at least) by using this one, too, which looks for all the world like a cow in love with a Millennium SC20 semen tank. Perfectly understandable.

European Fur Breeders' Association

The industrious European fur breeders of the European Fur Breeders' Association need to learn to dial it back just a bit. A smidgen less... enthusiasm would serve them well. We're uncomfortable giving them pointers, but their videos look like hoaxes or something we might have cooked up just to make the EFBA's position look even worse.

We've seen footage before where animals speak about their yearnings and their fears in their own voices, and, far from grounding us in a comforting reality, they only make our skin crawl and our bowels loosen. What begins as an attempt at cinéma vérité becomes cinéma putréfié, as the cognizant beings patiently explain their eagerness to die.

Fred the mink gets the ball rolling.

"...nice farmers and vets take care of us," he says—and they sure do take care of them!—"and we are useful to people!"






And then things get a little personal when Fred points out the real value of his friends Simone the chicken and Lola the cow:

Where the EFBA's little videos compound the insanity is in their central, axiomatic proposition that because raising and killing animals for their meat is ordained by the animals themselves, there can be no legitimate objection to raising and killing animals for their fur. It's logic so simple even (only?) a child could embrace it!














After all, there's no difference...














(Thanks to Dr. Mrs. Suicidefood for the referral.)






Addendum: If you really need to watch one of these videos, knock yourself out.

Addendum 2: Enjoy a suicide-clothing digression from four and a half years ago.