Pitmasters BBQ

Here is a sow who has lost her mind. They scooped it right out of her head and packed in their own ideas before screwing the top of her skull back on. She exists solely to satisfy the needs of others, walks only on paths set down before her.

When confronted with her own destruction, she winks. When faced with her status as chattel, she ties the Stars and Bars around her neck, and flirts. Their symbols have become her symbols, their ways hers. Their flag will be her burial shroud, but she is helpless now to resist. At the prospect of claiming an identity of her own, she demurs.

Her powerlessness is the only thing she trusts, so she clings to it. But it is her anchor. The Pit and its master have her in their clutches. She mistakes it for a lover's embrace.

Dixie Meat Rub

Even stuffed to bursting with the meat of his kinsmen, he has but one thought.

His abdomen taut, his pulse sluggish, his eyes heavy with impending slumber, he has just a singular idea buzzing in his spongy brain like a dozy bumblebee:

Must. Prepare. Self. For imminent eating. Must have rub. Applied to belly.

Unable to muster the energy to speak the words aloud, instead he thinks them into being. Rub my belly.

He pats his girth helpfully. "Here," he seems to say. "The rub goes right here." And then, before sinking into his pork coma, he prays you will know what to do with his lifeless body.








Addendum: Have we, perhaps, already seen this type of glutton (for punishment as well as for the meat of his own kind)? Yes, we have.

Rajun Cajun Café

There's nothing an inspired crawfish can't do!

And nothing inspires a crawfish more than the prospect of his own annihilation.

And so, warmed by thoughts of boiling from the inside out, the crawfish acquires a drum kit, practices tirelessly (even to the point of mastering the not inconsiderable drumstick-held-in-claw technique), assembles a band (Rajun Cajun), writes some material, finds someone to tie a napkin around his "neck," and offers up a musical salute to his eventual consumers.

Smokin' Pigs BBQ Team

A more troubling abuse of power we have not seen in a long while. These two good ol' boys (of the pig persuasion) flout traffic laws for what is distinctly personal business. They flash their tin stars, turn on the gumball machine, and make everyone get out of the way.

Their "emergency"? They're late to a funeral: their own. It's like cashing in your life insurance while you've still got time to enjoy the money. Such dedication to the art of dying!

And what of the dog? It is a curious phenomenon. Humanoid pigs (they wear clothes, they drive cars, they have jobs—yet they will nevertheless be eaten) have a regular animal animal for a pet. The dog in the bed of the pickup is just a dog. His tongue lolls as he enjoys the simple beastly pleasures of riding into the wind.

And may we point out the howls of protest that would ensue were a vegetarian outfit to equate law enforcement officers with pigs?

Ed Boudreaux's Bayou Bar-B-Que

We tried.

We have stared at this thing for three hours straight, forgoing all food (except liquids) and human companionship. We have pondered it. We have challenged it. We have sought and failed to find.

We have asked the ceiling, the sky, the heavens above and received no answer. We are alone.

"How could this make someone want to eat dead pigs?" And then, more quietly, "How could this image be any less appealing (short of nudity and open sores)?"

A bedraggled Mardi Gras vagrant—the single-strap overalls, the frayed cuffs—rides a baleful pig, his jingle bell reins announcing the coming of calamity and giving all within earshot the chance to hide behind their deadbolts.

This does not exactly stimulate the appetite. Or so we pray.

Sorrento Lions Club Boucherie Festival

It's a party in honor of butchery (boucherie), so naturally pigs are on hand to celebrate! Only in a world where suicidefoodism holds sway could that make a glimmer of sense. And yet we have endured hundreds of examples of this very worldview.

At the Sorrento (Louisiana) Lions Club Boucherie Festival, weary travelers can satisfy their hunger with any number of pig-based products. Roast pork and pig ribs, of course, but that goes without saying. And because this all takes place midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, relentless consumers can also indulge in (in ascending order of horror) pork jambalaya, boudin sausage balls, cracklins, and hog head cheese. Is it any wonder the pink pig has flipped his cap in ecstatic expectation? He knows that every last scrap of him will be put to "good" use, and really—isn't that all any animal needs?

In an almost unheard-of gesture, the Festival also has offerings for those "who cannot eat pork." We confess that we assumed such people would be excluded outright, and subjected, perhaps, to public humiliation.

The Festival features more than just foodstuffs crafted from guitar-playing pigs: art booths, carnival rides, a parade, and (brace yourself) a beauty pageant, wherein Miss Boucherie is crowned. That's right: Miss Butchery! We catch ourselves snickering, and then we grow silent, shamed by our own incomprehension.

And finally, also from the Festival's website, is this endearing, yet ghostly, image (see right). In it, a pig, possibly the joyeux strummer from above, beside a cajun chopping block.

Is he dead, the ax having already done its blessed duty? Or—as we believe—has he merely fainted in bliss at the prospect of arriving in that boucherie in the sky, there to be killed over and over, world without end?






Addendum: Among other prizes, Miss Butchery will walk home with a "septar" and "nice gift's" (sic).

Valleydale

Down in Valleydale, land of jolly, jolly pigs, life is one grand party! The pigs perform for us, tootling and swinging. Their merriment, their cheerful industry, their indomitable spirit—all are on full display. They sing, they wiggle, they strive with well rehearsed precision to erect a towering edifice proclaiming the Power and Goodness of Valleydale!

Vintage television commercials bring the golden past to life, to remind us of Valleydale's glorious beginnings. Pigs tout the wonders of bologna and the iconic Honee Weenee. Their presence is a balm to nerves frayed by the hurry-up world we all inhabit. Everything will be all right, the pigs say to the people of the Southlands. Just keep shoveling it in.

As the Valleydale all-pig marching band takes to the streets to pour their Valleydale luv all over us, they sing rapturously!

The music goes zoom zoom!
The drummer goes boom boom!
And everybody shouts, "Hurray for Valleydale!"

Hurray for Valleydale!
Hurray for Valleydale!
Hurray for Valleydale!
All hail, it's Valleydale!

Valleydale sausage!
Valleydale wieners!
Valleydale bacon!
Zing zing zing zing Valleydale!

Says the Valleydale web site: "[T]hese lovable characters created happy, long-lasting memories and captured the hearts of a generation of viewers from the earliest days of television. Even today, folks who have not been exposed to the commercials in 40 years or more can still sing the Valleydale jingle and describe the characters."






Still, for drama, for pathos and the shameless manufacture of pity, nothing bests the nonmusical "Butcher" ad. In it, a hurried customer demands of the porcine butcher, "Gimme some bacon and sausage—any kind." (Granted, we're off to a contrived start.) The butcher then responds with incredulity and indignation. Any kind of bacon? Any kind?! After chastising the customer for his culinary incorrectness, the butcher goes soft. Overwhelmed by humility, he all but begs: "Valleydale sausage and bacon! Try to remember. Won't you?"

Yes, we are asked to swallow the notion that this pig would care, that he would be perplexed and insulted were someone to choose to eat the wrong pork products. We are walking down a familiar path, to be sure, but that renders the forest no less haunted.

An often overlooked aspect of suicide food is its total lack of exigency. Think about it: do the purveyors of dead animals face a shortage of customers? Imagine Virginia and Kentucky back in the heyday of Valleydale's charming commercials. Were the simple folk of those stalwart commonwealths on the verge of throwing in with the vegans and abandoning their carnivory? Of course not. One might suppose that the only required elements of any successful advertising campaign were the pounding-in of the company's name—and this is accomplished in the Valleydale spots with all the subtlety of raining hammer blows—and footage of the purportedly mouth-watering food.

Strange then that Valleydale spends so little airtime on offering its viewers even a glimpse of the products in question. Instead, the entire enterprise revolves around redundant assurances that meat-eating is "natural," "normal," and “necessary.” Something that the audience would have taken to be self-evident if it were put to them in plain terms. And yet this nonsense is the very foundation of suicide food: the attempt to convince people of what they are presumed to believe already. Again and again, they are told, "Your habits are not objectionable in the least. Look! The only ones who might have a counterclaim are lining up on your side! Carry on!" But since when have people needed incentive not to question their own assumptions? That mental inertia is all but bred into the human condition.

The adherents of suicidefoodism are willing to take no chances. Thus, Valleydale's marching band, its Dixieland combo, its construction workers, and the rest.

(Thanks to Dr. Bob for the referral.)






Addendum (1/01/08): We have just learned that one can purchase plush representations of Valleydale's obsessive pigs. We have not learned why one would wish to.

Frenchy's King Ro

For the record, we will stipulate that this is, in fact, a chicken, and not a quail of some kind.

Regardless of the bird’s provenance, what’s going on here would be macabre, if not for the oomph that Nawlins puts into everything. The meaning’s not buried, is it? Even though King Ro soon will be?

In the finest tradition of the Crescent City, our bird struts down Bourbon Street, backed by the swingingest dixieland combo. While the bass drum pounds and the clarinet soars, King Ro heads up his own funeral, thumbing his nose at old man Death even as the chains rattle. Finally, it’s “You want me? You got me!”

The king gives up the ghost, a smile on his beak. But don’t be blue. Ro wanted to end up this way, spinning upon the device whose name he bore. Besides, his spirit—that is to say, his taste—will last forever!