Mainely Grillin' & Chillin'

Lobster: Say, when you think about the Raitt Homestead Farm's Mainely Grillin' & Chillin' Country BBQ State Championship, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

Pig: Hard to say, Lob. I guess the grilling? Or maybe the chilling?

Lobster: They're both important aspects of the G&C festivities, that's for sure. But aren't you forgetting something?

Pig: No, I don't think...

Lobster: Come on, Pig. What's the best part? The Reason for the Season?

Pig: Um...

Lobster: There's the grilling. The chilling. And the...?

Pig: The killing!

Lobster: Now you got it!

Pig: If it weren't for us getting killed, none of the rest of it would be worth a darn.

Lobster: Too true.

Pig: And the spilling. Spilling our blood?

Lobster: Sure, I guess.

Pig: And the willing? Like, making out your will?

Lobster: Yeah, but it's not like we own anything to give away. It's borrowed time all the way! We can't even claim ownership of our bodies.

Pig: There's the Adirondack chairs, too. Can't forget them.

Lobster: They make the chilling so much easier.

Pig: To us!

Lobster: To us!

*clink!*

Snapper's Saloon

With a little imagination and a whole lot of unpleasant warping of one's mind, any edible thing can become a violent, sexual trigger.

For instance, the Lobstress.

Granted, compared with hooter, it takes plenty of effort to turn snapper into a word charged with erotic possibilities, but it can be done!

Just picture gleaming chitinous claws, crimson claws that mock-snap your most delicate regions, and that lipsticked mouth looming above them, she's just laughing at you, her cruel, painted eyes smile, she strokes her hair, long earrings dangling and tinkling, and it's all you can do to lift her above the boiling water and pry those succulent claws apart, dunk her in, and slam the lid down tight, chest heaving, your face flushed with the heat from the stove, your fists clenching and unclenching in spasmodic rage.

But they saw! They saw it all! She forced you! It was all her fault! That lobstress didn't know when to let it go. She had to keep snapping, clacking again and again. That snapping never stopped. Playing, she called it. Playing?! Yeah, well, who won the game? Huh? Who won the game?

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

Beaux Hawg BBQ

It's called the Good Life, all right?

A martini, a fine cigar. Good food, good friends. And when the good food is the good friends, so much the better.

The good pig is an instant archetype, a down-home bon vivant. He smiles at his own good fortune, shrugging in lieu of explanation.

After they've experienced everything life has to offer, they'll hoist themselves onto the barbecue. Indeed, today is a good day to die.








Addendum: Yes, sir. From Kansas to Florida, the good pig is living it up, for the time being.

Suicide Snacks: quickies 8

It's been close to a year since we allowed ourselves a moment to rest and offer up another installment of our beloved series of "Suicide Snacks." Sometimes, like today, we're just not up to the rigors of our self-imposed campaign.


Can you read the inspiring legend on her sash? She has been crowned Miss Prolificacy, the livestock-makingest pig there is! She's a one-sow pork-producing machine!






This exotic beauty, this made-up, be-kohled octopus in Portland, Oregon, wiggles her sensual arms, beckoning all comers to dine on… well, herself.

Bonus: Impossibly, this seductress is only the third octopus we have ever featured!







Really? It's just us? We're the only ones creeped out by a pig with a beard? Okay. Fair enough.








We're not sure what we're seeing here. The weary satisfaction of another factory shift competently worked, perhaps. Or maybe the muted joy of a lobster facing his imminent boiling out there on the factory floor.

Alaska Symphony of Seafood

Is that enough? We could go on, all the way back to 1998. But surely this majestic sweep, this nine-year span of our tuxedoed fish impresario, provides a suitable account of the institution known as the Alaska Symphony of Seafood.

What more could you need to know? Year after year, a sophishticate climbs onto the stage and leads the band—out of necessity a different band each time—in a stirring rendition of their own funeral march.

It might feature crooning fish, crustaceans playing chamber music, or be-bopping puffers, but no matter the configuration or style, this is music with heart. With soul! With tender, flaky flesh! It's the perfect accompaniment to imminent destruction and it will reverberate during their elevator ride to heaven.

Maine Luau Seafood & Bar-B-Q

Based on sketchy intelligence reports, we believe we are dealing with the following subjects:

• A lobster sitting on a trap, firing an arrow at an apple and a cow.

• A drunk chicken in a grass skirt.

• Three clams, possibly with knives embedded in their heads.

• A belligerent pig perching in fire.

So far, sure, this is all just another day at the office. (And the scene is remarkably similar to this vision of cheerful bedlam.)

Where things get a little strange is that this surveillance photo is from a U.S. government archive!

Are we witnessing "enhanced interrogation tactics"? Are these crazed "food" animals ours or Charlie's? (Or whatever we call the collective enemy these days.)

What was the image doing in the files of the (not actually) nefarious National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration? (Which it was.) Could it have something to do with top-secret global warming research? A military-agrindustrial plot to destroy foreign nations from within, by infecting animals with suicidal impulses?

Well, no, it couldn't be that. American animals have been obsessed with death for decades and we're still going strong. Unless you consider our devastated econom—

Oh my god!

Breaking News: Lobsters' Plans Thwarted

NPR has reported that one Anthony Jones has been sentenced to four years in prison for stealing 91 lobster tails from Bally's Atlantic City casino.

Morning Edition's Renee Montagne puts it all in perspective when she reminds us that the lobsters were "not so lucky, either; the twelve hundred seventy-five dollars' worth of seafood was destroyed."

And isn't that the real crime here?

All those weeks (months?) languishing in Bally's famed tanks, amassing their lucrative flesh, awaiting their lives' culmination! And then… And then it all comes to nothing! They go unbought and—far, far worse—uneaten by casino patrons.

Never have lobsters been so wronged!

Lewisburg Rotary Club Goat Barbecue

We confess. We are perplexed. We are dealing with either 1) a brilliant piece of suicidefoodist propaganda, or 2) the stupidest goat ever.

In other words, either

1) The Lewisburg Rotary Club Goat Barbecue is a traditional event, wherein pigs in great profusion will be spitted and roasted. The goat, fearing that he will be excluded, arrays himself in pig drag. (Much like these chumps.) Do you see the lengths the animals—even goats!—will go to in order to sacrifice themselves to us? We are practically providing a service to them, granting the opportunity, as we do, to die.

Or,

2) The Lewisburg Rotary Club Goat Barbecue is indeed a goats-only affair and this one here thinks that by disguising himself as a pig, he'll escape the Agony of the Coals. If this is the case, the goat could stand to learn a thing or two about pigs. Any fool knows that pigs are just crazy about dying! They'll stop at nothing in their quest to be killed and grilled. Seriously, have you ever seen a pig making for a barbecue? They're like running backs tearing toward the end zone. And all that's without the barbecuers eagerly greasing the skids. No, if the goat wanted to escape attention from this crowd, he should have dressed up as a salad.






Addendum (9/12/10): This lobster is another pig masquerader. Is this a whole thing now?

(Thanks to Dr. David for the image and the referral.)

Wiltons

Those snooty lobsters. Think they're better than everyone, walking around with their "noses" in the air, feelers waving dismissively.

Do they even say "Hello" as they pass? Yeah, right. They keep on walking, eyes closed. They won't even acknowledge you, you know? Like you're not even good enough to be in the same room with them, breathing the same precious oxygen. Their damn top hats just hanging on for dear life.

There they go, holding those walking sticks that probably cost more than a month's rent for that crummy closet you call home.

Clutching their champagnes, muttering about the markets, they pass by like every boss who ever made you feel two feet tall.

All because they can hop into pots of boiling water and cook themselves from the inside out.

Big deal. Doesn't prove anything.

(Image source.)







Addendum: Another natty crustacean gentleman lording it over us mere mortals! He's from the Key West Shrimp House of, naturally, Madison, Indiana. (Thanks to Dr. Namey McNamerson for the photo.)

Iowa Meat Goat Association

Let us get reacquainted with Grant Wood's iconic 1930 portrait of—take your pick—upright Americana, small-minded provincialism, tradition, and/or the urgent need for progress.

The pair has served as a scrim upon which has been projected the American experience. Our foibles and virtues, our past and future—everything we hold dear or would gladly leave behind… It has all been seen within the flinty farmer and his wife. (Wood's sister, the model of the farmer's wife, was aghast at her portrayal as wife to a crusty old man. Consequently, she was the first to suggest that the woman in the painting was meant to be the farmer's daughter.)

Wood's painting has been coopted and satirized innumerable times, and the Iowa Meat Goat Association's offering is particularly rich.

To see livestock cast in the role of Everyman and Everywoman is unsettling. It's the same muddled thinking we've seen so often. The goats are equated with us. They wear clothes. They have jobs. He tends the fields. She keeps the house. Together, they make a life.

They are imbued with all the cultural significance of Wood's farm couple, all the complexity and ambiguity of each of us.

And yet they are livestock, born to die. The "home" they pose in front of isn't a quaint old farmhouse. It's a barn. They represent the Iowa Meat Goat Association, for crying out loud! They are afforded no opportunity even to be goats. No, they are meat. We are meat!

Exactly whom is the IMGA diminishing here?







Addendum: Another example. Perhaps because its style is so cartoonish—miles from Wood's realism—the Johnson's S&SDB logo doesn't offend any more than the average suicide food offends.

(Thanks to Dr. Cathy for the Johnson's Seafood & Steak referral and photo.)

Eat Your Children: a digression

Halloween costumes are a cherished part of autumn. Children's spirits soar as they experiment with make-believe and the assumption of new identities. It's a way of making real a small and friendly magic. And who hasn't oohed and aahed over little ones dressed for the season as teddy bears or tigers or kitty cats? (For our first Halloween, so many long, tedious years ago, we were a humble, brown mouse.)

But these are not that kind of costume. No, when you dress your child in these costumes, the magic quickly curdles. You are pretending for your baby, imagining she is food, meat, a dead and cooked animal.















It won't escape your attention that these costumes—featured on Martha Stewart's television show and website—are specifically not depictions of living beings. That livid red lobster is fresh from the boil. And the plucked turkey is wearing those paper shoes, the dead-turkey equivalent of heavy rouge on a corpse. The babies are even posed on platters, swaddled in garnish!

In that modest, unassuming way of ours, we refer to this as Ironic Aggressor Sublimation, and we've discussed it before (here, for instance). It's the supposedly hilarious identification with animals classified as victims, inferiors who could never threaten our status. It is never less than a laugh riot!

"It's a morbid thing."

Addendum (2/12/08): Another one. So cute! Hey, it's not like they feel pain or anything. (Image source.)


Addendum 2 (5/03/08) Of course, some people don't need to imagine their food babies as animals at all. For them, it's enough that they simply be identified as human chefs. No, wait. This is making less and less sense. (Photo courtesy of Dr. William.)






Addendum 3 (3/02/09): You may also choose to eat your child in sandwich form.











Addendum 4 (9/12/09): Or just cut out the middleman and eat a baby made from meat. Can you remember a time before you had ever seen this? Neither can we.



Addendum 5 (2/21/10): Children are edible in many, many forms.













Addendum 6 (12/26/10): Another example of the Grandmother Effect in action?