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.

Shrimp Daddy's

This is living the life.

Just relaxing in the cocktail glass, a giant lemon wedge for company. Take it easy, you know? Just conform your chitinous exterior to the glass's contours.

Prop an elbow on the rim.

Looking sharp with that bow tie. You might be on the way out, but you're not down. Not yet. Takes more than a boiling bath to do you in. Believe it: you're laughing! Digging the scene!

This is your time. It's all about you.

When they come around, looking for the tenderest place to slip the tines in, lower your shades and give 'em the line:

"Who's your daddy?"

Shrimp's got it going on.

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.

Caporal Fried

One of the satisfying dismaying things about administering this archive is that so many of the bizarre things we see are old hat. A chicken playing at cowboy? Seen it. (Here and here.)

Still, what this sample lacks in innovation it makes up for in sheer, sixgun-firing pep.

This little feller is just so dad-blamed happy to be here, showing off his skills with a shootin' iron while he shows off his palatability when fried to a golden, saddle-leather brown. This is how the West was won, with exactly this kind of vigorous gumption.

Or, not won, maybe. Face it, if the Caporal Kid had been in charge, the West would have been consumed right down to the tumbleweeds—chicken, shrimp, fish, and all.

Sea Host

A charming glimpse at a more innocent world.

A world no less insane than the one we know as the present, but a more innocent kind of insane.

Sea Host appears to have been a chain of seafood restaurants from the late 60s and early 70s. Or not. A chain from the East Coast. Or not. (Details are sketchy and hard to come by.) But it matters not! For regardless of when, where, or why it existed, we are refreshed to see "food" animals presented without even a hint of sex appeal, drunkenness, psychotic rage, or, in fact, anything more alarming than the garden-variety desire to die. Yes, it's come to the point where that is our baseline. We can hardly even remember animals who haven't dedicated themselves to the pursuit of their own deaths, chasing after it like a long-sought treasure.

Sea Host offered up an entire cast of suicidal characters, including these poor souls:

















Sylvester (the titular host), Mr. Big, and Smiley—and the rest of the gang—were all too happy to cater to the wishes of their customers. One can imagine Mr. Big's Cockney slang, Smiley's endearing speech impediment, and Sylvester's belief in the hard-won honor of serving himself, boned and filleted, lying beneath a lemon wedge.

It's almost sad to think about them now, their finest days long behind them. Now that they've died, no more do they have death to look forward to. They've been robbed of what they held most dear.

No! Let's remember them as they were. Not dead, but happily, blissfully, eternally about to die.

(Special thanks to the Waffle Whiffer, who doesn't even know that he helped.)

Seafood Festivals, a retrospective

For sheer pageantry, nothing beats a seafood festival!

Let's face it: barbecue festivals can be tawdry affairs. Lewd, beastly, tawdry affairs. But seafood festivals are full of wholesome, welcoming energy. The fish, shrimp, crabs, what have you, are thrilled to step on dry land. This is their first foray into the world of humanity, so, unlike the sordid, jaded pigs and cows, they still love us. They've come to put in an honest day's work. To earn a fine, fine death.

They play trumpets and saxophones for us! Guitars! Some kind of thin, flexible piano keyboard things! They put on one-man-band shows for us!

In their winsome naiveté, they honestly believe they owe us something. Perhaps for having been spared the feedlots and pens? For being allowed natural lives, up until the nets trap them in the choking, alien air?
















Even their royalty and their entourages make appearances at seafood festivals. It is also possible that the two non-royal crabs are official decoys, employed to throw off subversive crustacean elements. Then again, what could plotters do to the crabs that their beloved humans aren't already planning?

We are especially touched by the pearl-wearing crab queen and the plucky shrimp she has impaled on the blessed tines of her regal fork!

Finally, we are reminded that it is not only royalty and music-making courtiers who show up for these things.

Garden-variety aquatic fun-lovers are here too!

Here we see a high-roller from Atlantic City and a skipper from Pompano Beach. Each cares enough to gasp their last in our presence, surrounded by their cherished totems: the dice, the weathered plank.












Addendum (5/28/09): Another good time for food and mankind both! These toe-tappers aren't even fazed by the prominent use of the word boil.









Addendum 2 (5/23/10): Another swinging, musical shrimp.














Addendum 3 (5/23/10): This crustacean doesn't so much swing as rock.











Addendum 4 (5/23/10): Look! It's that same darn crab again, creepy leer and all!

Addendum 5 (12/18/11): Another creepy and/or drunk crab.

Party Like a Wok Star

Last time, we discussed suicide food in low places—the bins of the nation's dollar stores. From there, we travel now to the catalogs of America's hipster etailers.

And when we get there, what do we learn?

Mostly, that even those for whom T-shirts are the standard medium of self-expression (and whose self-expression is typically the expression of a non-self) yearn for animals of their own to mock.

And so, this delightful shrimp spouting a would-be catchphrase. Yes, it has an arbitrary winkiness to it, but we still can't imagine anyone repeating it.

Caught in the chopsticks, the shrimp claims to regret nothing. Instead, its imminent consumption is the quintessence of a glorious deathstyle, its final thought the exclamation point at the end of a meaningless existence.








(Thanks to Dr. Peace Farout for the referral.)

Rodolfo Langostino

We here at the Center for the Analysis of Suicide Food have been stricken with the fever that is sweeping the region. So it is possible that our perceptions and judgments are off.

Does this image actually show a Casanova in shrimp-form? Surely it's only our febrile delirium playing tricks on our eyes. Because… a leering shrimp filled with lustful thoughts of dead crustaceans… Even the purveyors of suicide food couldn't conjure up something so bizarre.

If they did, we would have to question the mental stability of Rodolfo Langostino (as the spokeshrimp is called). What sort of self-loathing is necessary to let a shrimp conclude that his company is fit only for the corpses of his kinsmen? Whether necrophilia or a shocking lack of confidence, this fellow's got real problems.

His own death will no doubt be a blessing.

(Thanks to Dr. Mar for the referral.)






Addendum: The package uses the word ultracongelado in boasting about the product. Yes, our Spanish is rusty, but doesn't that term mean "ultracongealed"? Don't they want people to buy this stuff?