Polvos Pinós

A deal:

We will admit to ignorance when it comes to this, if the world will admit that—whatever it is—it is awful. Disgusting and awful.

Polvos Pinós is only the first mystery here. In Spanish, it means "pine powder" (or, even stranger, "pine powders"), but we have no idea what to make of this arcanum.

Yes, the basics are plain enough. Mama Pig and Baby Pig leave the mercado, and its debonair, suit-wearing proprietor, with a great big sack of the stuff, and they couldn't be happier. Baby even pulls along behind him a wheeled toy: a corpulent mother hog shoveling Polvos Pinós into her baby's fat little face.

Self-saucing pigs, we've seen. And self-grinding pigs. But these are the first self-fattening pigs we can remember.

Still, what is it? Are there clues? What about there, in that inset circle? Two pigs weighed on the scales. The sinfully scrawny pig in the right-hand tray skulks above the legend "sin polvos pinós." But on the left-hand tray! In the left-hand tray sits a handsome hog basking in the glory of his girth. He is labeled "con polvos pinós." (Of course, this was before advertisers learned to harness the awesome explanatory power of the bar graph.) So what have we learned? When pigs eat this stuff, this pine powder (or smoke or roll around in it), they get nicely fattened.

Perhaps Polvos Pinós is merely a delicious treat? Pigs are renowned for their healthy appetites, after all, and this could simply be an after-dinner sweet marketed at the pig demographic. But… no. We don't believe that any more than you do. We have seen far too many tokens of suicidefoodism's putrid promise to believe anything so innocent.

Indeed, as this second advertisement claims: Polvos Pinós has the power to "give admirable results in all animal classes." All classes, it would seem, except for chickens. The ghastly chicken corpse hanging over the scene like a shroud has hardly achieved an admirable result. Unless Polvos Pinós is meant as a poultry poison?

No! It is happy pig feed, and pigs happily gobble it up, so that they might reach their target weight and prove themselves in the only way "food" animals can.

The Cod Father

That it should come to this! That the grim city has given rise to a fish so crazed with the lust to be eaten! That he should employ violence—indeed, that he should engage in such an elaborate criminal enterprise bent on the consumption of himself and his entire gang!

We thought we had seen animals at their lowest, animals at their most debased and ugly, their sick thirsts borne high like flags. We were wrong.

Here, Bugsy the Fish, trusty tommygun in fin, calls out to all comers: "This way for great fish & chips!"

His life of violence has wreaked its havoc on him. He is stiff with rage, his cheroot like a knife. His face is a brutal mask. All of his energy is devoted to the proposition that the world is his oyster and he is the world's fish. He wants to be consumed, and dammit! He will be consumed! "Listen up, you saps. This is my joint, see? And in my joint, me and my crew are the ones what get eaten, got it?"

And what of the poor old woman at table two? So cowed, so sad. So alone. Has she ordered the blue plate special? To paraphrase Gloria Steinem, "A woman without a plate of flesh is like a 1930s mobster fish without a gun."

(Thanks to Dr. Erin for the referral and to Dr. charlie-75 for the photo.)

Stone Ridge Meat & Country Market, Inc.

The Stone Ridge Meat & Country Market (in Wautoma, Wisconsin) is a regular animal-eater's Meat Mecca. Just look at this place!

They don't just sell every kind of meat under the Wisconsin sun—beef, pork, chicken, lamb, veal, fish, duck, game hen, turkey, goose, sausage, ham, bacon, bologna, etc. etc. etc.—they love meat. And it loves them back!

Case in point: their farmer mascot and his dear (but grubby), soon-to-be-dead-and-sausaged pig. The filthy pig is perfectly at home in the farmer's arms. Theirs is a friendship forged in the eater/eaten dynamic. Simple folk, yes, but simply happy.

It goes beyond men and pigs. Way beyond.

Any old feller can love a pig. It takes a real man to love a salami. Like this salami coddler*. What can we say? It's just the Stone Ridge style. It's a wondrous world of meat is what it is. Meat in all its forms, meat to satisfy every need, meat to fill every void.

This is the land animalvores dream of. Wisconsin might be America's Dairyland, but this one savory corner of it is America's Meatland: it's full of guys walking around caressing meat and soon-to-be meat. And would you believe? Using meat as recreational equipment!

Don't take our word for it. Witness the salami-used-as-an-inner-tube and be appalled awed.

We're not exactly sure what to think.

Stone Ridge appears to be some sort of suicidefoodism Ground Zero, the starting point for a new world order. A utopian neverland populated by meat—meat that wants to be eaten, coddled, sledded upon.

For all we know, one can come here and find meat that wants to be drafted into the military, sent on a scavenger hunt, and hollowed out and played like a trumpet. Meat with goals, meat with hopes, meat with silly, childish fantasies. Meat that demonstrates every propensity, exemplifies every personality, gives expression to every yearning wish! Meat, meat, meat! The sky's the limit in Wautoma!

And there's more!

Trust us when we say that we've shown you only a tiny fraction of what the Stone Ridge Meat & Country Market has to offer. For instance, year-round venison and wild game processing, complete with a good-natured buck who's only too happy to pose for the camera. (And presumably for the rifle blast, too!) That old joker—always getting in on the act.

At Stone Ridge, gunshots don't chase the game away. No, sir. They bring 'em running!

Yep! The animals in this joint are just dying to be killed!













*Salami coddler is the most offensive carnivory-related epithet we've come across since last week's bottomfeeder.

Cirque du Poulet

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! See the only thing under the sun worse than a conventional circus! Wonder at the "hilarious" antics of animals born to die! Goggle at the spectacle of birds who want only to tickle your palate! Thrill to the abomination that is… Toronto's Cirque du Poulet!
















(This row: Georges Bouillon and Ringmaster Coq au Vin.) Yes, yes, it's all very charming and twee, what with its food-inspired names and playful spirit, but all we see is a celebration of avian death.











(This row: Clucky Flameback and Mince Carter.) How could this concept be anything but grim? Combining circuses and suicidal birds—two of the worst ideas man has yet devised—is a guaranteed loser.











(This row: Mystique Whitefeather and Breasty Chesty LaRue.) The entire mural is a love letter to chickens becoming dead. Sliced by knives, dunked in boiling broth, charred, and fated to die.











We can hear the clucking chorus now: "You old pooh! I think this mural is a sheer delight!" You're welcome to it, Madam. (Or Sir?) Its lightheartedness is one of its gravest offenses. Granted, it is misdirection of a highly artistic nature, but it is cloying deception, nonetheless.

(Thanks to Dr. Caitlyn for the referral and to Dr. urbanmkr for her fine photos.)






Addendum: Can you make it out, the graffiti scrawled across Mince Carter's vignette? It reads: "Why did the chicken cross the road? Cause thats the only trip establishment would let it take. (sic)" Poignant.

Bottomfeeders

If we didn't know better, we'd have to conclude that Bottomfeeders seethes with contempt for all of creation. For animals, surely—contempt for animals is, after all, the watchword among suicidefoodists—but for their human customers as well. You are what you eat? Indeed. Now, imagine that a coworker asked you: "How would you like to go to Bottomfeeders with us, you insignificant garbage-eater?" Would you accept with gratitude? For our part, we are insulted even imagining such an invitation!

Or is there, perhaps, a different definition of bottomfeeder, one of which we are unaware? A complimentary one? Well, wait. The website of Bottomfeeders (the restaurant, not the gang of garbage-eaters) does attempt to convince us that they intend this other sense when they use the word: "A well-treated customer." Well, that's that. Feel better?

(While we're dicussing the nuances of bottomfeeder, we should point out that Urban Dictionary weighs in as well, with these definitions: "A lazy, drunk, pot-smoking loser who can't hold down a job" and "Delusional follower and parasite.")

Onomastics aside, we are left with the unfortunate image of that unholy hybrid, that… that… Chiggish. This is the most unwholesome animal mash-up we've seen since the Porcrab.

This chicken-pig-fish amalgam represents Bottomfeeder's dearest wish, that they could kill three different animals with one chop. Doing it one-at-a-time is sheer tedium. If only science would get with the program and make the Chiggish a reality.

Festival of Cruelty 4

It's been just over three months since our last foray into the pits of suicidefoodism's even darker side. We fear this pace is taking its toll on our sanity—three months is hardly long enough between visits. Even now, we still have the combat veteran's frayed nerves and thousand-yard stare.

But return to the bloody battlegrounds we must. We cannot leave our fallen comrades behind. Soon enough, we will re-immerse ourselves in the relative safety of suicidefoodism's bromides. But now is no time for rest. We haven't yet earned it.

Alhambra Abattoirs: The poor Alhambra pig endures a punishment right out of the excesses of Greek myth. Doomed to an eternity of humiliation, the pig bears on his broad back the Yellow Fool holding aloft a tray of meats made from all the pigs his mount wronged in life. He is perpetually slave to the Yellow Fool, forced to relive his shameful deeds again and again, every day anew.

Just look at the poor beast's face! Ask yourself why the advertisers didn't even attempt to tell the suicidefoodist lie: that the pig knows his place and enjoys what little his life has to offer. They preferred to wallow in the stark misery of the tableau.





Don's Specialty Meats: We've seen pigs (and other animals) in cauldrons before, but rarely with such ghastly realism. It's as though the people at Don's Specialty Meats want you to feel what this poor, long-suffering pig is going through. He's so hot, his shoulders are steaming! Note the bewilderment, the anguish on his face as he tries to hold back the tears. Do broken pigs taste better? Is this what they mean by "specialty"?






Dr. Bones Slow Cooked Championship Bar-B-Q: An image hateful in every way. It maligns all that is good in this world: the innocent, those dedicated to healing, our commitments to one another. Everything! An undead doctor demonstrates the most appalling bedside manner since Dr. Phibes.

We leave it to you to interpret this picture. Is the doctor planning on hastening his patient's departure from this world, in a sick, cleaver-assisted twist on mercy killing, or has he filled the IV bag with sodium pentobarbital? (Or would the resulting death be too painless?)

And again: why? Why does the appeal to anyone? Can you imagine walking down the street, seeing that awning, and saying, "By George! That looks like a friendly establishment! If they treat their customers with half the respect they afford their 'food' animals, we're in for a treat! The euthanasia drugs are on me!"



Frische Fischbrötchen: This being the festival of cruelty, we are at least spared the sportive fish hanging on a hook, acting out the whole thumbs-up, "life is good" charade. But perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.

Is this any better? More honest, admittedly, but also a thousand times more gruesome. We can't help but imagine the fish's panicked agony, gasping, his eyes bulging with the realization that this is his ending, before he finally dies on a bun.








Two Fat Guys Bar-B-Q: Fat they may be, but if their cow and pig surrogates are any indication, they could more properly be called Two Vicious Meatheads. Is this how barbecue patrons see themselves? As snickering bullies forcing chickens—why is it always chickens?—to choose between death by burning and death by stabbing?

We can't be alone in finding these devils repugnant. They represent every impulse to dominate and destroy that humanity struggles with. They are also appetite suppressants of the first order!







"Cook a Little" Apron Designs: This is the apron to buy when the "Kiss Me, I'm a Sadist" design is on back-order.

Otis Poultry Farm

You see it, don't you? The sinister subtext practically leaps off the screen!

The granny cannibal—the Grannibal—offers up her grandkids baked into a pie. "Hello, weary traveler. Come in, come in. Can I get you someone—that is to say, something to eat?" Her eagerness lends a pathetic note to her treachery.

Is the Otis Poultry Farm a house of horrors? Oh sure, the two chicken caryatids flanking the doorway, luring unsuspecting visitors, give the impression that this is a place that honors chickendom, a temple of poultry, a shrine to Those Who Peck. Don't be fooled.

We are reminded of other true believers we've encountered. Like them, the Otis chickens have clearly subordinated themselves to the collective, to the brotherhood of death-worshippers. They have dedicated their short lives to their own destruction, and the destruction of their kin.

Suicide Clothing: a digression

Today's suicidal animal has so many choices! He need not bequeath his body to the butcher or the grocer. No, he is limited only by the sick power of his warped imagination.

Of course, as we know from our studies of suicidefoodiana, medication or other treatment (even on an outpatient basis!) is rarely recommended. No, the "best" thing to do, it would seem, is to give the poor beasts a final, friendly handshake and shove them on their way to eternity. Which can take the form of spits, cauldrons, bullets, hooks, harpoons, and the swords of the torero.

Or even the gentle ministrations of the professional tanner? Well, why not indeed? It certainly doesn't make any less sense, now, does it? And this explains our present subjects. Seen here in an image appearing on a website devoted to the proper care of leather goods, these three chums—may we infer their bond from the fact that they are bathing together?—have willed their bodies to the practitioners of the sartorial arts. Maybe not their entire bodies, but at least their outsides. (Of course, the lamb doesn't really have his little heart in. That wool will grow back. He is our first suicidefoodist poseur!)

Like all good Accomplice Animals, this trio feels compelled to go the extra mile. Hence, the old Suds 'n' Scrubs. We wouldn't want to force the tanner to stoop to cleaning the hides himself, would we? Think of this as a purification ritual, their final act before committing their flesh to posterity.

For your "pleasure," some more pictures of happy skinwear extolling the virtues of cleanliness:















Addendum (3/08/08): And here's an animal who—what's her deal?—isn't happy with the arrangement.













Addendum 2 (3/01/10): This cow is so excited to take part that she's made herself into a hood roof ornament for Jamin' (sic) Leather! (Thanks to Dr. Slodki for the referral.)














Addendum 3 (8/17/10): This cow and her ass are happy to be here, in the world of cows (and their asses) being transformed into clothing. (Thanks to Dr. Chris for the referral and the photo.)