What We've Been Missing: a digression

It's not suicide food. In fact, we can't muster the kind of charitable sensibility required to call it food of any kind. Regardless, this is the "food" we've been "missing" from our diet these many yearning years.

The sources of the photos have been intentionally omitted. If you recognize an image as originating with your company, and if you would like to confess, contact us and we will include your name.

And now, time for us to eat our heart out. Oh, the professionally prepared glories we could be enjoying!

Sick on a paper plate. This is either some kind of barbecued experiment gone wrong or a last-minute save that prevented Tiger from vomiting on the carpet.










An unidentifiable, charred horror. Next to the vibrant, living green, red, and yellow of the bell peppers, the mummified main course would appear to be evidence of arson. (It is, purportedly, a pig's shoulder.)












This one? A baked potato (go on, we're listening), under a butterglob (never mind), a sprinkling of pencil shavings (?), and a scoop of congealed nasty. Sure. No.









Sweep up tire scraps from the shoulder of I-90. Add bleach and let bake in a laundry hamper for two to three months. Deposit scraps on piece of white bread.

And? And then what? Eat it?!








Conclusion: We wouldn't eat this stuff with someone else's mouth. Nice try, meat makers.

The Pig on Beale

Spare us these "food" animals with attitude!

Who do they think they're fooling? Attitude?

We are reminded of H.L. Mencken's mordant observation about politics wherein he likened the voter to "an ox whose last proud, defiant gesture is to lick the butcher behind the ear." Little did ol' Henry Louis know that he had handily encapsulated the Suicidefoodist's Code!

Yes, this could be taken for a comment on the entire suicide food mythos! Take The Pig's pig. (Please!) All that "attitude"—the shades, the sleeve rolled up to show off his he-man physique—and for what? How does the pig use his attitude? Does he kick his would-be killers and consumers in the ass? Does he smash the idols of suicidefoodism's corrupt church?

Hell no!

He performs the equivalent of licking the butcher behind the ear. Ass-kicker? More like ass-kisser! He advertises for the pork pushers! It's an act we've seen (and documented) countless times, and yet it still makes our shoulders sag and our heart ache.

The shame! The humiliation! Stupid pig doesn't even care that he's made himself into a contemptible laughingstock.

Cozy Cow Mattress System

This product promises to give cows a pleasant, abrasion-free place to lie down and rest.

Is that so bad? Why are we showcasing it here? Do we object to cows sleeping comfortably? To efforts undertaken on their behalf?

No, no, of course not.

It is not their comfort we object to. If, though blameless, they must be confined to the penitentiary, we would have them afforded as comfortable an existence as possible.

Indeed, one of the many benefits of this product is that "Dinged-up heifers and 'basketball' sized hocks are history. You save in reduced, premature culls... and lower vet bills."

And won't the cows be more comfortable knowing that their owners' vet bills are kept low! Not only are dinged-up heifers history, but so are the cows' worry lines and troubled sleep!

No, it is not the cows' comfort we object to. It is this cow's smiling depiction. As though her smile, as she snuggles on her Cozy Cow® Mattress System, negates the truth of her life. That dozy smile—that contented Mona Lisa smile—is a lie!

(Thanks to Dr. Becci for the referral.)







Addendum (4/12/09): We assume this image represents the same company and the same cow-cozying line of products.

Once Upon a Grill Private Catering

"Once upon a grill." And what a fairy tale it is!

It's one of the suicidefoodist's treasured dreams. The animals go beyond content, past complicit, and all the way to "fully invested." In fact, they make it their business to do the butchering, cooking, and (most magical of all) the dying!

Whether line-cook or server, the pigs who run the OUAT grill are satisfied with their lot in life. Such as it is.

Hacking up the family, grilling them, and finally preparing to jump in the fire: it's a tough life and the end of the shift finds you tired. But it's a good tired. An honest tired.

What began as a fairy tale—pigs doing all the work, elf-style, to keep the grill going—ends that way as well: And they all died happily ever after.

American Bar-B-Que & Catering

It's your day, America! No, not July Fourth. The other day. Election Day, that once-every-four-years opportunity to reassert our values, our character, the song of our hearts!

And what do we stand for?

Why, setting up "food" animals in red, white, and blue get-ups and then knocking them down!

Or, even better: Getting them to front our barbecue establishments!

The standard suicidal trio—Cow, Pig, and Chicken—is given the Yankee Doodle treatment as they offer their enthusiastic (if psychotic) endorsement of an America-themed business that would serve their flesh.

And no matter which candidate wins today, nothing can change that.

God bless America!

Festival of Cruelty 7

We apologize. The time has come, again, to leave our stronghold of irony, of bemused bafflement. Suicidefoodistic imagery, absurd though it be, has at its heart the intent to deceive. By obscuring the real story and offering up prettified images of animal subjugation and death, it means to provide plausible deniability.

But these logos. They care not for such niceties. They have no need of deception. They will not sugar-coat. Instead, they will sewage-coat! (Find the previous installment here.)

Road Kill Smoking & Grilling Team: The dog rides the barbecue Slim-Pickens-in-Dr. Strangelove-style to terrorize the animals he will kill and (possibly) eat raw. What's so charming is the idea that the animals who sacrifice themselves for the nation's barbecuers should be driven from us, panicked, only to be run over and flattened by a rabid pet. Or wolf. Or whatever that maniac is. A break? Why should they get a break? Haven't they already been provided substandard feed for all those months? And for what? What have they given in return? So far, nothing! So brace yourself, cow. Say your prayers, chicken. Prepare to die, pig!



Butt Whoop:How about this, from our Adding Insult to Injury department? (Or, more accurately, Adding Injury to Death.) Before the pig can be barbecued, he must be bludgeoned and bloodied. Curiously, they went to the trouble of administering first aid before flinging him onto the grill. (To prolong his agony?)




Big Dipper Bar-B-Que: Cast off your comforting myths! Big Dipper Bar-B-Que knows that the most effective appetite stimulant is brutal reality. The chicken's neck won't wring itself. The bones will not snap of their own accord. The feathers will not fall like autumn leaves. Hence, the Fist of Painful Truth. With nothing but concern for the chicken's ability to die an honest death, it squeezes, squeezes. (Has it really been over a year since our most recent "choking the chicken" reference?)



Merchant Street Smokehouse: Again, the idea is that the animal must suffer before death. Even before the knives are sharpened. If this necessitates the hiring of a cowboy to humiliate a bloated hog, so be it. This is not child's play. Note the look of shock and horror in the pigsteed's eye. Do you get the idea he will welcome death? Please ignore the simpleton/pig in the corner. The less said about him, the better. (Thanks to Dr. Bea for the referral.)



Chicken To Go: She wants only to flee the hellscape that has been constructed for her. The sign is like an image of their surveillance of her. She's frozen in a moment of fear and desperation. Afterward, they watch her begin her furtive escape. They trail her cab all the way to the airport. She grabs her suitcase from the trunk. And then, in the gloom of the near-empty parking garage, they jump her. (Thanks to Dr. Edie for the referral.)

Hallmark Poultry Processors Ltd.

He's the cock of the walk, the Hallmark Poultry Processors Ltd. rooster is!

He's got the world by the horns. It's all laid out there in front of him, a land covered in gold dust. All he's got to do is bend down and scoop it up! No wonder he's whistling a tune as he moseys along.

Yes sir, life is good. He's got a hat, a bandanna, even a holstered six-shooter! Matter of fact, the only things he doesn't have are self-respect and the will to live, but if you can't buy 'em down to the Woolworth's, he's not interested. And so he'll go on whistling his tune right up until the second the axe falls on his humble, despairing neck.

Again we wonder what has become of the masculine icons of the past. A cowboy should be out on the range cursing at cattle and drinking campfire coffee, not lollygagging and waiting for some fellas in suits to gun him down. It just ain't right. But in Suicidefoodistan, nothing's right. Everything's for sale and nothing's worth a damn.

(Thanks to Dr. Becci for the referral and to Dr. halv99 for the photo.)







Addendum: Is this Hallmark company related to this Hallmark company? If so, they've got quite a way with a logo!

Big Belly BBQ

Look into the eyes of horror! (The one that isn't winking, at least.)

Our paunchy pig's words could more accurately be rendered: "Never trust your BBQ to a non-cannibal."

This villain reminds us of no one so much as the Rosie's Vermont Beef Jerky bull, one of the first Judases we ever featured.

Like Rosie's bull, this monster is proud of his depredations. Having gorged himself on his fellows, he doesn't hide his face. No, he pats his pork belly, happy to be identified by his aberrant morals.

And after a lifetime of cramming his own kind down his throat, what then? There is nothing left but ritual suicide, to atone for his sins. Or perhaps not to atone for them, but instead to underscore that atonement is, at the last, impossible.

That we are meant to see him as a reliable narrator, a figure worth trusting, throws the whole enterprise into question. No one could repudiate his own authority more emphatically, more hideously, than Big Belly.

Juicy Butts

Another one? Another pigwhore pushing the barbecue?

Like the others (her and her, for instance), this hussy has been living rough. Clingy half-shirt, filthy stockings, frayed mini skirt, garish make-up—she's full of class like a heap of scrapple is full of antioxidants.

Yes, we should be over it. We have gone through this so many (many!) times. But the sheer absurdity of it—the sheer absurd, sordid weirdness—still surprises us.

What is the actual message? If a pig must be depicted condoning the consumption of pork—and that certainly does seem to be a necessary condition of suicide food—why must she be such a deliberately trashy specimen? Are they just piling on the transgressive touchstones? Is it intended as a warped justification for the imminent violation?

It's as though we're seeing two parallel versions of "She was asking for it," one granting the illusion of sexual permission, the other giving license to do violence: "What do you expect—she was dangling the meat right in front of my face!" is indistinguishable from "What do you expect—she was shaking her ass right in front of my face!"

This is a world of men and objects. A world, therefore, where anything—everything—can be justified.

(Thanks to Dr. Bea for the referral.)






Addendum: We're guessing that Juicy is kin to the Bubba's Ribs & Q floozy. (Thanks, Dr. Carrie.)

Crawfish Boil Championships

What to make of the crabpot vessel bobbing on a soupy sea?

Look at the crew of the good ship Suicide sailing, sailing over the bounding broth!

How would you characterize them? Do they appear to be fleeing those who would kill them for sport? Are they weak from horror? Are they desperate with the fear and apprehension of the fugitive?

Not even close.

While two of them pull apathetically at their celery oars, the others relax with bottles of beer. They're not escaping. They're pleasure-boating!

Or—who knows?—maybe they're in search of even bigger pots and even hotter waters into which to hurl themselves.

Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch

More historical revisionism from the suicidefoodists.

We've seen their many post-modern reinterpretations of cowboys before—not to mention the occasional pirate and superhero—but this example is especially galling.

Because Rooster Cogburn the Ostrich is modeled after John Wayne's iconic roughneck lawman from the film of the same name, which was also the sequel to True Grit. (We need not mention that they got the eyepatch on the wrong eye.)

The cinematic Rooster Cogburn was gruff and tough, the epitome of rakish manliness.

Eula Goodnight (Katharine Hepburn): Just to whom do you think you are talking, Mr. Marshall?

Rooster Cogburn: You is to whom I think I am talking, Ma'am.

Eula Goodnight: It's true that you are larger than me... but only physically.

Rooster Cogburn: In this case, my dear lady, that is enough.

Eula Goodnight: Do you mean to tell me that you are prepared to use brute force?

Rooster Cogburn: That is exactly what I mean to tell you.

Eula Goodnight: (pause) Oh.

What does it say when a character like that is co-opted by the flightless bird industry?

It says they will never stop! Nothing is off-limits. Every symbol of fierce independence is prime for expropriation. When even The Duke—the paragon of the cowboy ethos—can be transformed from outsider archetype to uncomplaining shill and no one blinks, the Movement might already have won.







Addendum: Of course, just like the late John Wayne, "Ostriches are very feed efficient and take minimal land to raise."

Crawdad Creek BBQ

It's as though every link in the chain of being is content. The hat-tipping farmer/pig is happy to represent a barbecuing concern. The crawdad is happy to have been fished from the creek and delivered into a land of deathly salvation.

(Brief Interlude: This all takes place in Boiling Spring Lakes, North Carolina. Does that mean the pig is fixing to dunk the cheerful crawdad in the boiling spring? In other words, is he hauling him out, or getting ready to put him in? Regardless, in this context, Boiling Spring Lakes is the most cruelly apt name we've seen in a good long while. Remember the "Noose" River?)

Back to our analysis: Regardless of its crustacean-boiling properties, Crawdad Creek and Boiling Springs Lake are surely magical places. They transform hogs—hogs who identify with their human overlords—into willing participants in the dark rite known as barbecue.

Big Mo & the Aho BBQ 'n' Gals

The meat merchants will not rest until they have penetrated every conceivable market niche. Here, it would seem, they are going after the proponents (or perhaps merely the sympathizers) of polygamist clone cults.

And going after them hard!

The benevolent Husband/Leader, with his ceremonial burger flipper, proudly presents his harem of sows. (Sticklers might insist that the females are not actually identical, and should not, therefore, be referred to as "clones." To them we say only: Look past the trivial differences in hairstyle. Attend instead to the faces, proportions, and personalities—or the identically exhibited lack of same.)

All of them, even the deranged offspring (of Wife #2, we believe) are plumb tickled to be a part of the barbecue lineup.

Apparently, the purpose of this particular polygamist clone cult is to breed a nation of foodstuffs. Lo! Their reward is right here on Earth: death—quick and painless or not, either way—and then the Flames of the Grill.

Yea verily, life (or its nearest equivalent) is good! The harem will grow, the offspring will keep offspringing, and the grills will ever be fed!

(Thanks to Dr. Bea for the referral.)