Pig-N-Whistle

Easy there, pig. If you're overeager, they might just keep walking. Try a little psychology: Instead of tooting away on that ol' earsplitter—that's practically a sonic explosion you're creating, what with those pointy shockwaves and all—try the laid-back approach.

You can't tell from some of the logos we've featured here, but meat-eaters like the hunt, the "thrill" of the "chase." If you're out on the sidewalk hooting away like a carnival barker, they'll figure you're desperate. And how good could a desperate pig taste? "What's he got to be desperate about?" they'll wonder. And they'll have a point. Delicious animals don't have to make a scene.

Yes, you want to be eaten. Of course you do. That's what separates you from your savage cousins, the wildebeest and that grimy bunch. A slow, tortured death is the only thing that can give your crummy life meaning. We understand. We really do.

So stow the whistle, and let your savory aroma sing your praises. Before you know it, you'll have 'em eating your loins out of the palm of your hand.

Bad Boyz Barbecue

This poor piglet, victimized by an uncaring world! Why is this on Suicide Food? Some cruel "sportsmen" are using him for target practice! Suicidal? Heavens—he's in the crosshairs!

Look more closely. This graphic from Bad Boyz Barbecue catering of North central Tennessee and central Kentucky does not depict a hapless martyr.

The face. Look at the pig's face. This is not the face of a victim. This is the face of the death-obsessed. The pig's heart isn't soured by the pain of living in a merciless world. Nor does he brood on a desire for vengeance. No, he is not preparing to rush the gunman while he reloads. What you're seeing isn't anger—it's scorn. The pig is contemptuous of the marksman's poor aim.

He wanted only to end this charade called living, to offer himself up to the appetites of a ravening crowd. And now... His every effort to do himself in is nullified. First it was booze (too much too quick—he just vomited and suffered a crushing headache), then hanging (no fingers means no knot-tying), and finally the rain of bullets. But no! It is almost as if a capricious God has decided the bullets shall veer and This One Shall Live! But who is this God to keep the pig from his destiny?






Addendum (7/10/08): Look who's moonlighting for the Nashville Lions Club's Maifest! Now he looks peeved because the lion doesn't know how to work the grill.

Rasta Joe BBQ

Well, Fat Buddies, your reign didn't last long. No more are you the title holders in the Ugly Appetite-Killer category. Rasta Joe has taken your crown and... pawned it to buy weed?

Everything here appears designed to repel (or at least annoy):
• Cat's-eye glasses
• Awkward draping of right leg to hide pot-induced arousal
• Half-shirt
• Bo Derek bead braids
• Hog bristle stubble
• Lovingly rendered trotter anatomy
• The "Peel me a grape!" posture

However!

Wince-making though he is, rasta pig is the perfect suicidefood mascot. Rastas take things as they come. They see the oneness of the universe. Irie and all that. Of course they understand how their death and dismemberment is all a part of the plan. It's Jah's will that they be devoured and excreted by heedless patrons.

This pig's total (and serene) acceptance of his fate is merely one way suicidefood works. It's okay with the pig, so it should be okay with you. Fry 'em up, and choke 'em down.

One love.







Curious design note: This depiction of Rasta Joe (left) appears to be an earlier incarnation of the mascot (judging by the current homepage of the restaurant). So... They reworked this thing to remove the soft-focus look and wallow in a "warts and all" aesthetic? Interesting choice.

All-You-Can-Eat Bar-B-Que Fest

Cow: I’ve eaten so much I can’t think straight.

Pig: I am packed.

Cow: I won’t be able to walk until I sleep this off.

Chicken: Tell me about it.

Cow: Hey, what are the brown things with the, like, sticks in them?

Pig: That’s a bone, dummy.

Chicken: It’s a chicken leg, man! Have some respect!

Cow: Chicken leg? Dude, I’m a herbivore.

Pig: Not for the last two hours you weren’t.

Cow: What do you mean?

Chicken: You’ve been stuffing your face with meat since we got here.

Cow: Why didn’t you tell me?

Pig: The sign says “All-You-Can-Eat Bar-B-Q.” What did you think?

Cow: You know I can’t read.

Pig: Whatever.

Chicken: You know what the brown lumps are, right?

Cow: I don’t want to know.

Pig: You believe this guy?

Chicken: He doesn’t want to know.

Pig: Take a guess.

Cow: I’m not guessing!

Pig: It’s beef.

Cow: I don’t know what that is.

Chicken: Unbelievable.

Pig: Beef is cow, stupid.

Cow: What?!

Pig: What did you think we were doing here?

Cow: You said it was a party.

Chicken: It is a party.

Pig: A big meat party.

Cow: I think I’m gonna be sick.

Pig: Do it away from the grill.

Cow: So... What's the red stuff?

Pig: I don’t know and I don’t care. It is good.

Chicken: Pork.

Pig: Whatever. Hey, what do you say we go get ourselves killed and eaten?

Chicken: You read my mind.

Pig: Let’s do it.

Chicken: That's a plan.

Pig: Everybody wants to eat meat this sweet.

Chicken: Good times.

Pig: Good times.

Cow: I’m coming, I’m coming. Help me up, guys. Guys? Wait up. Come on! I hate you guys. I am not eating you!

Ribs Etc.

We have been in consultation over this for days. We have called in experts from the University. We've debated, talked it through, and slept on it. It's no use. This logo makes absolutely no sense at all. And thinking about it any longer could very well cause brain damage.

It's beyond the senselessness of typical suicide food imagery. It makes a whole new kind of nonsense.

"If you don't eat here, we'll both starve." A standard, comedic restaurateur epigram. Yes, yes, very amusing. But here? Bewildering. For the pig—the pig about to be consumed—is the speaker, yes?

(Is it getting warm in here?)

So... We must eat at Ribs Etc. because if we don't, the pig will starve. And we wouldn't want that. So we are required to participate in the pig's destruction so that he may live. When he's dead. Because we sanctioned his death. To save him.

(Is the room actually spinning?)

Let's just say the suicidefoodist brain trust has been working hard to devise a new motivation for suicidal animals and a new means of jamming our rational thoughts.

(We have to go lie down.)

Rock-n-Roll Fingers

If only this were the cover of the Fresh Chicken Fingers LP from pioneering rockabilly frontman Rock-n-Roll Fingers.

Of course, if it were, we'd have to acknowledge that the shades-sporting, leather-jacketed Fingers here is hardly a fighter against the establishment. No rock and roll rebel, he. With hits like, "Fish Gotta Swim, Birds Gotta Die," and "You Make Me Sizzle," he sings a love song to the status quo. No, he's got the rock and roll lifestyle all backward. Instead of flagging down groupies, he's leaping in bed with The Man.

Alas, we must put an end to our rock and roll fantasy. This image is just another damned dumb suicidefoodist logo. Somehow, seeing this Rooster Bitch strut across the stage in all his inauthentic glory is supposed to make us want to eat chicken fingers.

As the Rolling Stones might have/should have put it:

"I know! It's only a dilute sham of rock and roll!"

We don't like it, like it, no, we don't.

Ribs Within BBQ Team

Rarely have we seen a more accommodating "food" animal! (Yes, there was this herd of obliging pigs, but none of them had the winning personality of this bizarre fellow.)

Regardless, what we have here is the epitome of the Accomplice Animal. He frees us from the shackles that keep us in the slaughterhouse, there to stun and eviscerate pig after pig after pig. The line never stops! The swinging carcasses keep coming. We kill as fast as we can, but we can never catch up. How we long for another species to dispatch! A single chicken to gut!

Even removed from the abattoir as most of us are—removed from the killing, the blood covering the charnel house workers' hands like gloves—echoes of the slaughterhouse reverberate around our kitchens. All of which makes the Ribs Within pig a godsend. For he is a self-killing pig. He offers us a new myth. Behold! He opens a bloodless aperture and painlessly removes his own ribs for us! They're so fresh they're still on fire. (?)

It's possible he has even supplied ribs—the ribs of his family?—to spell out the name of the barbecue team he represents. Notice also that the 1st-place blue ribbon inside his abdomen has absorbed all of the blood we might have expected to find. See, this pig even cleans up after himself. Such thoughtful livestock!

Fat Buddies Ribs & BBQ

Even though these chums are fat and jolly—so fat and so very jolly—let us remember the context that surrounds suicidefoodist imagery like the fog of stink that rises from industrial hog manure lagoons. The pigs are happy, and it is their impending death that brings them happiness. That, and their admirable obesity. They are hat-wearing meat piles with legs. But they know that just makes them more prized menu selections. This is what makes their life—oh, pathos!—worth living.

We turn now to a brief examination of the tagline. "So good it'll make you squeal!" A classic case of Ironic Aggressor Sublimation. The sounds of your contentment will mirror the panicked squeals of the beings your meal used to be. How can anybody function in such an intellectually chaotic atmosphere?

All told—the unhappy pairing of the words and graphics: repugnant. If there has ever been a less seductive barbecue logo, one less likely to bring 'em through the doors and put 'em in the seats, we haven't seen it. And we're not sure we would want to. But we must. Our hard slog to the bottom, to the worst of the worst, is not yet concluded. We have important work yet to do.

Festival of Cruelty 2

Our 100th post! And what better way to commemorate such an august milestone than with another look into the pit of depravity that exists on the outskirts of Meat-Eater Land? (Or is it located in its very heart?) You will remember our first Festival of Cruelty.

We leave behind the cognitive dissonance of suicide food—just for a moment—and enter an even bleaker, blacker-hearted place. These animals are not doing to themselves; they are done to. Steel yourself, bring along a loved one for strength (and a reminder that goodness still dwells in the world, somewhere), and let's proceed.

Big Country Weekend Calf Fry: Come on down to Vinita, Oklahoma, self-proclaimed calf-fry capital of the world! What do you mean you don't want to? How can you resist the look of pure, bowel-loosening fear on that cute calf's face? They'll make that baby animal beg for his life! And then they'll tear him apart with their bare hands and eat him! It's wholesome family fun.



Choke-n-Poke Meat Smokers: The natural animosity we feel for this cigar-chomping pig is mitigated only a little by the knowledge that he will get his soon enough. (What is it with meat-eaters and their chicken-choking symbology? Yes, you have seen it before. Here, for instance. And here.) Has there ever been a more obnoxious spokesman for the animal-eating movement? He strangles, he brands, all while shooting us the smuggest look you ever saw. Even the vegans relish the thought of his painful demise.





Porky's Pickle: Oh, what a pickle Porky has gotten himself into! Yep, this clumsy pig has fallen into the cauldron and he has no one to blame but himself. Squeal all you want, piggy—they're not letting you out. For its mean-spirited blame-the-victim aesthetic—if not for its draftsmanship—this logo is a real "winner."





Mad Cows BBQ: Mad cows? More like heartless and satanic cows. This one is just plain evil. The Dark Cud-chewing One has plucked an innocent piglet from the sty and prepares to take him to his murderous hell. And we're meant to identify not with the sinless babe, but instead with... the cow?







Pig Tales Newsletter: The masthead of the official organ of the North Carolina Barbecue Society is graced with an altogether offensive logo. From the terrified pig to the single-minded, cleaver-waving Chief Kill-um-All, this one is stomach churning.




Blue Springs Blaze Off: Simplicity itself. A pig, exhausted by fear and pain, leaps above the flames, knowing that his heart will soon give out. Look at him. He is jumping up and down in the fire, his trotters, his legs, his hindquarters all charred. Is the entire Blue Springs Blaze Off (Blue Springs, MO) this vicious? According to their website, "[t]he Blue Springs Barbeque Blaze Off received a special honor in 1989 when Governor John Ashcroft proclaimed the contest a Missouri State Championship." No comment.

Alabama BBQ Company

Barbecue as dramatized by Quentin Tarantino.

A dazed cow, a chicken stunned into paralysis, and that pig. The ringleader. (It's always the pig!) He's drugged, no doubt, but only because dosing himself with downers was the only way he could follow through on his ghoulish plot. His resolve is measured by the benzo—long practice has shown him how many for how far down.

And so, here is our standard barbecue threesome. (Notice how the chicken is the least comfortable of the bunch.) We don't know—we don't want to know!—how the pig engineered it, but it's all coming together. He will go calmly to the Great Beyond—barbiturates are like prayers for all the comfort they provide. His "friends," however... His friends must be dragged there, led by nose and beak into death.

Again—again!—we want only to understand how dreck like this can possibly attract customers! We assume, owing to its ubiquity, that it must. But how? Our ignorance is exhausting, even to ourselves. Are we too innocent to understand the engine at the center of all this, the exploitable flaws in the human mind, the minutiae of the service industry? Whatever the reason for our ignorance, ignorant we are. Time and again, we look on this visual garbage and are baffled. For here: animals, lashed together like hostages in a home invasion, plunked into the barbecue, where they can contemplate their own excruciating deaths. And this... appeals to people.

The Pig Roaster

Dishonesty is inherent in all suicidefoodist iconography. That is its bedrock. "The animals approve of your intentions," the suicide food proponent purrs. "Actually, the whole thing was their idea all along. You wouldn't want to cause offense by not eating them, would you?"

But this takes dishonesty in a brand-new direction and runs with it.

The pig is relaxing, enjoying the tropical setting, feeling no pain and having no worries, mon. The bounty of the tropics heaps itself around him. But it's more than that. The subliminal suggestion is that this pig is roasting all by himself. The sun is gently warming him. There's no need for us to intervene. This is nature we're talking about. Who are we to question it? Only a mean old crank would have a problem with this. Do you scold the sun for shining? Rail against the snows for freezing?

Join the natural order and embrace the consumption of pigs! This is life unfolding, the wondrous spectacle of planet Earth! Deny it no longer! The universe aligns itself to ratify your appetites! Only a fool would turn his back!

All of which renders this "After" image, from the same website, as nothing more than the punchline to a sick cosmic joke.








Addendum: The style of this logo might indeed look familiar. Other work by its creator has been featured here before.

Steamboat Bill's

Toot toot! Here comes Steamboat Bill on the shipshape S. S. Suicidefood! With a friendly clack, he waves his claw at the well-wishers lining the riverbank, face tendrils (?) flapping gaily like pennants.

The imagery is routine, but the subtext is ghoulish as ever. Our happy hero, loving life from the helm of his adorable tub, is steering her right into the cooking pot. There, as the paddlewheel churns helplessly, he'll consign himself to Davy Jones's locker to be "boiled with pride" (as Steamboat Bill's website puts it).

"Permission to come aboard, Cap’n?"

Granted! (Toot toot!)

"Permission to boil you and the crew alive, Cap’n?"

Darn tootin’!

"Permission to tear you apart and suck the meat from your glistening carapace?"

Sho nuff!

We're denied even the opportunity to deliver the poor crawfish from a miserable existence. No, we're encouraged to take him at his fullest, when his life is smooth sailing!

If you doubt the grisly undertone of the action—and, really, how could anyone past the age of majority doubt what the proponents of suicidefoodism have declared so vigorously for so long?—behold this T-shirt design offered in the official Steamboat Bill's catalogue:

Pinch Me, Peel Me, Eat Me. There, in six words, is the fundamental theme of the suicide food worldview, along with the concomitant sexual connotations. Oh, suicidefoodists! Clean up your act!

Uncle Sam's Barbecue

Happy birthday, America, you great big meat-eating country, you!

What finer icon for such a greedy, gluttonous land than this chubby, pink fellow! Natty in his vest and tie—not to mention his Southern Colonel beard—he is dapper, yet full of fellow feeling for his countrymen!

And service! The pig is all about service. Sacrifice for your brothers, the sanctity of duty. He's a recruitment poster come to life. And what of this recruitment? "I Want You." Whom does he recruit? How should we complete the elliptical slogan "I Want You"? He wants whom, for what purpose? To what end? And for what campaign?

To whom should we direct our allegiance? Just tell us "jump," and we're in the air. You have only to say the word!

The answer is simple and stark. He urges his fellow pigs, encouraging them to add their lives to the sacrificed millions. Join the ranks of the devoured! Grill fodder is a noble occupation! To the spits, lads!

And! And! He addresses us too. For we have our own heroic part to play in the American drama: Uncle Pig needs us to line up and eat! Eat! Lest the sacrifice of those innumerable, courageous pigs be in vain.

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