Best Buckin BBQ Cook-Off

The pig's wish has finally come true.

Clothed in the garb of the humans he has so long admired, he feels whole at last. Like the humans with their boots, jeans, giant belt buckles, Western-style shirts, and bandannas, he can whoop it up, waving his hat rodeo-style. Like the humans, he can subjugate another animal. (Let's see a regular old pig do that!) Like a human, he can exult while his inferiors grimace. Like a human, he can do whatever the hell he pleases.

Like Faust, however, the pig must pay a price.

In exchange for his freedom from having to treat other animals with respect, he must offer up something. You've already guessed what it is, yes?

It can be found down there at the bottom: BBQ Cook-Off.

The pig knows his time as a human will end shortly before the cook-off begins. He will be neither preparing nor sampling the food. No, he will be the food.

Improbably, the pig has concluded that the trade-off is worth it.








Addendum: In a similar vein, do you remember this pig-related fantasy camp?

Fröhliches Neujahr

Now this is how you ring in the new year! You load up one of the Campbell's Soup kids with a tray of champagne, jam a knife and fork in the pig's back, and start celebrating!

We won't begrudge anyone their New Year's bubbly, but we do question the propriety of the stuck pig. Stabbed, he trots gaily from the kitchen, his wounds nothing more than handy slots for the silverware.

The celebrants would, in spite of their inebriation, be horrified if not for the pig's sunny disposition. Seeing that terrible grin, they clink glasses and wait for the big moment.

The ball drops—5! 4! 3! 2! 1!—and, right on cue, the pig drops dead, a smile on his face. (Did you see him? He was the star of the show!) Out with the old, in with the new, and all that. Plenty more demented pigs where he came from.

Zagreb Butcher

It’s touching, really, the way the Croatian swine has put on his best outfit for his appearance at this Zagreb butcher shop.

In his smart, red bow-tie, he’s like the maître d’ welcoming you to your table on the killing floor.

And his eyes! Oh, his blue, beseeching eyes! How eager to please, his eyes, how eager to serve and be served!

Even suspended above the cremains of his fellows—his cured fellows shaped into multifariously knobbly tubes—he doesn’t lose his eagerness. His eyes plead with us for the opportunity to undergo the same transformation. From living thing to unrecognizable, insides-colored substance.

(Thanks to Dr. BJ for the referral and photos.)













Addendum: One detail that might have escaped your notice is the motif used for the tiny signs advertising specials and other delicious what-nots.

Now do you see them, circled to the left?

But of course! They too are pigs! So many opportunities to serve!

Festival of Cruelty 9

Unfortunately, the time has come, again, to visit the hated realm, the land not of suicide food, with all its mythologies and lore of misdirection, but murder food. We travel there periodically to toughen up for our usual slog. (Please have a look at the previous installment of this recurrent feature.)


Jerry's Food Emporium (Saskatoon): We've seen this theme before, the metaphorical made literal. It used to be one of our favorites because it's a source of such withering humor. The last time we saw "pulled pork" expressed literally, as a living pig yanked apart, the presentation was a good bit lighter. It lacked the magisterial viciousness present in Jerry's chalkboard rendering. Stretched taut, belly positioned in the flames, the pig screams, the pain welling from a place beyond tears. Agony, as we know, is the finest tenderizer. (Thanks to Dr. Meagan for the photo and referral.)





The Crazy Rednecks' BBQ: Now these are rednecks. Or, you know, crazed butchers. It's easy to deduce their plan: they will catch up with the pig, hack him apart with eatin' irons (silverware), douse him in barbecue sauce, and dig in. No time for cooking!

Note: Crude though they be, they have nevertheless mastered the very un-redneck use of the apostrophe and the plural possessive! Of course, capitalization still gives them fits.









Warning: This exists.













Road Kill BBQ Sauce: It's funny because the raccoon got hit and run over by a car! And someone's going to eat it! And it's either still alive, face contorted in anguish, or it's dead and the look on its face is its deathmask. Either way, good times.

Reflect for a moment on the mind that finds in animals squashed flat by cars a source of hilarity. Or better yet, don't.







Who Are Those Guys? Competition Cooking Team: From the looks of this image, answering the question is a snap. Who are those guys? A bunch of creeps trying to scare a pig and a chicken to death.

Prominavite

He's full of pep!

He is livid with robust good health!

His demonic eyes burn with the passion of the condemned!

He bursts into your crippled reality, a burnished idol, luminous nose ring chiming like a bell!

His muscles ripple, heralding the arrival of a spirit of terrible vengeance!

His fists are as the sacred mountains that guard the portal to the afterlife!

His horns hector the infidel!

Except… no. He's actually just some steer hoping to stay healthy enough to make a good showing at the stun gun station. Come on, man—your gung-ho attitude for this stuff is like a lifer thanking the warden for a color TV. Sure, it's better than black-and-white, but you're still locked up.






Addendum (10/14/09): He's still pro-death (here, he represents a meat product auction) and he's still… bursting through things, but he seems calmer. More subdued. The green works for him.

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.)

Speedy's Barbecue Inc.

A lot has changed since we served in the military.* We didn't have GIs out of uniform, rollerskating through the mess, delivering their buddies (and sweet tea) on a tray. It's a whole different ball game now.

We don't know whether the pig waiter skated in from the National Guard armory a scant 2.5 miles from Speedy's, but we cannot discount the possibility that, in addition to being out of uniform, he is AWOL.

But never mind that. What's got us so concerned isn't the flouting of rules and regs. It's the upending of the military's code of honor. Where's the esprit de corps that forms the backbone of any fighting unit? This dogface has turned his back on his fellows, serving them up like so much cannon fodder.

But maybe there's more going on under that garrison cap—a plan to incur his own punishment, perhaps? Is that why he works against morale so diligently?

*This statement is a rhetorical flourish only.

Chicken Noodle Café

The hot broth treatment appears to be getting to this poor chicken.

He is sitting in a bowl of self soup, the culinary equivalent of strangling yourself with your own intestines.

And look at his posture. Clearly, he's in the throes of the later stages of avian dementia. One wing propping up his head. Feet languidly drooping over the "tub." He's having the time of his "life," as his organs congeal and he simmers to perfection.

Then there's his "Eat my noodles" demand. Although we hate to point it out, that's not a noodle he's eating. (Does the chicken believe he comes equipped with noodles?) No, he's temptingly dangling some errant scrap of flesh. His gizzard, maybe. We understand chickens consider them quite the delicacy.

(Thanks to Dr. Jones for the referral.)

The Redneck PitKrew

The latest in industrious pigs.

We're familiar with the pigs who grind themselves, the pigs who debone themselves, and the pigs who bring the barbecue to your door.

But this crew krew! They'll repair your rig when it breaks down or runs out of fuel. It's like a comdemned man cheerfully restringing the gallows!

These fellers take pride in their work, that's for sure. Hurry, boys. Time's a-wastin'!

If the old girl isn't up and cooking in the next 30 seconds, she'll never take the cup. And if she doesn't, the pigs don't get their reward: death, dismemberment, and their moment in the Winner's Circle. Also known as the stomachs of the nearest racing fans.

Agricon 2009

The right jolly driver is surrounded by his right jolly mates. (That's mates in the British sense.) And they have every reason to be jolly.

Why, they have a road, a means of hauling and being hauled, and they have Agricon, "the only conference dedicated to those working within the Agricultural, Foods, Tipping, Milk and Livestock sectors of today’s road transport industry."

Naturally, the ebullient sow has pride of place (she gets the passenger seat instead of steerage), but all of the animals are, you know, haulage. Cargo. Goods. Stuff. Just this side of inanimate. Don't let the smiles fool you—these things are barely alive.

And that's what they're smiling about!

You see, in a strict, class-based society like England's, there's a certain comfort in knowing one's place. It offers some a security denied them by too much potential. The Road Haulage Association provides the livestock all the lack-of-potential they could ever wish for.

Kid Stew

Children rely on us for so much. Perhaps the most important thing we can give them is an example. A model of how to go through life with a healthy sense of themselves. With this foundation, they can fend off those who would harm their minds, their hearts, their bodies.

It innoculates them from so many of life's pernicious dangers.

This goat child—appearing on a website of Baytril, the pharmaceutical world's foremost animal-carers-about—seems not to have had a suitable model. Consequently, his view of himself and his worth is warped beyond all sense.

That's why he is looking to you for approval. He will do whatever it takes to get it.

He will bring you wine. He will offer up one perfect rose. He will serenade you. He will get the mortar and pestle and pound the oregano and garlic. He will assemble all the other ingredients. He will die.

(Yes, we've featured animals from the Baytril website before.)

Habeas Porkus

And thus the appetite for pork products is elevated to a Constitutional right.

The judge, though he be a pig, is happy to propound a novel legal concept. Happy, did we say? He is filled with more than the pleasure of playing his role in the law's grand drama.

(He's small up there, but can you make out the details? The black robe, the gavel, the white wig long emblematic of jurisprudence in the Commonwealth?)

His Honor is practically giggling as he hands down his ruling, a ruling that amounts to a death sentence for the pigs. Why isn't he troubled at the blatant miscarriage of justice? The pigs who are sentenced are not even party to the proceedings. And yet they bear the sorest burden.

Our principal objection: the judge should have recused himself. His overweening drive to die has rendered him unfit to hear the case impartially.

It is here that we wonder why they didn't go with the name Habeas Corpse. Wouldn't that pun have been more to the point?