Stoke It and Smoke It

The 6:05 Blood 'n' Guts Express, now boarding, track 3!

Making stops in Shametown, Degradationburg, and Self-Loathing Falls!

With connections to Slaughterville, Butchery Junction, Fort Dining Room Table, and Stomach City!

Refreshments provided by the crew. No, really. The crew are the refreshments!

Blood 'n' Guts Express—all aboard!

Rosie Free Range Chicken

Rosie is the sophisticated big sister of Rocky Jr., another deluded chicken we've profiled here. (They spring from the loins of the same parent company, you see.)

Where little Rocky's naiveté could be excused by his youth, Rosie—she of the pumps and wide-brimmed hat perfectly suited for a ladies' tea—can hardly claim the same gullibility.

Rosie has free-ranged across the oceans, pearls flouncing. She's a single chicken, worldly and wry. She knows what life has to offer. And somehow, having glimpsed its possibilities, having sampled its pleasures, still she sashays along the Dark Path. That way lie the kindly men with insistent knives, the plastic-wrapping machines, and the ovens and plates of a bottomless nation.

Death has seduced our Rosie.

(Thanks to Dr. Bea for the referral.)

National Foie Gras Week

One year ago, National Foie Gras Week took place, and the echoes still resound!

Even now, the birds are mocking the misplaced concern of the animalists. Do you see? Do you see how the necks of the liver-givers are adorned, emphasized, or otherwise exaggerated? Here it's not neck ties—it's a napkin and a fanciful O. Whatever it takes to focus our eyes on the source of the birds' pathos and triumph.

The fowl are more than mere foodstuffs (or living containers for distended livers). They are freedom fighters, offering an example of resistance. They will not lie down and let the simpering do-gooders take away our foie gras! (That's right: our foie gras.)

Along with Chicago Chefs for Choice, they will go down fighting. (Well, as long as they go down, it's all good. Right, Chicago Chefs?) With their dying breaths, they will proclaim the Truth! That a life without bird organs on crackers is no kind of life! That a dreary, meaningless existence—a mortal slog with nothing at the end but oblivion—is not enough for some! No! They will be spread on toast points. They will be crammed into terrines!

The gavageoisie will not be denied!






Addendum: More food for thought from the land of liverté. "Upon this duck's liver, this is delicious—and I know what I'm talking about!" (Thanks to Drs. aelle and Desdemona for translation assistance.)

Lamb Takedown

The Lamb Takedown, we surmise, is an Iron Chef-style spectacular wherein people cook and eat lambs. Straightforward enough, as far as these things go.

Yes, the lamb on the banner is a confusion of cultural signs: innocence married to 80s-era heavy metal (Lamb Takedown is rendered in Iron Maiden's font) and a more recent post-punk aesthetic (expressed by means of the facial jewelry).

When we consider the purpose of the lamb is to be taken down—about time those docile grass-nibblers got their comeuppance!—the jumbled cultural references make perfect "sense."

The twinkle in his eye reminds us that the lamb and the rest of his fuzzy playmates are more than willing to be taken down and taken apart. The lambs are eager participants in their own destruction. Or perhaps this one is depicted as looking down from heaven on tattered wings, having already been lovingly (and adorably) destroyed. From above the Beyond he smiles approvingly. Well killed, gentlemen. Well killed.

As he assures the Lamb Takedown audience and competitors: "Ewe will be rocked."

The bad-boy iconography is there as a balm to the two or three takedowners who might flinch at the thought of killing baby animals in such a self-congratulatory, celebratory way. For them, the rebellious typesetting and nosering offer, at least, a pretext for the killing. Sure, the lamb looks childlike—they might say—but he knows what he's getting into. He knows the score. He's a streetwise urchin birthed in suburbia's rotten crucible. Shed no tears for him.


(Thanks to Dr. Anthony for the referral.)









Addendum: We're not making it up.

New Pigs on the Block

If you had a time machine programmable to return you to 1989, and if you cared to drum up interest in your barbecue team by associating it in your audience's mind with superstars of the nascent Boy Band era transformed into "food" animals, this is what you would get.

That this should exist now, in a post-NKOTB period of only primitive time machines (at best), defies understanding. And we've managed to understand a lot of weird shit.

In the picture, clockwise from the cow: Danny, Jonathan, Joey, Jordan, and Donnie. We do admire the logo's faithful rendering of Donnie's tough-guy mandanna, Danny's geometrical hairstyle, and Jordan's starry jacket design.

Friskies Adventureland

We forget, awash as we are in praise, we forget that we are not the only beings on this earth deserving of adoration. The sense we have of ourselves—that we alone could inspire loyalty, reverence, even worship—is rarely challenged.

Cows and pigs and sheep and fish and chickens and all their lowly brethren march across battlefields, endure the obscenest of treatment, all for the joy of bidding farewell to this planet of miracles from the portal of our stomachs.

But no! It is not to Man alone the willing sacrifices aspire to offer themselves. Dogs also enjoy pride of place, and now we know we can add cats to the list. (And, as time may yet reveal, pet snakes and all other domesticated carnivores.)

Friskies brand cat food reminds us of this blessed fact, that there are consumable slaves for all. In the television commercial from which these stills were extracted, a cat receives the royal treatment from turkeys, from fish, and from baby chicks. All are pleased to fulfill their destiny as food for humans' pets.

The food welcomes the cat to the realm of the Omni-edible, a wonderland wherein everything exists for, and is assembled for the benefit of, the dominant beings. The ambassadors of this world—the seafood and the poultry—live (briefly) to serve and be served.

Awesome Ribs Restaurant

Now this is how it's done, people!

This is living out loud! With exclamation points! This pig is a living exclamation point! When you believe in yourself, anything is possible!

Well, maybe not anything, but if your goal is to get yourself eaten, then… awesome!

Even though the lower half of his body is long gone and what's left of him rests directly upon the altar/grill, still he feels the overpowering energy of suicidal striving! When you're this close to death, life tosses out exclamation points like confetti. So grab a few and feel the awesome!

Steak Frites

Très nonchalant.

In the demeanor of this boeuf, we read all we need to know. The lowered eyelids, the turned face, the frown, the studied look of ennui, even the contemptuous coil of smoke—they all convey the cow's disdain. For us. You can tell—it's palpable—that he loathes us and the untenable position we have placed him in.

To die, yes, but to die to be eaten by the likes of us?

Mais non!

He should be consumed by artists and philosophers! By sculptors and poets! Not by... restaurant-goers. Unworthies. Americans!

Manny's Has Great Legs

To seductive show-biz ostriches and chickens, we may now (at last!) add turkeys.

And take a gander at them (to extend the poultrypalooza)—so high-kicking, so shapely, so… so… great. We are left again to wonder at the response of the poultry peddlers. We can only imagine what inner dialogues they experience.

"The turkey legs we sell are so gosh-darned great. If only there were some way to get this point across to the leg-buying public. I've got it! If we have a kick line of dressed-up turkeys doing their thing Rockettes-style, everyone will understand!"

Sex appeal, the nostalgia of G (or maybe PG) rated burlesque, top hats... Manny, you have more than great legs. You, sir, have a marketing sense second to none.

(Thanks to Dr. Bea for the referral.)

WheaEsta 2009 BBQ Cookoff

These three "food" animals—the Unholy Trinity of barbecue iconography—are here to remind us what friendship is all about: Togetherness, cooperation, sacrifice.

Together, they tend the grill. It is their shrine, their oasis. The place where they can be their true selves.

Cooperating, each brings something sacred to the party. The barbecue sauce, the spatula, the salt, the briquettes. Without any of them, their drive to die would be frustrated. But if each adds his little piece to the puzzle, just think what they can accomplish! It's a "Stone Soup" for our modern times!

And sacrifice? What of sacrifice? This is where the trio really shines. For each holds back, allowing his fellow the honor of first to be eaten.

Roast Beef with Onions

Fear not! Still your racing heart! Spare your sympathies for someone who needs them.

This Alpine maid is not weeping with dread at her impending slaughter and consumption. True, the man is hefting the hammer even as we watch this scene, and the butcher is whetting his blades. Though the purplish mountains and serene meadow suggest nothing so much as unending peace, a killing looms.

The roast beef's cow's tears are not born of fear, of pain, of the horror of impending nothingness. It's just the onions she slices for the dish she will soon join.






Addendum: It's another illustration from the animal lovers at Baytril!

Bubba's Smokeshack Barbeque

Now here's a charming vision of a parallel America! Along the dusty main street of Wichita, the "food" animals have taken on the roles and mannerisms of humans. It's like the Planet of the Apes, only with barbecue.

In this America, the humanimals gather down to the barbecue parlor and just… set a spell. They catch up on the doings in the capital, puff on the ol' corn cob, pluck a little banjo. These are decent, hard-working folk, much like the people of real-life Wichita.

The difference, the warp that gives this mirror its funhouse horror, is that Cow, Pig, and Chicken have made a haunt of the establishment that will see them into their graves. Or, because graves are too good for the animals we call supper, into the stomachs of their consumers.

Of course, we and our habits, the things whose reflection is cast into this pseudo-Wichita (the Whichita?) of craven animals, are now suspect. Only a corrupt original could have spawned such a corrupt copy.