Anchor Butter: a dairy digression

The girls down at Anchor Butter are just a bunch of working stiffs, like you and me, taking well deserved pride in the fine product they help bring to market.

The successive artificial inseminations! The endless chain of babies torn from their sides! All cheerfully endured for the sake of their company's flagship commodity.

The most salient point: the cows are not mere objects—they are proper subjects, actors on their behalf, agents in their own right. Can an object drive a tractor? Ha!








Or churn butter to exacting standards? Or manage a hand truck? Absurd!

Touching on a loathsome but little-discussed theme—that of livestock as valued employees—this depiction of a shift at Anchor Butter is really just a snapshot, a day-in-the-life catalog of animal liberation.

Exploited underclass? No more than any other wage-earner! Captive property? Nothing could be further from the truth!

The cows are making the butter! They're calling the shots! The humans (chuckle chuckle) work for them!

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

Addendum: Revisit our most recent dairy digression.

Shrimp Daddy's

This is living the life.

Just relaxing in the cocktail glass, a giant lemon wedge for company. Take it easy, you know? Just conform your chitinous exterior to the glass's contours.

Prop an elbow on the rim.

Looking sharp with that bow tie. You might be on the way out, but you're not down. Not yet. Takes more than a boiling bath to do you in. Believe it: you're laughing! Digging the scene!

This is your time. It's all about you.

When they come around, looking for the tenderest place to slip the tines in, lower your shades and give 'em the line:

"Who's your daddy?"

Shrimp's got it going on.

Special Report: Pig Logo Exposé 10

For reasons known only to ourselves (at best), we like to assemble paeans to frequently seen suicidal pigs. The last one was a good while ago. Our files are bulging, so it's time for another.






























































































































(From left to right by row: Orchard Old Spots, Westfest 2006; Hamm's Meat, Stu-Pit BBQ Team; B. P.'s Smoke House, Mission Cochon; Bowie BBQ Duel, Rob's BBQ on the side; The Barbeque Hut, Conway's BBQ in a Box; Carolina Children's Home Annual BBQ Cook-off Festival, Bacon Camp; Tri-State BBQ Fest bucks, Big Pig Gig; Boss Hogg Award Winning World Famous BBQ, Lucknow Fall Fair; Garden State Porkway, A Hampshire Hog; GoodLand, Manfield Village Covered Bridge Bluegrass & Barbeque; Ware's Bar-B-Q.)

Appearing in such profusion, Dopey (as he shall hereafter be known) is surprisingly resistant to variation. Yes, he can be given spots or sunglasses, but he doesn't invite the same kind of tinkering other overused pigs do. Compare Dopey's immutability with Lumpy's or Jowly's ability to assume different roles and master new contexts.

There's something steadfast—almost admirable—in Dopey's insistence on remaining so trusting, right up to the end, over and over again.







Addendum (5/22/11): What no one was waiting for: Dopey specimen #22.

Susquehanna Blue Smoke

The barbecue battle, the boxing match, and other examples of ritualized warfare are here made literal.

This is actual combat, with uniforms and weapons and everything. The animals, naturally, reenact the Civil War and recast it in terms of combatants fighting for their chance to be eaten.

These aren't hobbyists playacting. This is that most terrible of all institutions: the art of war. And the stakes couldn't be higher.

Who can claim the title of conqueror? Whose banner will be hoisted on the rubble of victory? Who is the finest food?

Dixie Meat Rub

Even stuffed to bursting with the meat of his kinsmen, he has but one thought.

His abdomen taut, his pulse sluggish, his eyes heavy with impending slumber, he has just a singular idea buzzing in his spongy brain like a dozy bumblebee:

Must. Prepare. Self. For imminent eating. Must have rub. Applied to belly.

Unable to muster the energy to speak the words aloud, instead he thinks them into being. Rub my belly.

He pats his girth helpfully. "Here," he seems to say. "The rub goes right here." And then, before sinking into his pork coma, he prays you will know what to do with his lifeless body.








Addendum: Have we, perhaps, already seen this type of glutton (for punishment as well as for the meat of his own kind)? Yes, we have.

The Art of Ribs

The pig has agreed to pose for the impassioned artist because he is eager to see his true, inner self brought forth and captured for eternity. Like all sensitive souls, the pig is moved by the drive to experience the wonder, the sheer generative power of art.

So when the accomplished artist—you can gauge his skill by his beret, effete mustache, sandals, and the patch on his trousers—asked the pig to pose for him? Well, who could refuse?

And the result is everything the pig imagined! Just seeing his truest essence revealed is a natural poet's dream. And get a load of that truest essence! When the artist looks deep within the pig's trusting eyes, he sees… a big slab of bones and flesh cooking on the grill.

No subtle dance of emotion and thought. No questions gathered and scattered to the stars. No search for meaning. Just… a big thing of meat. Which, after all, is everything the pig hoped to see.








Addendum (1/02/11): More art-loving pigs.

27th Annual Barbecue Festival

Earlier this year, we profiled the 25th year of this Lexington, North Carolina, institution. Alas, our schedules are all out of sync, so we're still playing catch-up.

As in the '08 version, this one showcases pig employees, these two accomplished square dancers who are sweet on each other. He's a kitchen-pig with a paper hat, she's a waitress with a bow stapled to her head, and together they make sweet, America-flavored music.

It's important to understand that the pigs are not merely grateful victims. They are presented as authorities, speaking and acting on behalf of some putative restaurant.

When they do-si-do from behind the counter, they are saying—with every flirty glance and well placed trotter—that they exist to serve. To serve you your lunch on a tray, and to live out their subservience by being served.







Addendum: For the 26th annual festival, in 2009, they went with a countrified crooner, instead of café staff. Presumably, he's drawling about the gritty joys of being eaten.

Addendum 2: Somewhere between the 25th and the 26th festival, the organizers dropped the anniversary from the title and replaced it with annual. Is this meaningful? Meaningful? Now it has to be meaningful?!

Adega do Rossio

It's a happy woodland reunion and you're invited! Pull up a seat with the wolf (we guess) and the crow. The pig's been in the kitchen all morning and the chicken's dead, plucked, and ready.

This scene, found in the window of a Lisbon eatery, soothes us with its mood of quiet sylvan harmony. The players are so content, so amiable, each so satisfied with his lot. The wolf (we guess) prepares to feed, the crow to scavenge on the remains, the pig to serve with obsequience, and the chicken to be destroyed.

Every niche in the forest is filled. Every relationship finds its full expression. The woods ring with sheer, blessed systematic rationale. The sacrifice we witness is a celebration of reason!

(Thanks to Dr. Ana for the referral and the photo.)






Addendum: This isn't the first plucked sexpot we've seen. Far from it. There was her. And them, of course. And then, oh dear. Yes, there were these two birds.