Colman's Instant Beef Gravy

Things are different in Australia—profoundly, mystifyingly, adorably, offputtingly different—so there's no reason this should startle us.


But it does.


Because, to demonstrate the agreeable flavor of their meat-based food moistener, the Colman's Instant Beef Gravy people have introduced us to a beef paste-born bovine reincarnation springing forth from his sacred gravy boat. Look at him, freed from Death's grim shackles, leaping above the table top, destined to splash himself all over your plate! 


Of course, it's only what any right-thinking animal offered a second chance at life would seek out: not escape, but a quick trip back to the conveyor belt of consumption and nothingness.


Thus has suicidefoodism ever represented it. So eager are the animals to die that their most numinous vocation is not to die once, but to return to life to die again. The second death is sweeter, surely, because they rush into it with eyes open. Having already savored their own destruction, they hasten back to their utter negation, the no-time and no-place where they are finally at home.

And so Zombie Gravy the Bull soars. He cavorts and poses. He dances and sings. 


And what a song it is! For reasons we can't begin to explain (no, not even with all our big words and pointy-headed ideas), he croons "I like the way you moo!" He likes the way we moo? (We weren't aware we were mooing.) But you try arguing with a reanimated bull made of gravy.


See the whole thing for yourself. 


(Thanks to Dr. Julian for the referral.)

Team Bar-B-Quau

She is delight. She is grace. She is the embodiment of the solemn play that is life. 

The palm tosses in a summer storm, and still she sways, her hands telling the story of her unimportant birth and her wonderful, imminent death. The grass skirt flirting with her hips, her hooves twinkling in the sand, the ecstasy of movement—it all speaks of a joy, a gratitude. 

That the universe has blessed her with this tiny, fleeting, destined-to-be-unmourned-and-unremembered portion of existence! She can't contain herself. She must dance! 

Addendum: Another Hawaiian pig waiting to enact the most glorious rite ever. 

Beef-A-Rama

If there's one thing all cows can agree on—whether they be joggers, chefs, or breakdancers—it's the satisfaction that comes from identifying themselves as beef.

They're not really cows, you see. That's an illusion. They only look like animals in the role of athletes, food preparers, and artists whose medium is movement. What they really are is an ingredient, just a mass of substance to be used by someone else.

They have been reduced—they have reduced themselves—to the status of foodstuff, and they have never been happier. If they could only get past this troublesome pre-death stage, they would be happier still. For then their external selves would match their internal selves, and that's called harmony. Tranquility. Peace. Oneness.

In time, you beefs. In time.

Hogs N Heat Barbecue & Nut Fry

Finally, an explanation for at least one pig's perversity! He's an agent of pure corruption, in thrall to a psychologically devastated nihilism.

Suicide, murder, torture, the frying of testicles: it's all given license by this devilish boar.

The Cloven Hoofed One, the Hellhog, the Dark Swine. By whatever name he's known and cursed, he lingers in his excruciating afterlife, burning for eternity with a dream of dragging every last pig into his feculent sty. Death has been good to him. It's given him so much. He wants only to strew his blessings upon the multitudes.

Behind him, the Showgirls of the Damned praise his every repulsive lark. Choking on fumes, they sing for him. For all the pigs. For all the world!

(This whole business is not to be confused—we think—with the Hogs 'N Heat barbecue team.)

Pork Rinds, a retrospective

It's the quaintest obscurantism in the suicidefoodist canon: pork rinds. As though pigs are, what? Melons? Do melons smile like that? Dream or hope like that? Ha!

This rogues' gallery of fiercely oblivious spokespigs represents a soaring low-point in the annals of meaninglessness. Somehow—and we agree that this lacks a consistent logic—the sight of pigs extolling the virtues of their own fried skin is worse than pigs talking up their own cooked meat. It's more desperate. More depraved.

The very idea of pork rinds is so revolting, it's a wonder we haven't discussed them more often. In fact, the last time was more than eight months ago. So.

Welp! No more stalling.




























































The entire breadth of pigkind has turned out to support the proposition that their skin makes a convenient and appetizing snack. The top-hatted captain of industry, the dancing fool, the simple country soul, even the cowboy atop his docile flying buffalo—all pigs, from the lowliest to the loftiest, give the nod to pork rinds!







Addendum: If you can bear it, revisit our discussion of the most horrendously named product in the field of pork skin offerings. Yes, even worse than Microwave Pork Puffies (see above), but just by a hair.

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.)

Mountain High BBQ & Music Festival

In Franklin, North Carolina, the animals are willing. Boy howdy, are they willing!

When they hear the strains of the Mountain High BBQ & Music Festival wafting from those heavenly heights, they start a-dancin'!

Kick up your "heels," chicken! Prance and frolic, cow! And pigs? If you could just nudge the sign up… a little… higher?

Excellent! You guys are the best.

In a rational world (that is, in a world far, far away from this one), the animals would escape while the band tuned up. They'd flee across state lines—or wherever—to safety.

What they wouldn't do is carry on like this party was something being done for them, as opposed to something done to them.

Bloomin' Barbeque & Bluegrass

This is Bloomie.

Bloomie has, shall we say, bought into the system.

Actually, that's not nearly strong enough. Bloomie has swallowed the system whole, gone back for seconds, and leased her own seat at the table.

Honored to head up Severe-ville Sevierville, Tennessee's Bloomin' Barbeque & Bluegrass festival, Bloomie capers and flings flowers to the fates who have installed her in so high a position.

Know that Bloomie is no mere figurehead. She is a tireless promoter. She wants everyone to have a chance to eat her and her extended family.




















She schmoozes with Santa, serves up pig meat in a local eatery, and boosts Sevierville the best she can.

That she does it with such panache should not distract us from our inescapable conclusion: Bloomie needs our help, not our appetites.

Hava NaGrilla Kosher Barbecue Contest

Here we see the mechanism that allows faith to flourish. Through their belief, the faithful trust in their place in the universe's unfolding.

This leads inevitably to peace. Or, no, not peace. Wait.

Insanity. It leads to insanity.

Because, while this looks like a Jewish wedding—with the chairs hoisted high, and the chickens dancing the hora, and everything—it's not. No, far from the joyous commemoration of a sacred rite, this is the celebration of a barbecue. One in which the celebrants will be destroyed and eaten. Like we said: insanity. (How else to explain those smiles?)

But, oh, those poor, absent pigs. We can only imagine their despondency as they contemplate meaningless existence. Shunned and reviled, forced to face an unfeeling cosmos that cares not one whit about their flavor, they lead barren lives that revolve around not their confinement and unnecessary death, but instead their freedom and tranquility. Buck up, pigs. You've still got life's minor indignities and inconveniences to look forward to.

But for the cows and chickens whose flesh we are here to exalt, mazel tov!

And, please, may we take a moment? In our years of doing this, we have seen many, many terrible puns. Not just artless, overreaching puns, but puns that threatened to suck our humanity away. And now—Hava NaGrilla?—we have seen one more.







Addendum: This is only our second instance of suicidefoodist Judaica. Here is the first.