Christmas City Competition BBQ team

It's a Christmas tradition in these parts: Santa hitches the flying pigs to his magic barbecue and takes to the skies.

At every house they pass, Santa frees one of his wonderful pigs, who tumbles down the chimney, incinerating himself in the fireplace. Oh, don't worry! These are miracle pigs; they regenerate endlessly, until every home on Earth has a dead pig of its own!

Which is why the pigs are every bit as jolly as Saint Nick. On this night, they get to die eternally (well, a billion or so times each), again and again, reconstituted above the rooftops and readied once more for death.

Ho ho ho!

Take a moment to visit the ghosts of suicidefood Christmases past—2010, 2009, and 2007.

Suicidefood Book Report: Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher

In this, our fourth suicidefood book report, we continue our tradition of dabbling at the surface of books we haven't fully, completely finished. Or perhaps even begun. (Reacquaint yourself with our previous reports: Animals Make Us Human, Endgame, and Punk Farm.)

Our subject this time around is Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher  (Tricycle Press, 978-1582463155) by Laurel Snyder, illustrated by David Goldin.

[Editor's note: It's possible—just maybe—that, in relying on a particular source, we may have misrepresented the nature of the book in question, as thoughtful commenters have lovingly pointed out. Integrity Laziness compels us to keep the following as originally written.]

According to the blurb at amazon.com, it would appear this charming picture book is actually a chilling tale of premature animal dementia (PAD). As they put it:

"Baxter desperately wants to experience Shabbat dinner, the special Friday-night meal that ushers in the Jewish day of rest. [...] When he learns that pork is a forbidden food according to Jewish law, he stuffs his face with kosher pickles and raisin challah, hoping to become kosher. He even tries, unsuccessfully, to become a cow."

And you're surprised that suicidefoodism lingers? That it spreads like illness? That it lurks in the forgotten corners of the cultural hive, waiting waiting waiting to regroup, to regrow, to re-emerge and conquer!

Baxter—dear, foolish Baxter—wants so badly to experience everything the humans experience that he thinks nothing of attempting to make himself edible. The adorable string of misadventures he embarks on have at their center a trusting pig's desire to make himself the centerpiece of their holiday celebration. Not, you understand, to finagle an invitation, but to make his very flesh suitable for his hosts' consumption.

(Thanks to Dr. RandiJM for the referral.)

Pleasantville Pig Out

Compare if you will the name Pleasantville with the gruesomely spot-on barbecue-related town names we've seen in the past, like Boiling Springs Lake and Hardball Farms. While those toponyms put it all out there—the pain, the anguish—Pleasantville is coy. Pleasant. Does this look pleasant?

The pig in his barbecue grill jail, the flames swelling at his back—that's pleasant?

Well, for him, it probably is. We lost our heads for a minute. This isn't one of our scheduled Festivals of Cruelty, wherein the animals are truly terrorized and hounded to the brink of death and beyond.

This is party time. The animals are honored guests, proud for the chance to die and experience the oblivion they've spent their lives pursuing.

Sauced Pigs Bar-B-Que

We love animals-as-food punning. Ask anyone. (Exhibit A, and Exhibit B.)

These two pigs are sauced, you see—drunk on the glory of their impending deaths. They're also sauced, as in slathered with flavor-enhancing goop.

Either way, we can see they're feeling no pain. (That part comes later.) Right now, it's all about camaraderie, happy wishes for an eventful future, and the profound satisfaction that comes from fulfilling one's dearest wishes. That they can experience their blossoming present and fructifying future together is icing on the cake. Or more like barbecue sauce on the hunk of pig meat.

Of course, the one on the right looks like he's had a touch too much camaraderie and reminiscing about the paltry pleasures of living.

Addendum: More sauce-related wordplay, this time courtesy of a decapitated pig head wreathed in a bandanna of fire.

Best in the West Rib Cook-Off

The rib cook-off is finally given its due!

Ensconced within the classical tradition, the rib cook-off can at last be seen as the honorable institution it has ever been.

The pig in his cerulean toga and his laurel wreath signifying high birth and virtuous deeds readies to open the games and make merry.

Friends, Nevadans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to eat this here pig, not to praise him.
The evil that pigs do lives after them;
The good is oft consumed along with their flesh;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was delicious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.

Blah blah blah. Yeah, that's all very artsy-fartsy and everything, but maybe you should just listen to the pigs and start eating.

Civilization depends on obeying the pigs' wishes.

It always has.

Mainely Grillin' & Chillin'

Lobster: Say, when you think about the Raitt Homestead Farm's Mainely Grillin' & Chillin' Country BBQ State Championship, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

Pig: Hard to say, Lob. I guess the grilling? Or maybe the chilling?

Lobster: They're both important aspects of the G&C festivities, that's for sure. But aren't you forgetting something?

Pig: No, I don't think...

Lobster: Come on, Pig. What's the best part? The Reason for the Season?

Pig: Um...

Lobster: There's the grilling. The chilling. And the...?

Pig: The killing!

Lobster: Now you got it!

Pig: If it weren't for us getting killed, none of the rest of it would be worth a darn.

Lobster: Too true.

Pig: And the spilling. Spilling our blood?

Lobster: Sure, I guess.

Pig: And the willing? Like, making out your will?

Lobster: Yeah, but it's not like we own anything to give away. It's borrowed time all the way! We can't even claim ownership of our bodies.

Pig: There's the Adirondack chairs, too. Can't forget them.

Lobster: They make the chilling so much easier.

Pig: To us!

Lobster: To us!

*clink!*

Pig on the Pond

There once was a pig. There was a pond, too, but we're interested in the pig.

The pig had a dream. Unless you're three weeks old, you already know what the pig's dream was. The pig's dream was to get eaten. If he could bob around on an inner tube for a while beforehand, that would be gravy. 

So, the pig did what any pig with a purpose would do: He dedicated himself to the quest for culinary knowledge, enrolled in a pig-fattening class, and got himself fitted for a pair of swim fins.

All the pieces were falling into place. As he drifted off to sleep every night, he warmed himself with thoughts of his future, a future that offered itself to him like a big old plate of pig meat all dripping with, you know, "juice."

And after all that work… nothing happened. The pig floated from one end of the pond to the other, and no one so much as stabbed him with a fork.

Now, the average pig would have been so discouraged he might have given up completely on the idea of being killed and eaten in a superfluous festival of carnivory. But this pig was no average sacrifice. 

He didn't quit. 

No, he redoubled his efforts.

He got himself an advanced degree in Dying Studies and tried again. 

He'd give them something to shoot for. (And, hell, maybe even something to shoot at. He wasn't going to rule out anything!)

Slathering himself with BBQ 30 (ha ha?), he mounted his inner tube and took to the pond once more. Who could resist such an educated pig? He had achieved the pinnacle of academic excellence! He had finally become somebody. Just in time to become nobody.

(Coincidentally—we can only assume—the 2011 Pigs on the Pond event was designed to raise money for schools.)

Uncle Piggy Smokey Grill

We can't be sure, but Uncle Piggy sure seems like a pig with a terrible secret.

We don't pretend to know all the details, but if we had to hazard a guess, we'd say it involves his eating all the stuff you threw on the grill a few minutes ago. (See him patting his belly?)

And then there's his, well… His personal issues. It's not exactly well known outside the world of suicidefood, but cannibalism and his own impending demise have joined forces to inflame inside him an unquenchable paraphilia.

His shirt's already off, and he crosses his legs provocatively. He wants you to want him. He is making bedroom eyes at you from atop the grill. Oh, he'll make you cry Uncle.

And with that, we're off to see our therapist. Until next time!

Chickin' Pickin'

It's an allegory.

With pop-eyed abandon, the chicken pursues his own mortality.

The headless, skinless, footless chicken corpse scampers gaily ahead, leading the poor living bird further into the realm of delusion. You can almost feel how carefree the innocent cadaver is, with what solemn mischief it tempts the living.

Looking on from the stage, their role obscure, a pig and a steer.

Are they the judges of this macabre ceremony, this wretched game? Are they timekeepers of some kind, the sport's sacred adjutants? Are they waiting for their turn in the arena, their chance to confront their own imminent deaths?

No, we're not sure why we're trying so hard to make this rational either.

Animals Aren't Even Things: a digression

We've discussed the Doctrine of Inanimacy several times. It holds that animals, being mere objects, are beneath our moral consideration. Contrary to everything you have witnessed yourself, animals don't think or feel. Hell, they don't really do anything.

Of course, the bizarre part is how this concept—animals' status as nothing more than matter—so often nestles alongside suicidefoodism's foundational principle. Namely, that animals are so like us, with dreams and desires that resonate so strongly in us because they so closely mirror our own. They want to belong, to amount to something, to receive approval.

It's the central paradox of the Movement: that which should serve to create psychological distance actually inspires intimacy, and that intimacy inspires contempt. Look, it's a giant, steaming stew of contradictory impulses, and trying to understand it will only give you wrinkles.

Our point here isn't to understand. Instead, we'd like to look at something that denies even the Doctrine of Inanimacy, something that says individual animals aren't even things, something that would have actual animals vanish into sheer abstraction.

This photo is from the October 31, 2011 edition of The New York Times. It accompanied a story in The New York Times Magazine about a "farmer" hoping to do something or other with fancy meat.

Whatever.

Before you go any farther, take a look at the thing under the man's arm. If you're like us, you might have thought that object was a piglet.

You would have been wrong. The caption explains the true nature of the photo:

"Brock with one of his heritage breeds—the start of a grand culinary reclamation project."

And just like that—poof!—the pig has been rendered invisible. For the man isn't holding an individual animal, or even a physical thing! He is holding a breed, and not even one that occupies its own place in the natural order. No, it's one of the man's breeds! The pig can't even claim its own lineage, its own existence. It's as though chattel was too good for the pigs, and they had to be reduced to airy concepts.

Deny if you will that pigs are intelligent and you are uninformed. Deny if you will that pigs are sentient and you are blind. But deny that they are physical things and you are a madman.

BBQ Trophies

You are looking at a bunch of true believers. This Unholy Trinity has fully embraced their status as food. They have totemized themselves, solidifying their very objectness.

The point is that these animals have so thoroughly assimilated the very concept of their own worthlessness that they can appear—excited, eager, with fond wishes for a future constituting more of the same—as living embodiments of others' desires to eat them.

They do not merely offer their blessings on an endeavor dedicated to their destruction; they ratify the worldview and priorities of their destroyers. And so the cow represents herself as beef and the pig as ribs. They are just (temporarily) living stuff.

It is a curious phenomenon, this use of the animals' agency to reaffirm their lack of agency. Curious, but altogether commonplace.

Then again, it should hardly surprise us when animals this warped fail to appreciate the difference between prize-winner and prize.

Cohoctah Cook'n

It's the wistful side of suicide food. This pig's heart is about to burst. Look at his eyes. You can practically feel the pain in those big, heavy-lidded eyes. He wants so much. The yearning is written all over his face. His ears hang down, symbolic of his downcast soul. He suppresses a tear. When he's alone, those tears will flow. His sorrow will emerge, tentatively, so afraid is the pig of the mockery he has come to regard as his due.

To be put to work, managing the grill, while his dreams are elsewhere. Not far away, no, but elsewhere. 

Stuck behind the scenes, as it were, tending to the actors, he longs to be on the stage. It should be him crisping above the coals! It should be him sizzling, as his cooking flesh exudes its precious freight of fat! It should be him filling the skies with his smoke!

But they've got him standing behind a board (?), his "hands" alongside his, um, pointy fingernails—look, we're not clear on his anatomy at all—so he can watch. So he can eat his heart out.

But if he wants to be near, to have one foot in that glorious world of dead pigs, this is where he needs to be. Bitter as it is, this is the choice he must make. And always, in the shadowed cell of his mind, the thought resounds: Maybe one day....

Red'z Ribs

All we know is that Red looks a little—just a little—evil.

It's those leering, threatening eyes. And that iron grin. His cheeks heavy with menace. From his haughty height, he looks down on you.

Like another apostrophe-z fellow we know, Red is certainly full of attitude. We're not sure exactly how we'd characterize that attitude, but there's something of the bully about him. He's daring you to eat him and his ribs.

With that red vest straining against his girth, he taunts and tests. Do you have what it takes? Will you accept his challenge?

He's going to see you eat him if it's the last thing he does. Which is a convenient arrangement.

Le Vrai Menage

Hanging on like grim death to his cylindrical totem of cured meat, the pig ponders the meaning of his life. He quickly realizes—it's as plain as the meat in his loins, really—that without the promise of death, his life holds no meaning whatever.

The salami-sausage thing (why demean it with anything as puny as a label?) is the pig's life preserver. It is his flesh apart from his own flesh. The meat is sans rival. Nothing is better.

Nothing buoys him more surely on his journey along life's brackish course, and nothing promises to deliver him more quickly into the ocean of death.

Absolutely BBQ

Don't be distracted by the wild-eyed cowboy with the tongs and the flags. (What's he up to with his French and UK flags? Full disclosure: We don't care.)

The real story, as always, is the pig. The pig with the smile, the inviting eyes, and the spit rammed the length of its body. Whatever goes on around it, no matter the cultural significance of the celebration of which he is the centerpiece, the pig has simple needs easily met: hot steel, hot coals, and a hot old time. If only we all had such humble requirements! If only life were so accommodating to us as it is to pigs. It's almost as if the entirety of existence—the very Way of Things—were set in order specifically with the needs of pigs in mind.

And we thought we occupied the center of the world's turning! It's the pigs! It's all for them! Don't envy them their satisfaction. One day we'll all be just as dead.