Here's something that always... "bothered" is too strong of a term, but... you know how many restaurants and food products have animal mascots? Animal mascots that are advocating the killing of their own kind for food? Animals that want to be eaten themselves?

Here's a blog devoted to them: suicidefood.com

The latest posting is great:

How refreshing to come across a souvenir from Suicidefood World that requires so little analysis.

There is a pig. The pig is squirting barbecue sauce ("great" sauce) on himself. The pig is in a fire. The pig is happy, almost defiantly so. There. The End.

This might be the clearest and cleanest example of Suicide Food we have seen yet. Well done, Danny's Bar-B-Que, of wherever-the-hell-Danny's-is, USA!

The pig is burning himself alive, but all he's aware of is his pride at being "lean," and how tangy is the sauce that will soon lock in his flavor. If you doubt the twisted obscenity of the Complicit Animal, look upon Danny's pig here and know that a vicious power is at work.

That kind of reminds me of this Pluggers cartoon, written up on the Comics Curmudgeon: [link]

Suicide Food is, of course, the theme of The Muppet Movie, too.

Because when I first saw this cartoon, I thought the caption was going to be “A plugger makes jewelry from the bones of her children.”

Heh. That was my first thought too.

Suicide Food is, of course, the theme of The Muppet Movie, too.

Yeah, I was thinking of that. I have always loved Kermit's response to the frog's leg restaurant maven - about how he didn't want to be responsible for putting "millions of frogs on tiny crutches."

Liese, Victorinox makes a convertable backpack carryon: [link]

I used to read Omni a lot, mostly for the stories, which seemed racier than other scifi magazines. And the science fact was more dubious, or more out on the fringe, than Discover or Scientific AMerican or what have you. At least, in my head, which I like to think of as reality-based, but it's just a basis.

I used to read Omni a lot, mostly for the stories, which seemed racier than other scifi magazines.

Yeah, one story I remember featured sex on a space station.

And the science fact was more dubious, or more out on the fringe, than Discover or Scientific AMerican or what have you.

Oh yeah - that rings a bell.

I wonder if I have any of my old issues of Omni at my parents' house? I guess I'll find out soon (as they're selling the house).

Oh, I'm loving this blog - here's one that compares a seafood restaurant's lobster mascot being boiled with the painting The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David: [link]

Le Poisson
Le Poisson
How I love le poisson!
Love to chop
And to serve
Little fish.

Bush, on the VA Tech shootings:

"If you are a parent and your child is, you know, doing strange things on the Internet, pay attention to it and not be afraid to ask for help and not be afraid to say `I am concerned about what I am seeing," Bush said. "I think it's very important for us not to comment until it's all said and done, but that other cases there have been warning signals — that if an adult for example had taken the signals seriously, perhaps tragedy could have been avoided."

I don't think I do anything *but* strange things on the internet.