have you ever driven on the freeway and come upon a big ramshackly truck with a painted sign for a meat company? well, i have. a long time ago i remember seeing one with a dancing pig, holding a hatchet or something. it was kind of a simple drawing, with little lines showing the dancing motions, and the pig was wearing an apron, and dancing. with a machete. or hatchet. it doesn't matter which. and, you know, that pig was smiling. there's another meat company that drives around with a drawing of a cow's face, a pig's face and a chicken, all standing there together, and they have a crude little saying boasting how their meat is the greatest, but they say it in such a way that you are either offended, or you wonder if they didn't realize they were saying something kind of crass. but of course they are. so not only do they have this thing that says a crass statement, but they are further insulting the animals by having them ride along the freeway, dead inside the truck, with their smiling likenesses on the outside of the truck.
once when i was in france a very long time ago, i went into a store that was a sort of general foodstore. it wasn't a butcher's store, because i wouldn't have ever gone near that to begin with. although, when i was with someone once in vancouver or was it montreal? well, we were walking around and if one of us spied a store up ahead to the left with a row of dead ducks hanging down by their feet or something along the awning of the store, we would say as quickly as possible: "LOOK TO YOUR RIGHT!" thereby saving our friend the terrible sight. then i think once i said, "LOOK TO THE LEFT!" and the person looked to the right and saw a big dried pig head or something. it was awful. i felt bad, because she turned her head so quickly to avoid the sight and there she was, face to face with that head. boy was that awful. i also once had a friend who had a post office box near a store called 'proud bird' and they had all kinds of headless chickens, all splayed out, with their legs and wings spread, revealing all of their deepest feelings, right on a big bench-like display in the window. no modesty, nothing. proud bird. it was awful. it was one of the most denigrating things i had ever seen. it's one thing to eat a bird, or an animal. if you follow tinyengine,--what am i saying? everyone, but EVERYONE follows tinyengine--so by now you know that i am no longer a vegetarian after nearly 30 years and i eat turkeys and chickens and fish. and i even now prepare them. i buy raw bird breast and unwrap it and wash it and even though i am terrified that some salmonella has splashed up onto the side of my toaster where it will breed and leach into my toast, i still cook the stuff. but i don't jump around and poke fun at the raw stuff as it's sitting there on the butcher paper. i don't spread it out and prop up my old coloring books of pictures of smiling animals on the farm, while the dead bird is sitting there, all suffocating and pressed up against the cellophane of the little styrofoam package from the store. so why the heck are there smiling animals on those trucks? and also on the big signs at barbecue places, there's always a kind of weird, plump, fetching pig, with a--dare i say it--slightly come-hither look on its face, striding across the sign with a big spatula in its front hoof? it usually has a plump and rounded hindquarter and a high-heel kind of hoof. it's awful. i'm not kidding. look next time you go by a place like that.
anyway, i started to tell you a story about that big open freezer section in that store in france a long time ago. they sold lapin which is rabbit for those of you who didn't get my french egg joke a few days ago. but anyway, they sold lapin. to eat. bunny. to eat. comprehending that, at the time, was a stretch for me too. but anyway, they did sell it. and before i go any further, i want to say that i am probably the biggest francophile you would ever meat. i mean meet. i accidentally just typed that. can you believe it? that's live broadcasting, folks. gotta keep going. i tell you this so you know that i love the french. i love france. when i malign their rabbit-eating, it is just a culinary opinion, not a cultural one. but they had a sign for the lapin at however many francs per pound and then above it, they had torn a picture from a magazine of a girl in a frilly dress holding a little white and grey easter bunny in her lap. underneath it they told you how much per pound you'd pay for the frozen bunny.
i mean, don't you think it's mean to make the rabbit cute? or to make the pig dance, or to have the cow wink at you as you go by on the highway? not that it should be a menacing pig or an ugly cow, because that would only vilify the animals and it might be worse, because then it would seem like they had been depicted as bad creatures that should be killed and eaten. but maybe they could have a picture of a plate of meat or something. the plate of ribs could be up, dancing on little tap shoes. or else, the animals' mouths could just be straight lines, relaxed: not smiling, not sad or mean. it's just something to think about if you open a meat store or a bbq restaurant.
i have a tunafish salad sandwich in my refrigerator. it's now 12:36 and i'll probably have it in a few minutes. i bought it yesterday for my spouse of all sposi, but he forgot it today, so i am going to eat it instead. i saw salmon spawning (and dying) recently and i haven't had a piece of salmon since. i haven't recently run into a tunafish, so i'm just going to eat it and apologize and try not to picture it with a little net in its fin, smiling.
