Go Whole Hog!

My family's philosophy when I grew up was, Anything worth doing is worth doing whole hog. Go long, go deep, or go home. Lukewarm doesn't cut it, we'll spew you out of our mouth.

Now I'm old, and kids come to me for advice. (It's true, here and there you find stragglers.) And I tell them, much like Joseph Campbell's "Follow your bliss," whatever it is, go whole hog! They look at me, with doubt in their big innocent Walter Keane eyes. But I get a stern look on my face, and in my agitation point toward the door, snarling, "Now!"

I've been going whole hog all my life, and except for the dangers of always being ALL IN, it's been a fairly good ride.

But, let me say, I used to have a secret grudge against some in my family. Even though we believed in going whole hog -- and this is literal -- I'd still catch them buying half an animal. Know what I mean? That's one of three things: Shortsightedness, absentmindedness, or hypocrisy. I don't think it was hypocrisy, because they still went whole hog in everything else.

I'd think, "What's the use of buying half a hog or beef? Especially if it means letting the other half go to waste. Buy the whole thing!" And lockers back then were meant to handle the whole thing. These were people who went through the Depression. When times were good they built meat lockers like you wouldn't believe, the size of football fields.

In more recent years, though, as you'd probably guess, some of our sicklier friends stopped eating vast quantities of meat, and that didn't help. Guys at the locker threw up their hands and went out of business. The enormous freezer units were pulled out -- electricity also went up, taxes went up on the larger buildings, etc. Leading me to one conclusion: Life is nothing but a big conspiracy to screw us out of decent sized meat lockers.

There were still folks who needed lockers -- thank God -- but they had to do with smaller ones. My family, I regret to repeat, had a part in this devolution, buying half an animal when a full animal would've been better.

You never know what your actions might be if you don't go whole hog. But I've seen it happen. That's one of the benefits of old age. The wisdom of going whole hog. The chief detriment is they think you're crazy, depriving themselves.

A long-haired (bald on top) guy marches around the square with a protest sign, "Buy the whole animal." But across the lawn, a bunch of PETA women are stripped naked and painted like tigers. You tell me, who draws the crowd? The old man can do nothing but go home in tears. That, and prepare himself for even smaller lockers. Tell you what I'll do, I'll double down on buying personal freezers, energy crisis be damned!

Sorry I went on and on about it. There's very few things I care passionately about; meat lockers just happens to be one of them.

Anyway, people come to me. And that's what I say, Go whole hog. The ironic thing is, I myself have never ventured very far from my old comfort zone. But when I chose this path, I went whole hog. And so here I've been, in my comfort zone, at my grandparents' old place, vegetating and chilling, chilling and vegetating, but always doing it, strictly, whole hog.

Nature's Most Perfect Food - 2014

In previous years, I have summarily pronounced Tabasco as "Nature's Most Perfect Food." This year, with the possibility of shaking things up, I'm putting it in a head to head competition with a couple other great contenders. We'll see how it fares.

According to Wikipedia, "Food is that stuff we eat." If that's true, and I believe it is, we have to reason that some of it's likely to be better. That's what we're wanting nail down today, not only which is better but so good it deserves the sterling appellation of "Nature's Most Perfect Food -- 2014."

This year, I have three finalists, which I will list in alphabetical order, double-checked for complete impartiality: Bacon, Milk, and Tabasco. The competition will be fair, but I must insist, my decision will be final, certainly through the rest of the year, and until such time, if ever, that my taste buds and/or the inscrutable criterion "Extreme Unction" change.

Milk is a weird one, the beverage of mammals, produced right straight from bodies of the female variety. I'm given to understand that milk was my first meal, and was what I subsisted on through much of my first couple years. That's awesome to me, that I was so stuck on one thing. All I wanted was more milk, apparently. I still love it.

Bacon is a food we hear a lot about these days. At the current time, there seems to be a huge bacon kick with the public. Of our three foods, bacon is the one that fluctuates the most wildly in price. Cows regularly put out milk and it goes to market, but hog farmers know they've got food-gold, like oil, so the prices are always up and down. And Tabasco is regular as rain -- regular as rain used to be, before global warming. We'll just say now it's regular as Antarctic ice calving.

I want to underscore one other thing about bacon, that my love for it has nothing to do with jumping on today's wild bacon bandwagon; I've always had it. I love opening a pack of bacon. It's in there like the pages of a book, and you know it's going to be a taste adventure. Plus, hogs have always been a personal favorite.

I've known lots of people who raised hogs, and they depended on people like me for their income. I've seen freshly slaughtered hogs, not a good sight. I've heard hogs being castrated, not a good sound. But I figure any animal that's willing to go through all that, I'm not going to turn away their meat. One of the weirdest hog sights I've ever seen was something like 1,000 baby pigs all together in one room. Just a writhing, seething, heaving, disgusting mass of pig. I remember saying, "Get me the hell out of here!"

Milk and bacon, coming from animals, don't sound immediately desirable. But I focus on the finished product, a big glass of cold milk and a plate of nicely cooked bacon. Milk poured well before its spoil date, and bacon not fried to death, but not undercooked. So chewy, so flavorful, so nutritious, so much enjoyable fat that you can't help loving it. Washed down with cold milk. I always loved getting the little milk cartons in school. They only gave us white back in those days, unlike the current more-pampered generation. 

Then there's my old friend Tabasco. I've made it well known over the years, in real life and on this blog, that I love Tabasco. I've slathered so much Tabasco on things over the years, they really should make me an honorary citizen of Avery Island, my own little cottage, etc. Once I sneezed and had Tabasco way up my sinuses, nearly burning out my system. At the time I thought I would die, but I lived to laugh about it later.

These days, though, I've had a harder time with Tabasco. So I'm using less. I seem to be getting more sensitive to it as my aging molecules wither and die. With my mind I love it the same, but my molecules counsel restraint. I don't know what to do. I've always bulldozed ahead with my mind, but it's foolish to cross molecules. If they say they're tearing, straining, and dying, I need to listen, don't I? Or I could simply deny that bad things can happen, like with global warming, and press on full speed ahead. Who's ever heard of negative consequences from anything?

The way I'll decide the contest this year is according to the principle of Extreme Unction. Which of the three foods puts the most (and best) unction in my extremities? Right away, it's a contest. Milk, being my earliest (and only) food, obviously kept my extremities nice and rosy. It had no competition and did it alone. But having no competition also suggests an unfair advantage. As far as serving up unction today, yes, I will say milk still does. However, the old advantage is gone. Milk supplements, it's not the main thing.

Bacon has tons of unction. And my extremities find it satisfying in virtually every way. The one downside of bacon is that it often overloads my system with guilt. I'm always worrying, Have I cooked too much? Will I get fatter than I want? Should I eat it every meal? Is it bad for me? Still, just thinking of bacon there on the paper towel, the grease being quickly wicked away, leaving those lean strips in a seductive spread eagle pose, I'm always pleased and, even now, feel a tingling in my extremities.

Tabasco also carries a lot of unction, up the ying yang unction. Tabasco even makes me feel proud. I know Grandpa would love to see his boy eating a ton of Tabasco. He used to put it on my plate, a drop, and laugh himself to tears watching me trying to get it past my teeth. Then, after his passing, somehow his tolerance of it was transferred to me. So I'm no longer the boy but the man! Like Leonardo's man, my extremities are totally stretched out, and Tabasco hits them all, a bulls-eye every time. But Tabasco, fantastic as it is, is like milk in this one way, supplementary. Yes, occasionally I put it on a plate and lick it up, but not very often anymore. Because of age, the molecules, etc.

All three of the great foods have amazing unction, and each one's unction touches the extremities in ways hard to believe, or they wouldn't even be in the running. I tip my hat to all three. But the one food this year that puts the most Extreme Unction in my extremities, and therefore will hold the title forever of "Nature's Most Perfect Food -- 2014" is going to be  .... Bacon!

Boar Balls -- The New Family Fun Game

Here's a game I came up with because I had to come up with something! And you know what? It turned out to be a real hit! All the kids, my nieces and nephews, have been to the State Fair -- it's a family tradition -- so they know all about the horrendously large balls on the "Biggest Boar."

Every year farmers compete to bring in the biggest boar. They must feed them like crazy through the year, because they're the biggest things you've ever seen. They're so big, in fact, that you never see them stand up. Whether they could stand up, I suppose they could. But it's always so hot, it looks like they prefer to just lie there, their balls hanging out, exposed to a terrible swarm of flies. The two biggest boars are one of the main attractions at the fair.

Now, about the game. It came about because of a little serendipity. By that I mean, I have very sweaty feet, the weirdest, sweatiest feet you've ever seen. It happens like this: My feet feel like they're ice cold, while all this time they're sweating, making them even icier and colder. Consequently, if you see me walking around, I always have like three or four pair of fresh socks in my pockets. My pockets bulge out like a hamster's cheeks. It's quite a sight to see.

OK, next, it just so happened I was at the home of my nieces and nephews, and their kids, since some of them are getting older. This was at a birthday celebration for one of them. And some of them were looking curiously at my jacket, all bulging out, like maybe I was growing love handles. I was too embarrassed to tell them about my foot problems. So I thought quick and pulled out the socks so they could see it was all quite harmless. I said it was a game! But what?

Well, as these things go, one thing led to another. And next thing you knew, I had invented the game of Boar Balls. Which goes something like this: You have two teams. Each team has an IT. It is the teams' task, starting off about 12 feet away from the other team's IT, to ask questions of the other team. With a right answer, team 1 stays in place. With a wrong answer, team 1 advances one foot toward team 2's IT. Then, of course, the first team to get their IT smacked in the face with Boar Balls loses.

We've found you can make it a lot funner the grosser you are. Such as "Those are really sweaty ones coming!" Or "The flies are everywhere, swarming around!" And "How funky, very funky, those balls are!" You can picture how it goes: IT doesn't want to be smacked, because they're busy picturing in their mind an actual boar backing toward them. Which, if that really happened, it would be very gross and painful.

The day I made up the game I just happened to have 500 questions on small cards relating to true facts about hogs. Such as, "True or False, the boar is a male." I know, that sounds really easy, but some of these kids, with our educational system today, and their addiction to video games, don't really know what male and female even mean. Then there's questions that kids simply don't know because they're more agricultural whereas the kids are urban. Such as, "With the hog, it's a well-known expression that they're able to use everything but the __BLANK__." None of the kids knew this, again, probably a result of their addiction to video games and their lack of exposure to this fact. The answer is "The squeal." I also wrote in some gimmes, such as, "True or False, a groundhog is the same as a farm hog." That's false. The groundhog is different from a farm hog, the main difference its much smaller balls.

Since it's "The New Family Fun Game," naturally I'm sensitive that all families are not alike. There are some -- I'm thinking of our Jewish and Muslim friends -- who won't have anything to do with pork. For them, I recommend the same game, while calling it "Bull Balls." I've also written 500 questions on the big beefers.

My own family being at least nominally Christian, and not having any sensitivity about Boars vs. Beef -- frankly, we eat both, often together -- stick to the Boar version. Unless, and this is important, unless we've already memorized the Boar answers and need some variety, at which point we switch to the Bull questions.

No matter how you play it, it's both dreadful and yet kind of fun to picture that massive animal backing your direction, if you're IT, and having those huge balls smacking you solid in the face. As for me, even though I'm the guy that came up with the game, my imagination's working overtime and I don't want those huge balls in my face either! Crazy but true.

As Worthless As Boar Boobies

"You're as worthless as tits on a boar!" How many times have most of us heard that in our lives? It's one of those deals where if I had a nickel for every time, even taking into account inflation and dividing by two, I could've retired at 40. But instead of saving my money and letting it accrue, I figured, "What? A nickel, that's nothing!" and spent it. Or would have had I gotten them. As it turned out, even the idea of retiring early -- it was a lie -- was worthless as tits on a boar. Can a guy even retire when he's on disability -- game toe -- I'll be dragging this damn toe around forever, like the palsy, worthless as tits on a boar.

Probably even writing about tits on a boar is worthless as tits on a boar. What good's it going to do me? I don't get a big kick out of reading my own stuff. It's like Frank Sinatra, who wouldn't listen to his own records. But I've gotten this far, it's tough to stop now. I usually think that way about investments of time. It's been five minutes more or less, and even if it is indeed worthless as tits on a boar, I have my standards. Waste not, want not. You can't get your time back. So you have two choices, stop now and regret having started, or keep going and try to redeem it. My way is, if the spirit's moving -- anytime now! -- I keep going...

I actually get weird glimpses of ultimate reality, those glimpses that hit you all of a sudden and only last one second, based on this very thing. From starting things, then not being able to stop. Like the Big Bang, it's hard to collapse once it's erupted. As a personal example, which might turn out to be worthless as tits on a boar, too, let me offer this: You've got a stack of things to sort, let's say 25 things, like cards. You get them half way sorted, then you think, "I'm going to do it a different way, like descending instead of ascending order." For me, that can be a real freak out moment, albeit with some spiritual touches.

I had this idea of me being in an argument with another person. The other person says, "That's as worthless as tits on a boar." Then I say, "Do boars even have tits?" He says, "Most don't." I say, "Have you actually looked at most boars in the world?" Naturally he hasn't, which means I've got him. Finally, I make a declarative statement, qualifying it like crazy, "I've heard that the general consensus of people who know about these things seems to be that boars technically don't usually have tits per se, but nubbies." Like most men. And no, I haven't looked at most men, although I believe that the general consensus of people who know about these things -- Elizabeth Taylor, Mae West, and Rusty Warren of "Knockers Up" fame -- seems to be that most men technically don't usually have tits per se, but nubbies.

So where's that leave us? Probably at women. And here's where I am an authority. I have looked at most women, and ... I'll leave it to your imagination what they have. It's not boar tits, and they're not boring. In fact the more hidden they are, it seems, the more fascinating they are. A point worth making? Or worthless as tits on a boar?

Just one more point on boars. I truly have seen any number of boars. I've been to the State Fair, I know the facts of life. You go there and they have boars lounging around their pens, always with their bottom ends hanging out, since there's no where else to put them. Have you ever seen the privates on a boar? Holy mackerel! Skip to the next paragraph while I fan myself!

I'm thinking, just for the heck of it, that I'm gonna make various allusions to the balls of a boar from the album titles of the great Welsh singer Tom Jones. OK? First, they remind me of "The Lead and How to Swing It." That's a Tom Jones CD I used to have. Boar balls are strange to me, but to them "It's Not Unusual." What they're like to carry around is something I'm glad I don't have to know. But for them, it's probably a lot of "Funny Familiar Forgotten Feelings." Forgotten because they lay down a lot, and only get up when flies bite them too much. Compared to a boar, I think of myself as "I Who Have Nothing."

What if you fell in a boar's pen and he thought you were a sow? He might say, "Say You'll Stay Until Tomorrow." If you did, you'd say, "What a Night." And not necessarily in a good way. You certainly wouldn't wait around for him to "Reload." Probably for the most part, when they asked, "Do You Take This Man" you'd take just one quick look and reply, "Rescue Me." But, alas, once you were gone, the boar might forever "Carry a Torch."

OK, everyone, please do me a favor: If anyone else has already written about boar tits and boar balls, particularly in reference to Tom Jones albums, let me know. I'd hate to be accused to copying someone else's idea. But one thing I don't want to hear is if you think this blog is worthless as tits on a boar. I'm sensitive. As the Tom Jones album puts it, what I need is "Tender Loving Care."

Pigs: "Eat More Bacon"

[Artwork COPYRIGHT 2011 dbkundalini, All Rights Reserved, please don't steal it. Note: Getty Images, please feel free to contact me for usage rights. Limited rights offered to Pork Producers, International.]

I was with a guy at the local barbecued pork restaurant recently. I think it was last Thursday, possibly Tuesday or Wednesday, definitely not Monday, and they're not open on Sunday. And I was busy on Saturday...

Anyway, they have quite a few pigs and other hog-related memorabilia, statues, knickknacks, and portraits there, with the pigs seeming to condone and even encourage the eating of their meat. This struck my friend as being kind of odd.

And, now that I think of it, it also strikes me as being somewhat weird. Maybe they ought to be like the Chik-Fil-Et (sp?) chickens, I guess it is, or maybe cows, that are encouraging possible customers at their restaurant to eat more cow or chickens, whichever is opposite of what they actually serve there. I guess it'd have to be chicken in a place called "Chick-Fill-Et." Like they must serve chicken filets, so there's cows encouraging people to "EAT MOR CHIKN."

That makes more sense if your whole thing is to have people eat the other guy and not you. Or the other species and not you. But it's shortsighted, like in the Martin Niemoller quote, if Niemoller had been a cow: "They came for the chickens and I didn't stop them. Now they're coming for me and there's no chickens to save me." Still, being shortsighted when it comes to your self-preservation can be an effective way to save yourself, because it at least buys time and allows you to plan your next move.

But getting back to pigs, and I'm 100% serious about this, in my opinion it's better to exist than not. If I had never been born at all, imagine how unhappy I'd be. I'd be sitting there going, "What? A stinking chigger can exist, but I can't exist?! How crazy is that!" You'd be unhappy, too! Or step it up, with something better than a chigger but still not as good as a man. "A stinking pig has a shot at life, but not me? Good grief, what kind of world is this anyway?!"

Since I actually do exist, I'm happy to share the land with pigs and chiggers.

OK, back to the pigs existing. There are millions of pigs, and the fact of the matter is hardly any of them, like less than 1%, would exist if they weren't being bred for food. Think about it, no farmer is going to breed 5,000 pigs just to have them standing around. He's trying to make money, not clutter up the farm with useless pigs. Therefore, if no one ate pigs, pigs wouldn't exist in any quantity. So if you're a pig, and you realize all this, you are going to do what you can to make sure people eat more pork, because that's the only thing that gave you a shot at life.You're not going to have piglets without that policy, however revolting it might otherwise be to you.

Just today, I had four slices of bacon. And I feel good about it, because I'm doing my part.