WTP. (What the Pork.)

(Sits, tharning* at the screen.)

Food is fraught. There is no getting around it. In a First World society – where food is abundant - (even though, in a truly perverse turn, there are those in this First World who are still starving.) our nutritional intake has made its move far beyond an instrument of survival to an expression of fantasy, fetish and power. Our uneasy relationship with food in the US mirrors that of our twitchy sexual appetites as a source of shame, punishment, titillation or thrall.

This is not unique to the American Experience. Anxious murmurs are heard all through out the centuries about over-indulgence in any respect. We bathe in the battery acid of our own guilt over what we’ve eaten, when, how much, why. God. I ate that entire pizza by myself to fill the ever-widening crevasse of loneliness, didn’t I?

Every day, there it is. Food. Don’t eat it. DO eat it. Indulge yourself, you disgusting waste. We trumpet our victories in denying our taste buds that last French fry or Snickers Miniature. But lurking just around the corner is another temptation, another Food Hooker waiting to ask your hard up belly if it’s looking for a date.

And, oh, my god, it is.

This tears at us inside. I want that, no, I don’t, wait, I DO.

Ads like this DON'T HELP ANYTHING.

I have nothing against the entanglement of sex and food. To each his own, tra la, tra la.

I do, however, get the fierce heebie jeebies over a woman (?) in a pig suit - perhaps on leave from the Furry convention - aping the sexy Flashdance choreography as she (?) yanks the chain and releases BARBECUE SAUCE on her/him/itself, only to flick it in the direction of two nonplussed dudes and an ANTHROPOMORPHIZED BAG (presumably filled with Sliders or, gulp, more BBQ sandwiches), dousing them in reddish sauce and then cutting to the "Come Hither" shot of the sandwiches themselves, only to return to the dudes as one of them, in a, let's face it, suggestive maneuver, wipes a bit of the sauce off the bag and LICKS IT OFF HIS FINGER.

What club is this? Is that guy dating the bag? Would you, I ASK YOU, lick ANYthing off of ANYone - even a date - that was splashed on you by a sweaty exotic dancer? Even if you were in Amsterdam and hopped up on goofballs?

And why is the sauce "Come Hither"? So you can (that's right) Pork It?

None of this, and I mean NONE, makes me want to eat anything from this tawdry city called White Castle. Where every club features a Mascot Sauce Dance and Paper Bags with Feet are the only escorts in town. I round the corner and there are the Chicken Ring Hookers arm in arm with the Douchebag Husbands.

(This is to say nothing of the White Castle commercials that feature the little Paper Bags stalking unsuspecting humans in their places of business or at a gym. CAN'T YOU LEAVE US ALONE?)


White Castle is counting on our twisted casserole of Pop Culture Strip Club Junk Food Shame in order to sell us its wares.

"Hey, baby, how 'bout you and me get to makin' some bacon?"

We pull out the $1.13 it costs for a sandwich, knowing what dread the dawn will bring.





*Tharn - v. Stupefied, distraught, hypnotized with fear. But can also, in certain contexts, mean "looking foolish," or again "heartbroken" or "forlorn." Originally found in Richard Adams book "Watership Down".