Apologies for the Hiatus

My life unexpectedly became very busy, very quickly.  Sorry for the wait!  Next post will be up within a week!

Eat Me!

source

source

source

source

source

I love restaurants that advertise their products through cutesy little livestock animals just waiting for someone to eat them like it's all they've ever wanted.  Seriously.  I don't know though, maybe being eaten would be nice if being stuck in a pen all day was the alternative.  But whatever -- I see this everywhere I go.  It's a pretty popular way to advertise barbecued pork ribs in Korea, just as it is in the U.S.  I remember seeing it a few times in Japan, too.  This is the really weird side of anthropomorphism, I guess.  The side where we project our desire to eat meat onto the animal from which that meat is made.  Like all these sadomasochistic animals are just going "Hey!  That's not such a bad idea!  I do taste pretty good, if I may say so myself."  There's a whole blog dedicated to this sort of imagery, and it's called Suicide Food. There's also this post, which elaborates a little bit on our age-old tendency to believe animals really want to be eaten.

Oh, and this video:

Nameneko Cats (なめ猫)

source

source

source

source

source

I originally came across Nameneko / Namennayo cats in some magazine I was reading.  There was a picture of an issue of Life Sucks Diegest (a graffiti and hip hop magazine from the late '90s / early '00s) in there somewhere, with a cover photo featuring two delinquent cats smoking in the boys' room at school.  I still like to look at it when I need cheering up.  As you may be able to tell from the third image in this post, the costumes they put these cats into ("they" being Satoru Tsuda and his team) were somewhat awkward, but according to this post at Mooky Chick, discomfort was not an issue.  And as you can see in the set photo above, plenty of attention was paid by Tsuda's assistants.  That said, please enjoy these for what they are: f***ing adorable.

Uno Moralez

source

source

source

I originally saw Uno Moralez's work over at Monster Brains, where it fit in quite well.  I was really intrigued by the top image of feline sex workers, although it isn't included in Moralez's portfolio (I had to dig through his Livejournal page a bit to find it).  It's violent and sexual in a pretty disturbing way (what I've posted here is only the tip of the iceberg), so I don't recommend it for the prudish or the faint of heart, but I do highly recommend it to everyone else.

Inaugural Post: Smoking Tigers

Source

Source

Source

From a Korean folktale in which two rabbits narrowly avoid becoming lunch for a tiger by placating him with a nice draw on the ol' pipe.