Hog Hannibal Lecter
Internet round-up for the week of March 24, 2025
Hello hello, and happy Friday!
It’s wonderfully sunny right now (and 71 DEGREES!!!) after an insane thunderstorm this morning. I’m looking forward to cracking open a couple of windows and getting some fresh air in this place before it rains all next week, ugh.
This week has been busy, as usual — writing, writing, and more writing. I said in December I was going to take up a hobby this year, and it’s almost April, and well…I still have eight months to find a hobby, right? Don’t I have until December 31, 2025 at 11:59 PM?? Please say yes.
Unrelated, does anyone want to come over and teach me how to sew or something? And then answer my annoying questions when I almost immediately forget the instructions one week later?1
Constant grind aside, I’ve mostly just been decompressing with Food Network and sleep this week. Of course I’ve been online — OF COURSE — but actually, maybe a little less than usual? Certainly hasn’t stopped me from being in front of screens, obviously. Just ask my near-empty bottle of rewetting eye drops.
At any rate, you know I’ve got goods for ya, so let’s get on into ‘em:
Headline of the week
A hearty TMI thank you to my pal Viktoria, who brought this NYT headline (gift link, bb) to my attention this week:
For context, here’s a video of Karis in the show ring with her piggie:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
As a person who has shown pigs (usually referred to as hogs in livestock competitions) and other livestock in the past, this is…extremely normal!
I’m not sure I actually have any photos of me in the show ring with one of my pigs, but I was able to quickly locate this image for street cred:
One big difference between showing pigs and other animals — the pigs are all just loose, roaming around the show ring. You’ll notice Karis has a little tiny whip2 that she uses to direct the pig around.
There’s a judge in the ring checking out all the pigs to choose a winner. On average, I’d guess there are 12-15 pigs in the ring at one time (usually divided up by weight class). So you’re trying to navigate your pig toward the judge so they can see their front, away so they can see their butts, and left/right in front of the judge so they can see the pig’s sides as well.
The judge isn’t going to approach you to make sure they to see each pig — it’s your job as a showman to make sure they get a good look. Plus — you want to get the judge’s attention, because, well, everyone else in the ring is doing the same thing. How do you get said attention?
Eye contact.
When the judge begins placements of his favorites, he’ll point you to a set of pens stationed on the side of the show ring. So you also need to be paying attention so you get the memo.
Then it’s your responsibility to get your pig over to the pen, open the gate, and get them inside. You’ll stay in there with your pig until the judge finishes up and tells everyone what place they are.
Also! Off topic, but Karis is showing a type of pig commonly called a “blue butt.” I had one of those — they’re a cross between a Yorkshire pig (white) and a Hampshire pig (Oreo-colored black and white). I also showed one Yorkshire, but mostly picked Hampshires because, well, they’re just cute. (Here’s a lil guide to pig breeds.)
So, yeah — is Karis a little OTT? Sure. Does that work? Sometimes, yes. Not always — but it can’t hurt to have a little personal style. So that’s that on pig showmanship!
As an aside, I’d love to take this opportunity to tell you about my pig, Squeaky (I named her that because she squeaked instead of squealed when she was little), who was like the Jake Paul of show pigs. All she wanted to do was fight. The second she entered the show ring, she would pick a target, and attack.
Now if you’ve never seen pigs fight, it’s absolutely ridiculous. As you can imagine, their main weapons are their teeth, so they bite at each other. But in order to attack, they kind of have to get on the side of the other pig. Their teeth aren’t right up front. So they end up locked in this weird, side by side stance where they’re biting each other’s necks and spinning around in circles and squealing insanely loud.
Here, I’ve drawn you a terrible diagram:
Anyway, you can’t really break them up because a) they’re biting each other super hard and b) they’re like 90% muscle and weigh somewhere around 220 lbs. So I’d mostly just stand there kind of sheepishly and point my little whip at her while she acted like hog Hannibal Lecter.
Eventually, someone would come running in with a big metal gate and mash it down in between the pigs to separate them, and the fight would end, and I’d get back to showing until Squeaky saw somebody else she didn’t like.
The judge would sometimes pen us up — not because we were winning, but because Squeaky was making such a goddamn scene. As you can imagine, it’s hard to win if the judge never gets to see your pig because they’re acting like a lunatic.
Anyway.
I’m kind of wondering, now, if I could interest you in a Deep Dive about the wild world of livestock shows? I have an incredible amount of knowledge on the topic (I’ve showed cows, goats, pigs, and helped friends with chickens) that is functionally useless in most situations, so…uh, yeah, let me know.
I’m being personally attacked
One thing about me is that as soon as I become obsessed with a product, the company that makes it discontinues it. It has happened to me dozens of times throughout my life, but this week, two separate companies have wronged me. And as you know, I will never miss an opportunity to complain about a Brand™.
You’ll recall my previous Deep Dive referencing my favorite Doritos, perhaps?
Well, those were discontinued this week, along with my favorite tea:
Is this newsworthy? Decidedly not.
Is this also my little tiny corner of the internet to complain? Yes, it is.
Am I embarrassed to admit my main frustration is that there is a non-zero amount of time these two products in conjunction have served as my lunch? Only a little.
You should all know that I once bought an entire case of Dove soap off eBay after they discontinued my favorite scent. They lasted for about six months and then I was forced to find an inferior product. But my chips? MY CHIPS??? And MY TEA???? 😭
Seriously, imagine introducing a delicious product, getting people obsessed with it, and then removing it from shelves.
Thank you for being my captive audience during these trying times.
Good Reads
The morning routine of Ashton Hall, a fitness influencer, has been making the rounds on Twitter this week. The whole thing is totally unhinged, complete with removing mouth tape, dunking his face in sparkling ice water served to him by a faceless woman, and somehow hovering in the air above a swimming pool for a full four minutes.
He essentially spends hours doing almost nothing, other than getting on what I assume is supposed to be a business call where he tells some invisible man, “we gotta get to at least 10,000.” 10,000 what?? Dollars? Bananas? Hostage wife-chefs?
An astute viewer also noticed this key detail:
If you’ve been seeing Saratoga water and bananas together online this week, that’s why. Anyway, Garbage Day did an absolutely fabulous write up on the fitness dude phenomenon that’s totally worth reading.
Randomly selected animal cutie
Cute animal video referencing internet memes? We love to see it.
That’s it from me this week! I’m off to spend at least 5 minutes away from screens while I get a snack, and then try to peruse the world wide web for a hobby. Have a great weekend!
K
Definitely not how my attempts to knit or crochet have gone previously. Not at all.
These aren’t like super painful to the pigs or anything! It’s mostly just a stick. Some of them have little leather flaps on the end, which was my preferred style. Here’s a link to a whole bunch of different styles; the “hog bat” at the bottom is what I’m referencing as my fave. I just felt like they looked cooler and had a little more surface area.
Didn’t know I would be all in on a pig fighting diagram but I was legitimately pumped when I scrolled down and there it was. Deep dive very much needed.
Would absolutely LOVE a deep dive on animal showing.