It's odd marketing when creatures want to become your dinner

I first noticed it in a Tokyo subway, of all places. The sign depicted an enormous, anthropomorphized cup of ramen noodles smiling out at the throngs of Japanese commuters. In its right hand was a hefty pair of chopsticks. It was reaching over its head, dipping the chopsticks into the steaming soup atop its face and extracting a generous mouthful of noodles.

The ramen cup was effectively preparing to eat its own brain.

During years of driving through America's backroads, I would see this aesthetic often. Southern barbecue joints were particularly prone to it. Once, on a rural road in North Carolina, I passed a place that depicted a plump hog, grinning broadly and reclining on a fuming grill. One hoof was raised in greeting, beckoning the diner. The other was basting itself -- presumably in its own juices.

It's not always so carnivorous. Bruno King of Ravioli, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, features a sign depicting a three-ravioli pileup, almost like a pasta totem pole. The uppermost ravioli -- which, bear in mind, is sitting on the other two -- is holding a fork and a knife in gloved, Mickey Mouse-style hands and licking his semolina lips. Whether he's preparing to feast on himself or his compatriots is unclear.

Entertaining signs

Funny thing about the Internet: It can make you crazy, but it can also make you realize you're not crazy -- and not alone. I thought I was the only idiot to notice this kind of thing until a friend sent me a link to a Web site called "Suicide Food" (http://suicidefood.blogspot.com ). It chronicles -- but is emphatically not pleased by -- "animals that desire to be eaten."

"Suicide Food actively participates in or celebrates its own demise," the Web site writes. "Suicide Food identifies with the oppressor. Suicide Food is a bellwether of our decadent society."

And, finally, this: "Suicide Food is not funny."

Well, we can differ on that one.

Not to say they don't have an excellent point to make, but the whole affair is still pretty damn entertaining, particularly when you look at the categories involved. Among them: "crawfish," "apple of death," "sunglasses," "tuxedo" and the always classic "wink."

Let's face it: Untethered capitalism has always been pretty carnivorous. It's not coincidence that the signature meal of a Gilded Age robber baron was a massive steak dismantled by a huge, sharp knife. Consuming animal flesh, whether ethical or not, is nothing if not a gastronomic power play.

Couple that with the marketing proclivity to come up with cartoon characters to brand products, from the bald and earringed Mr. Clean to Speedy Alka-Seltzer to the various crazy birds that tend to advertise sugared breakfast cereal, and you have conditions ideal for autocarnivorousness.

The Suicide Foods site rates its examples in miniature "psych evaluations" that go from one noose ("mildly troubling") to five nooses ("Ye gods! I must go wash out my eyeballs!").

Genre categories

There's the scarlet lobster basking in a boiling pot, facing death happily while drinking a mug of beer. There's the Australian butcher whose logo is a giggling cow looking at its hindquarters, which are being sliced off as steaks by a huge disembodied knife. There's the pig that's opening a trap door in its abdomen and extracting a rack of delicious smoked ribs. There's the hot dog with a face squeezing ketchup onto its own head.

Most troubling, though, is the category "sexy." It includes a deeply disturbing image called "Grills Gone Wild," depicting a female pig wearing three bras and posing provocatively.

Viewing this theme park of meaty death, you have to wonder: Do humans have such a developed on-off switch about where their food comes from that we not only factor out the imagery but, in fact, accept it as a reason for salivation? How far, exactly, can we go down the "Eat Me" road without grossing ourselves out?

Maybe we don't really want to know.

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POLISH FARE

I grew up in Pittsburgh, which meant understanding a sometimes confusing landscape of Eastern European foods that draw quizzical looks when you mention them elsewhere. City chicken? What on earth is that? Kolbassi? Is that the same as kielbasa? And what's a pierogi, anyway? Isn't it just a ravioli with potato or sauerkraut inside?

So I was pleased to see that some students from my suburban Pittsburgh alma mater, Hampton High School, had decided to chronicle the culinary and cultural traditions of the Pittsburgh neighborhood known as Polish Hill, which -- like so many other old folkways -- are in danger of disappearing.

Their book, "Polish Hill Remembered," includes old-time recipes for the gastronomically adventurous, including a duck-blood soup named czarnina, savory dishes like kapusta (a salt pork and cabbage concoction) and klopsy (Polish hamburgers) and a confection of unlikely nomenclature called "Aunt Marcy's Nut Horns."

In a landscape dominated by the big boys -- Italian, Mexican, Chinese -- having access to unusual traditional recipes seems a worthy pursuit, be it Polish or any other ethnicity. If you want to cook up some of these things, see www.polishhillremembered.com