Interview With a Pig

Summary

The content is an eccentric interview between the author, Gutbloom, and a pig named Wellington, exploring themes of interaction, the past Internet culture, and the pig's perspective on life.

Abstract

The article titled "Interview With a Pig" recounts a unique conversation between Gutbloom and a pig at a petting zoo/farm. Gutbloom reminisces about the interactive nature of the old Internet, where readers had a sense of involvement, and then introduces the interview, which was requested by his readers. The pig, Wellington, with a penchant for lofty language, claims to be of noble lineage and corrects Gutbloom's characterization of him as a "gutter pig." Despite admitting to familiarity with "slop" and alluding to the harsh realities of farm life, Wellington maintains a sense of dignity and pride in his work entertaining children. The interview concludes with Wellington requesting a lewd message be delivered to a sow at another farm, which shocks Gutbloom with its crudeness, confirming Wellington's "gutter pig" status.

Opinions

Gutbloom fondly remembers the interactive elements of the old Internet, such as LiveJournal polls, which gave readers a sense of participation and power.
The author humorously notes that his readers might have been influenced by opiates, reflect

Interview With a Gutter Pig

Gutbloom: Dear Senator, (this is the way one addresses a pig with whom one is unfamiliar) would you be so kind as to allow me to interview you for my web log.

The Pig: What? Who is speaking? Is that you (he looked up at me). Remarkable! I thought you were just shtik fleysh mit oygn (a joke…. “a piece of meat with eyes” in Yiddish. Pigs are fond of Jews and Muslims for obvious reasons). Where did you learn to speak the language of the four-footed Lords of Yorkshire? (a pretense. He means to tell me that he is of English descent and not an American pig.). You are welcome to interview me in exchange for a favor, the nature of which I will disclose to you at the conclusion of our discussion. (pigs often strike up dishonest bargains and this kind of purple speech is typical).

Gutbloom: I’ll accept your terms provided the favor is within my powers to complete, but I must confess that my readers have asked me to interview a “gutter” pig, and some of your friends at Stonewall Farm directed me here, specifically to you, sir, so I must ask if it would be fair to characterize this interview as a talk with a gutter pig?

The Pig: Print what you must in your silly web-thing (there is really no way to say “blog” in pig… my previous translation was fudged. What I really said was “newspaper article on the porno machine”), but my mother was a Landrace and my father was a Great White. My ancestors hunted truffles on the banks of the Seine. Your informants, Ces porcs la ferme de Stonewall, don’t know what they are talking about. I am high born.

Gutbloom: But things haven’t gone well recently, have they?

The Pig: (He sighed the kind of depressive sigh only a pig can sigh). I’ve seen better days. This is not what I was born for.

Gutbloom: A problem with slop?

The Pig: Could be. I’ll admit that I’m familiar with the stuff, but you’ll get no tearful confessions from me. My dignity is undiminished. (here he references the pig maxim “The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.”)

Gutbloom: Were you born by the lagoons? (I’m asking if he was born in a factory farm… an impolite and touchy question).

The Pig: Shi!, you humans have no manners. I was born near the lagoons. I know the desire for protein (a reference to cannibalism), the recycled meal (eating feces) and the loneliness of yearling stall (homosexual incest), but I make no excuses. I’ve made mistakes and while I’m not all that I might have been, neither am as little as others would make me… your friends at Stonewall Farm included. I do my job. The children come. They are not disappointed. There are many other pigs that wouldn’t represent zhu as well as I do. You’ll not hear me complain. I have a season or two more in me, and then I will go to the place of my brothers (the slaughter house). And I will go knowing that I have nothing to hide from my God and nothing to apologize to my ancestors for.

Gutbloom: (I end the interview because once a pig starts talking like this there is no stopping him and the speeches just get longer and more vainglorious). Well said, senator. Thank you for your conversation. May the sun shine upon your ears and your tail rest in the mud (a standard pig blessing). Would you be so kind to tell me the nature of the favor I might have the honor of fulfilling for you?

The Pig: You are kind. I apologize if I called you ill-mannered. I hate to ask (they never hate to ask). Could you please get word to a certain sow, the fair Petunia of Overlook Farm in Bennington, New Hampshire? Could you please tell her — (and here he uttered something so rude and vile that it can’t even be printed on the Internet! I was, quite honestly, shocked, for I had never heard so much filth in all my life. Ugly talk like only a pig can make, and as I stood dumbfounded and dazed by the depravity of what I had just heard, and as my head swam with the realization that decorum and fair play dictated that I someday repeat this mess to an unsuspecting sow on the other end of the state, he laughed a piggy laugh. A low, harsh, Dick Cheney like laugh. My blood went cold, for he was, as you requested, the gutterest of gutter pigs.)