Truth HQ by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T R U T H H Q

Around this time, an incident took place that has stayed with me ever since. A local grocery shop had installed a new window display. It was to promote a certain brand of tinned, processed meat. Said brand used a cartoon of a piglet in its advertising logo. The piglet sat reclining on one front trotter, whilst in its other front trotter it holds up a tin of the meat.

There were several disturbing things about this logo already. For one thing, the creature had the proportion of a piglet but the expression of an adult. And then, it seemed to me that no real pig or piglet could adopt the reclining position that the animal had assumed. And of course, no real piglet could grasp a tin – or anything else, for that matter – in one of its trotters. And anyway, why would a piglet look so gleeful about displaying a tin containing the chopped remains of other pigs?

But, whilst all this had been disturbing enough already, the shop display had only re-doubled the horrors. Centre-stage of the display was a model of the offending piglet clasping a REAL tin of the meat. The most disturbing thing about the whole wanton apparition was the sense of vertigo it induced in me. Because – well, think about it. On that tin of meat was the logo, showing a picture of the piglet with a smaller tin in its trotter. And on that smaller tin of meat was a yet-smaller logo, with an even smaller piglet and an even smaller tin of meat. It was dizzying! I remember staring agog in front of the grocery window, wondering how it is that grown-ups could commit such atrocities of existential anxiety without, apparently, any sense of responsibility, or indeed, any sense of shame.

The name for this – I later learned – is an

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