It's just not the same without the pig.

Yesterday was our little village's community corn roast, a nice way to spend an afternoon playing catch-up with all the neighbours. You couldn't have asked for better weather, the setting down in the valley was wonderful and there was even a live bluegrass band.

I miss the pig, though.

See, in years past a whole pig was roasted on a spit and served as part of the festivities. It's a hideous amount of work though and this year the pig was replaced with BBQ'd tubes o' lips a.k.a. hotdogs.

I like hotdogs, and these were excellent ones, but it's not often that you get to stare into the eyeless sockets of your food, so I kind of miss the pig.

(This coming from a woman who goes mental when someone serves her an entire fish because it feels as if the fish is looking at me as I eat it. Oh yes, I am a paragon of consistency. Thank you for noticing.)

There's something very primal about eating recognizable hunks o' animal. I suppose this goes back to great-great-great-to-infinity-and-back Grandpa Gnorge, the guy who got us to the top of the food chain.

(You remember Gnorge. He was the one who died in that random, senseless stroll-by Wooly Mammoth stomping and became the butt of all those "What's red and white and found between Wooly Mammoth toes?" jokes. Yeah. THAT Gnorge.)

Yes, yes I have just told you a slightly skewed version the first joke to ever crack me up. You were just subjected to one of the big crazes of the 1950's, The Elephant Joke.

Ah, the elephant joke.

Elephant jokes were actually elephant riddles, but we always called them jokes. The first one ever told to me was:

Q: What's brown and red and found between elephant toes?

A: Slow pygmies.

This is the first joke I "got" when I was a kid. This is the alpha joke, the joke that formed my sense of humour. I know. I'm as troubled by this as you are.

I became an obsessive five-year-old teller of elephant jokes.

Q: What's red and white on the outside and gray on the inside?

A: Campbell's Cream of Elephant Soup.

Looking back at this now, I can see I am very lucky my family didn't put me up for adoption.

Fortunately, as my three loyal readers well know, my humour has matured considerably from those days.

Yes, I actually wrote the preceeding line with a straight face.

So let's see ... I started this out talking about missing a pig and ended up being grateful my parents didn't put me up for adoption when I was a child.