Scrapple Sculptors Warn Breakfast Mush Itself Is Becoming Too Competitive
Artists at Philadelphia's annual scrapple contest discovered their raw material had formed a union and was demanding smaller spoons.
PHILADELPHIA, Amateur sculptors gathered at Reading Terminal Market for the annual contest where people turn scrapple into art, a breakfast mixture whose ingredients are customarily discussed after breakfast, if at all. By midmorning, the table held a horse, a lighthouse and, according to one judge, “an emotionally complicated rectangle.”
Then the material organized itself.
The scrapple on the judging table formed a semicircle and elected a chair. Mira Quibble, senior delegate of the United Breakfast Mush Federation, said it would no longer be pressed into monuments without “a clear artistic brief, two paid breaks and access to a slightly warmer room.”
“We have spent decades being called mystery pork while doing the structural work.”
“We have spent decades being called mystery pork while doing the actual structural work,” Quibble said through a narrow gap in a loaf. “Management can at least stop calling our internal texture rustic.”
At first, competitors treated the announcement as part of the contest. They kept carving. Their work, meanwhile, developed other plans whenever the artists looked away: a swan became a filing cabinet, and a family of scrapple ducks joined into one enormous question mark. A bowl of uncooked material filed a formal complaint over the word “uncooked.”
The ducks had set the tone. The scrapple soon introduced a contract saying every finished piece needed a name, a biography and “reasonable opportunities for personal growth.” Jonah Brisk, who had been making a bridge, was told to add a small door in case the bridge felt undervalued and wanted to leave the table.
A nearby man noted that scrapple has no fingers for signing documents. So the union appointed a spoon as notary. The spoon was named Clive by unanimous ladle vote, stamped each page with a wet circle, then requested dental coverage.
By afternoon, the artists and the scrapple had an agreement. Each masterpiece would receive one dramatic monologue before it was eaten, displayed or returned to the refrigerator. The document also gave all breakfast meats the right to refuse symbolism. Judges were still trying to decide whether a sculpture could win a contest while functioning as a labour organisation.
The contest’s actual competitors did make scrapple artworks at Reading Terminal Market. The sentient mush, the union, the emotionally mobile ducks and the spoon with legal authority are inventions, though Clive maintains he attended in spirit.