Word: porker
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...main upholder of the traditional nuclear family this fall is Roseanne. Pudgy comedian Roseanne Barr plays a working-class mom grappling with a dull factory job, three hyperactive kids and her lazy but lovable porker of a husband (John Goodman). Barr's sullen sarcasm -- a cross between Erma Bombeck and Alice Kramden -- is a cry of revolt against years of cheery sitcom parents. Says Mom after the kids run out the door: "Quick, they're gone. Change the locks...
...North earns five times as much as her office-worker son in Hanoi. In 1983 Viet Nam managed to feed itself for the first time in years. Though owning pigs is illegal in Hanoi, many of the capital's residents raise swine with loving care; a single butchered porker can bring in as much as a well-paid salaried worker earns in a year...
Dressed in a ridiculous trench coat, he sets off under the cover of night and abducts a succulent pig (Betty) from a local farm. The porker, however, harbors two secrets. First, it is an unlicensed pig, covertly purchased by Swaby and his two friends, the accountant Allardyee (Richard Griffiths) and the barrister Lockwood (John Normington) and planned as the guest of honor at a fete to celebrate the royal wedding. Secondly, the pig is subject to frequent and liquid bowel movements, especially when brought into a strange environment like the Chilver's living room...
...black swine, the so-called cochon planche, has long been a combination bank account, mobile garbage-disposal unit and occasional religious prop. Haitian farmers, among the world's poorest, have relied on the pigs to produce income for medical care, weddings, funerals and education. The long-legged, lean porker was also a helpful consumer of weeds and even human wastes. And of no small importance, hougans (priests) regularly appease their demanding Petro gods with the blood of a black pig, the preferred sacrificial symbol of voodoo...
Much as Miss Piggy might like to claim that moi is responsible, the porker boom began long before the Muppets' superstar made her bow. Miss P., sniffs Lucinda Vardey, co-author of the anthology of pig lore, Pigs: A Troughful of Treasures (Macmillan; $14.95), "has done a lot for pig relations, but she is not a true pig. She is purely human and has very few pig qualities." Vardey's collaborator, Sarah Bowman, feels that the pig boomlet has ancient roots. "The love of pigs is an inborn thing," she says. "I have always thought that wallowing...