Innere Schweinehund

I recently learned about an expression in German that cracks me up - it cracks me up because it's so weird and so German and so...well pork-related.

This expression, one's "Innere Schweinehund," translates literally to one's "Inner Pigdog." You see images like the above ("tschüss" means goodbye) on various exercise books and weightloss websites (http://www.isch.at/). Your inner pigdog is your weaker self, the part of you that tells you to sit around on the couch, watching TV, getting bigger and bigger. Your inner pigdog makes you lazy and completely unmotivated. It is not, I read recently, used as an insult (e.g., "God get off your ass, you pigdog!"), unless, of course, you were talking to your own inner pigdog. In that case, laziness might not be the entirety of your problem.

What's funny to me about the inner pigdog is that it's somehow different from merely being a couch potato. There is this strange hybrid animal who lives in your head and makes you this way. You simply need to overcome your inner pigdog. In some ways, it makes it easier to relinquish responsibility (it's not my fault, the pigdog made me do it). In other ways, it makes you acknowledge that you are, at least in part, a pigdog.

What's also funny is the importance of pork in this culture. Although the pig can be sometimes very bad (e.g., the inner pigdog, the expression for shitty weather - sauwetter - lit. translated to sow weather) or very good (on New Years Eve, you give a little marzipan pig to your guests, because pigs are a symbol of good luck; to say you have a pig means you have a lot of luck). Another favorite expression I learned recently is "Everything has an end, only a sausage has two."

So I'm eating a lot of pork, I'm getting in touch with my inner pigdog, and I feel like I have a pig.

Oink!