This remains one of my favorites of the songs we wrote. Bop sent me the lyric in July of 1999, and I wrote the entire song in about an hour. I then stayed up almost all night cutting the first demo so I could email it to Bop, who loved it. He originally called it "Howling," as in a howling pigwind, but I convinced him to change the title. This song was our first indication that we really had something here, that Longrows and Lilly had not been flukes. Over that summer I cut at least 5 different demos of this song. I originally thought it should be longer, and cut one demo that had a second verse, using a nursey rhyme. However, Bop was adamant that the lyric was finished as it was, so the second verse was not to be. Our compromise was that if the song was first heard in this short version it would have to return later in the cycle, which it does.

this little piggie's market
is this little piggie's home
and this little piggie's roastbeef
is this little piggie's none...
and this little piggy cries,

" We are sticks and straws and bricks.
A wolfen meal on cloven heel
and hardly sliced
but so well nicked

down near the wilder saltlick
down near the thinnest of the thick

Down where our pinkied necks are picked
like roostertails in cockfights
like soupbones tossed in dogfights.

As if we are the leaf of Eve...
the fig.
As if we are the thinking thought-
ful pig..."