eat your heart out

it's an organ meat i don't have much familiarity with, although i have eaten chicken hearts and they are ok. when i was growing up in cuba my grandmother herrera had chickens in her backyard and sometimes she would just go out there, corner one, grab it by the neck and give a quick yank. the chicken would spend some time flopping around the yard before it just died from a broken neck and then began the plucking and cooking. i can still bring up the smell of the burning feathers. of course every single part of the chicken was eaten, including the heart, and sometimes there would be an egg inside waiting to be laid. nothing is as good as food that fresh. anyway, something made me think of the expression and i found that it is regarded as a re-phrasing of "this will eat your heart out" but generally implies that that you will be missing something essential, from the core. can you eat your own heart out? i guess if you are spitefull enough you could. which brings you to that other expression "cutting off your own nose to spite your face". but would you eat it? i can understand the vindictiveness behind it though. there's alot of guilt and regret being implied here, alot of baggage. some serious "couch time" anyway, the expression is also thought to be an adaptation of a 16th century phrase "eat one's own heart" meaning to suffer from silent grief; and is believed to have biblical roots in the phrase "to eat one's own flesh", used to describe an indolent, or lazy, person. jesus, how lazy could you fucking be you can't get to the fridge so you'd eat your own...what? in any respect, its an interesting phrase. here are some "heartfelt" songs to go with your offal.

JIMMY SOMMERVILLE


JANIS JOPLIN


BLONDIE


TONI BRAXTON