The Cupcake Manifesto

If, as Bush Administration spokesman, Scott McClellan, states, the Bush Administration will be the one to decide how to "define and achieve victory" in Iraq, as a member of the voting public in America, I put forth that Bush, in declining to define victory as Webster's Dictionary or any common understanding of the English language would, should simply define victory as "little creme-filled cakes", then move immediately to innundate Iraq with nutritionally lethal countrywide shipments of Hostess Cupcakes, Ding Dongs, and Ho Hos, which no insurgency, however ideologically disciplined, could effectively withstand. Then while the terrorists are picking up, unwrapping, and unwarily consuming these innocent-seeming little cholesterol bombs, we sneak the U.S. forces out of the country under cover of a mass enemy sugar-coma.

My fellow Americans, in order to show our united and patriotic support for the troops, please mail the indestructible commercial snack pastry of your choice to President George W. Bush, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500-0001, to prove that we the people are indeed willing to contribute directly to the Bush War effort. Show the world that Osama Bin Laden cannot stand up to Little Debbie. Please tell your family, friends, e-pals, coworkers, bowling leagues, quilting societies, and congregations to give generously to the cause, so that we may at last hear the forces of evil and destruction cry, "Twinkies! Oh God, no! Not Twinkies! Aaaaaiiiieeeeee!"

Respectfully,

Angela Rhoads
619 Park Avenue
Bremerton WA 98337

PS: Please forward this to everyone you know, living or dead.

President Massa

In a little-noticed corollary to his earlier action ending prevailing wage standards for construction workers in the wake of "The Whole Katrina Exercise" *, Bush issued an executive fiat this morning reversing the Emancipation Proclamation, and returning blacks to slavery, stating that not only would this greatly improve the economy, ending the need for job outsourcing, "But them Niggras was all way better off during the Plantation days anyways, back when kindly white folks took care of 'em and seen they worked hard and et well and went to church." While Mr. Bush's title will continue to be "Mr. President" to white Americans, black Americans will be required to address him as "Massa", except for Condi Rice, who Mr. Bush explained "ain't hardly black anyways".

* Cheney refers to the Gulf Coast Disaster as "The Whole Katrina Exercise", which we are "getting on top of".

Angela (Possibly In Oz)

Pink Triangle Cake

One of my custom cakes available when I ran Michaelangelo's bakery was the Pink Triangle Cake. You use a basic cake recipe, baking it in a square pan (or a rectangular pan, which will yield 3 triangles). When cool, you just cut it diagonally, place one half on top the other with a middle layer of (what else?) sweet fruit filling (plain bottled conserves such as Danish red currant are particularly nice), and frost with Baby Dyke Icing.

Baby Dyke Icing: using the standard Confectioners' Sugar recipe from the back of the box, replace the liquid called for with pureed maraschino cherries. Easiest preparation is to run a small bottle (drained of excess liquid) full of cherries through a food processer until smooth, then blend in the butter and powdered sugar with the same processing blade. One bottle will color and flavor quite a good amount of icing. To decorate cake, reserve one whole cherry. With a piping bag, edge the top and sides of the triangle with a lacy garterbelt pattern, open in the front. Draw a single plain line of frosting up from the bottom point of the triangle to halfway up the center of the top layer, then fork the icing line into a 3 pointed"Y" (Sorry, no character that looks like drawing a fork on a computer keyboard). Place the cherry (dried well with a paper towel, to prevent excess color/moisture "creep" into the surrounding icing) in! to the appropriate point in the "Y" design, and sprinkle top area of the "Y" with lightly toasted coconut strands such as Angel Flake brand sweetened coconut. Or sprinkle with long-turned chocolate shavings. Do not use commercially made chocolate sprinkles, though, which will look exactly like the unpleasantly sharp stage of re-grown shaving stubble when they stick to the frosting. Unless razor stubble just happens to be your thing, in which case, Bon Appetit.

Angela, Sweetly -- but in answer to:

And Here Is Why You Should Be A Cake Eater
by Gene Elder

You may have heard of James Dobson's classic book Dare to Discipline. The following article about the death of a 3 year old was inspired by his teaching people how to use the strict father model to raise their kids.

Father Guilty of Murdering Toddler He Thought Was Gay
A Florida man has been convicted in the beating death of the 3-year-old son he suspected would grow up to be gay. The boy's mother said the man, Ronnie Paris Jr. wanted to toughen up the child and prevent him from becoming a sissy. The man was convicted of second-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.

Voted for WHOM?

By the way, do you know any, or have you spoken to any, Bush supporters who have personally told you they don't support him anymore? I haven't found anyone who'll admit to voting for him, who'll discuss it. They get angry and won't talk at all, or they rage against "liberal media" who are making it impossible to win the war, by reporting news that makes Americans turn against the way it's being waged. Apparently, if the only news that came out of Iraq was positive news, Christian youth would be pouring into enlistment centers, and the public would be blissful in American glory. I don't know which sounds worse: DunderRepublik or just losing the goddamned war clean and honest.

In Numb Hopes

This seems to be a first. After all of Bush's other big patriotic "there's a terrorist under your bed purplefaced colorcode alert" speeches, his poll numbers rose. Every time things looked bad politically, he could put out another scare message, and his numbers would rise at least temporarily. His own man, who sensibly quit after the election, former head of the Homeland Security Dept. Tom Ridge, said after leaving that most of the colorcode scares put out by the administration had been over his protests, as they appeared to be issued for political reasons and not because intelligence warranted them. (Too bad he couldn't have developed a conscience before November 04.)

So in answer to American anxiety and pessimism, and in answer to calls to bring home the troops, he gives a plateload of platitudes, and flat refuses to even discuss developing a plan to end the war. Instead, it's 9/11 and TUYB again. And his numbers did change, within days.
Dropping. Dropping for the first post-speech period ever. From about 48% approval down to a new low of 43%, about where Clinton was during the Sexwitch Horror. People really don't want to hear that all we can hope for is to stay the course, when that course seems to be leading us straight into one big damned bloody brick wall.

He was, however (in the interest of strict fairness) correct on one point of his speech. We are making progress, even rapid progress, in Iraq at the moment. When one is in quicksand, one is technically making measurable progress. The progress is simply in a most unfortunate direction.

GoodGod Bird

When I was a kid, my dad stopped in the middle of a story one afternoon, hushed us all, and said, "Listen! Listen! That's a Goodgod!"

We wanted to know what the heck a Goodgod was, and he told us it was a giant woodpecker, so damned big if you saw it you'd say, Goodgod!I must have been about 4 or 5 at the time, and I still remember it because we all looked so hard trying to see it, and even though we could hear it, the woods were so deep and full of snakes, he wouldn't let us go across the creek to get closer.

This was in the Francois Bottoms, a deep swamp area where you could get lost half a mile from your house: even adults frequently got lost, sometimes for days. This was 40 something years ago, so they weren't as extinct as they were listed. This same area, by the way, is known for skunk-apes: reddish, orangutan sized local variations on Bigfoot. I knew churchgoing, sober people who swore to have seen them, even as recently as 20 years ago. Stranger Things.

Okay, I was about 5 years old when the Goodgod bird sounded off across the creek from our house, so that would have been 1964: 20 years after the official last sighting, and on the other end of the state from the Big Woods sightings in northern Arkansas.

The area of Francois Bottoms is just about undevelopable, because it's under water part of the year, and a bog the rest of the time. The trees have adapted, and the undergrowth is like a wall. The Tribes in the area left it alone for the most part, because of the Foolkiller. Most of what's been carved out is raised areas near the pine barrens that could be drained off for farming. Nobody told us that the Goodgod/Lordgod was extinct, and they sure as hell forgot to tell the bird.

Unfortunately, I don't remember what it sounded like, for the simple reason that it didn't sound to me, as a kid, anything like a bird. It sounded like something you'd hear a carpenter use. I don't know if it's an actual call, or the distinctive drumming it makes when it feeds.