It's Time to Kill the Cupcake

(The following post was inspired by Tom Scocca)

WARNING: This blog post is not about sports. It is about cupcakes. So if you were expecting a sports-related post and you do not want to read about cupcakes, you might want to get out while you still can.

As for the rest of you, hold on to your dicks.

It is time for us as human beings to completely abolish the existence of the cupcake. I say this without the least hint of irony, sarcasm or tongue-in-cheekness. The cupcake is the bastard child of the dessert world and its existence is a black mark on human ingenuity. When I see a cupcake, my first urge is to drop it down a well.

I’m not some kind of ranting madman, though. I have a sound, well thought out and highly logical argument in favor of the cupcake’s eradication. I have little doubt that by the time you finish reading this post you will share my disdain for the cupcake, and if not, you are probably the kind of person who thinks that Glenn Beck would be a cool dude to party with.

My main issue with the cupcake derives from the fact that not one person in the history of human existence has managed to eat a cupcake while simultaneously:

• Not looking like a complete fool
• Managing to not make a huge mess
• Managing to get 2 consecutive bites that are equal parts frosting and cake

Don’t believe me? Let’s do a quick walkthrough of how the standard cupcake eating experience usually unfolds.

When you first examine a cupcake it becomes clear that you cannot just go after it by taking a normal sized bite, because doing so would leave you with more than half of the cupcake stuffed in your mouth, and then everyone who has gathered in the breakroom to sing happy birthday to Marilyn will look at you like you are some kind of gluttonous freak. Samantha might even say something bitchy like, “Hey sport, take it easy there! We only bought 12 you know! Ha-ha-ha.”

Being the classy person that you are, you decide that this cupcake needs to be eaten slowly and gracefully, like a lovely duck confit. So you begin by peeling down the front half of the little wrapper that surrounds the bottom of the cupcake. As soon as the wrapper is pulled down the damn thing shits crumbs all over you. Here you are, handling a freshly purchased pastry, and the thing has already started to crumble into dust before it has even been touched.

After dusting the crumbs off of the front of your nice sweater vest, (the only one you own by the way and will now have to wash because you accidentally rubbed some of the cake into the fabric while you were trying to brush it off) you begin trying to formulate a plan of action for your first bite. You can’t give it a full bite for reasons previously discussed, but too small of a bite will leave you with a meager mouthful of cake and frosting all over your nose.

So you decide to that thing where you kind of tip the cupcake backwards at a 45 degree angle in an attempt to keep the frosting away from your face and you take a bite that is about 80% cupcake and 20% frosting. This inevitably leads to more crumbs falling off, which leads to you doing that thing where you cup your other hand and bring it up by your jaw so that the crumbs don’t go everywhere. We all know that this particular move always makes you look super cool. No doubt someone, most likely Kristine, will witness you doing this move and you'll respond by doing that thing where you raise your eyebrows slightly and nod at her as if to say, "Mmmmm, good cupcake!" But what you really want to say is, "I'm so glad you are watching me make a fool of myself Kristine. Perhaps you could look elsewhere before I jam this cupcake into your face."

Now you’re one bite in and staring at an angled concavity that makes it impossible to take the cupcake head on once again. You decide to try and attack one of the newly created corners, which you might be able to pull off with moderate success. This will be the highlight of your cupcake eating experience.

With the corners eaten, you are now faced with a sheer wall of cake underneath an overabundance of frosting. Knowing that you have to even things out, you lick some of the frosting off of the top. It tastes gross.

This is when the real trouble starts. At this point about half of the cupcake is gone, and Laurie is undoubtedly going to ask you if you would be able to seal this pile of envelopes really fast and get them in the outgoing mailbox before 1:30 PM. This means you will have to put your cupcake down—but guess fucking what—with half of your cupcake gone it is way too top heavy to set down without it tipping over and getting frosting all over your desk. Now you have to go find a napkin or plate that you can gingerly lay your cupcake on while you do Laurie’s work for her.

With the envelopes sealed, it’s time to get back to the torturous duty of eating your cupcake. Now that half of it is eaten, you find yourself having to peel off more of the wrapper in order to expose edible areas. This will greatly limit the space with which you can grip the cupcake, which will no doubt lead to further mishaps with crumbs and frosting getting where it doesn’t belong.

At this point you’ve got about two onerous bites left before you are left pinching a thin spire of cake with a massive gob of frosting at its peak. You decide to just shove what’s left of it into your mouth all at once and you go into a sugar coma. Marilyn, of course, will see do this and cast disapproving eyes in your direction.

Bearing these truths in mind, I have created a graph which demonstrates just how useless cupcakes are to us as consumers of food.

Area=Value

We begin by plotting the food in question’s deliciousness in relation to how easy said food is to eat. From this plot point we draw intersecting lines, thus creating a rectangle that’s area is representative of the food’s overall value.

As you can see, pizza, which is just as easy to eat as it his delicious, creates a rectangle with a very large area, giving it a very high value.

Cupcakes, on the other hand, are not represented well on this graph due to their moderate deliciousness and eminent difficulty of consumption.

I’d also like to point out that I’ve presented this well reasoned argument to many friends who have called me crazy upon hearing about my hatred of cupcakes. As of yet, not one of them has been able to present me with a logical rebuttal.

I have been told, “Well Tom, cupcakes are supposed to be messy when you eat them!”

O RLY?! So if I told you that I didn’t particularly enjoy getting stabbed because it hurt really bad, would you reply by saying, “Well Tom, getting stabbed is supposed to hurt, so that’s not a good reason to hate on getting stabbed!”

If you get enjoyment out of how difficult cupcakes are to eat, you are a masochist and a sick fuck.

Worst of all, I have had people tell me that I should just eat cupcakes with a fork if I have such a problem with their form.

Want to know why I don’t eat cupcakes with a fork? Because if I was going to do that, I would just eat a regular piece of cake like a fucking adult.

Thanks for your time.

Feel free to contact the author of this post at leyt345 at gmail dot com.