Thursday, September 06, 2007

Today in Extraordinarily Odd

A 65 year old woman named Mrs Skapa was carded in Maine and seeing as she didn’t have ID she wasn’t allowed to buy wine. She’s learnt her lesson though, “I'll be bringing my driver's license with me from now on," Skapa said. And what an important lesson it is too. This is one of those situations where the person in charge is half asleep bored but just won’t think outside the box or risk making a decision because they’ll be fired and they’ll be fired because their boss is a control freak petty administrator who really should be working for the government and ultimately, you have to simply breathe and not think too much when you’re in line or you’ll kill that freaking woman who didn’t get her god damned money out prior to getting to the register and she wants to pay in one and five cent coins and you really need to be somewhere else and my god, I just hate shopping. [source]

Eating them in restaurants in the south, apparently, isn’t putting a dent in China’s rodent problem and consequently – no doubt spurred on by the pending Olympics deadline in Beijing – a report has been released that the Chinese have brought in an elite fighting force of natural rodent predators to get rid of the problem; a team of foxes and a team of eagles. Using these natural predators to kill the rodents is not only inexpensive, it can sustainably control rodent plagues and there's not environmental pollution," the report said. Because when you’re buying eagles, they’re cheaper by the crate. Normal families can’t afford a batch of eagles but when you’re a country, eagles are the natural alternative to poison that doesn’t know the difference between rats and small children. [source]

In an effort to force children in America to stop being so god damned obese, cafeteria menus are being amended in schools this academic year and cupcakes are getting the chop. The Times reports that “Parents in Texas lobbied to get a “Safe Cupcake Amendment” added to the state’s nutrition policy. The measure, which passed, ensures that parents may bring frosted treats to schools for celebrations.” It’s good that there’s such thing as a Safe Cupcake Amendment”. It sounds like something invented by a b-grade actress who hasn’t been getting much work and who has come up with some kind of really intellectual way to justify eating cupcakes at midnight. It’s also just the most generally American thing, maybe ever. I never thought I’d say this but, good on you, Texas Parents. [source]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think everyone was in agreement that the school cafeteria needed to go on a diet. But banning cupcakes is tantamount to outlawing one of the last remaining bits of childhood that kids today have left. Merry-go-rounds, walking to school, trick-or-treating, and simply playing outside are now nearly things of the past.

OK, so the cupcake crisis is not exactly up there with global warming. But it is, nonetheless, important to our national heritage (and to our fundraisers), and it doesn’t take a think tank to solve the problem.

It’s apparent that the only way we’re going to have our cupcake and eat it, too, is to build a better one. Americans do it all the time. It’s our nature. Ban it? Why, when we can just improve it.

To be successful, it must be indistinguishable in flavor and texture from the original. Can it be done? It already has been done by hundreds of thousands of parents across America who have risen up (ahem…) and have overcome the cupcake crisis by simply adding a few healthy, and sneaky, ingredients.

As a “sneaky chef,” I discovered that because kids love them so much, cupcakes are the perfect “carrier” to deliver valuable hidden nutrition. How? By simply adding a few hidden ingredients. And what school nutritionist could object to a cupcake invisibly enhanced with pureed blueberries, spinach and whole wheat pastry flour, and with only half the fat and sugar?

With this simple solution–call it a “nutritional compromise”–our kids can enjoy a time honored tradition, and we can relax in the knowledge that they are also getting some much needed nutrition.

Parents, we must unite to save the cupcake, and the bake sale, as one of the last vestiges of childhood innocence and American nostalgia. By adding some sneaky nutrition, we can get cupcakes taken off the endangered species list and back into happy tummies. Let’s start baking again for fundraisers, and keep the fun in childhood and the specialness in birthdays.

It’s time to let ‘em know there’s a new cupcake in town!

Missy Chase Lapine is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals.