Give Cake a Chance

"All we are saying is 'give cake a chance'." The crowd, having been assembled for an hour, was now chanting perfectly in unison. Chocolate confections were wheeled out in massive plexiglass cases that looked like nothing more than mobile plexiglass bank vaults. Women started screaming - there was a massive push on the temporarily erected barricades only just held back.

The two journalists on the sidelines made sarcastic remarks about the hypocrisy of the cakeniks. How they demanded free cake for all, yet never supported initiatives to raise the minimum wage for bakers.

I took a broader view. This was only the culmination of a long cultural relationship with sugar and flour. After all, it had fueled the slave trade. Sugar, that is. Which was why I preferred pie. (Fruit was clearly superior)

I was reporting on the enemy. I dashed off a quick post to alt.pie.org on my Blackberry (my favorite) and screamed just as the woman in sticky red velvet began to glare suspiciously my way.

A young man stepped forward on the stage, brandishing his i-pod before plugging it into the speaker stand. Apple notebooks were everywhere, along with Appple logos. The spectacle counted MacIntosh as one of the sponsors.

And clearly, this was a scoop for them. We had courted the Great Fruit for three years, sending them weekly, even daily, examples to Job's office and all major subsidiaries' retail locations. And still, they betrayed us. As if anyone had ever heard of Apple Cake.

I had one last chance, and we knew it.

I needed an angle - the Angle, the one that would take the cake and stop people from eating it, too. In keeping up the sham, I had to pull out my cup of frosting, uncap it and light the birthday candle already stuck upright inside.