Wednesday
Apr102013
Pass Fail
April 10, 2013 Ok, bakers, you have one job. ONE JOB. Ready?
Here goes.
This plastic piece has football lacing on it, so - still with me? Yes? - so just put it on a cake, like so:
;)
...and voilà! Instant football.
Now, go find a brown cake, and put the piece of plastic on it. That's it. That's all. You literally cannot screw this up.
Annnnnd .... go.
;)
What.
What are you doing.
Seriously.
TRY AGAIN.
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
Thanks to Megan C., Michelle L., & Carol B. for the reminder to always keep it stupid, silly.
Reader Comments (60)
Sung to: Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Lace belongs on the brown cakes
Not on pink, just on brown
Skip cupcake trays and pudding-filled snacks
I'm just really so taken aback
C'mon root, root, root for the baker
If they don't get this it's a shame
(Aahh)
For it's one,
Two,
Three strikes, you're out
And your cakes... are... LAME!
Yesterday, I had a student argue with me that the word "bunny" is a college level word which she should get extra credit for using in a sentence. Her rationale was that it was a word in one of her textbooks. She flounced angrily off in near tears when I declined to accept "bunny" as a college level word.
She and plastic football lacing decorator are soul-mates.
No, wait, let me guess:
Everybody's a winner
but you most of all.
Pink pigskin laces
Pass to poo asterisk "ball"--
Pudding cake touchdown!
[I now pass the haiku ball back to Haiku Joy, who always scores a touchdown.]
The brown mess on those cupcakes... FAIL! Seriously, who would eat those?
Is it just me or does the concept of a "pudding cake tray" just boggle the mind? It doesn't look like pudding, cake, or pudding cake. What is that?
In the last cake, one of the label choices is "Louisiana Crunch". I am sure the "crunch" is the plastic baby that's left over from the Mardi Gras cakes.
@HaikuJoy: I can definitely feel your pain. I've had an ongoing debate with my (undergrad and graduate) students regarding the fact that they have to write in complete sentences. Granted, I'm teaching history, so the "bunny" issue doesn't come up that often. :)
I don't really watch football...I'm pretty sure those bakers don't either O.I
@Haiku Joy ~ Sounds like the perfect time to pull out the babies!
@ Sharon ~ Now I'm going to be humming that all day. I'm sure my boss won't notice, right???
I would have followed the headdesk with a facpalm. Sharyn lolol
Oh, and the "this source has a very deep to the soul information" sentence returned in the final draft.
I think we're going to have a whole generation of adults who don't know how to write in full sentences because they've been texting since they were 12.
dnt u thnk? :-/
If you squint a little and ignore the plastic lettering on the side is it maaaaaaaaaaybe possible that the pink cake is intended to be the back of a corset? I mean, if it is, it's still terrible, but maybe, possibly the wreckarator was trying to be creative? Possibly?
I am clearly feeling generous this morning. Huh.
The shape of the football lacing... Um... That's an... Um... Interesting shape... Um... MOVING ON...
@millbrit I agree. What is a pudding cake anyway? Also, YOUR STUDENTS DIDN'T WANT TO WRITE COMPLETE SENTENCES? SERIOUSLY? What, were they going to use text language instead? Actually, maybe I don't want that answered...
@Haiku Joy Bunny? Seriously? The chick thought "bunny" was a college level word? SERIOUSLY? -_- Ouch. The stupidity hurts my brain.
Ok.. the first cake looks like a creepy hacked off body part with stiches... bleck..
I enjoyed Sharyn's song very much and then it dawned on me that is a baseball tune and these were suppose to be football fail cakes. Makes them even wreckier!
#2, no pun intended, "spaghetti and poop meatballs cupcake cake" . So many wrongs in one epic wreck!
millbrit, do they ever say to you "but this isn't English class? I don't have to use complete sentences in history class?"
I just... I can't even...
Every time I think we've reached the bottom of the 'stupid' barrel. Every. Time.
TECHNICALLY</>, those could also be used to make anything - ANYthing - into a "recent surgery" cake... FYI. You're welcome.
@Sharyn - aaaaaand you've done it again. I honestly don't know how you keep it up. If they ever bring back "Who's Line Is It Anyway?", I am *SO* nominating you!!! :-)
@Haiku Joy & millbrit - I taught chemistry & biology for a few years & if I had a dollar for every time I heard "But this is <science> class, I don't need to write in complete sentences / show my work / include units in my answer..." (The latter would be why we lost a satellite years ago on the way to Mars. One engineering team used metric & the other used English...NASA's worst hour for sure... ;-(
@At no one particular - 2nd photo's mine - Whoopee! ;-0 KarateLady strikes again!
What is that, Frankencake?
Oh, no...the Tingler is loose in the bakery....scream for your lives!
I don't believe those are football lacings at all! They're stitches for all the headbanging they cause you. Thoughtful... no?
I heart Sharyn. Her work is the perfect complement to this site. That is all.
Are you ready for some football? Good, because all you're getting is the laces.
If I'd paid a quarter, I'd want it back.
By the time I got to the second "cake", I thought. "Wait, there's more than just the two of these out there?"
(hoping that's a complete and accurately punctuated sentence. LOL.)
It boggles the mind that decorators even need a plastic doohicky to make what would be a very simple design. I'm a horrible cake decorator but I'm pretty sure even I could glop on a fairly decent football lace - and it wouldn't be shiny.
Did the second cake have guacamole on it? A little lemon folks!!!
OK , I'll be the rational one! (And No I'm not a baker!) The plastic lace football covers MUST be leftovers from foot ball season, and they are using them up right? Right!?!?! God please someone tell me this is the case!
The bunny student is in her 40s. English is her first language. She literally pouted when I told her "no."
They could also be used for Halloween as spines.
I think the brown one is "supposed" to be a basketball...maybe?
#1: It's pink because a football is called a pig skin, duh.
#Every Wreck of This Magnitude: This is clearly a clever attempt at world domination. The rest of us will have headdesked ourselves into comas and be unable to resist.
Considering that the pink one had a plastic "XLVI" on the side, they actually meant to make a pink football. Was it just so their customers could avoid eating brown frosting, or were they trying for the "girl" market?
Because that would just be stupid.
Girls know footballs are brown.
Even Jen.
;-)
"Cake" #3 actually does look like a bunch of slices from a pudding cake (e.g. cake with pudding mix added to it to make it moist). Why someone would think it's acceptable to put plastic football (or corset) laces on it is beyond me.
Please tell me these were all Photoshopped, like Sad Keanu.
@Haiku Joy, that is just sad. I'm 40 and know quite well that bunny is a word I learned by first grade. Heck, I had to learn to spell and define 'procrastination' in second grade. By that standard, lagomorph wouldn't even make the grade.
As for the "football" cakes, I have no words.
The first one makes me think of my 16 year old when he smiles. (brace face)
These all remind me of instructions between me and my "gardener." EVERYTHING has to be done twice - once creatively and the other the way I instructed. If I laugh at this site, sometimes I don't shreak after the "gardener" leaves. Jen, you don't know how many lives you have saved.
Thanks for the support everyone. Fortunately, students who do not use full sentences are relatively few and far between. Now the number who manage to avoid reading the whole assignment is a completely different story. Maybe that explains so many of the Cake Wrecks that we see... ;)
@KarateLady's Daughter: Pudding cake comes in many different forms, many of which are absolutely delicious! Granted, I'm slightly biased on that front. I always ask for Banana Split Cake for my birthday. Some people consider pudding cakes to actually be a form of pie, although I'm not going to attempt to differentiate between the two. Either way, it's worth trying. :)
Personally, I look to voice-texting on 'smart' phones that aren't smart enough to distinguish accurately between homophones as the agent of final destruction of written English. This trend merely reinforces the seemingly endless conflation of to / too / two, your / you're, lose / loose with which we are all overly familiar. Thankfully, it cannot contribute to the "extraneous apostrophe on a plural" phenomenon that I would like to see dropped into the nearest live volcano. You know, to advance science and stuff.
How did today's thread become an English forum?
In summary, I would just like to pose one question: Pineapple pudding cake? Really? Trying to combine 'pineapple' and 'pudding' in my mind is like trying to force two like magnetic poles into contact.
@Haiku Joy- I'm guessing your 40 year old was snapping her gum, twisting her index finger in her hair, and wearing a skirt that was WAAAAYYYY too short when you had this conversation with her? I'm picturing a blank look on her face 90 per cent of the time.
It's a very scary future we are facing as a society.
#1... Theses cakes are ridiculous.
#2... Louisiana crunch cake is delicious. j/s
@Haiku Joy, @millbrit, and @KarateLady-- I asked my college students to insert a computer-related clip art image into a Microsoft Word document, and I got bunnies, Christmas trees, skateboards-- anything BUT computer-related objects. I finally realized that "computer-related" meant "stored on the computer" to them.
I'm catching up on a few days here, and I really don't have much to say about today's cakes except: if even I know it doesn't look like a football, then it really doesn't look like a football.
As for yesterday, for those of you who have not seen Game of Thrones or have and it's not your pint of mead, please don't judge those of us who do. A few of us would run away with Peter Dinklage if he asked us to, and our loving husbands would understand. (Seriously, he's awesome. Actually, they both are.)
Through this fair blog I have been introduced to many a specialized interest over lo, these many years, (steampunk, Firefly . . . the Oxford Comma) and I have kept my mind open. Sometimes I, too, have fallen under the sweet spell of a new interest, and other times not, but through it all I have recognized that people of fine taste and intellect can, and indeed should, be partial to a diverse array of delights. It is one of the things that makes this community of loyal Wreckies so endearing and enduring.
Tricia . . . Out.
Milbrit, I teach US history. Every term I have to explain that yes, grammar matters. "But this is not English class. It's not fair! You should only grade on content." Ah, but if I cannot understand what you are trying to say, I cannot grade the content. And then there's the, "You only read three chapters, didn't you?" "Naw, I read the whole book." If so, why did you miss the two chapters that talk specifically about {region}?
I suspect this translates into "Of course I read the entire order form. Your cake has a football flotsam on it, doesn't it?"
@KarateLady: They are bringing back Whose line is it Anyway!. It will be on the CW but but they are bringing back most of the performers.
It's time for an eye exam: I thought the pink one was a princess phone.
@JerseyGirl - Then we MUST nominate Sharyn post-haste! After all, they are bringing back *most* but not all of the performers... :-)
@Tricia - Well said & quite right! Thank you for being so gently assertive (seriously - it was nicely done!) rather than aggressively defensive as some might after their favorite show has been attacked. (Hey, if anybody mocked my fav shows or me for watching/loving both the new & old Hawaii-Five-O, or TRON, or Lost in Space, etc., I would feel at least slightly compelled to practice some martial arts on them, though I would try to restrain myself & be civilized...)
@Craig - Yes, we should discuss the wrecks & drop the tirade against students-who-aspire-to-do-the-least & are a sign of the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it...Did ya see where I took the photo of cake (CCC) #2?! :-) @Haiku Joy - And did you snack on one of those babies when Ms. 'Bunny' hopped away? :-)
That first cake reminds me of when my sister's bestie was little and tried to fix his teddy bear when the seam between the legs got ripped. His mother advised him to never become a gynaecologist, and I hope someone said the same to that baker *shudder*
As for the decline of grammar, that's been happening for at least ten years. When I started college, one of my tutors had to make a general announcement after our first assignment for her class that text spelling was not acceptable in college assignments. These were supposedly intelligent people who had somehow already gotten into college (and future teachers, I might add) and they were using text spelling in their assignments?! I give up.