The Farcical Files

"School bake sales are tons of fun, and that worries California's committees for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, whose blue-nosed busybodies fret that their young wards are packing too much tonnage. California has adopted strict dietary guidelines governing what scores of comestibles may be sold in its schools-even at occasional bake sales- which has led to the banishment of that old standby, the cupcake. Reports the New York Times: 'The Piedmont High water polo team falls woefully short of these standards, selling cupcakes, caramel apples and lemon bars off campus in a flagrant act of nutritional disobedience'. Savor those words: 'nutritional disobedience'. As longtime advocates of the decriminalization of desserts and other controlled substances, the editors of this magazine pray that California will have the good sense to legalize cupcakes, and even harder substances such as lemon bars, thereby undermining the black market in confections and bringing sucrose-related commerce out of the shadows and into the open market place." --National Review