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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

WTF is it about Cupcakes?


I am embarrassed to tell you this but I had to buy a piece of Microsoft software.

Since I bought my iMac I have become totally Macstoned and immersed in the wonderful new technology but I just could not deal with ‘Numbers’, which is the Mac equivalent of Microsoft Excel. I am quite sure Numbers is fabulous – but I have been using Excel since it first came out many moons ago and just could not adapt to Numbers. I am sure you know how you just get shortcuts imbedded into your brain and just cannot get rid of them. So I cracked and bought Microsoft Office for Mac.

And I must say that it is much more elegant that Office for Windows. The fundamental structure and commands are the same – which makes it easy for me to use – but it just – you know – looks better and seems to work better. One of the issues is of course that now that I don’t have Windows I do not have daily (or even hourly) crashes and do not get stupid messages saying one thing but which really mean:

‘This program has stopped working. We are not sure why – perhaps it is taking a tea break – we would look for a solution but we know there isn’t one so we will just keep you sitting there staring at the screen for a few minutes and then we may terminate the program and let you start again. But if you shout at us like you are doing now we my just hang you out to dry and freeze your computer completely – and if you continue to bang your keyboard like that we will just give you the old BSOD finger and make you search for your original program disk and that will make an ugly sight as you rummage shouting through the drawers of your desk wishing to Keerist you had done what you should have and put the fecking thing where you could find them again.'

OK so I have one freezing episode on my iMac since I bought it 5 months ago. I asked it to do something unreasonable and it told me to bugger off and I watched the spinning colored wheel for quite a long time while I tried to figure out what to do. The usual response is to ‘force quit’ a program but I could not do that because no program was running. I eventually turned it off and back on. Perhaps some Apple users can provide the answer.

What is it about cupcakes? These used to be things people made for the school fete or for children’s birthday parties. They were large lumps of fluffy (or sometimes rock hard) cake with icing on top. They cost about 10c to make and sold for 50c – in 2008 money. You can buy them in any cake shop in Australia for $3 per dozen.

Just before we left Sydney the Cupcake Whirlwind hit Sydney – and probably the rest of Australia. We had the ‘Cupcake Room’ open just near us. We tried this to see what the fuss was about.

They had two trays of cupcakes – each one a masterpiece of colored icing and ornaments. The cupcakes themselves were microscopic and hard – and tasteless. They came in one flavor – no flavor. No Chocolate, no Cinnamon, no Banana, nothing else – PLAIN. Plain, tasteless and expensive.

They cost $2.50 to $3.00 EACH!

We thought (knowing so little about these sorts of things that it is laughable) ‘well this won’t last long – who would buy these?’

But on it rolled. I did a quick Google search and there are at least 30 cupcake shops in Sydney now. They may be hundreds. My only question is WHY?

I just do not know but this link takes you to an article that attempts to explain the inexplicable. 
And now Wien is now infested with cupcake shops. Wien! Of all places! Still they have to be better than Topfenstrudel (Parsifal will comment about this).

Here is a link so that you can see the dimensions of the problem facing us. This has to be the cake equivalent of Starbucks.  They must be stopped!


4 comments:

  1. I have had it with cupcakes ever since I baked 2 dozens to take to school for my oldest's 6th birthday celebration. I used only the finest ingredients, only the choicest ingredients would do. As soon as my little darling came home from school, I enquired about the jury's verdict. Oh, she answered, my classmates said that they were almost as good as Giant's! (Giant is a supermarket chain in Washington, DC - cupcakes cost a few bucks a dozen and were nothing but bleached flour and highly refined sugar and hydrogenated fat - I am still not over that one, as you can see!).

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  2. You turned it off and then back on? I didn't know you were an IT support expert? Usually you have to go on hold for eight days and work your way through six levels of a management tree before reaching someone qualified to advise you to try that! Amazing - now those cakes look nice!

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  3. These new fandangled cupcakes aren't a patch on my Grandma's coconut Patty Cakes.

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  4. You might like to have a look at a little program for the Mac called What's Keeping Me?, although I'm not sure it would have helped in your particular situation since there was no program running.

    http://download.cnet.com/What-s-Keeping-Me/3000-2248_4-197098.html

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