I HATE FRUITCAKE

It's only a few more days until Christmas. Time for me to explain my feelings on the one part of Christmas that SERIOUSLY needs to  be put out of its misery.  And I know that many people agree with me on this because we all seem to be trying to get it as far away from ourselves by sending it to others.  So what is this yuletide atrocity?   It's FRUITCAKE.  That hideous loaf of  dried fruit and leftover cupboards scrapings we dump into a pan, coat with rum, wrap in foil, and then send to our loved ones when, more appropriately, it should be sent to our most hated enemies.
 
       People don't even know where this god damned thing originated.  I looked on the Internet  just to see if maybe I could shed a little light on its origins  and perhaps point an accusatory  finger at the inventors of this gastric apocalypse.  

     As near as I can figure, it came from an English version of Plum Cake.  'Plum'  being the word for any dried fruit at the time.  It seems there were certain laws or restrictions which did not allow for this cake to be made at any other time of the year save Christmas and Easter.  Apparently, they were already aware of its malicious intent and felt the need to limit its distribution to times when the population had good cheer in abundance.  But if this is so, then why the hell does it have the ability to remain edible (and I use the term edible loosely and to refer to the ability to chew it not necessarily to digest it) for weeks, months, and quite possibly years??

     It just dawned on me that I have never made a fruitcake in my entire life.  Neither has anyone I know.  And yet we have all received one at   some Christmas or another.  Maybe there is a very small finite number of these fruitcakes floating around and that by merely coming into contact with one it has scarred us for life.  Perhaps fruitcake can actually last for generations and we are simply receiving and re mailing the same fruitcakes over and over to each other like some twisted, hideous, semi-edible chain letter.

     I ate a fruitcake once just to test a hypothesis of mine. I postulated that by eating a fruitcake that quite possibly I would have been infected with a toxin that caused me to seek out and create a fruitcake so as to keep the number of them constantly the same. It was proven false. I did, however, come to find that by eating a fruitcake by yourself for the purposes of scientific research, that your insides will bunch up and suddenly cease to function. Were it not for the candy like fruit jewels encrusting the top of the cake, my  colon would have begun  to resemble, in both shape and rigidity, the exhaust system of a 1957 Chevy.  Thank  you, Jesus, for the fiber contained within.  Now I can spend hour upon hour gripping the toilet seat like a Chuck Yeager's ass did breaking the sound barrier. evacuating  myself of every once of fluid with the efficiency of a fire hose.

     Who knew that fruit could possibly weigh so much.  My God, the damn thing is only a few inches across and yet has the density of a small star.  With what it costs to send these things through the mail, it's  surprising we haven't found some other way to dispose of it.  Now I know why mail trucks have double rear axles.  With the price of  heating oil here in New York, It may be more prudent to simply cram it into the pellet stove and use it to heat the house.....until August of next year!!!!
     One year, I actually considered making a website asking people to send all of their unwanted fruitcake to a single location to be used for the worlds largest  ski chalet constructed of nothing but fruitcakes all lined up like adobe bricks.  Then I'd leave the address of my old boss in the hopes that he was sucked into the black hole caused by that much mass in a single location.

    Just to alleviate a bit of the mystery here, can anyone tell me what the hell the green round things are inside of  it??  Those and the small bitter orange pieces.  My mother, trying her best to be helpful, told me that they were orange... and bitter.  Well thanks, Mom.  Your redundancy has been duly noted.  Remind me to thank you for your cheerful contribution to my culinary knowledge.  Remind me to send you a fruitcake.  I am going to assume that she meant that they were pieces of orange peel, but who in the HELL uses something they have thrown away as inedible refuse for an entire year and then suddenly considers it to be a primary ingredient for a cake sent to loved ones??

     This year I have decided that, rather than eat these wretched foil wrapped, 'urban legends of dispair', we should use them for other purposes.  Sliced thinly(I suggest using a table saw for this) they could be used for roofing shingles. Painted grey they could patch holes in battleships before going to sea.,Jimmy Carter may be able to use them as cinder blocks for Habitat for Humanity, New Orleans needs a levee. They are heavy enough to use as artillery shells instead of depleted Uranium, and, given their propensity for filling stomachs without ever seeming to get any smaller, would be more useful in an underdeveloped nation.  But then of course, after biting down into an unidentifiable colored piece of organic material, they  may opt for starvation as a more viable alternative.

  So Merry Christmas. And keep your damn fruitcake!!!!!!!