The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

There’s a long standing joke about fruitcake, that nobody likes it and yet everyone gives it. It’s a joke that gets repeated ad nauseum through any possible outlet, be it word of mouth or through modern media. It’s a joke so old that it is a cliche that gets rolled out every winter with little added to it. In fact, crap jokes about fruitcake – or “Christmas Cake” as it is often labelled here (with much more icing and often no rum) – is itself a tradition.

Strangely, no matter the derision, fruitcake is still bought, still offered for sharing and still gifted. The world is not covered throughout the year by an ever growing mountain of fruitcake, so people must be consuming it.

Is fruitcake merely the victim of some joke writer from a bygone time wanting to victimise a food for a cheap laugh, much like the typical mother-in-law humour? Could we just as easily have grown to mock the holiday beast, be it pig or turkey, the mince pie or the several quarts of sherry you have to drown because you wanted to leave a small shot out for Santa?

Fruitcake is a dislike of mine, but mostly through the inch of icing and marzipan that people insist on covering it in. The icing that somehow manages to permeate the density of fruitcake and spread the very evil roots of marzipan taste within. What should be a cakey, fruity and alcoholicly tasting experience becomes that with a sinister twist.

In short, I freakin’ hate marzipan. Fruitcake would do fine without it’s corrupting influence, I’d even take it out for a few drinks down the local bar, and I’d play wingman for it as it tries to chat up a cream slice only to discover he’s looking at it through beer googles and it’s really a boiler bunny – a two-bagger at that – who turns out to be a custard doughnut in the morning. One with granulated, not powdered, sugar on top.

So, why all the talk about fruitcake? Because once again Ben10 and Barbie give me the same deal in the calendar.

Todays outcomes were: The Simpsons calendar gave a chocolate shaped as a Wreath and the image was Homer getting electrocuted as plugged in the tree lights while Bart watched and laughed (loving that my complaint yesterday is redundant on this calendar). Barbie calendar gave a fruitcake on a sled and the chocolate was a reindeer with a bell around it’s neck. Ben10 calendar gave a fruitcake on a sled and the chocolate was a bas relief of the three wise men.

What the heck is with sleds so far, is everything going to have to ride a sled to be Christmassy for Barbie and Ben? Ben gets away with it, he’s a young boy and sledding is fun and totally wintery despite the extreme rarity of snow at Christmas, but Barbie has no excuse. In fact, I could see Ben, as a kid, fearing the image and it being part of a nightmare where some overweight auntie bakes hundreds of fruitcakes and insists he eats them all, as he flees the fruitcakes chase him. Barbie meanwhile just has ADD, “Let’s decorate the cake we made in the Barbie Dream Kitchen, Shelly, first we lay the gross marzipan so no-one will enjoy it, then we add small plastic holly so some kid will eventually choke and then we…ooh, look a sled, let’s go sledding…”.

It came to my mind last night, after writing, that I think this is one of the few times you all get to see Barbie sandwiched between Bart and Ben. If there isn’t one, there should be a Rule 34 for this.