Pointlife
The Point is…
Dear The Point Is,
My friend has an old cake pan in the shape of male genitalia that she does not know what to do with now that she has used it. What should she do with it?
Sincerely,
A Pandemic Problem
Dear Pandemic,
Being married, my associate was severely confused and utterly convinced that one of my dear readers had sent me Joe Camel’s death mask when confronted with the visual of your cake pan upon my desk.
When reading the letter attached to the pan, two things became clear. First, that I need to remember to tip my mail carrier extra for this, and, second, that the item mimicked something even more obscure to a married man: a penis.
My associate hadn’t seen one in years; he thanks you for the memories.
With reports of my own marriage having been greatly exaggerated (read: fabricated by me in an effort to gain citizenship), I, in actuality, recognized immediately what had been placed on my desk. I was also able to recognize the familiar feelings of inadequacy that accompany such a sight. I do not thank you for the memories.
Enough foreplay, let’s get to the question: what to do with the novelty maker when the novelty has been noveltized out?
Sadly, this is an increasingly important question that faces our world today, as kitsch consumerism butts heads with the “green” and eco-conscious sensibilities.
Can we keep shipping our novelty penis technologies to third world landfills at bulgingly exponential rates? No, of course not, those are our tin dongs and as such we cannot pass the buck, we must suck it up and lay it out on the table. Ignoring it will not make it go away, and oftentimes the quickest solution is not the most satisfying. Penis.
But what of the penis cake pan’s very existence? Turns out that an extremely limited amount of research turned up that there is a long tradition in humanity to make foods look like things that they are not. This got me to thinking, and I didn’t care for it.
When I was a child, and therefore still religious, I remember the presence of a lamb cake pan for Christmas, Easter, Boxing Day or whatnot (I don’t remember the exact date because I didn’t eat mutton until my late teens). The point is, cakes come in many shapes and sizes, and it is often considered true that the ideal size of a cake is big enough to get from the spork to your stomach.
Made of geldingized steel, the cake pan provided to me is as festive as it is titillating, which is to say … no, it is neither of those things. Honestly, what is appetizing about a cake in such a shape? I can’t even imagine what cake mix you would choose. Dick cheesecake? Dark chocolate? Pound cake?! The psychological implications run deep.
Curious, however, I attempted to make bread in the pan, and I can tell you that the shape of the pan does, in fact, influence the amount of yeast needed to make the dough rise. Depending on the method used; be careful, you may wind up with flaccid bread. If this occurs, decrease the amount of rye, otherwise you’ll end up with dreaded “whisky cake.”
So, what to do with something that clearly fails at fulfilling its intended purpose? If you are Don Henley, you call it The Eagles. But, in our case, it will not be that simple, because while The Eagles may only suck a chubby one, what we have is an actual metallic chubby one.
The obvious answer was to acquire a second pan and then use the pair as snowshoes. But a restraining order from the school district and a revised walking route to campus later, I have been led to believe that there must be a better solution. Using the pan as a bike seat cover and riding around town only made people look at me cock-eyed and caused me to have new and funny feelings I did not know how to address. Okay, I lied, the feelings were not new.
Other ideas that sprang to mind: a planter, a Jell-O shot suppository, a chafing dish and my favorite, a tribal fertility mask to be hung over the bed. I tried this last one out, and other than the new feeling of something over my bed actually being hung, its magical abilities were lost on me. But my cat did get pregnant. I don’t know anything about that, though, I swear.
Finally, it came time to really find out what was what and I bowed to the pressure of the 21st century version of surveying; I posted the question in my Facebook status:
“There is only so much room for cake in these lean times of economy and of diet, and I understand that if one was to sacrifice a novelty cake pan to waste, why it should be the lamb and not the penis. Therefore, what is one to do with a penis cake pan?”
I hope it’s not just because I have fat friends, but it seems that what people want you to do with an old cake pan is to, first, contradict me and then … make more cake. Yes, Marie Antoinette was correct, people just want more cake.
So, contradicting fatties, what occasion can you think of for using a penis cake pan multiple times? Outside of weddings, bar mitzvahs, bachelorette parties, Canadian bachelor parties and Bastille Day, the most obvious of all would be May 6, Sigmund Freud’s birthday.
A better centerpiece to celebrate Freud there is not. Also, you may want to make one for June 25, Amalia Freud’s (Sigmund’s mother) birthday. You wouldn’t want her to be envious, after all.
This article was written for “The Pointless” - The Pointer’s April Fools Day alter ego
