Wednesday
May112011
The Words Get in the Way
May 11, 2011 My friends, there's an epidemic sweeping our nation's bakeries that I think you should know about: SPATIAL AWARENESS DISORDER.
And believe me, it's SAD.
It starts innocently enough.
First you might notice a few odd gaps in their writing:
Then they run out of room:
Then they decide to just keep going:
The next thing you know, the bakery's sense of scale is swinging wildly from one extreme to another, ranging from the microscopic:
To the titanic:
"We had to bake three more cakes to fit it all in, but we made it!"Occasionally a wreckerator might recognize that s/he's made a mistake:
Thereby making it worse.In its final stages, the SAD affect can get doubly bizarre:
Bakers lose all sense of gravity, distance, and direction...
...and even more disturbing: appropriate word placement.
To this day, Nanny still can't look the mall Santa in the eye.Thanks to Chris S., Rebecca M., Marina C., Rachel P., Cindy E., Marc, Trish M., & Alison for finally exposing the third rail of cake decorating.
Reader Comments (70)
Wow, these are great! I know my writing skills aren't the best, which is why I avoid it, but these make me look like a champion!
Pervy Santa says, "I've got your Birthday right here, Nanny."
But you guys will always be spatial to me!
Hmmm... after seeing these wrecks, my own cake writing isn't lookin' so bad, now... :-)
Seriously, HOW are these people still in business?
The iMom says "How many times have I told you not to drink and decorate!"
On that first cake, it says "Hoppy" instead of "Epcot."
Looks like Nanny's birthday wish is finally coming true.
WV: askan- Askan you shall receive, Nanny.
That last one just crack's me up! How Rude! :D
hahaha the arrow. I can't even.
i wonder how long it will be before someone (who has no sense of humor and obviously hates cake) complains about this post.
"blah blah blah Society for Spatial Awareness whine whine..."
@lori: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! i always knew i shouldn't trust Mall Santa!!
Nanny is having a really big birthday!
And the word "birthday" has now become a euphemism in my mind . . .
Does your birthday hang low, does it waggle to and fro . . .
Is it your birthday, or are you just happy to see me?
That guy is such a . . . a . . .a birthday!
Upon seeing a guy driving a macho sports car "Must have been born on Dec. 21." (think about it)
Well, you get the idea.
That red and white one -- how? Just how?
wv - messoars
Those wreckerator are a mess o' arses!
---> my favorite! (as in, why???)
---------------< the arrow is
(And I hope Donna M knows she's expected to comment on all the cakes now. Yay!)
I laughed so hard at the appropriate word placement. :'D
Even with out the strangely placed scripts, why a Santa birthday cake? Why does Santa look like THAT? Scarred! Scarred for life!
HEHEHEHE
I'm guessing the Miracle Strip Park cakes were meant for a lot of people.
Miracle Strip was an amusement park in Panama City Beach, FL. I went there a couple of times as a child, and I rode my first roller coaster there. The park closed quite awhile back, so that photo is several years old. A few of the rides were sold to a new outdoor shopping mall in PCB and are still in use.
Here's to hoping the bakery was required to pay for part of Nanny's psychotherapy! O_o
Titanic cake reminded me of the parting of the Red Sea. Not sure why. ;)
I had fun mentally taking the four cakes apart and reading them separately. :D
Spatial Awareness Disorder; this explains those poeple who stand uncomfortably close behind me every place I have to stand in a line. Bank, supermarket, you name it, there they are, eerily breathing on the back of my neck.
wv: tershme
Something "tershme" that the white-with-red-doodles-on-it cake was decorated after a few too many drinks.
I'm still trying courageously to figure out what that 8th cake (second from bottom) even says. "Hoppy Be Young"? Er, "Hppygy Yummy" with a heart in between? I have spent more time than I want to admit trying to decipher that one. And did the person who ordered it actually PAY for that? "Oh, thanks, exactly what I wanted for Hoopy Yrung's special day!"
I think Nanny should be looking Santa in the eye....
wv - upear: said Nanny (with apologies to The Night Before Christmas) "and what to my wondering eyes should upear..."
@Lori - AWESOME
@Mouse - Laugh, Thanks for
@Zoo Mom - You too?
@Jen & the CW Team - Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! My toddler demanded to know "Mommy, whatzo funey?" (well, at least that's how a wreckerator would translate her toddler-speak onto a cake!)
And it would have been so easy to fix Kim's cake with a well-placed comma and an exclamation point: Kim, Happy Birthday!
@Donna M: wow, that iMom is right up to the minute!
Thanks me. (or not)
For the Mories. (sure.)
Mira Pa? Mi Rapa? (que?)
Clerk Strip. (um. no.)
Is Santa.. GIVING birth?
writing on a cake is hard, but why not use a tooth pick and layout the words first?
Kim's cake could have been rescued with a comma...
"Kim,Happy Birthday"
Just found your site through another blog. I love it!
i would be shot if i sent out cakes that look like that! How do these people still have jobs? Seriously?
I love the double "Happy Birthday Allison" cake. Probably because my name is Allison and today is, in fact, my birthday.
It still doesn't make any sense though!
wv: bywaying
The wreckerators wrote the sentiments where ever they would fit on the cakes, thus bywaying all laws of physics, grammar, or just plain common sense.
Whatsa birthdoth???? (Anita's cake)
These cakes make me want to go get drunk then write on a cake. I bet mine would still look better! And poor Nanny. If I was her, I'd cancel all birthdays from here on out...or at least request a pie, no writing!
Also notice on Kim's cake, the wreckerator accidentally squirted squiggles on the edge, then made other squiggles all around to match it!
Wrecks is my favorite blog!!! Cake
^-----------------------------------^
lol - um, yeah, using an arrow to show that one word was mistakenly placed somewhere it wasnt supposed to be.... now THERE's someone who deserves a raise!
and....oh my. santa. is that a birthday in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
wv - sundect - Sundect the decorator - they traumatized his nanny!
I was, until now, blissfully unaware that Santa had stretchy clown legs. Now I must fear him. Thanks. And that 8th cake...Happy B Young? I am so confused.
The Santa cake....there simply are not any words.
#8 reminds me of someone who had a bad day and just said F*$% It!
I'm think the 8th cake says "Happy Grooming"
My guess is that Allison is having a segregated birthday party... boys on one side and girls on the other.
Wow, I just noticed my mistake "I'm think..."
I should probably quit my job and decorate cakes for a living.
"Miracle Strip Park"? I don't want to know.
It looks like a couple of those decorators were having a seizure, but kept right on decorating--way to power through it!
Actually, my kindergarten son does write that way sometimes--when he runs out of space, the letters just go up above, or down below, sometimes backwards...but he's just learning to write, so it's excusable and cute. But from a "professional" who's getting paid to do this...um, no.
The Miracle Strip Amusement Park cake(s?) actually brought a tear to my eye! I grew up with the park and still pass by the empty lot where all the rides used to sit when I'm in Panama City Beach. Even though it's all covered over with weeds, you can still identify where certain rides sat by the shapes they left behind in the concrete.
Back in the mid-90s, my family and I "borrowed" a frog ornament from a friend's yard and took it for a weekend vacation in PCB. We still have photos of us holding the frog at the entrance to each ride in Miracle Strip. The park employees were so amused that some of them spread the word around town about the frog. By the end of the weekend, we had total strangers coming up to beg to have their photo taken with the frog--all thanks to the Miracle Strip crew! (The frog's owner was very surprised and pleased when the frog was returned to her doorstep the following week--with a book of photos!)
--DFM
does that first cake say hoppy birthday???
"And believe me, it's SAD"
Ba-dum-Ching!
Awesome!
Spatial Awareness Disorder also explains a lot of what happens in parking lots and on the road.
I expect that what is holding up the complaints is having to sift through reams of one-word emails from each complainer, along with those that contain no spaces between words.
01 I hope Connic had a Hopry Birthday. (By the way, Wreckerator, Harry spells it with a 'k'. Just thought you should know.)
02 Poor Night Team. The irony: 'congratulations' is spelled correctly.
03 I've often wondered what could be written in the space provided on pre-decorated cakes. Now I know: gibberish.
04 The wreckerator thought s/he could avoid infamy by using a 'congratulations' pick. Heh heh heh. Unfortunately, the pick was about 4 times too small, making it look like Rashel's accomplishment is a secret. Presented for your consideration and filed under 'darned by faint praise' in... The Cake Wrecks Zone.
05 "Four cakes? Not a problem. We charge $20 per word for writing, though."
06 The funny thing: the arrow is pointing the wrong way. The scary thing: this is probably an exact quote of the order.
07 "Honey, we're not going to be able to tell them apart anyway, so let's just call them both 'Allison'. It'll save on birthday cakes, too."
10 What happens when wreckerators read Cake Wrecks while 'working'.
11 Since I count only 8 candles, I think MC Hammer said it best when he said, "U can't touch this."
(8 is also the base of today's numbering scheme.)
The sixth cake, Happy Birthday Kim, Seems like something I would do on a test. Arrow wasn't needed, really.
I miss Miracle Strip. :( It was the highlight of every summer I had growing up. At least Shipwreck Island's still there. Or at least it was last time I went to Panama City.