Recent Effluvia:

My mother made me a Hate Cake today. I don’t know what I did to upset her so, but it must have been bad. This was the meanest Hate Cake I’d ever seen. And I’ve seen plenty in my time.

In place of flour, she’d substituted plaster dust.

The cake had three wicked layers—each more revolting than the one below it. Each layer was separated by a thin glacé of duck lard. The bottom layer had a fine dusting of used coffee grounds to add texture and a less than delightful crunch. Layer two was equally appalling. It had a surprise filling: potato peelings and menthol cigarettes. The top layer was where the true culinary artistry shone. A delicate confection of ketchup, pork rinds and Trinidad Moruga Scorpion peppers, which I’m told are 100 times hotter than the Indian Ghost Pepper, Bhut jolokia.

The frosting was especially hateful. A spiteful spread consisting of full pulp orange juice mixed with Crest toothpaste. And no Hate Cake is complete without a jaw-dropping—or indeed, jaw-piercing—presentation and this cake proved no exception. What at first glance appeared to be delicate crystals encrusting the entire top of the cake surface was in fact, ground Italian glass. No expense was spared; that was genuine Murano glass, ground to perfection.