The Unbearable Sadness of Cake

(Where to start? Where to start?)

1. I have no cake.

2. If I did have cake, I would now have no cake.

3. If I did have cake, and still had cake, I would soon have no cake.

4. If I was gazing long-lastingly at cake, but couldn’t decide to get it.

5. If I was gazing long-lastingly at cake, but decided not to get it.

6. If I was gazing long-lastingly at cake, but decided to get it.

7. If I was gazing long-lastingly at cake, but decided to get it, only to find I had left my wallet at home.

8. If I was gazing long-lastingly at cake, but someone else was eating the last piece.

9. If I was gazing long-lastingly at cake, but it was only a picture.

10. I decide to bake a cake, but have no ingredients.

11. I decide to bake a cake, but am missing eggs.

12. I decide to bake a cake, but mix up baking powder and baking soda in my mind.

13. I decide to bake a cake, but accidentally burn it.

14. I eat some cake, but the frosting is terrible (with those sweet/bitter frosting flowers).

15. I eat some cake, and it’s the best cake I’ve ever eaten, and I know that I will never have cake that good ever again in my entire life.

16. I eat some cake, and it’s the best cake I’ve ever eaten, and I know that I will search my whole life long for cake to equal or better it.

17. I watch someone eating cake, and it’s the best cake they’ve ever eaten, and they tell me so.

18. I eat some cake: it is neither excellent nor terrible: a middling cake.

19. A monkey eats the cake.

20. A monkey throws the cake.

21. A small child eats all of the cake when no one is looking.

22. The small child’s parents look on approvingly as it eats all of the cake.

23. There are a lot of children eating cake.

24. Just recently, a lot of children ate cake, and now they are insufferable.

24b. But I am suffering them.

25. There is only One True Cake.

26. There is no One True Cake.

27. The cake is only a mirage in a desert of desserts.

28. The cake is made from spam/tuna/meat paste/anchovies/cardboard.

29. The cake is a prop.

30. The cake is a CGI cake.

31. The cake got rained out.

32. The cake is really a sandwich.

33. Only Members of the Club get to eat this cake.

33b. I am not a Member of the Club.

34. The cake is all Greek to me, whatever that means.

35. I was too sad to eat cake.

36. I was so happy I forgot to eat cake, and then felt sad.

37. The cake was actually a hat.

38. The cake was actually a hat, as described in the novel Madame Bovary.

It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile’s face. Oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord, small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new; its peak shone.

38a. I don’t know why Madame Bovary‘s hat reminded me of cake.

38b. It’s actually Charles Bovary’s hat; Madame Bovary doesn’t figure in, hatwise.

39. The cake tastes good, but there’s something indescribable missing from it.

40. The cake tastes good, but I know exactly what’s missing from it.

41. I’m still thinking about that not-a-cake hat.

42. The cake is actually a giant chair.

43. The cake is a hamburger and fries. I mean to say, it’s a cake made to look like a hamburger and fries.

44. I only have 33 items in my list of cake sadnesses.