Tossing out the old fruitcake

Typewriter Tales - By Jennifer McBride

Looking for a way to get rid of that ugly light-up tie your Aunt Matilda gave you? How about the Tickle-Me-Fonzie that your daughter's squeezed enough times to make you scream?

Manitou Springs, Colorado has a solution for you. The city has turned fruitcake — the inedible fructose-full globs of legend — into some delicious fun. On the first Saturday of the New Year, fruitcake haters compete to see who can hurl their hunk of natural cement the farthest. Because of "creative" baking techniques, the rules now stipulate that the only ingredients that can go into a recipe are fruit, nuts, flour etc. Absolutely no rocket fuel or lead filling allowed. Fruitcakes are also restricted to a weight of four pounds, for safety reasons.

This event has become a corporate affair. Boeing entered their own pneumatic fruitcake thrower only to be defeated by a troop of Girl Scouts. Boeing got revenge a few years later. In 2007, eight aeronautics engineers set the record with a throw of 1,420 feet. Their weapon of choice? The Omega 380 — a mock artillery piece fueled by compressed air pumped by an exercise bike.

That record will stand forever unbroken, since throwers are now limited to 250 feet. After hurled pastries started wreaking havoc with seismographs and tearing chunks out of town buildings, organizers decided to promote accuracy over distance.

Can't cook? Or you actually like eating fruitcake? You can "rent" someone else's disgusting delicacy for $1.

Of course, hurling isn't the only category throwers can compete in. According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, one year a Saddam Hussein fruitcake took home the prize for "ugliest."

The ancient Roman delicacy probably deserves better than to be thrown pistachios-first into a mountains. Despite being a modern by-word for gross, fruitcakes were once considered so "sinfully" good by 18th-century Europeans (those Protestant party animals!) they were banned at all other times but Christmas.

So toss that fruitcake. Better than eating it and imperiling your immortal soul…

Anyway, the point is this — why just fruitcakes? Why not other pieces of junk? If you've tried to exchange something and the Wal-Mart clerk just laughs at you, you need to consider your alternatives. Drastic times call for drastic measures, and the Elvis hip-pumping Santa would look so wonderful sailing over the Lake.

So the rest of you can chuck your clothes and jump into nearly-freezing water if you want. To bring in the New Year, I'm going to be playing with some Grade A rocket fuel.