The pie, Boulderian scholars tell us, is a sacred ritual object in Greater Boulderia. Pies have been sighted hovering in the skies over Boulder from the earliest times (but only by those whose Intentions are truly Good), and hence are sacred to the Cult of Good Intentions. Some seers even say that Chief Left Hand and the Native Boulderians who first lived here saw them, but were just too bummed out to mention it at the time.

So it would hardly be completely improbable if plastering someone in the mug with a pie might one day be legally-protected First Amendment speech in Boulderia! Our Glorious Republic moved one step closer to F.A. pie when a jury declined to convict Agent Moon Pie, aka Sara Toombs, a then 20-year-old Naropa University student, of assault for pieing University of Colorado Boulder Chancellor Richard Byny.

The facial pastry was administered by Toombs, a reputed Groucho Marxist, because of Byny's presumed intransigence in adopting a CU policy acceptable to campus activists on the issue of sweatshop sweatshirts. Byny claimed a nosebleed and a ruined suit (it was, sadly, a blueberry pie), and Toombs was jailed briefly on assault charges. Members of the Boulder Biotic Biotic Baking Brigade staged demonstations before the trial to show that pieing is "a funny, friendly thing."

But it's not as funny as might be inferred from all the huffing by certain of the local punditry over the outrageousness of even charging Agent Moon with assault when she's cute as, well, a pie. In two full columns on the subject, one local sage managed to avoid stumbling over the disquieting notion that the victim might find a slightly more sinister subtext in this little prank: might not be a pie nex' time, Poopsie!

It doesn't do much to affirm the notion that all individuals ought to be safe in their physical persons, and it's no boon to free speech if the holders of unpopular ideas can be publicly pastried to wild popular acclaim. Is anyone really surprised the D.A. dropped this hot, flaky one in a jury's lap? The jury went with harassment instead of assault.

Consequently, Mondo Boulder's panel of weird-law experts advise that, despite the verdict, don't try this yourself unless your target is the currently unfashionable white male who is not a judge. Better yet, don't try it if you're not a cute lil' gal.

So don't take your pie to town, son (or daughter). Shoving it in someone's kisser constitutes a wanton and sacreligious desecration of

[NOTE: Recent studies (No, really. We're not making this up) have shown that blueberries may not only help keep the brain healthy but may help prevent breast and cervical cancers. Once again, Modern Science vindicates folk wisdom! Mondo Boulder can't understand why the Moon Pie defense didn't try to claim she was giving Byny an alternative health treatment.}

[NOTE: It is considered cowardly to recycle a fruitcake by, say, giving it to either friends or foes alike. Boulderians of integrity publicly toss their holiday fruitcakes into the cemetery, perhaps thereby symbolizing the Death of the Old Radical Left (or perhaps not), since the fruitcake is traditionally the sacramental food of Boulderia's lively political scene.]