The Hobo Philosopher
Rice Cakes – Yummy, Yummy.
By Richard E. Noble
My wife, over the past 30 years, has probably been on every diet known to mankind. For the first 15 or 20 years I went along with her. I've eaten almost anything in the name of fidelity and loyalty. But in recent years I have become a follower of Omar Khayyam. Omar's bible is the Rubaiyat. You know ... A loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and thou; Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you die.
I don't know exactly what it was that my wife did that brought me to my first serious reading of Omar Khayyam's the Rubaiyat but I think it was the rice cakes.
A rice cake was the first food product that ever made me regret eating. I found myself, not only reluctant, but annoyed by the act of chewing. For the first time in my life I truly understood how hunger could be a bad thing. The rice cake is a food engineering failure. Those scientists who work at the artificial, commercial, synthetic food laboratory are true geniuses. They can make cardboard edible and even digestible and most of the time they can make almost anything taste like chocolate. But they failed with the rice cake.
As I was chewing my first rice cake my brain was asking my mouth; What is going on here? Aren't we supposed to be spitting this out? My teeth and tongue had a slowdown strike. My stomach, small intestine and duodenum went into a huddle. The conclusion that they arrived at was a question that they forwarded to my brain. Their e-mail said; If this guy decides to start eating mud, AstroTurf, or plastic wrap are we required to digest it? Do we have any rights here?
It seems to me that along with an immune system and all those other involuntary type things we have going on in our bodies there should be a this-is-repulsive system.
I started putting peanut butter, jam, jelly and real butter on my rice cakes but somehow the rice cake was able to contaminate even these few of my favorite things. I tried to wash it down with a cold Miller's. Can you imagine going to a bar and instead of peanuts they put rice cakes on the bar for snacking?
A rice cake is an anti-food. It can annihilate other food and destroy a person’s desire to eat. If you eat only rice cakes you will die. Rice cakes drink all the water in your body, dehydrate your internal organs and then kill you.
I have read that they are working on a spinach flavored rice cake. These people are sick.
I think that I could eat a cup of uncooked, bleached, white flour and enjoy it more than eating a rice cake.
In Japan they have made eating into a suicide sport. They eat these fish that are poisonous and will kill you but they eat just a little so that they can dangle on the edge of life and death. They like to feel the "tingle" of the unknown - the hand of eternity on their shoulder. If I was the manufacturer of rice cakes, I would send them to Japan. In Japan eating is "to die for." Eating rice cakes might become a competitive spot in Japan.
Has anybody thought of a rice cake tossing festival? Are rice cakes biodegradable? I'll bet rice cakes don't go bad. If you made a bird feeder out of rice cakes, I'll bet no bird would touch it. My cats won't eat rice cakes. For that matter I'll bet that rice cakes don't grow mold. I think rice cakes are a bi-product of Styrofoam. I don't believe that rice cakes are really a food.
I think if you handed out bags of rice cakes to the starving around the world, the poor would lie down on the bare ground, cover themselves with the rice cakes and die. Either that or they would bust all the rice cakes open hoping to find food inside.
Compared to rice cakes soy protein burgers are delicious. I even tried frying rice cakes in bacon fat and mixing them with scrambled eggs and melted cheese. Even the dog wouldn't eat it.
I've been thinking of bringing rice cakes to the nursing home. Old people can find a use for anything - plastic bags, used aluminum wrappers, old string, paper clips, plastic bottles, oyster shells, maybe the old people could do something creative with rice cakes.
Hey what about powdered rice cakes on a fire ant hill?
“A Little Something” is R.E. Noble’s first book of poetry and it is now on sale at Amazon and locally at Downtown Books along with Hobo-ing America, A Summer with Charlie and Honor Thy Farther and Thy Mother. Richard Noble is a freelance writer who has lived here in Eastpoint for nearly 30 years.
