Blame it on Minute Rice

At a recent concert, I had the fortunate opportunity to be within 20 feet of the stage. The band played, people danced and whooped it up, and the venue was pretty much a wall of sound. And then the second song started. Lesser amounts of whooping it up took place and countless concert goers felt the need to text, tweet, or email right there on the spot. Total attention time: 3minutes and 45 seconds. The remaining 120 minutes of the show was a combination of “Yeah, great song,” followed by “who in the world can I tell it’s a great song.” Of course, countless photos were added in for good measure. As I watched this, I realized that we are a country with the general attention span of a fire fly on coffee. How did this happen, and who started this sad spiral downward? After a night of pondering, I have found the answer. MINUTE RICE!

Yes Minute Rice. It was invented in 1949 and produced by General Mills. It is now owned by Kraft. Minute Rice, taste withstanding, was basically the Industrial World’s way of saying. “Your time is too important for yummy rice, and who needs to stand over a stove for 20 minutes.” The ironic part is that it takes more than a minute to cook it. What’s up with that? No matter, the sinister seed (or grain in this instance) was planted. Focus and concentration are no longer needed. I’m pretty sure the Kung Fu TV show in the 70’s had an episode about this, but my lack of focus is preventing me from researching this little known fact.

It gets worse. From there, Microwavable Minute Rice was introduced. For people who don’t have the time or focus power to boil water, you now can microwave your minute rice. Today’s leaders were the children of the Minute Rice revolution. Need I say more…

There are others in this conspiracy. In 1957, Zenith developed something called the “Lazy Bones.” It soon became what we know as the Television remote control. This allows us the opportunity to change the channel over and over, which is good because we have to do something with all the free time that Minute Rice has provided for us. Space constraints do not allow me to go further into the history of Jiffy Pop. If you think the two are not connected, you are sadly mistaken!

My other concern is what is expected down the road. You know when we look back and say nostalgically, “Remember the days when we had to wait just a minute or two for rice? Ah, those were the days.” This may be followed by “Honey. hook up the Minute Mental Telepathy Unit and create some dinner.” I could go on and on, but I need to now focus on something else. I’ve spent 17 minutes writing this, and I’m exhausted. Oh look someone tweeted to me. Got to go…