"YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR
CAKE AND EAT IT TOO!!!"
Is it just me, or does this expression really not make sense?

"Hoo-boy, he's probably gone totally off his rocker", you must be saying. Well, I'm way ahead of you. I've KNOWN I'm off my rocker for a long time. In fact, I'm actually sitting in my COMPUTER CHAIR right now. Ha ha! So as I type this, yes, I am OFF MY ROCKER. How about the rest of the time? The term "plain old crazy" will do just fine, thank you. I'd like to think I am an individual, with my own (crazy or not) way of seeing things. But I'll tell ya, just because I recently got new glasses doesn't mean the world's any more in focus than before!

But can you have your cake and eat it too? Well, let's pick this apart. If someone serves you cake, you "have it". It is in your possession, therefore you "have it". When you open your mouth and stuff the cake in ungraciously, slobbering all over the place, you STILL "have it". When it's in your mouth, it's in your possession. It goes down yer esophagus, into yer gut, thru yer intestines...all that while, the cake is in your possession. It's in the grasp of your BODY, after all. So you still "have it". Sooner or later you WON'T have the cake anymore, but we won't go into that. At least, not here.

Sometimes, if you're going against the grain, if you're standing up for principles you believe in, and everyone is ripping your ideas to shreds and ceaselessly mocking you for being an uncomprehending pseudo-idiot-savant hosehead, but you KNOW you are right, an expression that might come to mind is "let 'em eat cake". If they HAVE cake, that is. Or you might want them to eat (insert 'four letter word' here)...but we won't go into that either. But at least we've settled one point...they'll HAVE whatever it is they're eating. For a while, anyway.

This, then, can be expounded upon even further. There are the "have's". Then, there are the "have-nots". The "have's" possess enough money to buy all of the cake they could ever want. In this case, we could broaden "cake" to mean, "anything which contributes to the amount of luxury in one's life." "Cake" to, say, someone who owns a big money-grubbing Rezzort might mean, several cases of Chateau Lafitte '59, probably worth thousands of dollars a bottle. Oh, and don't forget the truckload of Caviar either. Who knows; with two or three layers of caviar, separated by layers of, say, truffles or whatever, they might even have "Caviar Cake"!

On the other hand, "Cake" to Joe Blue-collar might mean, an extra half-rack of Cascade Beer and a few extra Jo-Jo's with the fried chicken he's buying. It's all relative. So, ol' Joe might be a "have" to a degree. Even if he doesn't "have" a lot. Maybe, however, there's a month when ol' Joe can't afford any luxuries, what with increasing property taxes and city utility bills. So he can afford no luxuries whatsoever. It's all he can do to put a can of baked beans on the table. He can't afford cake, whether it's actually 'cake' or anything else that approaches luxury; thusly, he becomes a "have-not". Unless things have become so bad for him that the can of baked beans is actually a LUXURY. It's conditions like this that keep local food banks in business.

Perhaps there should be THREE terms..."Have's", "Have-LESS", and "Have-NOTS". After all, those who have less (who could probably actually be thrown in there with the have-nots,) do celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, etc. So they do sacrifice whatever they have to in order to get CAKE. (Although the "have's" buy expensive pre-made cakes from the top bakeries, while the "have less" and "have-nots" buy a box of Jiffy Cake Mix for $1.29, and bake the thing at home, trying all the while not to burn it.) The "have's" who eat cake do so at pretentious parties with pinkies raised as they delicately insert neat little cake squares into their yaps. At real ritzy parties they use cake forks. The po' folks who eat cake have the kids blow out the candles first, and everyone present hopes they get the corner piece with MORE FROSTING!

Looking back over what I've typed here, I can see that I haven't accomplished very much, if anything at all. Maybe I'd better get to the point of all of this. Now where's that 'point'??? It was around here somewhere...oh, there it is...the point of all of this is that CAKE, in a way, is a societal equalizer. The rich folks eat cake, the po' folks eat cake, and while I never have any occasions to eat cake anymore, I do eat Twinkies from time to time, so I 'spose I fit in there somewhere. The average common person, then, eats cake, and so do the rich and mighty, as seen in this picture:


www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/hbo served up this foto on a silver platter. With a cake fork.

This caption pretty much wrote itself. I LIVE for moments like these. That's probably why everyone tells me to GET a life. Even if efforts like this reveal me as a political ignoramus. Hey, I resemble that!
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This has been one of the crummiest posts I've ever written. HEY! YOU GOT A BIGGER PIECE THAN I DID!!! NO FAIR!!!