3 More Thoughts
Jun. 10th, 2003 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauWAN
I have been amusing myself recently with the "find random user" function of Livejournal. An unexpectedly large fraction of the journals I've seen are written in Russian. I wonder (since I've been too lazy to look it up from their userinfo pages) whether these are Russians posting from Russia, or are they Slavs transplanted to America, taking advantage of abundant and cheap American technology and Net access to write online in their first language? For that matter, where are the other immigrants - I have found only one other user posting in a foreign language (German).
***
TUP
One of the more disgusting things to come out of the Mammon McDonald's Corp. is the new "McGriddle". Haven't tried one myself yet (I don't eat eggs) but I understand it's a wad of bacon or a sausage patty, scrambled eggs and American cheese, served between two McGriddle cakes, which are small pankaces with syrup added to the mix. Apparently 550 calories and a colon-clogging 33 grams of fat.
Now, where do you suppose the idea for this came from? Did someone in the marketing department think that people who eat at McDonald's really do not have the time or coordination to eat things separately, or were they perhaps slumming it in an actual McDonald's one day and saw some obese moron who preferred to eat with his hands shoving the components of his whole Hotcakes n' Sausage tray into a huge syrup-soaked sandwich and stuffing it down his capacious maw? Equally probable to me but we'll never know the truth.
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TREE
For all the time I spent in the Army in my younger life, I rarely dream about it. But last night I had another mixed-up dream in which I was a platoon commander, had been wounded in the shoulder slightly and was kind of slumming around the mostly empty barracks while my arm healed. I scrounged a couple of doughnuts from the kitchen and sat around reading war comic books. Later the dream turned into a sexual (though not consummated) fantasy involving one of my co-workers, a woman I've never been interested in, see once a week and speak to once a month. Jeez, why can't I just sleep?
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FORT
Uh, that's it. Say something, whydoncha?
I have been amusing myself recently with the "find random user" function of Livejournal. An unexpectedly large fraction of the journals I've seen are written in Russian. I wonder (since I've been too lazy to look it up from their userinfo pages) whether these are Russians posting from Russia, or are they Slavs transplanted to America, taking advantage of abundant and cheap American technology and Net access to write online in their first language? For that matter, where are the other immigrants - I have found only one other user posting in a foreign language (German).
***
TUP
One of the more disgusting things to come out of the Mammon McDonald's Corp. is the new "McGriddle". Haven't tried one myself yet (I don't eat eggs) but I understand it's a wad of bacon or a sausage patty, scrambled eggs and American cheese, served between two McGriddle cakes, which are small pankaces with syrup added to the mix. Apparently 550 calories and a colon-clogging 33 grams of fat.
Now, where do you suppose the idea for this came from? Did someone in the marketing department think that people who eat at McDonald's really do not have the time or coordination to eat things separately, or were they perhaps slumming it in an actual McDonald's one day and saw some obese moron who preferred to eat with his hands shoving the components of his whole Hotcakes n' Sausage tray into a huge syrup-soaked sandwich and stuffing it down his capacious maw? Equally probable to me but we'll never know the truth.
***
TREE
For all the time I spent in the Army in my younger life, I rarely dream about it. But last night I had another mixed-up dream in which I was a platoon commander, had been wounded in the shoulder slightly and was kind of slumming around the mostly empty barracks while my arm healed. I scrounged a couple of doughnuts from the kitchen and sat around reading war comic books. Later the dream turned into a sexual (though not consummated) fantasy involving one of my co-workers, a woman I've never been interested in, see once a week and speak to once a month. Jeez, why can't I just sleep?
***
FORT
Uh, that's it. Say something, whydoncha?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
McLump
Date: 2003-06-10 10:44 am (UTC)In England I discovered an interesting little delicacy. It was called the All Day Breakfast in a can. The common fried breakfast one got at the local greasy spoon was eggs, bacon, sausage and beans. The majority of the can's contents were baked beans, but suspended within the mess were lumps of scrambled eggs, pieces of bacon and sausage. I bought one, for my collection. It was never eaten.
Later, I found a new can meal by the same company. This one as called the Full Monty and had even more goodies in the can, like scrambled eggs enrobed within gooey sausage meat! I bought one to put on display at my school's common room, I worshipped it as an icon, but someone stole it and ate it.
My american classmate J. snuck one into the larder of another classmate, as a joke. Nothing ever happened. Curious and thinking he hid the can too well, J. peeped into the cupboard and discovered SIX more cans of the Full Monty. Not only had the classmate eaten the contents, but liked it and bought more!
So who's idea was it to lump food together for convenience? Looks like a chicken and egg question to me. If they make it, we'll eat it. And if we'll eat it, they'll make it.
Re: McLump
Date: 2003-06-10 11:36 am (UTC)Yes, super-sized America... to echo an earlier rant here, what amazes me is the contempt for humanity companies can display, intentionally or not.
Certainly the people who come up with ideas for things like the McGriddle don't eat them themselves - hopefully they are too alert mentally otherwise to remember some basic points about nutrition.
I would think that after a few years, a McDonald's marketing exec probably would view coming up with new dishes as a fantastically profitable method of slopping the hogs. "Hm, let's just see what we can make them stuff down their gullets next..."
I still think that McDonald's food, with its generally mushy consistency and loads of sugar (even the buns are loaded with sugar to extend shelf life and brown faster) constitutes a plot to deprive a respectable fraction of the population of its teeth, to the point where they only thing they will be able to eat is McDonald's food.
Is it necessarily a chicken-and-egg (and American cheese, slathered with sauce and folded into a moist wad of dough) question? Some people eat at McDonald's not once but several times a day, almost every day, so for them the answer is yes.
Re: McLump
Date: 2003-06-10 12:39 pm (UTC)One burger and fries is not bad for you, or if it is, then a slice of cheesecake with apricot preserves is also bad for you. It is when we eat in excess that the consumption becomes unhealthy. But that is our choice.
I personally am not a McDonalds fan - if I'm going to consume those calories, then I want the cheesecake. But I have no sympathy for the obese people suing the fast food industry because they had no idea it'd make them fat. It was their choice.
I am more disappointed in the people for providing business to fast food than to the fast food industry itself, after all, McDonalds is simply doing what it's supposed to be doing - making money.
Russians Online
Date: 2003-06-11 05:52 am (UTC)Re: Russians Online
Date: 2003-06-11 10:19 am (UTC)Re: McGriddle
Date: 2003-06-11 10:52 am (UTC)Yes, Zak, everything you say is true. But I also agree with everything Rosminah said above.
Everyone who is relevant to the McGriddle equation is behaving as they are programmed - obese people in a hurry with $1.49 in their pockets are stuffing down these wads of dough, syrup, cheese and cheap meat because they chose it and paid for it; McDonald's Corp is doing its profit-seeking best to satisfy a need it only partly created; and people who should be beavering away quietly in their cubicles are posting stuff on the Internet about the whole greasy mess.
Again, what gets me down is the programmed aspect to it. I learned a long time ago that most people tend to act the way they are treated. If society gives people the default role of unthinking consumers, dedicated to days of drudge work followed by television, relieved only by the temporary satiation of basic lusts (sweet greasy mushy food, assembled by humans but only because their labour comes cheaper than machines; flashy toys; boobies or buns on the Orthicon Tube [wired or not]; etc.), then something like the McGriddle makes sense. Not only that, this is the easier and more profitable route.
I think if our society gave a bit more shrift to people thinking about what they're doing, and educating themselves about what goes into their mouths bodies and brains, we wouldn't have so many people acting like spoiled self-absorbed children. I cna't help but think that life in North America would be much more pleasant and productive if the emotional age of its inhabitants advanced by four or five years.
Of course, my comments only apply to this little wired, overly affluent corner of the world. There are lots of people out there who would love to get their hands on a McGriddle. Hold the pork products for the Muslims and Jews; cheese is out because of the large portion of the world that doesn't feed on cow's milk; and do Buddhists eat eggs? Hm, how about a sweet soggy pancake? Mm, mm, good....