(This may be a bit off-topic, but it's important to save Nick H. as a resource for this page.)

You mess with McDonalds, and you're messing with the American Way-of-Life.

You're messing with all that's cheap and tacky and exportable and flashy and easy.

You may as well mess with Lucky Strike cigarettes, or the Marlboro Man. Parking lots, asphalt and concrete highways, the internal combustion engine.

Or SUVs.

For God's sake, get a grip. You're screwing with globalization, free trade, and capitalism.

You're heading down a slippery slope when you start to criticize "freedom fries", with their symbolic drenching of oil, fried to a symbolic crisp, and served with a symbolic smile by a minimum wage worker whose family could well-nigh be asleep when she gets home. To peace and quiet, I might add.

Be careful. McDonalds represents America, home of the "freedom fry" and land of the obese.

Mess with us, and bigawd you just might find yourself at the wrong end of a cruise missile fired by a fat fellow with a quarter-pounder with cheese in his left hand.

You even look cross-eyed at a McDonalds and it's worth an overnight stay at a friendly concentration camp, far from home, complete with entertainment by Lynndie England and the Guys or the equivalent. Stimulating conversations with well-travelled strangers, with the emphasis on stimulating.

Please heed a word to the wise.

Arf