McShit

Some years ago, I read Fast Food Nation, shortly after it was released and beginning to get attention. My life has not really been the same since then. I have never looked at meat the same way. Before FFN, when my kids were young, I’d buy them Happy Meals. I read them extracts from the book and now they won’t touch the stuff. It makes me very proud. I recall vividly quoting “there’s shit in the meat” to my eldest. It was I believe, the first time she had heard me say the word ’shit’ properly.

I’m so glad that McDonalds are going down the toilet. The only reason I frequent their establishment is to dump down theirs.

However, there comes a time, a post-IKEA time usually, when one has a hypoglycaemic attack of biblical proportions and only the Golden Arches will fix it. For some reason, the mind, which under a severe blood sugar crisis no longer functions properly, craves shit. And of course, one will find plenty of shit - as well as sugar, saturated fat, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and of course, high-fructose corn syrup, as well as the most amazing anti-mould preservatives known to man - therein.

Above is my order. It has of course been given the full-on Photoshop treatment. I picked up some tips here and there and I’m really enjoying Photoshop again now that I have a roof over my head again. So, my order. Shit everywhere.

The piece de resistance, nay, the creme de la creme of the whole experience was that chocolate doughnut. Regulars might recall my Krispy Kreme eulogy some months back. Well, this stuff was not so much Krispy Kreme as Krusty Krack. If a tramp had laid that on a plate instead of in the toilet of a McDonalds, and an employee had smeared deodorant, stabilisier, emulsifier, anti-oxidant, trans-fatty-acids and high fructose corn syrup all over that turd, it might have tasted better. Let me tell you what it didn’t taste like - and that was a doughnut.

Don’t ask me about the biggest misnomer in history, that’s right, the Big Tasty. They had to call it that in casse customers mistook it for what it is, a lump of chewy, gristly shit, smeared with cockroach guts and weedkiller. I can’t remember what it tasted like to be fair. I don’t know if it was just the hypoglycaemia, or whether my mind deliberately blocked out the experience like some post-traumatic-stress episode.

Thank heavens for labels then. Tropicana is Tropicana. Oranges. Nothing more, nothing less. Or is McTropicana different? I don’t know, I was far too out of my head to read the label. But it was sweet, as was the 7-Up. Or is it Sprite? What does it matter. In the mouldy container that masquerades as a drinks dispenser, it could be anything, as long as it has high-fructose-corn-syrup in it.

Credit to the staff, they saw that I was utterly fucked and had the grace and courtesy to call me a cab. Now that’s an experience I will never forget - a cab coming to pick me up from McDonalds. Oil’s well that ends well.