961...Ode To Mickey Dee's And tic

A cut and paste job from a New York Times blog that tells us that in the lower 48 states the farthest one can get from the golden arches is less than 150 miles. I would guess that in Canada, if one follows the Trans Canada highway, the number is similar.

McSparseness,’ U.S.A.

Today’s idea: The place in the contiguous United States where you can get farthest away from a McDonald’s is in remote northwestern South Dakota, a visual artist and mapmaker figures.

Stephen Van Worley

Commerce “To gauge the creep of cookie-cutter commercialism, there’s no better barometer than McDonald’s,” writes Stephen Von Worley [sic], a blogger and visual artist who says he came to this conclusion on seeing golden arches on a dispiriting drive down Interstate 5 in central California.

And so it dawned on him that to locate the antithesis of such strip-mall sameness, it makes sense to find the remotest point from any McDonald’s in the lower 48 states, as the crow flies. And to do that you need to plot the locations of each of the roughly 13,000 of them across the land, as Von Worley does in the illuminating (some would say alarming) map above.

[No matter, I may be World Famous but I ain't Bill Gates, he hee]

As the map suggests, you then need to go west, young crassness detester. Von Worley writes:
For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map: the barren deserts of central Nevada, the arid hills of southeastern Oregon, the rugged wilderness of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, and the conspicuous well of blackness on the high plains of northwestern South Dakota. There, in a patch of rolling grassland, loosely hemmed in by Bismarck, Dickinson, Pierre, and the greater Rapid City-Spearfish-Sturgis metropolitan area, we find our answer. Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles by car!

Suffer a Big Mac Attack out there, and you’re hurtin’ for certain! [Weather-Sealed]

WFDS

629...As It Turns Out

If one were to believe what one heard on talk radio, the one outlet being CFRA in Ottawa, and if one were to believe the chatter at the Tim Horton's and the Starbucks and the McDonald's I was at yesterday [I have a serious caffeine addiction] Mayor Larry O'Brien, well, everybody knew he was going to be found not guilty.

As if.

WFDS

598...Drink A Quarter Pounder

I bet you wouldn't drink a quarter pounder.

With cheese.

I found an old press release from The Center For Science In The Public Interest and in it they say that if you order a venti [20 oz.] Starbucks' Caffe Mocha you might as well be sipping that 500 cal burger. A venti Starbucks' Java Chip Frap is like drinking a regular McD's coffee. With 11 creamers and 29 sugars.

Mmmm, heart attack.

WFDS

373...Falling Down At Mickey D's

Do you recall the Michael Douglas flick from the early 1990's, Falling Down?

Dya remember the scene where he goes into the fast food joint and wants breakfast but canna have it coz he is seven minutes late?

I had a parallel experience at the Elgin Street, Ottawa, McDick's this morning.

Fellow came in at 10 53 and wanted a burger and the manager, a clerk and the assistant manager all told the fellow, who had protested, that they don't service lunch until 11 and he would have to wait. At the end of the line.

Fortunately buddy took it a lot better than William Foster, Mr. Douglas' character, and for that I am grateful.

WFDS

97...McHappy Day

Just remembered, today iffen you buy a Big Mac or a Happy Meal from the second best ubiquitous restaurant on the planet, Mickey D', a buck goes towards kids.

Or something like that.

Mangia, mangia.

WFDS