I really, really don’t want to get into a discussion about the goodity or the baditude of McDonald’s here, but I do recall that scene from Falling Down and I did admire the honesty in this video from their Canadian Marketing people:
And yes, I have to admit that while both of those burgers got my salivary glands working overtime, the one with the carefully-piped ketchup was definitely the more tempting.
I have decided that I want carefully-piped ketchup on all my burgers from now on.
I’m often asked how close the nearest McDonald’s outlet is. Aren’t we all? Most days, right?
Of course, with my Android smartphone in my hand, it’s easy to help the enquirer out – I just use Layar or some similar augmented reality browser (note: first time you use it, you will feel like you’re in a science fiction movie) [Android QR here].
But what if I wanted to know how far it was between McDonald’s “restaurants”?
Well, then, I would turn to datapointed.net – because they have helpful maps for that sort of thing:
Here are their images for the UK and Ireland:
…on the isle of Great Britain, proper – anywhere reachable from London on foot, aka the mainland – Cape Wrath ranks McFarthest. From its restless shores to the nearest McFix, the hungry traveller must traverse the Scottish Highlands to Inverness, 136 kilometers [84.5 miles] inland.
And the US of A:
As expected, McDonald’s cluster at the population centers and hug the highway grid. East of the Mississippi, there’s wall-to-wall coverage, except for a handful of meager gaps centered on the Adirondacks, inland Maine, the Everglades, and outlying West Virginia.
Initally, they had the McFarthest Spot™ down as “between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley: 107 miles [172km] distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles [233km] by car!”, but that has since been updated:
Because per our calculations, the winds of McDistance have shifted – from your lovely rolling grasslands to the dusty Western outback. There, in the high desert of northwestern Nevada, you’ll find antelope, wild horses, and the Lower-48?s new-and-improved McFarthest Spot: a patch of sage and soil that is 115 miles [185km] away, as the crow flies, from the nearest McDonald’s!
Which is all very interesting and shows a certain degree of obsession and nerdiness. Not, however, as much obsession and nerdiness as actually getting in a car and actually going there. Really.
What follows is a diary of a two day road trip to Nevada, complete with photos, videos and an image of the McFarthest Spot™, appropriately marked:
Brilliant.
There’s loads of other wonderful stuff to get immersed in at datapointed as well – including a statistically computed visual representation of the game “Chinese Whispers” and horoscopes dismantled:
David McCandless and friends have analyzed the text of 22,000 online horoscopes and found that they’re different permutations of the same few words, more or less.
Who knew?
Gotta love the internet. How ever did we manage without it?
Oh, this one makes me proud to be English.
A 29-STONE mum who feeds her eight-month old triplets with McDonald’s has insisted she is bringing the tots up in the “best way she can”.
Leanne Salt, 24, said she is “too busy” to properly feed daughters Deanna and Daisy and son Finlee.
So she lets them eat her takeaways and gives them Wotsits snacks and microwave meals.
(for my non UK visitors, 29 stone = 406 pounds or 184 kilos)
I have to admit that once, in a fit of desperation, Alex was given 6 Chicken McNuggets from the Kenilworth drive-thru. It was as a result of poor paternal planning and I felt awful for ages afterwards, although with hindsight, that was probably because of the Quarterpounder with cheese that I had at the same time. And the cardboard fries.
Alex seemed to enjoy his reformed lumps of fried, mechanically-recovered chicken though, even if he didn’t really seem to know what to do with them. Well, he was only 6 weeks old at the time.
Of course, there’s no problem with the odd McDonald’s every now and again, even if they do their best to put parents off buying their inaccurately-named Happy Meals. But we certainly don’t go down the road of doing it every day. That would get in the way of his KFC addiction.
Leanne steers away from healthy foods in case it makes her tots anorexic. She said: “I don’t want them to think they have to watch what they eat. I’ll tell them big is beautiful.”
Yes readers, “big is beautiful” – I’ll let you decide on that one:
Picture from Closer magazine
When I see that sort of picture, aside from the immediately overwhelming thought that “big is beautiful” (obviously), I also find myself marvelling at the amazing strength of denim. Presumably, those are just over-the-counter jeans from the fat section of Matalan, and yet look what they’re holding within them.
Quite remarkable and a great advert for Vietnamese sweatshop workmanship.
Oh – and I wonder where the bikini-clad Carrie Fisher is, as well.
Swine flu can’t get to Coventry quickly enough.