San Luis Obispo can’t even do bad times properly. Bad times are when everybody goes to McDonald’s. Across the country, sales are surging as the poor iron-stomached masses are drawn in by those great deals—for just $5 and the price of your medical co-pay at the cardiologist, you can get a temporarily satisfying meal.

In San Luis, the McDonald’s on Foothill—near a freakin’ college campus!—is closing. Too much competition from restaurants, they say. The city’s precious no-drive-through policy didn’t help.

So we can’t even do bad times properly. A new art gallery—which simply isn’t supposed to happen in bad times, because art is the first thing anyone gives up—moves in and the McDonald’s closes down.

Welcome to the bizarro economy, where home price are plunging but multi-million dollar homes are still selling like McHotcakes.

Personally, I’m not disappointed about the McDonald’s closing. I never thought they used enough glue in their Chicken McNuggets. Glue is crucial to a successful McNugget because they have to hold the non-glue parts together with something. Thus, glue.

Without enough McGlue, once you puncture the plasticy outside covering, all of the chicken-like bits tumble out into your barbecue sauce. And then you have to lick the barbecue sauce container to get your chickenish food scraps. Not easy while you’re driving. They should make a Bluetooth device that licks the barbecue sauce container for you; it would be more honest, anyway, because without any actual tooth usage, what the hell does Bluetooth mean? As far as I can gather, those Bluetooth ear-clippy things were conceived to appeal to people who always wanted to look like douches but were put off by all the wires. They should call it BlueDouche.

Fact is, I could offer better, more accurate names for a whole lot of things and places. Here goes:

Panda Express: We’ll call it “Sticky Tables.” Does anybody know how to say that in Spanish?

Taco Bell: Let’s be honest and let people know they’ll be needing the bell to call for more toilet paper.

Burger King: Like McDonald’s, but with dirtier bathrooms.

In-N-Out: Actually, these places rock, although it sucked that millions of us got those e-mails saying they were offering 25-cent burgers for their 60th anniversary, but then that turned out to be a hoax.

I think I could really help out Carl’s Jr. This place is a marketing mess.

First, why would you call a burger the Six Dollar Burger—I gather the original idea was that these things are as good as one you’d pay six dollars for—when it actually costs only slightly less than six dollars? That’s just stupid. Second, what’s with the whole Green Burrito part of Carl’s Jr.? How many fast food joints am I supposed to be going to at once? And since when is differentiating a food item by noting its sickly, snottish color a good thing?

Let’s just rename this place “Diabetes.”

And since I’m renaming things I’m going to offer a new name for the television network CBS. Between CSI and its flipper-baby offspring, NCIS, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, Numb3rs (which deserves its own special place in naming hell), Cold Case, and The Unit, they should just be honest and rename this network “Murder.”

Speaking of … In February, the government is going to murder over-the-air television for people who don’t have cable, a fancy new television, or a converter box. I think I’ll just let mine die.

Enough of this negativity, though. It’s the holiday season.

 

Here’s my recipe for eggnog:

1. Turn on Rachel Ray.

2. Think nasty thoughts.

3. Ponder how Rachel Ray is equally as attractive and unattractive to both women and men. She’s, like, that infinity symbol, her own yin and yang.

4. Stir loins and add four eggs.

5. Add two cups cream.

6. Add one cup sugar

7. Look for nutmeg.

8. Give up on nutmeg. Who has nutmeg?

9. Pour two cups of whiskey.

10. Pour one cup rum white rum.

11. Release intern from cage.

12. Have intern stir eggs, cream, sugar, and missing nutmeg vigorously in a disposable bowl.

13. Have intern dispose of stirred bowl of eggs, cream, sugar, and missing nutmeg.

14. Have intern clean up mess and drive intern back into cage.

15. Combine whiskey and white rum. Add nonexistent nutmeg.

16. Consume.

17. Go to McDonald’s. Get McNuggets. Ask for extra glue.

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