I'm going to whine like an insufferable brat, in this post. You ready? Here goes.
Thanks to the Forces of Evil and Villainy who hold sway at McDonald's, mankind is now one step closer to the brink. It's the End Times. Does anyone remember this?
When I was a kid, Orange Hi-C was the highlight of the rare trip to McDonald's for me: the ordinary-seeming, not-carbonated, uniquely flavored beverage that as a kid, I simply called, in my rare happy-voice, "Orange Drink! Wheee!" I got it on every trip to the Golden Arches. They've had it ever since...that's like, what, 40+ years, maybe more? It's an INSTITUTION, I tell you, and as you can see from my highly useful photo, its so magical that shiny sparkles shoot off of it at the McDonald's soda fountain (see totally legit photo above). As a presumably reliable and beloved staple, I continued to enjoy it well into my dotage (er, I mean, middle years; more on that later) should I happen to find myself in a McDonald's. It was a simple happy bit of joy that never failed me.
Then...about a year ago...I walk into my local McDonald's after a long brutal day at work, not feeling like cooking dinner and in one of those "the heck with it, I'll grab a burger and an Orange Hi-C, and maybe some fries, waistline be darned" moods...
...And I saw... THIS horror.
It didn't fully sink in, at first. I thought, well, maybe my local small town McDonald's just didn't get on board with the whole "Orange Hi-C is heavenly" concept and had to substitute this rubbish instead. Temporarily. Just temporarily. Right? Right?!?
NOOOO!! [Lots of deleted swear words went here] so, I went to another McDonald's... and another one...and another one...and found that ...nooo... all of them have replaced my beloved Orange Hi-C with this ghastly orange Fanta pee!!
WHY, MCDONALD'S, WHY??? It's over! Over!! The End Times have begun! Seriously... Fanta?? Was perhaps having the restaurant's employees line up and take turns peeing into the soda machine somehow not profane enough?? Why did you do this to my beloved Orange Drink?!? Did I do something to make you mad at me?? Was it because I went into a Burger King that one time??
I have determined with high scientific accuracy that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, dressed in gruesome Ronald McDonald clown costumes with tentacles and fangs and stuff, have ridden into the halls of power at the McDonald's headquarters on Mount Olympus or wherever it is. Their grim, medieval armaments of Plague and Famine and what have you were replaced with spreadsheet printouts that some bean-counting dweeb in their wretched Marketing Department gave them that say, "we can save 0.0001% per annum by replacing the delicious Orange Drink with this carbonated goat urine, AND wring pain and suffering from the weeping masses by doing it! MUA-HA-HA-HAA!!"
I'm quite sure that the version of Microsoft Excel licensed to the Four Horsemen include a hot-key for inserting "MUA-HA-HA-HAA" here & there in their "fast food take-over plot" inter-office documents. It saves them time, that way.
This will NOT be forgotten, McDonald's! I'm going to call the Pope.
The madness descending upon my world has not ended there. You may recall my having mentioned that I live in the once calm, sedate green hills of Southwestern Missouri. This was once a fine, cheery place like the Hobbit's Shire. (I exaggerate, but only a little.) But now, even Missouri has happily leapt upon the "legalize marijuana train". Don't get me wrong; if you have a difference of opinion with me over this issue, that is perfectly okay. I'm just here to vent my spleen; not start an ideological debate. That said, I was perfectly okay with marijuana usage being subversive and illegal, given that it's use has a certain "seedy" nature, depending on who you ask. Medicinal value aside, I have an old friend from another largely rural nearby state who is a narcotics task force police officer, who has seen the damage that drug use has caused real up-close-like, including what can happen around large (illegal) marijuana farms and the violence that ensues thereof. Maybe I'm a bit old fashioned, but I don't think it needs to be a "thing" gone mainstream in our world. But during the last round of elections, there were no less than THREE marijuana-legalization initiatives on the state ballot, and one of them actually passed.
Why is this relevant? Because just the other day, a few months since that law passed, I happened to be running errands around town. While at my local bank, when I saw THIS absurdity in their shopping center's parking lot:
I thought, "What on earth...?" Why has someone taken this lovely old VW Bus and hoisted those flags upon it? Ostentatious much? On a side note, can the VW Company be blamed because a particular element of the 1960s counter-culture generation made their product synonymous with illegal drug use? No, no they can't. I'm sure they didn't mind profiting from it, but I doubt they set out to make this vehicle while actually saying, "Oh, I know...!! Let's design the official illegal dope-mobile of the 1960s!" That old vehicle had plenty of charm all it's own before the first one ever got painted with garish flowers, or had marijuana smoke billowing out it's windows as it went down the road.
Once my business was concluded at the bank, curiosity got the best of me. I slowly drove around the other side of this poor thing, and understanding dawned at last:
Sigh... Great. Just what my small town needed. A "dispensary", or what have you. I don't know if that annoys me more than the tired cliche of associating drug use with a Volkswagen Bus to make it look "hip", or not. Feel free to weigh in (politely) in the comments. You are welcome to disagree with me; just don't be vulgar or rude.
Next, adding insult to injury, while still grieving over the loss of my magical Orange Drink, I just recently turned 50 years old...don't laugh...and while I don't FEEL that old most days, about 2 days before the Big Day, I got this in the mail:
Followed shortly thereafter by this:
Excuse me?!? Shove it, AARP!
If you don't know, "AARP" stands for "American Association of Retired Persons". Apparently, AARP thinks I'm ready to be put out to pasture, and thus would have use for a trunk-tote (boot-tote if you like) for my Old Man-mobile, for ease of hauling home my month's supply of laxatives and Milk of Magnesia. (Us old men gotta lubricate those bowels, don't ya know!), AND they also appear to know my exact age and when my birthday was!! Seriously, AARP? Get the heck out of my business, you appalling devils. Apparently, AARP thinks I'm now a mummified relic who might be convinced he needs to pay them a yearly stipend, in order to cope with my sudden milestone birthday status. An outrage! Mind. Your. Own. Business!
After further exacting scientific research, I have now expertly determined that the ghouls at AARP caper and jeer in crazed glee like Old Testament fiends atop the same corporate board room table with the very Four Horsemen who peed into the McDonald's soda fountains, in a bleak conspiracy to crush my soul. "You're FIFTY now, John! You thought we didn't know? You don't DESERVE Orange Drink! And your neighbors can all smoke weed, now!
"MUAH-HA-HA-HA!!"