“Welcome to McDonald’s, may I take your order?”
“Yeah, I’d like a six-piece McSushi meal, supersized, with the Wacky Wasabi dipping sauce.”
“Would you like regular fries with that, kelp tempura, or one of our new non-fat salt-water enemas?”
“Enema, supersized. Oh yeah, and I’d like to add a vitamin boost.”
I have a dream. Actually, it’s more of a recurring nightmare. In it, Americans have reverted to riding bikes everywhere they go. Rusting heaps of cars line the highways and little furry animals scamper freely across the blacktop fearlessly.
The average diet consists of seafood, veggies and rice. Obesity is a distant memory, consigned by exercise and healthy diet to the Maury Povich Memorial Archives in Cleveland.
In this dream, self-satisfied grins are the dress code du jour, and as I make my way through an airport terminal, I notice the lack of national guardsmen. Terror has been stamped out like an incense stick when it’s time to leave the house.
Time moves differently in dreams. I blink my eyes in the airport gift shop, and I’m landing on a runway in Japan. Visions of John Zorn album covers Lindy-hop through my mind as I prepare to disembark.
The hatch hisses open and before the stewardess can say “Thank you for flying the friendly skies,” I’ve bolted.
Up the ramp and ’round the corner I run. Urgency spreads through me like cheap whiskey. I just can’t wait to…
(From dream to nightmare, in half
a second.)
What the hell? What kind of cruel joke is this? Surrounding me, literally filling the waiting area are not trim, sparkling-eyed Japanese, but rather fat, angry Americans, wearing Hooters shirts and Mickey Mouse ear hats. As they begin to laugh, I feel a scream violating my lips.
That’s when the pelting starts. French fries, ice cream cones, ketchup packets, jalapeno poppers — and the final insult, milkshakes not actually made with milk. I’m drowning in cheap fast food and though I try to run, my legs simply pinwheel like a spinning Chinese Pagoda firecracker on the Fourth of July.
And then I wake, my sweat a mixture of MSG and coconut oil.
“Welcome to McDonald’s, may I take your order?”
“Coffee, black.”
I come back from my nightmare to find the television still on. It’s an ad for Wendy’s. They’re telling me to try one of their brand new garden-fresh salads. I find myself wanting to comply.
Instead, I change the channel. Taco Time has salads too. I change the channel again. Burger King’s bashing me in the skull with the blunt end of their new “healthy” Chicken Whopper. And now, at select locations, the BK Garden Burger … dear God.
I turn off the television and pick up a copy of Time magazine, hoping to distract myself from the hunger pangs gnawing like ravenous ferrets at the obsessive-compulsive portion of my brain.
Opening to the table of contents, I’m immediately struck by the feeling that my life has turned into a Kafka story.
On page 30 is a story about health trends in China and India. Evidently, after following our dietary lead, heart disease, obesity and hypertension are all on the rise. Not only that, but American cattle farmers are actually having to ship their product overseas, as U.S. citizens become increasingly health conscious.
I throw down the magazine and run. If I run fast enough, I might be able to escape the new dream I can feel forming. But I’m running on a treadmill. Everything comes full circle.
America? China? It’s all the same. We all live in a yellow Big Mac wrapper.
Welcome to McDonald’s, may I take your order?