The Last First Day

Here I am, at my last first day of high school. Fun stuff. I'm blogging from the computer class, of which I am trying to retain an open mind and try to learn something about computers I don't know. Yay.

Edmond the Hun

The End of the World Has Begun

$2.58 a gallon! A crime against humanity! Aaaaaahhhh!

Mother Loses 37 Pounds Eating McDonald's

Yes, it's true.

Many of you have probably heard about the documentary Super Size Me, where this guy ate nothing but McDonald's for a period of time and gained weight or something like that. Well, he was eating 5,000 calories a day, eating everything on the menu at least once.

This lady decided that McDonald's was being unfairly criticized, that the responsibility for obesity was shifting to the providers of the food and not the ones who actually eat it (smart woman).

So she ate at McDonald's three times a day for 90 days. She used their website to select meals that amounted to no more than 1,400 calories a day, eating mostly salads and burgers and hardly any french fries.

And she lost 37 pounds.

This woman is living proof that it's not McDonald's---or any other unhealthy fast food provider's---fault if you're fat and unhealthy. It's your own fault for eating the food. You have the power to know the nutritional information of the food you're eating, and you have the power to adjust your diet accordingly.

It's about time people started taking responsbility for their own actions and stopped blaming it on corporate giants who pay me $6 an hour to give you food so I can go buy gas that may soon cost me half an hour per gallon.

Edmond the Hun

(Proof: www.cnn.com)

War on Terrorism: Racial Profiling

Liberals are getting all freaked out about this new concept of racial profiling. I, for one, hope that it becomes fully implemented into our transportation system, and very quickly, at that.

Racial profiling is the idea that security offers focus their random bag searches on male Arabs/Muslims and related types of suspicious people groups. The reasons are fairly obvious: the major terrorist attacks on Western civilization in recent years have come from those male Arab/Muslim types. If we checked them thoroughly before allowing them on our trains or subways or airplanes, then we would make it much harder for them to penetrate with an attack.

Of course, civil liberties obsessives are crying foul. That's unfair discrimination, they claim. That's unfair to all the poor peace-loving Muslims who want to live a simple life here.

My response: Too bad. Live with it.

If there was an outbreak of bombs blowing up in the US caused exclusively by male teenagers, and the government decided to carefully check the baggage of every male teenager that boarded a plane, sure, I would hate the extra difficulties presented to me personally, but I would understand that it was necessary. In fact, this sort of group-specific discrimination has already been present in our society for years. It's called car insurance.

Male teenagers are irresponsible, or so the statistics say. We immature young adults don't pay attention and cause considerably more wrecks than any other driving demographic. So the insurance companies hit us up with considerably larger payments. I sigh and submit, because I need to use my car. Where are the same liberal groups in this situation? Why aren't they crying, foul! You can't discriminate against all those poor responsible male teenagers who just want to live a simple life and drive their cars around!

But they don't do that, because there are enough irresponsible crash-causing male teenagers that it makes sense to just charge them all more money instead of wasting time trying to find some way to measure responsibility and driving skill. Likewise, there are enough Arab Muslim types that have made terrorist attacks on our society and are continuing to plan them, that it makes sense to just screen all of them before boarding planes and trains instead of wasting time trying to find some way to figure out which ones are peace-loving and which ones aren't.

Peace-loving Muslims of America, I'm sorry for the extra trouble racial profiling may cause you. But you have no choice. You must sigh and submit. It's the only way to protect us from further attacks.

But oddly enough, they're not the ones that I'm hearing complaints from. This anti-profiling stuff is all from the civil liberties groups. So to you, I say: Shut up! Stop preventing us from preventing terrorist attacks! Or, if you're so excited about group-specific discrimination, find a way to lower my insurance bill.

Edmond the Hun

Sports: Preventing Indian Mascots

The NCAA has banned 18 college mascots, which are Indian-related, from championship events, calling them "hostile and abusive." Indians---or Blackwhawks, or Braves, or Seminoles, or whatever---have been used as mascots for American sports teams for years, and there has always been debate over whether it's demeaning to our real Native Americans. Apparently, the NCAA thinks it is.

However, they're not offering a reason for why they think it's "hostile and abusive." Come to think of it, I've never heard a good reason at all. I don't see why any Indians should be offended at all.

Think about it. When a team picks a mascot, what are they looking for? Something strong, something powerful, something inspiring. That's why we lions, tigers, bears, and eagles are so powerful. Would a lion complain that it was being abused because a team used his species for a mascot? No, for the same reason a celebrity doesn't complain when she's put on one of those "50 Most Influential People" lists (or whatever they're called.) It's a compliment! It's an honor! It's saying, you're so cool that we want to honor you. You're special enough to be a symbol of our team's strength and inspiration.

Teams don't pick mice or caterpillars for their mascots. They're weak. They're not inspiring.

Teams pick worthy icons for their mascots. And Native American Indians are certainly worthy.

Their warriors are historically famous for their incredible strength, endurance, and ferocity in battle. Naming a team after an Indian is simply honoring those virtuous characteristics and delcaring their desire to emulate them. There's nothing "hostile" or "abusive" about it!
Leaders of the NCAA, don't prevent your colleges from honoring this special ethnic group of our country. Native Americans, when a team picks you for their mascot, they're saying that you are worthy of honor and respect! What's so offensive about it?

Edmond the Hun

Mysteries Revealed: The Life of A French Fry

Doubtlessly, you have consumed thousands of those potato by-products known as "French fries" without giving the slightest thought to the long and arduous process by which they are prepared. This dark and mysterous pathway shall be illuminated by the light of my experience in a little McDonald's restaurant in the heart of America.

Let us begin the journey.

The shaping of the fries is a part of the process not known to me, but I imagine it involves slicing potatoes into thin strips a few inches long and freezing them. These frozen fries are placed into brown paper bags. About six brown paper bags are placed into a cardboard box. Thousands of cardboard boxes donate their residence to these paper bags with frozen fries.

These boxes, bags, and fries arrive at the restaurant via the truck. Or should I say, the Truck. I have never seen the vehicle mentioned in writing, but it is referred to so uncompromisingly as "the Truck,"---never "a truck," or "the supply truck," or "the big truck," but simply, "the Truck,"---that one almost imagines it has reverently been entitled to a capital letter. The Truck is as necessary to the life of the restaurant as the ships were to the early colonists. It brings not only fries, but meat patties, chicken, cups, lids, sauces, ice cream, apples, grapes, lettuce, pickles, onions, cheese, buns, nuts strawberries, toys, stickers, straws, napkins, cookies, croutons, syrup, coffee filters, coffee, fry bags, take out bags, burger boxes, tray liners, bottles of water, containers of milk, containers of chocolate milk, apple juice, salad dressings, forks, knives, trash bags, and a host of other things that I have forgotten or am not yet aware of.

The cardboard boxes containing the bags containing the fries are taken from the Truck and carried into the walk-in freezer. A reinforced steel door opens into the first room, which averages 38 degrees Fahrenheit and holds the aforementioned items that need to remain cooled. A second reinforced steel door opens into a second room, which averages 11 degress Fahrenheit and holds the aforementioned itmes that need to remain frozen. This is where the fries are kept.

(On a completely unrelated note, it feels very good to walk into the walk-in after you've been standing over the fry station or grease vats or grill.)

When fries are needed, a lucky employee is chosen to carry a box from the freezer into the fry hopper, which is a large plastic container shaped somewhat like an upside-down triangle with tiny metal doors at the bottom right. The cardboard box is opened. The brown paper bags are opened and dumped into the fry hopper.

Below the large plastic container is a sort of mini conveyor belt for metal baskets with handles. The fry hopper is somewhat intelligent, and it knows when there is a basket on the top ledge of the belt, and it opens its tiny metal doors and drops fries into the basket. The basket then slides down to the end of the bottom ledge of the belt.

Another employee, or perhaps the same one, takes the basket by the handle and places it into a vat of pure grease. This is known as "dropping a fry basket." The employee presses a timer on the side of the vat, which is set for three minutes and ten seconds.

The employee waits three minutes and ten seconds.

The timer beeps and flashes "PULL." The employee pushes the timer (to stop the irritating beeping) and pulls the basket up and dumps the hot, cooked, fresh fries into the adjacent fry station. He pours salt from a salt dispenser onto the fries.

There are empty bags of small, medium, and large fries. The employee takes the desired bag in one hand, and with a little metal container in the other, sccops up fries and funnels them into the bag.

The bag is then placed onto a tray or into a bag, depending on the method of your order.

You pick up a fry with your fingers, and place it in your mouth, where it passes in and out of your body. But we will leave the details of that process unexplored.

Edmond the Hun

Back

Hey, I'm back from Mexico. Good stuff. I'll be working on updating everything over the next few days, so be patient. Bien?

Edmond the Hun