h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Noam Chomsky. hey I read him am I now one of the well read,interlectual, liberal, partison well to do but slumming activists?

....certainly not......

bummer...

Ooh, yes, especially the last bit, about McDonalds. In his book 'Best Democracy Money Can Buy', Greg Palast refers to the Demonic Clown and similar. Funny, I *loathe* clowns, and Ronald McDonald has always seemed a particularly nasty example of the breed!

BTW, the Palast book is very mixed - some parts excellent, some just awfully studid..

Clowns ! yack...I also always hated them...as well as circus.

Surprisingly, a guge number of people *hate* clowns, and most children fear them. So, why do parents insist on taking their poor children to circuses, or even to sit on the knee of ?

clowns are evil

people are stupid

Children are always frightened by strange faces - faces that don't match the accepted standard of beauty, or are at least of average appearance. So clown faces, witch faces and Santa Claus scare the crap out of kids.

There was a documentary on beauty that I watched some time ago... think it was on TBS. They found that babies recognize beauty, even though they're too young to understand media notions of what beauty is. It's part of the same behavior pattern that makes babies of all species 'cute' to human beings. It's the squinched up features in a round face, with big eyes, that make us go 'ahhhh, how cute!'

What's this about the Demonic Clown? I don't care much for clowns one way or the other, and I have no love for McDonald's.

In Greg Palast's book 'The Best Democracy Money can Buy' (which,BTW is not as good as I had heard, in my opinion), he talks about having succeeded in keeping McDonalds out of his small town, for a while anyway,and refers to Ronald MacDonald by that sobriquet! I pity any poor fool who works as Ronald MacDonald, dressing like a complete prat for TV adverts and scaring children at Mall openings...
The irony is, that I find MacDonalds food quite tolerable. Question - does anybody really *like* it?

PS - In the latest season of 'Buffy' we're seeing, she works at the 'Doublemeat Palace'. Is that a take-off on MacDonalds, Wendys or Burger King? (Much better food there, I think). Any ideas? What does the 'Doublemeat Palace' represent?

.....Well if I HAVE to choose (I try to stay away from places like that; especially as it has recently been revealed, that they don´t pay tax in Denmark due to some smart, legal ,"tax avoiding scheme"), then Burger King definately have the best burgers.The meat actually tastes like grilled meat, and the buns are better than Mc. D´s.

And I don´t know about the "double meat palace".

Oh... and people volunterily dressing up like Ronald McDonald, should have their heads xamined....

seriously...........

"The irony is, that I find MacDonalds food quite tolerable. [burger] Question - does anybody really *like* it? "

Della. McDonalds here is cooked differently. Not the same oil, better beef and tomatos etc. People could hate it and be experencing much different food.

Interesting! You never can tell whether the fries will be hot and crisp, the filet of fish succulent and tasty... It's quite variable in Auckland, depending on the time of day. Burger King is good! But give me good old 'shark and taties' any day. (Or a spring roll. Mmmm) As Homer Simpson says, Mmm Junk food (or something.) I was going to say, fast food, America's one contribution to the world, but then I remembered that the Ancient Romans had takeaways! No,truly!

--Mr Blair--------Mr Bush
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and what about the ?????

American People,Wake up!
The Congress is now approving the Bush talking!He is testing the countries around the world as if he was preparing a major War in order to find his allies when there is hope to avoid another war!He really is in desparate need of sleep.
Stop swallowing your sleeping pills and send them to the White House before it gets out of hand!

was posted in another thread

http://www.theonion.com/onion3836/bush_seeks_un_support.html

Reading this,I think that the situation is worst than I previously thought.How can he get 56 % support from the american people.I start to realise that the problem is not really Bush but the majority of the american people!!!!If this war go on then the World is in peril...

The problem we're having, fablefilou, is that the Republicans are in favor of war, and the Democrats are in favor of the UN handling this situation. The Republicans hold a very small majority - 56% sounds about right, because Bush just barely got the majority vote. (He didn't win the popular vote, but that's a particular peeve of mine.) This is the biggest schism between the two parties yet - until this came along, the worst problem we had was with the handling of the economy. The economy usually does pretty well when a Democrat is in office - we had eight years of prosperity with Clinton. Now Bush is in office, the economy sucks, and he's talking about going to war. Imagine my dismay!

If you listen to Bush, and his toadies in the White House, they'd have you believe that all this is settled, and we're going to war. I'm frightened by that, but this is just what the Republicans say. The Democrats aren't convinced.

They aren't showing the picketers around the White House on the news, but they're all holding signs saying 'Peace not War!'