You want some fries with that?

Now reading: Fast Food Nation. Because I've succumbed to liberal peer-pressure.

Actually, it's a pretty interesting read. It starts out with a kind of narrative of Carl Karcher's (the eventual founder/owner of Hardee's) life, which reads like Ben Franklin's autobiography. Lots of depression-era philosophy and peculiar optimism in the face of adversity. That is, "work hard and you'll make it eventually". And he did work hard -- he would work 12+ hours a day at his first restaurants, spending the evening hours mopping the floors and cleaning the place up. Oh, and he drove an ambulance in WWII -- with Walt Disney, oddly enough, whose life story also gets featured in the grand narrative of the rise of fast food. While I was reading this advertisement for the American Dream, I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And drop it does, starting with Disney's penchant for hiring ex-Nazis to build sections of his themeparks and busting up (literally) striking animators. This all gets tied in to fast food when Disney and McDonald's team up to "synergize". You know, putting Disney toys in happy meals and such.

Anyway, seems like an interesting read. Something Ralph Nader probably creams in his jeans over. Oh, and there's a part about how corporate interests have taken over schools, which is kinda fun in a disturbing way. Apparently, Exxon created a curriculum for social studies teachers that taught that using fossil fuels "has no negative environmental impact" and that "alternative sources of energy are too expensive and impractical". But what's a school to do when it has to rely on contributions from Exxon, Pepsi, and the like just so they can buy textbooks?