An Open Letter to McDonald's
Dear McDonalds,
I have eaten at your fine establishment pretty much as long as I can remember, although my dad’s second wife was a bit of a health nut, in that she did not want me or my older sister to consume nothing but garbage, sugar and fat so during their marriage you were a rare treat.
Oh, but we’ve had some good times through the years! Remember when you had that Olympics promotion where you’d give out Big Macs, fries or soda if the United States won and Russia boycotted the games that year so me and my older sister would visit you every single day to pick up more free game cards and cash in the ones we had for delicious, delicious, McDonalds food?
Remember the McLean Deluxe, that nasty-ass “health” burger with the lean beef and the weird seaweed additive? That shit was gross as hell but I consumed it happily during the brief window when it was available.
Through the years, McDonald’s, you have fed me. You have given me a place to sit and work, complete with complimentary Wi-Fi and outlets a plenty. When I was a child you gave me Happy Meal toys of my favorite movie, TV and comic book characters. As an adult you do the same for my son.
To be frank, McDonald’s, you’ve been more of a mother to me than my mother ever was. But this open letter is not about who is ultimately morally superior, McDonald's, a moderately evil global corporation, or my dead mother.
No, this is an article imploring you to bring back the McDLT. The McDLT was, of course, a noble experiment to correct mankind’s greatest frustration: that during preparation, vegetables that are supposed to remain cool, such as onions, lettuce and tomato, become hot when they’re slapped on top of a hamburger and then shoved under a heat lamp.
Our greatest food scientists tackled this problem head on and came up with a miraculous solution: an elaborate styrofoam package that separated the lettuce, tomato and onion from the hot hamburger by keeping them in different compartments of the same foam container.
The McDLT had only one small problem: all that extra styrofoam was an environmental catastrophe. It almost single-handedly destroyed the planet. It was a fucking nightmare in terms of its environmental impact.
The ecological devastation the McDLT wrought proved the death of the gimmicky burger. So why am I angrily agitating for the return of this Earth-killer? Simple. As a writer, I love using the McDLT as a metaphor. I cannot say how many times I’ve written about something separating two things like a McDLT container, or how many times that metaphor was edited out for being too obscure.
Of course you could say that I should just use a different, better, more timely metaphor for separation and segregation. Never! I am a weird old dude, and part of being a weird old dude is trying to keep things alive in the public imagination long after everyone else has forgotten about them. That’s why I am, as I’ve written here before, a professional rememberer. As such, I am concerned that I will soon be the only person left who remembers the McDLT.
Crap! I had no idea McDLT metaphors could be used for EVIL purposes!
That’s why I implore you, McDonald’s, to bring back the McDLT so that when I reference it EVERYONE will know what I’m talking about.
I know you’ve had bad experiences with stuff like this before. Rick & Morty nerds were so overjoyed that you brought back Szechuan Sauce that they all went out and got laid, throwing the sacred nerd/jock balance permanently out of whack.
Environmental impact aside, and also, I suppose, ignoring issues of health as well, nothing bad can come of the McDLT returning. Or I could just change with the times and let the detritus of the past remain in the past, or be forgotten forever, but you know as well as I do that that is just not going to happen.
So bring back the McDLT!
Support independent media, get instant access to patron-only content and be a good human being by pledging over at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace