two tons of milkshake later and I still smell like dairy

Roar.

I don't actually want you to respond, but could somebody tell me what's up with the chatty devils behind the counters of this fine nation's rapid food establishments. Of today's nine meals seven were consumed at such establishments, and in the process of procuring four of these meals I found myself awkwardly dancing on the edges of conversations with greasy people. They were polite though, and for this I'm grateful. After jiving away a decade's evenings worth of my youth in the food service and retail industries any sort of positive encounter contained by walls of these sorts renders me light-headed, weeping and glowing like a wife after her wedding and/or honeymoon. So when a pudgy mass of indeterminate age or gender remarks as to the fleeting nature of curly fries when one must transport them via automobile to a hungry and waiting mouth, I'm only able to further rubberize my smile and say, "I think I'll be able to make it." Perhaps an elderly woman, working off the payments on her nineteen year old son's tattoos, smiles toothlessy and begins to unravel a five minute yarn on the merits of ordering milk with spicy food. As the yarn descends into talk of milk spoiling in her car one day and how she decided to drink it anyway because it was worth it because she ate a spicy chicken sandwich I excuse myself to use the restroom. An hour's worth of napping later I emerge remarkably unrefreshed and snatch my food from it's perch on the cool metal counter and gorge myself on the most terrible potato and cheese combination this humble American has ever tasted.


The day's other encounters with food service personnel were typical, though I admit it mildly atypical for them to have shared a kite-fly-off as a climax. Won one, lost one. Not bad.

Final words: gemini, arm-smashing machine, Ireland