And now, Scary-Crayon presents... by: Wes So, any and everyone who watches television is familiar with the newest McDonald's slogan: i'm lovin' it. A while back Maddox gave his take on the the new campaign -- pointing out that it's an anagram for "ailing vomit" (the two apostrophes are MIA, though ;)) -- and, like him, I can't get on board with this one. While my answer to the question "Did somebody say McDonald's?" was usually, "No, at least not that I heard," it was pretty inoffensive, and though I have to admit that knowing that McDonald's "loved to see me smile" made me feel all fuzzy on the inside, this one's just lame. At least it's entirely in lowercase -- e.e. cummings would be delighted. But while we could go on about the stupidity of the slogan and the crappiness of McDonald's food for an article, that's Maddox's thing, and in truth I actually like some of the scary clown man's fixin's -- those dollar menu apple pies are goooooood eatin'. So we're just going to review one of the new McDonald's cups. Not one of those special deals you get with a supersized menu; no plastic Olympic collector's edition cups here -- just one of the regular cups that gets all soggy and leaky and fills your drink with big chunks of wax if you leave it in the fridge for too long. Yep. So the first thing you'll notice about the cup is that there's a sporty blue woman in rollerblades who appears to be squatting slightly and sticking her plaid-covered ass in our faces. I'd love to say something really witty right here, I'm not sure what to make of it -- she's just sticking her ass out for no reason whatsoever. Sure, I could posit a few reasons -- given her stooped position, she could be about to unbuckle her jeans (note that her hands would be in about the right place for that), pull down her pants, and give a urine sample -- but in any case, is this really the kind of thing you want to see just before you take a drink from your disposable cup? And are you absolutely sure you didn't ask for lemonade? Hmmm... Turning the cup a bit, we see that in front of our blue sk8r goil there appears to be a ramp of red letters reaching into the sky. I don't exactly see why a girl who's already turned blue would want to skate even higher into the atmosphere -- isn't there less oxygen up there? -- but I guess things like breathing don't matter when you're lovin' it. But the yellow brick road this ain't, folks -- something tells me this is far more sinister. I don't speak most of these languages and can't read the Japanese and Chinese (?) characters, but given that in the center it clearly says, "i'm lovin' it," I'm guessing that this is our new Mickey D's slogan translated into various languages. A quick visit to the Dictionary.com Translator confirms our suspicions -- typing in "amo muito tudo isso" and translating from Portuguese to English, we get "I love everything very this". Not quite "i'm lovin' it", but we're trying to emulate urban American street slang here, so maybe that's the literal translation of poor Portuguese grammar. And going from German to English, "ich liebe es" gives us "I love it", so I'm satisfied. However, this raises a question: did McDonald's just translate the American slogan into different languages for the purpose of constructing an unholy stunt ramp of Babel for our blue sk8r to climb as she embarks on her drug test? (Will the higher altitude increase her chances of passing? Will she turn fuschia, and is she going on this perilous journey for the express purpose of making our cups more vibrant and colorful?) Or is McDonald's in fact employing this slogan around the world and was too lazy to make individual cup designs for every country in which it collects its billions of souls for immersion in the great deep fryer of Tartarus? Somehow I doubt it. I mean, can you really see people walking around Romania -- the dwelling place of the great Count Dracula -- going around proclaiming, "i'm lovin' it!" as they eat Big Macs by daylight to gain strength for their nightly war against the undead? And can you imagine the people of Amsterdam saying, "i'm lovin' it"? I'm thinking that statement would take on an entirely different meaning there. And you know what? I think I just figured out why rollergirl is squatting like that. She may not be lovin' it yet, but she's about to. "how are we doin'?" McDonald's asks. My response? "Pretty piss-poorly, pals." (Love that alliteration.) Yeah, questions end with question marks, but here's the kicker -- they also begin with capital letters. Not to mention that you've sent a blue whore of Babylon to skate up a red-lettered road of Babel and take a piss in our wax paper drinking cups. Your slogan doesn't speak for me, Mickey D, 'cause I'm totally not lovin' this. And look in the left hand corner there -- a one-armed person with no hands and feet who's apparently been beheaded and cleaved in half at the waist appears to be throwing his/her brain into a wastebasket. I guess I'd better keep my mouth shut -- apparently that's the fate of those who dare speak out against the mighty McDonald's machine. (More alliteration!) He wasn't lovin' it before, but I guess excessive mutilation and a full lobotomy will bring anyone around... :/ And finally, here's the Olympics logo thing alongside a flaming McDonald's logo. What's that? A flaming McDonald's logo? And look at the text: "PROUD PARTNER". And they are awfully close together... aaand I'm just going to stop that joke RIGHT THERE before I unintentionally offend someone. But know that it was going to be pretty witty -- I mentioned the yellow brick road and colorful things earlier, and the Olympics are being held in Greece (bonus points for anyone familiar with some of the old cultural practices...), so I was going "over the rainbow" with that one. Get it? Ha ha! And beneath our "snug as two men bugs in a rug" partners, Coca-Cola sits alone and unwanted. By the way, here's a fun question for you -- what if you ordered a Pepsi? Wouldn't it be weird for it to come in a cup that says Coca-Cola? Like, even weirder than THE SANDWICH SO WEIRD it frightens McGriddles? YES! So weird that the planet would be knocked out of its orbit and we would all die flaming horrible deaths as the earth slowly drifted into the sun! HA HA HA! Oh, wait, nevermind -- apparently they don't serve Pepsi at McDonald's. I checked the on-site menu and nothing came up, and then ran the above search -- apparently out of 1726 documents there's not a single mention of Pepsi. What's up with that? I'm thinking there should be at least one mention of it, like in the FAQ, because you know that the question, "Hey, why don't you guys serve Pepsi here?" has come up more than a few times. Maybe it's a cover-up? Maybe the WORLD-DESTROYING scheme I suggested above would really work? Or maybe my brain's just been fried by trying to come up with an article's worth of things to say about a stupid cup? And maybe, just maybe, McDonald's is to blame. :( Ich liebe es nicht. -- Wes -- Psst...wanna make a PayPal donation to Scary-Crayon? Just click the image above! Simple, no? ;)