Now that I’m living in the Southwest, I’m living like one should or at least does in the Southwest.  This means that I go to Wal-Mart and McDonald’s regularly.  Both Wal-Mart and McDonald’s give the dollar so much distance—which is sort of praiseworthy—but this also makes them evil in their way.  Though it can be seen as harsh to blame an enabler, as I suppose we are responsible for our own actions, I am starting to find it pretty easy to blame both Wal-Mart and McDonald’s as something more like treacherous McDrugdealers, adding H to their blow.  While it is always troubling to see fat women—too fat to walk—driving their Wal-Motorized carts around the store like plankton, a cart load of Fritos, Doritos, double-stuffed Oreos, of course Coca-cola, Tostidos with a quart of cheesy salsa, gallons of gummy bears, more of these sorts of things and often small-but-fat children in tow, my real McBeef is with McDonald’s.  While I noticed in the health food store that they had me with my back to the wall when it came to paying for some organic pomegranates with the cash I had on me and me wanting to head back to the Wal to see if I could get them any cheaper, I’m luckily not too worked up over the value I may or may not be getting at Wal-Mart.  (And I’m not blind to the adds they run claiming to save the average family of patrons a Wal-loping three grand or so a year.)  I think my real issue with the seemingly high price of pomegranates stemmed from McDonalds anyway.  As such, I concede that my issue with McDelightful’s is probably because I noticed them having a more pronounced effect on me.

When I go to McDonald’s I tend to get one of two options, nearly identical options at that.  In Option A, I get a one-dollar McDouble, a medium fries and a small soft drink.  In Option B, I get a one-dollar McChicken sandwich, a medium fries and a large coffee.  Lately, however, I find that I go for neither Option A nor Option B, because in newfound Options C and D—in which I replace the medium fries from A and B with large fries—I get two monopoly game pieces that I wouldn’t otherwise get.  The upgrade is around thirty cents, but the word “upgrade” is a tad misleading.  It shares a sad but similar truth with “getting your money’s worth” at an all-you-can eat buffet.  While it is easy to agree with your accountant that the more you eat, the more you save; it might, on the other hand, also be wise to consider the fact that you can be made to pay for things in more ways than mere money.

Anyway, to get back to my point about my McDaemon’s, this monopoly game has me a bit Mac-concerned.  I do love both monopoly and the idea of getting something for nothing, but what is the difference between a fry-box and a scratch ticket these days?  Once in Puerto Rico for ten days with my girlfriend, brother and friends, I put a nickel in a slot machine at a fancy resort that we were crashing.  From that nickel, I won ninety-five cents.  More importantly than turning a nickel into a mountain of McGolden fries, I was ahead.  I could retire from gambling, forever a winner.  Since my first and only experience paying to gamble, (understanding the only true gambling being the act of gambling one’s own fortune) I never gambled again, sort of (at least with odds stacked against me).  These past weeks, however, I question the validity of this.  Thirty cents more per go, for fries that I don’t want and still nothing to show… Am I still ahead?  I’m afraid that I’ve been McDuped out of my McSenses, which has cost me real McDollars in the end.

Today, I even found myself looking online for an analysis of Mickey D-ealer’s game, as if I were a poker player processing probabilities.  I figured it would be important to know a complete list of the rare pieces to know if I had anything, which I don’t.  I have nothing but busted monopolies and big dreams to date.  Then the McDratted Scotsman had me McDaydreaming over other ways to make a buck.  I thought it might be time to start a website or rather an online matching service that took something like a lowly 2% cut or something McDefinately stupid like that to publicizes which pieces were valuable and to take such pieces and complete monopolies, process paper work, etc.  It was a total waste of time, and I was really just there to study in the first place, to get my money’s worth of a class…