AlchemyToday

Driving into work, I looked out the window and saw water spurting 30 feet into the air out of a manhole thanks to flash flooding and grabbed a video.  Pretty amazing.  I didn’t get much of the lightning, but that was something else, too.

You know, I’ve only spent a little bit of time in Paris, but you have to harbor some serious francophobia to come away with this impression:

The French do not much like children [off with a bang]. Restaurant meals are available at very limited hours. You want lunch — it had better be between 12 and 2 [aka lunchtime]. Miss that and you can have a snack — but only if you are in a place big enough to have a range of restaurant types [and/or street vendors, bakeries, groceries, etc, etc which are ubiquitous in any "place" in France]. Dinner starts at 7 [aka dinnertime], no matter that you missed lunch and want a burger or a salad at 5, not ice cream or a beer. And meals take forever. I like the leisurely lunch as much as any journalist, of course. But not with my kids, every day — which leaves us with grilled-cheese sandwiches, hold the ham. Oh, you can’t hold the ham? Thanks [clearly this anecdote is relevant].

Finally, there is a lot of bad food in France — especially around tourist sites, including the great museums [the prepared food in the Met and the Smithsonian is fantastic and cheap, right?]. I will not say what I paid for two sandwiches and two salads [ignoring who's responsible for the weak dollar; food in Paris was astonishingly cheap in 2001] — all premade so unwanted ingredients could not be removed in advance — and a few soft drinks at the Louvre, after braving the crowds to see the Mona Lisa (which attracts tour buses full of people eager to take group pictures of themselves in front of the picture [doesn't failing to visit the Liberty Bell disqualify one for employment at the National Review?]). There is much excellent food, of course. But who wants really excellent food every day [everyone]? Sometimes you just want to get everyone fed and get on with your activities. Fast food exists because a mediocre, entirely predictable burger from McDonald’s is no worse than what you would get a certain percentage of the time at individual places that might not be as clean and certainly won’t be as quick [I love McDonald's... but clean?]. There is an obvious open niche for a service-oriented place that downplays the drama and provides reasonably healthy food in a clean setting. And as for the health claim — I don’t personally buy it [Buy what?  That it's a good idea to have a healthy diet?]. But I am currently in a region where every farmers’ market, farm stand, and café sells foie gras, duck confit, and excellent high-fat cheeses, and what passes for a vegetable in restaurants is potatoes sautéed in duck fat [Who claimed French cuisine was healthy?]. A few carrot sticks and an apple and Mickey D wins that one — so no surprise that it’s doing well.

I really hope her kids enjoy their sabotaged McVacation.