Lowlights included getting "Chili and Noodles" which contained no actual
chili (after many attempts to discover what chili was like, including
I got the fish. Well, I ordered the fish, anyway. What actually arrived was a 'Frisco Burger'. For those of you who don't know what this is, it's... it's... oh, I can't bear the awful memories!
Ahem. Suffice to say, it's something that looks something like regurgitated hairballs in their own luscious sauce. This was quickly sent right the hell back from whence it came. Fish arrived shortly thereafter (they were supposed to be fish sandwiches but the waitress was already shaken by the Lack-Of-Chili Debacle, and I saw fit to bug her about something different, which was the Lack-Of-Fries. Fries arrived shortly thereafter.
They were wholly inadequate fries. Hopefully all of you have had experience with the lucious kind of fries, the ones that are thick and contain much more potato than they should, very little grease, and are nice and crispy-crunchy. These were almost completely unlike those fries. They were pathetic, wimpy, rejects from the fry factory, unworthy to grace a plate with anything other than the similarly inadequate, wretched little fish patties.
On the other hand, I got a superb root beer float with this meal, which was free because of all the wackiness. So the afternoon wasn't a complete wash.
To segue from my earlier comment, this is where I rant about Political Correctness simply because I can. Now, there's such a thing as Going Too Far, you see. I should know, I do it all the time. It's where you take a perfectly reasonable assumption or idea and carry it to such ludicrous extremes that it creates a laughingstock of the ideals that spawned it.
Let's take, for example, oh, Christianity. Now, there's a nice little idea that, to me, summarizes the core of Christianity: "Being mean to people sucks. Cut it out, dumbass."
How did we get from that to the Moral Minority, the Church Police, the Crusades against the Heretics, the... well, a whole ton-o-crap, really. The answer is that some people just don't know when to quit. When the Christian religion was young, there were many fascinating debates among the faithful about the nature of various truths and whatnot, but these weren't vicious debates. It didn't take long, of course, for this to migrate into killing each other over, for example, wether Jesus was Divine Only, Human Only, or Both.
At least a lot of that stuff's mellowed out recently, but still. I think we would have been a lot better off if we stuck with the older gods. I mean, nobody disrespects, say, Zeus, or fails to understand philosophy. If you talk smack about Zeus, he'll come right down and kick your pansy mortal ass. That's the kind of thing people understand. None of this 'oo, pretty immortal soul afterlife' stuff.
And Satan! If the church didn't have such a mighty rod rammed up its rear end, it might have remembered that The Devil's job was as a judge and punisher of the people (after all, how can you know if someone's good or not if he hasn't been judged?). None of this competition with God stuff. Old Scratch is just a loyal flunky like any of the other bad-asses we don't hear much about these days (what's the Angel of Death up to these days, you wonder).
Wow. What was I talking about, anyway?
Oh, right. Political Correctness(tm). Start with a simple idea: "Hey, saying stuff that offends people sucks. Cut it out, dumbass."
How did we get from that to "You must never say anything that might possibly, under any circumstances, offend anyone, wether or not they're completely out of their minds, under pain of massive lawsuits"?
And... hm. I'm out of vitriol today. Curses. Oh well, I'm sure this will come up again.