67 reasons why Butterfinger McFlurries suck (idea)

Last night I finally caved in and broke an eight year long spell of not eating at McDonalds. I purchased a butterfinger McFlurry for two dollars and sixteen cents, exclusively because the e2 node had been cooled so many times. 67 cools, at the time of this writing.

I expected tha macdaddiest, pimpin'est liquid in a cup this side of Abe Vigoda's urine. What I got was the shittiest liquid in a cup this side of a lactose intolerant baseball player with gear on backwards who incidentally just won the gallon of milk in an hour bet.

Here are sixty seven reasons why butterfinger McFlurries suck, based on my experience with them to date.

Part I: Physical Problems with My Butterfinger McFlurry

1. The cup was half empty. If it came from Dairy Queen it may have been half full, but McDonalds automatically makes me pessimistic.
2. The butterfinger pieces were stale. Butterfingers should flake, not chew.
3. There were chunks of ice in my cup. You know it's mixed badly if you find bits of tasteless mush.
4. The cup itself leaked.
5. The spoon is small: to compensate for the deep concave well of the spoon, you have to eat it backwards.
6. The opening of the dome lid is not big enough to scoop the final spoonsful of melted McFlurry out.
7. The ice cream was terrible.. It's hardly even soft serve, and barely ice cream. Did you know it's reduced fat?

   Part II: Problems With the Concept Of A McFlurry

8. Ok, so Seattle might have fairly puny autumn and winter weather, but it was cold outside. McFlurries are cold, too. Ice cream product doesn't mix well with the chill factor of the outdoors.
9. Isn't this thing just a rip off of a blizzard? Except blizzards are typically made better. A resounding hooray for the high quality of fast food nowadays.
10. Let's say that to compensate for reason number 6 you pull the lid off. Where does it go now? Chances are it's got sticky melting soft serve on it, and it has the potential to soil any surface you put it on, due to the hole in the top!
11. Speaking of that lid, why even bother putting it on in the first place if the McFlurry cup isn't filled to the top? With slurpees, this dome-style lid is warranted because they're self-fill, and you may make use of the added capacity. With McFlurries, it's all for the illusion of cool. So to speak.
12. I purchased mine from the food court at the mall. There were no napkins. Asdf.

    Part III: Nutritional Concerns

13. Can you imagine what would happen to people if these things were not made with reduced fat ice cream? I'm no nutritionist, but 620 calories seems like it should be a third of your daily food intake, not an incidental chaser to your quick meal.
14. 90 grams of sugar is a lot, too. Your average 12-oz can of coke has about 36 grams of sugar - this is two and a half times that, in what, like eight ounces or fewer?
15. One possible nutritional concern is that there are no useful vitamins in a butterfinger McFlurry, outside of phosphorous and potassium. And those aren't even vitamins, they're minerals!
16. Milk isn't really all that healthy for a lot of people. Most people are lactose intolerant to some degree. Why are we such gluttons for pain?

    Part IV: Problems With Butterfinger

17. Butterfingers are poorly designed, because they flake. When you crack open a butterfinger it leaves sticky dust everywhere.
18. Crispety is not a word. Neither is crunchety. Peanut-buttery is suspect.
19. Aren't they just chick-o-sticks covered in chocolate?
20. Bad chocolate at that. Nothing worse than that unmoist, preservative-laden wax they pass off as chocolate. I highly doubt it melts.
21. If you crush up butterfinger and let it sit in a dish, the moisture gets to the flakes and causes them to melt together. This is a possible solution to problem number 17, but then they taste stale.
22. Speaking of stale butterfinger, there's nothing worse. Butterfingers should taste like sugary peanut butter pie crust, not like hardened lumps of epoxy-like brown sugar.
23. Yellow is a weird color. I may be wrong, but I'm guessing the yellow 5 and red 40 listed in the ingredients are mixed specifically to match the pantone color of the wrapper.
24. Made by nestlé. Hershey makes far better candy.
25. When you freeze, or rather, make very cold (butterfinger McFlurries are not frozen, otherwise they'd be unmixable!) butterfinger, it doubles the effect of problems 21 and 22.
26. The butterfinger website is pretty bad. I mean, it's not as if one would expect to see anything other than advertising there, but sometimes it is disturbing to see popular culture broken into individual servings, wrapped up and sold to teenagers everywhere.
27. I can download butterfinger ads from the butterfinger website, but I can't get a lousy mail order candy bar.
28. The nutrition of a butterfinger candy bar is almost as bad as a butterfinger McFlurry, but since this list is primarily about McFlurries and not butterfingers themselves, it isn't necessarily to say much. Just look at the label.

    Part V: Ethical Considerations

29. McDonalds is an evil company. Though they may have plenty of positive PR fluff on their website, they also have plenty of evil skeletons lurking in shallow graves. One merely needs to do a little bit of digging.
30. By purchasing a butterfinger McFlurry, you are supporting two corporations: primarily McDonalds, but secondarily Nestlé.
31. McDonalds is the figurehead of American fast food culture. American fast food culture is unquestionably a bad thing.
32. The butterfinger McFlurry is just one more off-the-menu item of dietary excess available for cheap to Americans today. How many straws can the backs of Americans take before they collapse under their own weight?
33. As if the concept of supersizing wasn't bad enough, as if the concept of putting two all-beef patties (with special sauce, lettuce, cheese...) on a burger wasn't bad enough, now we have people who believe the amount of junk they eat isn't high enough. They need dessert now, and those relatively benign little hot apple pies won't do the trick anymore. Enter the butterfinger McFlurry, and more recently, the triple thick milkshake.
34. Two all beef patties, as I mentioned in the reason previous to this, coupled with special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun is forever burned into my memory. It's bleak indeed that I know this advertising jingle but am not positive about the spelling of my mother's maiden name.
35. Though it's no surprise the corporations themselves are not the greenest around, could they have omitted this much maligned plastic lid? Less plastic is better plastic.
36. A moment of silence for the concept of mass slaughtering animals worldwide, a process that doesn't make sense from a thermodynamics standpoint, to provide an already stuffed population with an increased supply of unbalanced nutrition.
37. McDonalds has a partnership with Disney. Let the corporate conspiracy theories begin. Want to hear something as sad as the death cry of a doe hit by a monster truck?
38. McDonalds and Disney partnered up with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to hand out Youth Millennium Dreamer awards in Walt Disney World in May of 2000. I'm glad to know that my $2.16 went to fund such a pro-community organization, the likes of which demonstrate just how deeply in the sack they are with the United Nations.
39. This is, of course, coming from the same corporation who allegedly included meat products in supposedly beef-free products in India.
40. ...And the same company who found themselves pitted against a judge who found that their corporate drivel wrongly tried to justify their high fat, high sodium, high-in-animal-products "food" as being a potential part of a well-balanced diet. That butterfinger McFlurry is just one more log in the fire.
41. ...And the same company who, as mentioned previously, has a sinfully depraved menage a trois type relationship with Disney and Coke. Never forget that your pooh bear embroidery is made in a Haitian sweatshop.
42. ...And the same company who's cuddled up close to Nestlé. McDonalds is the American Life, the Universe, and basically Everything.
43. Nestlé, who manufacturers those delicious butterfinger chunks in your McFlurry, virtually owns the dairy market in Sri Lanka.
44. A fact that's made worse by the fact that milk prices in Sri Lanka have been steadily rising ever since 1981, after the government's National Milk Board partnered up with Nestlé and two others. A fraction of the money spent on a butterfinger McFlurry at least indirectly supports this exploitive corporation.
45. Real milk is no longer sold in Sri Lanka. Instead, the market's turned to powdered milk. Now that they control the milk market of Sri Lanka, Nestlé sells their powdered milk for US $1.33 per 400 grams. 50% of the population of Sri Lanka has an income below 1,000 rupees, or US $10.
46. Thus, Nestlé has made it very difficult for children in Sri Lanka to get a decent amount of calcium, by the long term exploitation of their monopoly. It's a good thing that McDonalds has a partnership with these guys, seeing as how they do so much for the global community. With their powers combined, they're like motherfucking captain planet.

    Part VI: Linguistic Malarkey

47. It's often said that the English language is a difficult one to learn. I don't doubt that. With product names like “butterfinger McFlurry,” it's no wonder people have a difficult time adjusting to the English language in America!
48. Butterfinger as a phrase makes little sense. Butter is an animal product made from milk fat. A finger is the generic term for one of the digits on your hand, but also refers to long, jointed things meant to jab or poke or manipulate. When combined, these things suggest a jointed poker made out of treated milk fat.
49. McFlurry is also nonsensical. McDonalds's gimmick is to prefix product names with Mc, which they have trademarked. See chicken McNuggets, McSalad, etc. According to Razhumikin, Mc means "Son of." ... Son of^TM Flurry? This is outrageous.
50. "Mc" doesn't even necessarily have positive connotations - see McJob, going for a McShit, etc.
51. Flurry, I suppose, is more rational of a term than at first meets the eye. It's close enough to Blizzard as to be confusingly similar, but a blizzard is an intense, destructive snowstorm. A flurry is a brief, light snowfall. What an apt name: a McFlurry is a confusingly similar knockoff of a blizzard, but lacks all of the punch and quality of its competitor. But still, it's using that gimmicky, ridiculous prefix!
52. The combination of butterfinger, a phrase that makes little real sense, and McFlurry, which is a reference to both popular culture and ironic marketing, results in a product name that has virtually no impact outside of brand-name recognition. It's good sounding, but junk when consumed - just like the product itself.

    Part VII: Miscellaneous

53. It cost me $2.16. Surprisingly, I didn't have exact change. I hate carrying change around, so I decided to leave it all sitting on the counter, along with my receipt.
54. It made me break my eight year long streak of not eating at McDonalds.
55. Granted, I didn't actually set foot inside a McDonalds, per se, since it was at the mall, but I had to go to the mall to get it.
56. After leaving the mall with my butterfinger McFlurry and shivering while eating it outside, I had no place to put it.
57. I wound up leaving it in a movie theater for somebody else to pick up. I don't know whether I should be mad at myself for not throwing it away, or if I should be comfortable with the fact that I am justifying the janitorial staff's existence.
58. That stupid leaking dome of a lid caused me to unknowingly get melted McFlurry all over my pokémon t-shirt. Pissed.
59. I still think that $2.16 is too much to pay for a McFlurry. See McDonald's sets prices according to what people are willing to pay.
60. I feel foolish for being so easily swayed by the 67 cools on butterfinger mcflurry. And all this time, I assumed that the node had so much attention for the sheer merits of its namesake.
61. This node has taken me over two hours to research and write, which is a lot more than I spend on most of my homework assignments. I had planned on making Swedish waffles today, but now that plan has been dangerously compromised.
62. I think -- and this may or may not be a fact -- that the triple thick milkshake may cost less, but actually be a better buy, in terms of quality.
63. The process of actually purchasing it was a little stupid, due to the credit card reader taking a long time to approve the request of the guys in front of me. They moved aside. I kept saying, “I want a butter-” only to be interrupted by the cashier telling me that it was still being approved. Perhaps he put spite into my McFlurry.
64. Money of mine has now gone to support McDonalds and therefore Disney and Nestlé. Wee little portions of sweatshops in Haiti and malnourished kids in Sri Lanka are now indirectly my fault.
65. More negative aspects of the butterfinger McFlurry than I ever thought I would care to know have now been lodged in my brain. I am not usually this negative of a person, but sixty seven reasons: that's a lot. Enough to significantly throw my balance of positive vs. negative thinking off for the day. I'd better get back to my Tappy Tibbons tapes.
66. It totally didn't go well with the pizza that I had eaten prior to this whole debacle.
67. In all honesty, I think I want another butterfinger McFlurry.

References:
http://www.corpwatch.org/campaigns/PCD.jsp?articleid=995
http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2001/137/
http://www.converge.org.nz/hrag/apr3098.html
http://www.afsc.org/nero/jcpenny.htm>
http://www.worldfederalist.org/WFM_NEWS/WFNews40/mcun.html