News You Can't Use: McDonald's to Cut Prices on Drinks as Industry Slumps

Having the world's most extensive strategic arsenal of high fructose corn syrup beverages is bound to come in useful at some point. Maybe we can water crops with the bubble water, something like that? Or perhaps it could be used to save the slumping fast food industry, which has been hamstrung by the fitness craze sweeping the nation, the new and exotic so-called "grocery store" and our recent decision to raise the minimum wage to a thousand dollars an hour, making everyone super wealthy because that's how economics works. Now the hope rests on watered-down syrup delivery systems aimed at the human resource who is not aware that you can buy the real stuff dirt cheap at that weird, snobbish "grocer" I already mentioned.

McDonald’s Corp., reeling from an industrywide restaurant slump and slowing growth from its all-day breakfast push, is looking to beverages to help perk up the business.

Once I could get breakfast balls at 11:01 a.m.without making a giant scene I pretty much lost all interest in purchasing them. Give me something else to dream on, pink slime industry.

The world’s biggest food-service company, which last year focused its advertising on cheeseburgers and chicken sandwiches, plans to offer $1 sodas and $2 McCafe specialty drinks across the U.S.

The critically acclaimed "I'll give you these cheeseburgers/I don't want any cheeseburgers" advertising campaign somehow failed. Perhaps I can offer you something else. Suck a soda through a straw?

It’s turning to higher-margin beverages at a time when cheap grocery prices are prodding more Americans to eat at home.

Seriously bro, I bought a box of Captain Crunch up in that bizz-atch for three Washingtons, took it home and got down. I have defeated the "restaurant" trick bag and am woke as fudge.

Last year, the chain advertised two-for-$2 and two-for-$5 deals to bring back diners they’d lost after nixing its popular Dollar Menu.

Yeah, nice try. My dinner budget is one George plus applicable sales tax and that's not negotiable.

“Demand has been a little weak,” said Jack Russo, analyst at Edward D. Jones & Co. “A lot of these guys think they’ve got to keep promoting to keep people coming in the door.”

Some of these em effers think you have to offer deals or whatever. It's crazy.

The McDonald’s promotion, which starts in April, will include soft drinks of any size for $1.

Yes, even "medium."

The strategy aims to create “noticeable changes” for customers, said Adam Salgado, vice president of U.S. marketing at Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald’s. 

We've given up on subliminals, at least for now.

“It’s adding another layer of great value for customers with more choices.”

You will note that it's just a minor price adjustment and there are no actual new choices, but by the time you figure it out I'll be on a plane headed for South America.

Snack maker PepsiCo Inc. said on a Feb. 15 conference call that it expects commodity inflation to accelerate this year. Potbelly Corp., a U.S. sandwich chain, also warned about rising costs.

Pathetic Fat and Inactive Piles of Human Waste LLC warned that current indicators suggest a market correction is coming soon.

Starbucks Corp. and Dunkin’ Donuts, meanwhile, both have rewards programs that lock customers in with free and discounted beverages and food.

Buy ten cheeseburgers and the eleventh is 10% less! Here, stick this card in your wallet with all the others!

“We know that there are budget-conscious consumers out there,” he said. “Value will always be a part of our strategy.”

With that in mind, we're cancelling the "McCaviar" sandwich.

Full Story.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.   

News You Can't Use: Homeless Florida Man Brings Skull to Grocery Store

With Halloween just around the corner and down the temporal street that ultimately leads to dark and hateful oblivion it's time for some real life scary stories. Or at least a real life "I can't believe how awful and pathetic everything is" story, which is what the so-called real world tends to create rather than PG-13 thrill rides about evil dolls and evil clowns and evil dolls that are clown-dolls. Still, today's story manages to take highly unusual events and present them in the most banal "oh well" fashion, so at least there's that. If we can't have sincere scares at least we can be proudly desensitized to hometown horrors.

Shoppers at a Sebastian, Florida, Publix grocery store called 911 when they saw a homeless man walking around with a human skull, authorities said.

More "Publix" snobs, people who think they're too good for "Everything's Cheap and Rotten" or "ALDI." All it takes is a dangerous human derelict and his macabre fashion accessories and everyone's using their little glow screens to call in the five-oh.

"He had put the skull on top of a trash can over there because he wanted to tell somebody to call the sheriff's office," said Indian River County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Thomas Raulen. 

That's how that works. If you need police assistance, go to some lower tier food depository and set the item of concern or a reasonable facsimile on the ash can. Society's nice and healthy, nothing about this is unusual, please resume your shopping for Dinnerables and assorted swine parts.

The unidentified homeless man found human remains in an isolated area near the homeless camps and brought it to the Publix to report the body on Tuesday.

This one time...at homeless camp... I also like how there's more than one and it's just accepted with "oh well" resignation. Not our problem 'til they start with the skullin', I suppose.

“He was using it as a puppet," witness Nick Pecoraro told WPBF News. "It smelled like death.”

We'll just leave out these bizarre and sickening details when we make the police report, because it's easier that way.

Can we just do more common core math instead?

Raulen said that it was unlikely that the victim had been decapitated, but that the body was too deteriorated to tell much information about the victim. 

I don't know anything, but I'll still offer lame speculation for no good reason.

Full Story.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.