I'm back on my Fantasmagorical Awesometastic "Lo-Karb" Diet™, which of course means that I take in vast, heart-clogging amounts of red meat, cheese, and unpasteurized sweet cream that I SUCK DIRECTLY FROM THE COW'S TEAT MWAHAHAHA - sorry, got carried away there. Anyway, I eat a lot of meat.

So when I get a craving for fast food, I have to go somewhere that I can get a lot of meat relatively cheaply. McDonald's has a great deal with the Double Cheeseburger, which is only a buck; I can get 6 of those and have 12 small burger patties for the price of one Super-Sized Big Mac meal (which they don't sell anymore because fat people keep suing, for which I think they should be given liposuction via flensing knife). Sadly, there's no McDonald's within easy driving distance of my route home (the one in East Newark, that technically I pass on my way home, is not easy to get OUT of; if I stop there I invariable have to make a large loop and go around half of north Newark, due to all the stupid one-way streets involved). There is, however, a Wendy's.

Wendy's also has a sweet deal for burgers; 99 cents for a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger. You only get one actual meat patty, but it's larger than those they put in the Double Cheeseburger at McD's, and you also have the additional enticement of bacon. So I routinely stop there on my way home and pick up between 6 and 8 of them.

The only problem with this is that I feel guilty for coming home and throwing away 6 full-sized hamburger buns, when people in Zimbaire or Mongostan or wherever are having to survive on as little as a thin piece of treebark and the juice of 7 horseflies every month. So sometimes, if I'm not in a particular rush, I tell the friendly Wendy's employees not to give me the buns.

Unfortunately, they put each burger into one plastic/foam container. Each of these containers can hold easily three burgers, so once again I'm feeling horribly wasteful, and wondering exactly how many penguins I've personally melted from the greenhouse gases emitted during the production of all this polypropylene.

So the other day, I actually walked INTO the restaurant, and made what I thought was a very clear request. "I would like 8 Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers please . . ."

"EIGHT?" the countergirl said incredulously.

"Yes, eight, with NO BUNS. And please put the burgers into as few toxic containers as possible."

"Eight . . . junior . . . bacon . . . anything to drink?"

"No thanks." I had soda at home. (For that matter, I also had a large box of frozen quarter-pound hamburger patties, 2 full pounds of bacon, and a 16-slice-pack of American Cheese. But I wasn't ready to face all that preparation.)

"Okay, you're order number 738, give us just a few minutes."

I spent a little while admiring the "Employee of the Month" wall, and then turned to discover my order was complete. Three bags of food, with each burger neatly placed inside its own container. I sighed heavily, and wandered over to the ketchup/straws/napkins table, where I set my three bags down, and set about putting all the biggers into as few containers as possible.

5 minutes later, I had 3 containers, one bag, and a pile of plastic and foam that I made a big show of putting into the trash, in hopes that the employees behind the counter (the store was thankfully not terribly busy) might notice exactly how much of their product was being wasted. They, of course, cared about as much about wasting material as I do about amateur Mexican soccer, so I huffed my way out of there and went home to gorge on my hard-earned lunch.

Oh, and also they raised the prices on the burgers from 99 cents to $1.29, the greedy bastards.