‘Tis a bleak and dismal country I live in

They don’t have drive-throughs here! I am so not even kidding. They don’t have a single speck of a drive-through food place in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. All they have is drive-through banks now and again, and although those are lots of fun because you get to watch the canister go wooshing up the tube and the nice bank ladies give you lollipops (you can see that I have never actually patronized a drive-through bank as an adult), they are not at all the same!

So I have a few questions for you, Great Britain.

Can a drive-through bank give you delicious French fries with small containers of sweet and sour sauce? No.

Can a drive-through bank save you from starvation late at night when you are in a hurry and you don’t want to go inside a sketchy fast food restaurant in the middle of the night? No.

Can a drive-through bank save you from starvation at all? No. They only give you one or maybe two lollipops each, and then only if you are young and cute.

Can a drive-through bank…Oh, but you get the idea, Great Britain. I don’t want to rub salt in the wound. I understand that everyone here drives a stick shift and that makes it harder to eat while driving, and that you have therefore felt it necessary to outlaw any eating or drinking whatsoever while driving. Okay. But about that, two things. One, it is very possible to eat while driving a stick. I have done it lots of times. I wouldn’t be so confident as to say that I could dip my French fries in sweet and sour sauce while driving stick, but I am content to eat French fries without sauce. And it is easy to set a bag of French fries or chicken nuggets in one’s lap while driving and consume them very safely between gear changes. Two, what about the other people in the car? THEY WILL STARVE.

This has to stop. I call upon the citizens of the United Kingdom to rise up as one and demand their drive-through rights! Do not allow yourselves to be forced to park your car and go into fast food places! Insist upon drive-throughs! They are convenient and efficient, allowing many useful professional people to seize a quick cup of coffee in the morning on the way to work and get to work on time, ready to save lives and defend murderers and file papers and program computers!

(No one could fail to be moved by such stirring rhetoric.)

Incidentally, I am now on a Mission to watch lots and lots of Oscar-nominated films before I see the Oscars themselves, as it is more fun to watch award shows if you know something about the things and people getting awarded. Ellen DeGeneres is hosting them, so it would be a shame for me not to appreciate them to the fullest, since I have been telling the Academy for years (at least two — when did Finding Nemo come out?) that she should host the Oscars. The Academy has started to really listen to me. Last year I told them, Get Jon Stewart or Ellen DeGeneres, and they got Jon Stewart, and this year I told them, Get Ellen DeGeneres, and they got Ellen DeGeneres. I influence them with my mind powers.

But that’s beside the point. I was going to say, so watch for brief movie reviews. I am going to be an Oscar-nominee-movie-reviewing FIEND (if I have enough time).