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Can I get a Slotar Happy Meal to go please? What kind of toy do you get with that?
6 replies
Can I get a Slotar Happy Meal to go please? What kind of toy do you get with that?
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i usually have a strong stomach and i just came back from lunch.
i am feeling pretty nauseated at the definition of slowter.
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I forgot how messed up Iceland's economy is. At this point, they should mortgage themselves back to the Danish Crown.
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@Quake 'n' Shake: Newfoundland did that during the Depression--they actually gave up independence and came back under British rule.
Well, at the time (1907) it really wasn't all that big of a deal. The Statute of Westminster wasn't passed until 1931. Prior to that, Dominions were still VERY directly under the thumb of the Brits, not the way they are now (Which is to say that the Queen retains the right to veto legislation, although I believe Canada is somewhat of an exception).
But I could be way off on all that...
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But on the bright side, now is an excellent time to visit Iceland because they are one of the few currencies doing worse than the dollar! Only a 2 hour flight from the East Coast. I've actually been wanting to go and play midnight golf...
@dfens42: If you go, please spend a day at the Blue Lagoon spa. Especially if you go in the winter. Truly breathtaking beauty.
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@dfens42: Sure you can visit, but Americans won't be able to eat anywhere since all the McDonald's are closing.
@dfens42: True, but you will still be spending a small fortune on the plane ticket ($1,000 for a ticket for me in March).
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It's a shame what's happening in Iceland. It's an amazing country with an awesome nightlife.
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@tbax929 is rooting for a Phillies repeat: So the only criteria for an amazing country is to have young people with disposable income drink until they puke?
@ThinkerTDM: That is absolutely what I look for in a tourist destination. You can keep your family-friendly Disney nonsense to yourself. Bring me corruptible young women with too much alcohol in their systems, please.
@Tightlines: I thought the same thing when I read tbax929's comment. So apparently not that big of a leap.
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WTF is the International Monetary Fund? Probably some conspiracy theorist's wet dream
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@TommyFeds: \"Probably some conspiracy theorist's wet dream\"
You hit your head on the nail with that.
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You know, I wish they would talk about Iceland's ludicrous meltdown instead of MJ on the news. One dead pill-popping dumbass should not over shadow an entire country. I hate American news sources, they just feel so useless at times.
Anyways, I feel bad for those people; their woman are hot.
@RichasB: I'm pretty sure MJ stopped being news officially around the time that the balloon kid got a whole day of coverage.
@RichasB: Are you f'in kidding me? You have virtually every world media source of any significance at your fingertips and you're complaining about MJ being on the news?
@RichasB: Wait... Who, other than you and people like you who keep bringing him up to make a point about the media, are still talking about him?
Find better, more relevant and more timely examples, the news media is deeply flawed, it shouldn't be too hard. Also realize that 90% of what we think is news in this country isn't, there is a place for what amounts to gossip but it should stop masquerading as useful information.
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Mmm. That Royale w/cheese looks like a tasty burger.
Meh. Good riddance. I'll take an Icelandic mixed meat hot dog over a Mickey D's burger any day of the week. It's curious, though, that $6.36 for a burger in Iceland would give anyone there or visiting there much pause: stuff -- food in particular -- *is* expensive in that neck of the woods. Whatdya want? You're in the middle of the ocean.
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If $6.36 is too much for a Big Mac, perhaps someone should tell every Jersey Turnpike rest stop?
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@TheWillow: I think it's talking about the sandwich itself and before taxes, not the combo. I haven't been out to the McDonalds' in Jersey or Kansas but in general, Big Mac sandwiches in the US are under $4 each.
@blash: I've had medium-sized \"value\" meals on the turnpike that were over $9, so I figured I was probably in the ball park.
... This was several years ago, before I stopped eating McDonalds (unless the only alternative is BK), so it may have gone down.
@TheWillow: And Kansas. You have to fill up on decent food before hitting the 100 mile stretch where there are no exits and nothing but McDonald's.
@henrygates: Kansas isn't any better off the turnpike. Pretty much 100 miles of nothing but a McDonalds at ever exit and nothing else.
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The currency system fails and they bash a \"symbol of American colonialism\"? Enjoy your sheep gut
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I've spent a lot of time in Iceland and I have to say that their fast food outside of McDonald's is pretty darn good.
How can you beat a bacon wrapped hotdog?
If you ever find yourself in Reykjavik make sure to hit up the Hlollar Batar downtown. Good fast food.
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\"'Our competitors all use domestic meat and lettuce and so on, while we are flying in these materials, which is extremely expensive,' Ogmundsson said.\"
Well, now, here's your problem.
@Applekid: In all fairness to McDonald's I will note that I don't think Iceland raises cattle for beef, so they'd have to probably go with lamb burgers (sounds good to me). I also don't think they grow much lettuce there. More often that not, you'll find they use cucumbers in lieu of lettuce on sandwiches.
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@Applekid: Yes, McDonald's requirements for consistency are part of the problem.
I wonder what kind of bonuses the Icelandic bank CEO's got for running the country into the ground.
Iceland was a dirt poor country for ages. I enjoyed reading about how the older generation bemoans the younger's aversion to traditional (read: made from the cheapest food around) foods.
But having just been in August I didn't notice things were especially cheap anyway and everybody seemed more than happy to shell out about $10-12 for coffee and pastry or a couple of pylsa. Hell, the only place we found serving \"traditional\" food charged a good $45 for a serving of thorramatur.
@TheName:
I second this. Was just there and had thought it might be cheaper because of their economic woes. But it's a relatively expensive place, and I was spending pounds. I was really glad I wasn't spending USD.
But it's a beautiful place. Great hiking and camping. We're already planning to go back.
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Any food that is a homophone for 'slaughter' is A-OK in my book!
Do not taunt happy fun slowter.
And yet they still have better internet with more broadband penetration than the U.S.
@Covertghost: Define \"better\" Internet - have you been there? Have you used it? Do they get access to webpages that Americans can't see?
Off-topic rant (as if your's was on-topic), but I really have an issue with the whole \"broadband penetration\" thing. Broadband is available on every single square inch of U.S. soil... just because some people are too cheap to pay for it, does that mean our broadband penetration isn't good enough? This really bugs me. Maybe we haven't turned socialist and given free high-speed to all the homeless shelters, but its available. If you want it, its there.
@Radi0logy: No. No it is not. Please, come to South Dakota. We still do not have broadband everywhere. The east side of the state is fairly well covered unless your on a farm really far from any town. Get out into the central part of the state or anywhere far west and rural and your out of luck.
Much of the rural part state is still running on old copper phone lines from the 30's and 40's.
Well, satellite \"broadband\" happens to suck particularly hard, and is in many ways worse than dial-up.
@Radi0logy: Sorry, but I can't consider anything with high latency broadband. Your claim that broadband is available to \"every single square inch of U. S. soil\" is laugable if you rule out satellite. I'd also be willing to bet there are some inches of soil in the Alaskan north that aren't even covered by satellite.
@secret_curse: \"if you rule out satellite\"
Therein lies the problem. You want to rule out broadband Internet access that is affordable and accessible for every American, simply on the basis of its deficiency of being unable to provide you with a a decent game of Counterstrike. Sorry, that is not the yardstick by which Broadband is measured, don't redefine words to suit your argument.
@Radi0logy: Wait a minute- Satellite? Affordable? Accessible? What are you on? I want some too! I want to move to Japan at the first opportunity- 100M connections for what I pay for a 5M one in the US. Youtube at blazing speeds, song downloads only taking seconds, etc.
@jamar0303: And pay $800,000 for a 1 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment on the 12th floor. Come now, don't bring silliness into it.
The fact remains, that Satellite IS qualified as broadband, IS under $100 a month, and IS available everywhere in the U.S. If you want to continue to nitpick small issues with it in comparison to other broadband providers, that is your right. But trying to pretend that it \"shouldn't count\" as broadband just because it isn't fun to play online video games with it is just ridiculous.
@Radi0logy: It's not just \"not fun to play online video games with\", it's no good for anything that dial-up isn't good for except downloads, and the transfer limits put a quick stop to that. I don't get why you don't see all these limits and can still call it broadband. It's like here in China where my apartment has 512k DSL but real speeds are mostly below ISDN speeds. And I count as \"broadband\". I shouldn't.
And it's not silliness. Silliness is actually paying US$800K for a 1DK (1 bedroom, dining room, kitchen for the real-estate terminology-illiterate) apartment in Japan. It's more than possible to find a 2LDK (L meaning living room) for half that.
@Radi0logy: Satellite is not affordable broadband. It costs way too much money for the average American to install and run for way too little bandwidth. The only way that satellite helps is with the downloading of files - your email will come in a little faster, your YouTube will come in a little faster, but that's it. Actual web surfing, i.e. clicking from link to link on the Consumerist or Wikipedia or your choice of news sites will not be \"broadband\" fast because the rate at which these sites can respond to you clicking links very much does rely upon latency.
Satellite internet is dial-up internet with faster downloads, NOT broadband internet.
@blash:
Satellite also tends to have pretty vicious transfer caps. A plan that costs $60/month for a 1Mb/128Kb connection with high latency that makes any number of modern web services unusable combined with a 200MB/day transfer cap, should in no way be considered \"broadband\".
@Radi0logy: Because it is more akin to dial up than broadband. We know people that use it due to no other option and looked into it ourselves when we were considering building outside of a populated area.
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\"We sort of assumed that McDonald's could be profitable almost anywhere...\"
I live in Flint Michigan, we've had plenty of McDonalds close in the last 10 years. Heck, even our dollar stores are closing.
\"According to the Economist's Big Mac Index, the world's most expensive Big Macs are currently located in Switzerland and Norway...\"
or terminal 6 at LAX
@Roger_Wilco: I love that old joke...
I took my girlfriend to the most expensive restaurant in town last night.
Where was that?
The airport food-court.
@GMFish: its freaking true tho. I just flew out of LAX about a month ago and a buger at burger king was like $9 for the meal.
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This is a crime-- one that happened here as well, we were just big enough to weather the storm (so far).
Someone needs to just shut down the intl finance pipeline. Its all bull and all designed to rake billions or trillions off the top of the world's economies.
By that, I mean derivatives, etc. No one in the U.S. should be allowed to buy a derivative based on the price of grain in Tokyo.
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Man. That's really going to mess up Iceland's version of \"You're Never More Than X Miles From A McDonalds\" mashup map.
I can't imagine that McD's ever did all that well in Iceland even before the collapse.
So this proves that McDonalds is unable to actually evolve their business processes. All they had to do was create a subsidiary in Iceland, switch the supply chain to local suppliers, and ride the commodity roller coaster.
They probably sell beef hamburgers in India (being facetious).
Canada isn't too far away. Last time I checked Big Macs were about $4.59, and our currency is just about on par now.
Yet McDonald's remains popular.
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Now Iceland will be healthier!
I'd like a McHerring please. Hold the special sauce.
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Before the currency collapsed, I spent 10 days touring Iceland. We arrived in Reykjavik a little too late for a sit-down meal (thankfully as it turns out) so we went to a drive through burger stand.
Our two burgers, fries and sodas cost about $45.
Iceland imports everything but sheep, pumice, and seafood. And there are huge restrictions and tariffs on imported food. It's truly amazing that their existence is so totally dependent on imports - after the first day we stopped figuring out the value of everything in dollars as it was too depressing.
@meechybee: FYI, I later found out that beef is the most expensive imported food as their are huge tariffs and regulations on importing uncooked beef (which may explain McDonald's decision). Local fish and lamb is a lot cheaper (natch) as they can raise/catch their own supply.
That said, we never had a bad meal (as the commenter above pointed out) and I would go back in a heartbeat. But this time around, I would steel myself for the prices ahead of time and budget at least twice what I would to go other places.
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Does Iceland McDonalds sell Hakarl? MMMM
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Wait, I thought our lork and savor nObama wanted OUR cuntry to look something like Norway/switzerland??!! Or, maybe he's just another d****bag who likes getting all his special interest money (or having his supporters buy 100,000 copies of his book at one time) and f***ing up this once great country. Hmmmmm.
I like that they're gone. The \"burgers\" McD sells are dried up pieces of meat, and they generally make one sick after eating.
btw. its not \"slowter\" it's \"slátur\", and it's awesome beyond belief, as it is with most Icelandic foods
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I watched a show once about how Iceland was building a giant tunnel and dams so they could generate hydroelectricity to make aluminum. Didn't it work out? I would have expected their economy to do fairly well after it was finished.
It amuses me slightly when people talk of the economy of the country of Iceland collapsing. It only has a population of about 300,000 people. Lorain County, the county in northern Ohio where I live, has a population of 285,000. It is taking billions of dollars to keep less than a third of a million people afloat. I wish someone would spend a few billions on us.
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The combination of that photo and the definition of slowtar has just made me lose my appetite. Just a little. Uggh.
@pecan 3.14159265: It throws in some hard competition for lutefisk and haggis though!
@pecan 3.14159265:
Slowter is the least of it. Icelandic cuisine must've been developed on a bet.
There is an Icelandic dish, hákarl, which Anthony Bourdain called \"the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing\" he has ever eaten
Gordon Ramsey couldn't keep it down.
And Andrew Zimmern called the smell horrific.
[en.wikipedia.org]
The description of how it is prepared is enough to turn one's stomach. Don't say you weren't warned.
@pecan 3.14159265: Also, are you on twitter yet?
@pecan 3.14159265: Unlike you suckers, I already had my lunch. Momcooked Sabudana Khichdi - an absolutely delish tapioca dish complete with potatoes, green chillies, cashews and spices.
Heres one variant of it: [anubhavati.wordpress.com]
Comfort food does not get much better than that.
@pecan 3.14159265: Unfortunately I haven't eaten my lunch yet either... It might be a while now.
@pecan 3.14159265: My cold cut sammich remains resolutely delicious through the reading of this article. If only I had some pie.