Do we live in a giant McDonald's restaurant? Let's look at a McTypical Day:

• Wake up (thanks to your disposable plastic digital alarm, 99% petroleum and made by a laborer in Bangladesh making .06/hr) to the new Green Day hit, which sounds just like every other Time-Warner Green Day hit except they've added another trash can (32 gallon size, durable plastic construction, made in China) to the percussion section.
• Put on chain store, mall-bought clothes produced in sweatshops somewhere in Southeast Asia, sold at WalMart.
• Eat cereal grown with genetically altered wheat, grown by commercial farmers who use more petrochemicals than a medium-sized country in Africa, drenched in milk produced by using FDA-approved bovine growth hormone (which can increase milk production up to 16 McFold!)
• On the way to McDonald's for breakfast, listen to the local Clear Channel affiliate--you know the one: hits of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today! (And you thought La Grande was the only place to get this stuff . . .)--with the local-sounding DJ, on the car radio, which was mass-produced in a factory along the U.S. Mexican border where workers are currently fired for demanding a .10 pay raise (up to .90/hr). Hey! It's that cool new Hillary Duff song!
• Wait in drive-through for your eggamuffin (or a similar product from Burger King, Dairy Queen, Wendy's, Jack-in-the Box, Carl's, KFC, etc.).
• Go to work--you perform one task all morning--let's say, you're analyzing urine samples for drug use among middle school football players (not what you thought you'd be doing with your chemistry degree . . . ). It's repetitive, boring, the pay is mediocre, last week you dropped a flat of vials and had to work overtime--without pay--'replacing' them. And your co-workers may be 'secret shoppers,' so if you liked the job, you'd be worried this week. But hey, it's a paycheck while it lasts! And you get lunch! Well, not paid of course, but still. Hmmm . . . .where to go . . . .
• Lunch time-you only have half an hour, so you head over to Burger King for a supersized Whopper Deluxe, eat it in 4 bites, down the 48 oz drink (with 36 teaspons of sugar!), and head back quickly to find a restroom before lunch break's over;
• Avoid the talk at the water cooler about organizing a union--this may save you your job . . . for this week.
• Afternoon--time for your officially sanctioned-but-grudgingly-given 10-minute break! You head over to the 5-Minit Lube to drop the car off for an oil change, and go across the street to Starbucks for a double shot Trenta (that's thirty ounces!) skinny iced frappulacino;
• When you return, the supervisor at work, a 19 year-old, and former student council president of the local high school, informs you that you're two minutes late and tells you you're on probation because you deviated from the customer script with two 'secret shoppers' the previous day. Then he proceeds with a grim expression, learned from management training seminars offered online by a corporate consulting firm, to give you a lecture on the importance of appearance and customer relations (topics on which 19 year-olds are generally experts).
• Work's over. In the parking lot, you step in something dark and oily draining from under your car. You go home to your large apartment complex, Hamptondunne Luxury Townemaisons, built ten years ago on the busiests street in McTownVille, and narrowly avoid getting hit by a shingle that came loose from the second floor right under your door (which was manufactured in Malaysia from plantation-grown tropical 'hardwoods');
• You haven't noticed yet, but underneath your car, the pool of oil is spreading where the 5-Minit Lube attendant stripped the threads on the oil pan screw, because he was too busy jamming to the local Classic Rock radio station, you know the one--it requires the playing of 'Stairway to Heaven' or 'Free Bird' (depending on which state the local affiliate is in) at least once every 90 minutes. Chances are he was tightening the screw to 'Free Bird' during the frenzied guitar riff at the end when the screw, manufactured in a prison factory in Cambodia for .00001, snapped in two.
• Once inside, you check the mail--the Oregon voters' guide pamphlet and ballot for the next election is there. You're too tired to look it over, and toss it in the recycle pile, feeling pretty proud of yourself for being environmentally conscious (you will later vote down the ban on plastic bags after having viewed a dramatic TV commercial with Chuck Norris assailing it as 'weenie roast' that represents an assault on fundamental American liberties);
• You turn on the TV to watch 3 minute news stories on war heroes, disease and Hollywood celebrities, interspersed with 30-second commercials from corporate sponsors that cost $1 million each to produce. One of them tells you to ask your doctor about Wysteria if you've ever had itchiness between your toes; another one had close-up shots of food that made the pizza look like it was photographed with an electron microscope. You finish the news feeling pretty socially responsible for keeping up with current events of the day.
• There are presidential debates on this evening, being carried by the networks, sponsored by ExxonMobil, TexacoChevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, BP, and some group called Citizens for Accountability in Politics. The two major party McCandidates have 2 minutes to discuss important policy issues, which they instead use to accuse each other of everything from terrorism to using a quarter saver at the local laundromat in their youth. They avoid answering the moderators' questions, for fear they'll offend some important voter block that their consultants told them to please, or some corporate donor who's already contributed $500,000 to their campaign. The moderators don't seem to notice this, but always know which camera to watch. One minute rebuttals with flashing red and green lights;
• Too tired to cook, even in the easy touch-screen microwave (just press the hot dog button! Really!), you call Carbono's Pizza and order a Dubble Stuffed San Antonio-Style Southwest Chicken BBQ Fiesta Pizza (with Hidden Valley Ranch® Crust). The chicken is produced in Tyson Chicken factories in Arkansas and North Carolina (and Kentucky!), and fed massive doses of antibiotics and steroids to reduce disease and fatten them more quickly (Some genetic engineering and processing experiments may apply! Ask your doctor about Chicktheria!), producing chickens with 20% more breast meat, and this meat is being used in the new 'product,' which is being test-marked in the tri-state region;
• You spend the evening watching tightly scripted 'reality TV' shows, whose premises are based on focus group research designed to target the 18-34 yr demographic. All of the actors are Extremely Buff and drop-dead gorgeous. Just like in real life. Your favorite is called MWF, My Wrestling Fantasy, where contestants vie for a spot on a Professional Wrestling Satellite Circuit (Really! No kidding!) by eating glass shards, trying to poison each other in the break room, and talking like Hulk Hogan (or that local DJ on the Classic Rock station).
• After a day like that, who's got time to pay attention to what politicians, who require millions of dollars to run even losing campaigns these days, are cooking up in Washington or the state capital? Time for bed. Just rest your pretty little head on that pillow doused in polybrominated diphenyl ether--a flame retardant that keeps your hair from spontaneously combusting while you sleep soundly (thanks to Loonesta!). And I don't know exactly what PBDEs are, but they double as neurotoxins! Did you set the alarm clock? Ooops, broken? That's okay, throw it away! Even if it's only the batteries! There's more at the GiantBoxMart where those came from! In fact, tomorrow you can use your 10-minute break to go out and buy another clock at GiantBoxMart's brand spaking new SooperCenter! Oh . . . use the express self-check out, so you don't get fired for being late back at work--those coaches and school boards are anxiously awaiting the results of your hard work!

Okay, maybe that's not a typical McDay. But hopefully you also get an idea of the ways in which McDonald's business model has spread to other institutions, and quite literally around the McGlobe.