What great sultan once ordered himself a meal to be made from the flesh of a thousand cattle? Or was it a king? I can’t remember. Perhaps the Emperor Napoleon, who came so close to conquering all that he could see (when standing on a chair.) Or Ghengis Khan? There have been so few in history that could have made such an order and expected it to be carried out. It was certainly beyond Queen Elizabeth, with her wavering power. Even Richard the Lionhearted would have had to bellow loudly to see such an request granted. You had to be massive to make such an demand. You had to be so massive as to be famous for being massive. Not Brutus, but Caesar himself. And perhaps Nero.

But now almost any of us can enjoy this luxury, doing nothing more complicated than going down to McDonalds. According to Eric Schlosser, that Fast Food Nation dude, there may be parts from up to one thousand different cows in a just a single burger (which, at participating restaurants, can be had for as little as a buck.)

Not that I get the entire flesh of these creatures. That would be excessive. Instead, I share this meal with others, who, like myself, felt they, too, deserved a break today. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of my fellow countrymen. As I eat the Big Mac, I break bread with them—while not in a biblical sense, certainly with a salt-induced vigor that would rival that last of suppers. And the people I feast with are from all walks of life, all political parties, all religions, races, creeds, and are likely spread out across the globe. Probably within the same month. It’s more than a melting pot, it’s communion. It’s community.

And I’m loving it.

As anyone in the Los Angeles area knows, it’s been cold in these here hills. It’s the result of El Nino weather. El Nino, for those Spanish-disabled types literally means “The Child” (named after the Christ Child because it starts around Christmas.) But no matter what languages you speak, a more literal translation is “freaky weather all winter.” This means it’s warm on the east coast, cold on the west coast, and time for anyone afraid of imminent global warming to buy a big bottle of St. John’s Wort.

And for you Lotuslanders, before you get upset about the cold and having to rake leaves for the first time since you moved here from Oinky, Nebraska, consider the main benefit: crystal-clear air!

If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to get out of your house/office/full-scale-replica-of-an-elf’s-lair and take a look around you. But hold onto something tight when you do. It’s a little unnerving to see the cranes of Long Beach from the Hollywood Hills. Or the Hollywood Sign from the 10. Or a mountain you never knew was right there, suddenly looming over you like a giant come out of the mist. The whole effect is like getting a new eyeglass prescription after having put it off for decade or so. Or having Merlin turn you into a Peregrine Falcon for a little while, if that’s the sort of analogy you prefer.

And ‘a little while’ is the key phrase: El Nino only lasts a few months. So head up to Runyon Canyon for lunch today. Scoot over to the Los Angeles Crest this weekend (bet you never knew it was prettier than Italy up there.) Or just sit on your fat-ass and drive down Mulholland. Either way, you’ll be pleased with what you see. And you’ll get some sense what this town would look like if everyone bought a Prius instead of a H2.

Okay, well that’s about it.

Here’s a quick round up of angering things from around The World of News:

It seems like it should be funny, but it’s not: The United States Army asks dead soldiers to sign up for another hitch.

Toyota develops a feature only parents will love: A car that detects if you’re drunk and shuts off. Of course, it can only be a manner of time before the government starts requiring these in cars. My libertarian inner-child is twisted into a knot over the potential for yet more regulation.

More things to fear North Korea for: Seems that beyond their nuclear ambitions, they are developing an arsonal of chemical weapons. Generally speaking, these are not the guys you wanna get stuck with in the lunch line. Maybe Bush was right about them after all. But if so, why did we invade Iraq instead?

The cold war is over, but that’s not stopping the Russians from attacking us from space. But, of course, it was just an accident. And, incidentally, looks like we’ve attacked the Japanese, by ramming one of their tankers with a sub.

Looks like Castle Bran, the castle oft-rumored to have been the home of Vlad the Impaler (a.k.a Count Dracula) is up for sale. Post-communist Romania returned it to the descendent of the last rightful owner, who is now a graphic designer in the United States. But I guess he’s thinking the seventy-seven million dollars the castle is set to fetch would be a little more lucrative than heating a 57-room medieval castle “getaway” every winter.

Lastly, it’s going to be Roswell all over again, with United Airlines and the U.S. Government denying what seems to be an incredibly valid UFO sighting over Chicago O’Hare. Of course, it was only United Airlines employees who saw it, and since they did trademark “The Friendly Skies™”, maybe other airlines have kept quiet from fear of copyright infringement.

It sounds like an Onion headline, but it’s not. It turns out that that world’s largest largest retailer has been throwing their weight around in an effort to save the environment. How? By pledging to sell you (and your ilk) one hundred million compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) this year.

CFLs are those tiny little fluorescent bulbs that screw into your regular lamp socket. The tubes themselves aren’t much thicker than a pencil and they are bent, either just out and back like a pair of tuning forks, or curved into a shape meant to resemble a regular light bulb (or a pear, it’s hard to tell.) These little bulbs are wonders of science. For starters, they use seventy-five percent less energy than a regular bulb (for the light they produce.) That amounts to 450 pounds of greenhouse gases that aren’t produced per bulb! And with greenhouse gases, as with styrofoam peanuts, 450 pounds can fill quite a large area. Better still, even though these CFLs cost more to buy, they last so much longer than “your father’s bulbs” that you save $30 dollars over the life of the bulb. “Very few products are such a clear winner,â€? said Brown University professor Steve Hamburg.

So if all this is true, why do we need Wal-Mart’s help to get this product into everyone’s fixtures? Oh, wait. I know that one: Because they’re ugly. Really, I think that’s pretty much the only reason. Americans will dress their kids from Old Navy, use the plastic lawn chairs as indoor furniture (only when there’s guests), and make the Ford Escort the single most popular car during the entire 80s, but we suddenly get real particular when it comes to our light bulbs.

Meanwhile, in other who-is-the-real-bad-guy events, it seems Greenpeace decided that Apple is creating too much waste. So how to make their point? They went down to the 24-hour Apple Store in Manhattan and shined sixty high-powered battery-powered floodlights on the store. Green-colored lights, of course, because that’s half their logo.

I can’t decide if this is shameless self-promotion on Greenpeace’s part (everyone is jumping on Apple’s coat-tails now that they’re popular again) or if they’ve finally reached the level of brain-drain that General Motors has after decades of being too bureaucratic and boring to attract the good new designers. Seriously though, these environmental guys need to get their act together. This Greenpeace “protest” falls on the same year the Sierra Club put Apple at the top of their list of Forward Green Leaders for “excellence in environmental efforts.”

I’m not surprised, though, by Greenpeace’s confusion. To me, Greenpeace has always been more successful at spreading crabs and hair lice among teenagers than saving the planet. And I have to ask: after shining sixty floodlights on Apple all night in order to protest against the company’s chemical waste, what did the protestors do with all the dead batteries?