One of the strangest things about the modern world, to those who have lived long enough, must be the unbelievable prominence of so-called "fast food," giant chains that oftentimes didn't exist fifty years ago, and yet now own more real-estate than some small country's. Indeed, if anything about America is ubiquitous, it would have to be the golden arches of McDonalds or the red-headed young woman of Wendy's, signs of commerce, civilization, and to a certain extent, the materialism that has dominated the last half-century of American modernity.