Where to begin? Morning news & inbox full of depressing stuff.Wall Street Journal reports on a study showing convenience foods don't really save time. Maybe not, but they'll turn you and your family into fat, lazy slobs. Stanford study reported in Seattle Times shows that kids will eat anything if they think it comes from McDonald's, even carrot sticks. Conclusion: Mickey D does a fantastic job! Wanna sell more carrots? Hire Ronald McDonald. Times also......

Comes as no surprise to discover that a website called TheGiantHamburger sells a do-it-yourself "16-inch giant hamburger kit" for $19.95 plus postage. All you need is 10 pounds of ground beef and one or two friends. Mention this in passing because Burger King, which has been running a distant third in the burger wars ($1 million per store, compared with $1.9 million for Mickey D), is beefing up its sales with a new 1,000-calorie Quad......

Over in Ballard, Archie McPhee sells a cheerful Lunch Lady action figure for $9.95. Tell the disgruntled lunch ladies in Chicago, who are demanding respect from a school system that pays them peanuts (well, $10.46 an hour) and expects them to serve slop to thousands of kids. "We're looking at each other like, 'I wouldn't eat that.' We wouldn't give our kid that at home," one lunch lady told the Chicago Sun-Times. No wonder that......