This is what happens when you get edumacated in the Magic Kingdom

Not quite ten years ago nineteen people took over four airplanes & flew them into buildings in New York City & Washington DC & a field in rural Pennsylvania & for a long time after that, no one wanted to get on a plane.  Yes, I know there were a lot of other things that came of it, but for the purposes of this story....

Here in Fladidah, we make a lot of our operating cash off of people who do not actually operate here.  This business of not getting on planes was a big big problem because no one brought their money here & the industry (& I do mean INDUSTRY) that revolves around the practice of overcharging touristas was feeling the pain.  Along with many many other such entities, Disney's Epcot Center threw open their doors & offered state residents significantly reduced entrance fees during specific week-days. 

I am not now & was not then a particular fan of Disney.  I am naturally suspicious of any large corporate entity.  Also I was not crazy about the mickeyfying of every story (Scrooge McDuck?  Really?)

Still we thought, lets see how Disney educates the youngsters.  Well, it was quite the eye opener.  & the biggest eye opener of all was the Monsanto Loves the People of the Earth exhibit.  It would be correct to say it kind of made my skin crawl.  Even A, who is not so likely to get amped up as me, kept shaking his head at the people lining up to hear a commercial (because whether there is a amusement park ride involved or not, endless platitudes about the wisdom of spraying your crops with Monsanto products is still a commercial).

We left the Agriculture-is-your-friend-so-long-as-you-are-on-the-other-end-of-a-large-piece-of-machinery Pavillion & went to have lunch.  In France.  A funny thing about France, a friend of mine teaches middle school to the Epcot employed offspring & she tells me she has a hard time convincing her students the the countries that border each other in International Plaza do not actually necessarily border each other in real life.  She discovered this was a problem when talking about World War II;  there was some confusion about Germans having to travel through Japan & Morocco to get to France.  I do not remember much about lunch except we were served white bread.  I have been to France.  I do not think they know what white bread is. They also served wine, which is how we happened to settle on France.

A while ago, another friend was doing an installation in one of the Epcot places-something to do with language & soy sauce...  Anyhow, he told me he often had lunch in Germany (where they serve beer) & then take a short walk around the plaza.  Although I cannot find it on the map he swears that Israel was somewhere near Norway (which I do kind of remember myself, you know, from geography class)  & one of his great joys was to watch the young Arab men pass by the blonde beauties of the Land of the Midnight Sun that are the stock-in-trade of international consumer marketing & make straight for the Israeli girls, who clearly had been chatted up by every Arab male over the age of five in the park & were frankly ready for something completely different.  He swears it happened every day & he was there for months.

So it seems there are some things you cannot teach people to buy, even in the Magic Kingdom.