Is Mariah Carey About to Be Eaten By a Rogue McDonald’s?

This morning marks an important milestone in the area of “stories our younger selves would struggle to comprehend.” At 10:42am Eastern Right After Daylight Saving Either Started Or Ended, Each Day We Learn This Lesson Anew And Then Forget It Right Away, We Don’t Know We’re Just Tired Time, McDonald’s tweeted the following:

She’s back! For the holiday season! And this time, she’s bringing a whole menu with her! This all sounds great, because when we close our eyes, each of us can clearly envision Mariah Carey just hanging out at a McDonald’s. Asking for an extra ketchup packet, rolling with the punches when the Big Mac has been sitting under the heat lamp a little too long, waiting for an elderly person to vacate a plastic seat so that she can scoop it right up without a team of assistants hitting it with bleach wipes and sage. Mariah Carey is most famously a woman of the people, so this partnership already feels right.

However, the image is bananapants with extra nuts, and it leaves us with a few questions:

• Why is Mariah Carey emerging from the ocean?

• Why is a McDonald’s sign emerging from the ocean?

• Is there, like, an underwater McDonald’s in this universe?

• Is it pick-up only, or is dine-in available via a system of airlocks and hatches?

• Does the little wave behind the pole of the McDonald’s sign indicate that the underwater McDonald’s is in motion?

• In this case, are the Golden Arches like the shark’s fin in Jaws?

• Is Mariah Carey about to be eaten by a rogue McDonald’s?

• Does she know?

• Are the Golden Arches less like a shark’s fin than LL Cool J’s hat in the unforgettable song “Deepest Bluest,” from the 1999 film Deep Blue Sea? Or are they more?

• Isn’t the holiday season typically associated more with snowy landscapes?

• Are Mariah Carey and McDonald’s about to introduce an ocean-themed holiday to an already crowded holiday season?

• Is there a scenario in which Mariah Carey pounds her fist onto a conference room table at McDonald’s Corporate and says “No Santa, no elves, no trees. Christmas is ocean,” and if so, did she then put a finger on her ear and hit a whistle tone, for emphasis?

• Do I have to go and get a holiday ocean for my house now?

• Has the unofficial title “Queen of Christmas” gone to Mariah’s head, so now she just feels like she can just do anything and point at it and be like “This is Christmas,” and we’re just going to be like “Yas, Queen?”

• How many times a day do you think Mariah Carey still says “YASSS?” (Once per waking hour at least, right?)

• Are you getting a real holiday ocean for your house, or a fake one?

• How many Fox News producers are in a Zoom right now, brainstorming ways to get their viewers outraged about this?

• What level of Fox News employee brainstorms the daily outrages? Are these executive-level decisions, or grunt work for the interns? A work responsibility one aspires to, or a task one cannot wait to get promoted out of?

• Is she on her way to a movie premiere, or just coming from one?

• If she’s on her way to a movie premiere, is it going to bother her that she’ll be soaking wet from the shins down all night?

• Is she’s coming from a movie premiere, does this indicate that Mariah Carey lives in the ocean?

• Have you noticed that people whose parents had a fake holiday ocean tend to get a real holiday ocean every year, and those who grew up with real ones usually go fake?

• Have you ever taken a moment and really tried to imagine a conversation between Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon?

• Where is the meal Mariah Carey is bringing?

• If you were lingering at your table at a McDonald’s, just taking your sweet-ass time with your coffee and McDonaldland Cookies, and you noticed Mariah Carey standing right near you, in this gown, with a tray of hot food, and everyone around you seemed like they just sat down, so she wasn’t making a huge big deal out of it, not yet, but she was for sure eyeing your seat, would you pick up the pace, or would you be like “we’re going to ride this one out, Mariah, you and me” and then vividly remember every detail and tell the story every chance you got?

• Does it make you sad, that first week of January when everyone throws away their holiday oceans? These majestic bodies of water, which have seen such intimate moments in your family’s life, which have been family themselves in a sense, just stacked up on the curb, one against another, discarded, forgotten?

• Do you think Mariah Carey actually had heard of Jennifer Lopez when she said she didn’t know her?

I have answers for none of these questions, but I can tell you what the “Mariah Menu” is all about: from December 13 right up to Christmas Eve, McDonald’s is giving away a different menu item for free—except it isn’t actually free because you need to make a $1 minimum purchase—and also you need to order it all on the McDonald’s app, which is the longest-running #1 app in the Your Thumb Hovers Over That GET Button For A Very Long Time While You Say “Really? Am I Doing This?” Over And Over category.

Also, none of the free menu items are the Filet-O-Fish, so who even knows what the hell is going on here.

Anyway, happy holidays. Don’t forget to hang your snorkels by the chimney with care.

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