I do enjoy the latest Ubuntu incarnation 12.04, Precise Pangolin. However, the global menu is just something that I cannot deal with. It probably stems from my phobia of the Apple operating systems. The good news is that this can be dealt with pretty easily by removing the errant package causing the behavior. Simply execute the following command:
$ sudo apt-get autoremove appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt
Then restart. All should be right with the world. PS: Firefox also has a Global menu bar integration add-on enabled. If you are like me, that has to go as well. However, I do use chromium as my default browser.