Vegan for a Month: Lessons Learned

The great vegan experiment is over. To celebrate I went out and tore a steak off of a live cow with my bare teeth.No, I just made that up. I have not yet harmed a cow. But the vegan experiment really is over.In case you missed it, I recently wrote a piece in which I declared 2015 to be the Year of Doing Without. Every month I plan to choose one thing to do without. For January, I decided not to eat anything that came from an animal. That’s vegan.(Some people go hardcore with their veganism and don’t wear anything that came from animals and don’t use anything that was tested on animals. And while I didn’t wear a coat made from baby cows, or intentionally wash my hair with shampoo that blinded fifty rabbits, I didn’t go out of my way to avoid those things either.)I initially planned to begin Vegan January on New Year’s Day. However, my wedding anniversary is on January fourth, and we had plans to go to Eataly on January third, and damnit I’m not going to an Italian mecca and avoiding cheese. Since I’m the one writing the rules anyway, I decided to begin Vegan January on the fourth and go through the third of February.I made up some other rules as well:Beer is vegan. I don’t know whether all beer is vegan or not. I suspect so, but I didn’t bother checking. I didn’t want to know. I wasn’t going to give it up either way.Accidents don’t count. I didn’t intend to eat any animal products, and I exercised extreme caution not to do so. However, during the first week I absent-mindedly ate a few bits of macaroni and cheese that my daughter didn’t eat. The same with a piece of bread that contained dairy whey. And a spatula I used to stir some vegetables in a pan may or may not have been used to flip some barbecue chicken I was making for my kids at the same time.Pizza crust from my favorite restaurant is vegan. I took the cheese off. That’s good enough. Maybe the crust had butter on it. I don’t know and I don’t care. Eating seven or eight small pieces of cheese-less pizza over the course of the month doesn’t scuttle the whole month.Now that you know the rules, I want to share a few observations.--Being vegan is a pain in the ass. This revelation was both surprising and unsurprising to me. I figured it’d be a pain, but it turned out not to be a pain in the way that I expected.I thought it might be difficult to resist butter, ice cream, yogurt, cheese, and even meat. However, I didn’t really find myself tempted by those things. It helps that my wife discovered a vegan cookie recipe and baked the best damn cookies I’ve ever tasted, and that she can work miracles with sriracha and tofu.Problems arose when I checked ingredients on certain foods. I wanted a handful of sugary cereal, but discovered that there’s gelatin (made from animals) in the marshmallows. That loaf of bread has whey in it. Goldfish crackers contain cheddar cheese. Checking labels becomes tiresome, especially when you’re not necessarily checking for goodness, but rather just making sure animal products are absent.--I’d have no problem being 95% vegan. This stems from the last point. My meat consumption has been declining for over a year. I didn’t eat much butter to begin with, and even though I thought I’d miss yogurt, I never really did.I like eating plants. They taste good and you can do a lot of things with them, so I’ll continue to eat mostly plants. But I’d like to finish my daughter’s half-eaten peanut butter sandwich without worrying about whether the bread is vegan. And although I enjoyed a few pieces of pizza from which I stripped the cheese, it’s much more satisfying with the cheese still on it.My wife and I eat a veggie burger and freshly cooked vegetables for dinner every night. It’s rather annoying to avoid the veggie burgers I like simply because egg white is the second-to-last ingredient.So although I’m not going to be 100% vegan, I suspect I’ll maintain 90% vegan for the foreseeable future.--Vegan does not necessarily mean natural, healthy or good. Just because something is vegan doesn’t mean it’s something you should eat. Oreos are vegan and there’s nothing healthy or natural about those, although they can be good if you’re in the mood for one. Some vegan cheese is so disgusting I’d rather eat a raw oyster. A friend did give us some vegan shredded cheese that my wife used to make buffalo macaroni and cheese that might have been my favorite thing I ate the entire month.--Veganism can be entertaining. My wife came up with the Vegan January idea and began the month on the vegan wagon with me. She lasted ten days before the egg white/ veggie burger problem became too annoying for her, and she quit.She’s a vegetarian so it’s not like she ate a big bratwurst after quitting, but she did enjoy her veggie burgers with egg whites in them, and she ate a couple of ice cream cones. My favorite part of her vegan experience though was the end when she called me on the phone and said about quitting, “It’s liberating. Fuck it, I don’t care.”My kids obviously knew I was trying to be vegan, and I had fun listening to their meat-loving, ice cream-eating reactions, though I’m still not sure what my ten-year-old son meant when he said, “Vegans aren’t even people.”--Veganism can be annoying. Most of my family and friends knew about the vegan thing because of this blog. I’m thankful for that because the most annoying declaration in the English language might be, “I’m vegan.” Often the practical translation of that sentence is “I have very few foods that I’m willing to eat, and I expect you to come up with something that is going to be satisfactory. And don’t try to just shove a bowl of broccoli in front of me.”Most of the world is not vegan. If you want to eat in this world—meaning outside of your own house—you must realize that it might be difficult to find vegan foods that are not just fresh fruits and veggies. Don’t complain. Deal with it.--I’m glad I did it. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be, but I’m still glad that I did it. I found new ways to prepare some foods. I found new sources of necessary nutrients. I reaffirmed my mostly meat-free diet. And I had fun with it. Success.February’s selection for the Year of Doing Without: sweets. This might be tougher than veganism. Check back in March to see how it goes.PREVIOUS POST: Anti-Vaccine People and Ebola DeniersIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: 2015 Will be My Year of Doing Without+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, did you like reading this? If so, you should Share it on Facebook so you can bring joy to others. You can also find tons of other posts by me here. And you can like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes. Please.

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Anti-Vaccine People and Ebola Deniers

Vaccines don’t cause autism. End of story. I’m just some dumb blogger though, so if you don’t believe me, that’s fine.However, I should point out that a certain organization with a particular interest in autism examined a number of studies involving 1.2 million kids and came to the same conclusion. That organization? Autism Speaks.Or better yet—and I know this is a crazy idea—let’s see what the scientists and doctors have to say about it. The American Academy of Pediatrics likes vaccines. So does the Centers for Disease Control.Do you know who doesn’t like vaccines? People who are wrong. And people who worry about falling off the edge of the earth into an abyss where dragons roam.I’m sure you’ll remember that just about six months ago the world was wrapped up in Ebola Fever. I don’t mean a literal fever, I mean a figurative fever. Everyone was concerned about ebola. In fact, a majority of Americans supported banning flights from countries with ebola.No word yet if people in Africa are supporting a ban of flights from the U.S. because of the recent measles outbreak here. And since ebola is only spread by coming in direct contact with bodily fluids, while measles is perhaps the most contagious virus known to man, a travel ban only makes sense using the “OMG Ebola!” line of thinking so prevalent here a few months ago.Anyway, one of the challenges to containing ebola in Africa was that many villagers refused to believe that it existed. Or if it did exist then they suspected that outsiders spread it intentionally. In the village of Wabengou, in Guinea, a New York Times article quoted the village chief as saying, “We don’t want them in there at all. They are the transporters of the virus in these communities.”The “them” that the village chief referred to? Doctors without Borders. They thought the very people who were there to help them were actually there to make them sick.In another village, the president of the local youth league resisted Doctors without Borders because, “Wherever those people have passed, the communities have been hit by illness.”Eventually, the villagers changed their minds though as they watched hundreds of their friends and family die. They began listening to the doctors and health workers and did what they told them to do, and the epidemic slowed and came under control.Before we laugh at those “backward” Africans and marvel at how they could possibly be so wrong about how the disease was transmitted, we should realize that a certain segment of the U.S. population has rejected science in a similar manner.Over the past twenty years the number of parents who have chosen not to have their children vaccinated has risen. They rely on junk science, anecdotal evidence, or opinions from people who are just plain wrong.And that’s how a disease like measles—which infected about three or four million Americans every year before vaccines practically eradicated it—has begun a comeback. The CDC reported 644 cases of measles in 27 states last year. There's currently an outbreak that has been associated with Disneyland.The irony is that while we think of ebola deniers in Africa as being backward, poor and ignorant, the vaccine deniers in the United States are often affluent, which we like to assume means they’ll make good decisions.Not so.Unfortunately, politicians don’t help bring reason to the debate. One political party in this country has consistently waged a war against science on issues ranging from climate change, to evolution, to the ebola response, and now to vaccines. Rand Paul, who’s anxious to be president, proclaimed, “The state doesn’t own your children” and that vaccines are a question of “freedom” when discussing the idea of mandatory vaccinations.Someone might want to point out to Mr. Paul that the Supreme Court ruled on the question of mandatory vaccinations 110 years ago. The Court ruled that the freedom of the individual is limited by a fundamental social compact that’s necessary for the common good, and that the state can encroach on personal liberties when the “safety of the general public may demand.”In other words, schools have every right to tell a parent that their kid can’t go to school if he or she isn’t vaccinated. Yet politicians in almost every state bend over backward to grant exemptions to vaccination rules for almost no reason at all. That’s obviously not helpful.And some of the same politicians listen to arguments about the potential toxicity of vaccines. However, mention eliminating toxic compounds from the atmosphere by curbing industrial factory emissions and see how quickly they change their mind about toxicity.It's time to stop treating science as opinion before more people die.PREVIOUS POST: How I (Don't) WriteIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: The President's Immigration Actions, and Our Response to Them+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, how 'bout you Share this post on Facebook and Like my page Brett Baker Writes.

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How I (Don't) Write

My blog posts are like sausage: they come from a pig, they’re all linked together, some people won’t like them, they’re frequently not as good as you expected, and you really don’t want to know how they’re made.However, each week the ChicagoNow bloggers are given a theme to write about, and this week’s theme is On Writing. We’re free to interpret the theme how we wish, but we’re encouraged to think about how we write, why we write, the joy of writing, the pain or worries of writing, and maybe even why we don’t write.Stephen King wrote a great book called On Writing, half of which talks about his writing process. It’s interesting. However, one of the things that really stuck with me was his declaration that talking about writing keeps us from doing what we should be doing, which is writing.But I have this blog, and it was suggested that I write about writing. Talking about writing would force me to do what I should be doing, which is…writing. Just like King said.There’s nothing writers love more than to talk about how they write. As evidence, take a look at how many posts ChicagoNow bloggers produced on this topic, and compare it to the number of posts produced on topics in previous weeks.It makes sense that writers would want to write about writing. It’s something they know. It’s something they do. It’s something they have experience with.Here’s the short explanation of how I write this blog. I handwrite ideas in a notebook. I think about topics all the time. I formulate a post in my head. I write it in Microsoft Word. I edit it. I rewrite some of it. I post it. I find mistakes I missed before I posted it. I fix the mistakes.I use Google and Facebook to see if anyone’s reading or commenting on the post. Then it’s on to another post. I try to do a few per week. In November I did one every day. Often I don’t know what I’m going to write about until the day I write it.Now that you know how I write, let me explain how I don’t write.This may sound silly, but it’s actually quite difficult not to write.“Hey Mr. Dry it in the Water, you’re an idiot. I’m not writing right now and it’s not difficult at all. You’re just trying to make this whole writing thing sound much harder than it really is.”You’re right. It’s not difficult for you not to write. It is difficult for me not to write though. The difference? Intent.I have a blog. I have a novel. Those things didn’t happen by accident. I intended to create them and I did. If you don’t intend to write, then it’s not difficult not to write.The difficulty comes in when you intend to do it. Then in order not to do it you have to do something else.Like check Facebook two dozen times. Or run to the kitchen for another handful of peanuts. Or go play with your kids. Or watch a show with your wife. Or read an article online. Or read what other ChicagoNow bloggers are writing. Or go for a run. Or just stare at a wall.See, it’s difficult! It’s hard to sit down at a computer, maybe even put your fingers on the keyboard, and then find something else to distract yourself so you don’t have to do the work of thinking, and putting letters together, and using punctuation.But the amazing thing is that most people become experts at not writing the minute they decide that they want to write something. Nothing turns a person into a procrastinator more quickly than writing!That’s it. There are no great secrets to how I write. There are only two choices: write or don’t write.If I choose don’t write, then I have to work continuously to keep not writing. However, if I choose write, then I do it and it’s done.Until the next time I have to make that choice.The catch is that choosing write only presents more problems. Because unless all my work is crap, I have to keep in mind a simple truth: Writing good is difficult, but not as difficult as writing well.PREVIOUS POST: Mad Men: Notes From a Binge WatcherIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Facebook as Idiot Warning System+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, how 'bout you Share this post on Facebook and Like my page Brett Baker Writes.

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Mad Men: Notes From a Binge Watcher

I realize that I’m a little bit late to the game, and in all likelihood you probably already know this, but Mad Men is a great show. It’s the sort of show that can make you envious of the characters, while at the same time feeling superior to them, sorry for them, and thankful that you don’t have to work with any of them.My wife and I have intended to watch Mad Men for the past couple of years, but never got around to it. Then a couple of days after Christmas, when the kids were occupied with their gifts, and we’d already spent most of the day lying around doing nothing, we ran out of things to watch.We considered renting a movie, but I don’t do OnDemand and leaving the house just seemed like too much effort. So we put in season one of the show, which I’d borrowed from my sister months ago.And we were hooked.That day began a binge of 31 days during which we watched 78 episodes of the show. Some quick math reveals that we spent about 57 hours watching Mad Men. So we spent more than two entire days out of a month watching one show.It was awesome.Before I go on, let me remind you that we’re just through the first six seasons of the show. We haven’t watched the first half of the seventh season. So don’t spoil it for me or I’ll punch you in the throat.In return, I’m going to try and write about the show so that people who have seen it will know what I’m talking about, while also avoiding any spoilers for those who haven’t seen it.First, the alcohol. And the cigarettes. I wish that I kept track of how many cigarettes were smoked and drinks were consumed during the show. Don Draper drinks constantly: at home, at work, at business dinners, at picnics, everywhere.He’s a pretty good smoker, too. In bed, in the office, next to the pool, after he just got out of the pool. There’s one scene where a phone call wakes him up in the middle of the night, he answers the phone, starts talking and is half asleep and lights up a cigarette. Half the dude’s body is still asleep and he’s puffing away!And the sex. I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that sex plays a pivotal role in the lives of all the main characters. Even though I watched 78 episodes in such a short span of time, there was a moment near the end where I forgot that two characters had previous “relations” together.Ordinarily that wouldn’t be something I’d forget. But when there’s so much action going on a scorecard really could have been helpful.The work. I know nothing about advertising. It still amazes me that people buy things just because they saw an advertisement. That must be how it works though, or else companies wouldn’t spend so much on advertising.But the work in this show seems ingenious! They come up with some of the best slogans and campaigns I’ve ever heard of. I should do some research and find out whether any of it is based in reality, but I don’t want to know. I can’t decide if I’d be more satisfied if it was all invented for the show, or if it was all based on real life campaigns. Either way, it’s fun to watch.The inappropriateness. There are countless scenes in the show where I thought, or actually said aloud, “What the f$#%?” Things happen in the offices of that firm that would result in multi-million dollar lawsuits today. Husbands, fathers, wives and mothers do things that would make a family values voter want to puke.And even though it’s probably all loosely based on how things were in the 1960s, it’s fiction, so we can be secure in our entertainment.The visuals. Don Draper’s hair. His supposedly large penis. His sunglasses. His apartment. The offices. The restaurants. The cars. Joan’s boobs. Megan’s teeth. Peter’s hairline. His sideburns. Harry Crane’s sideburns. The telephones. The televisions. Ginsberg’s mustache. Peggy's ears.There’s so much to look at in this show you almost don’t even need the dialogue. Good thing we have it though, because it’s so good.Peggy Olson on a date, explaining why Manhattanites are better than rural people: “They are better than us because they want things they’ve never seen.”Peggy on Don Draper, “He’s always exactly who you expect him to be.”Peter Campbell to his wife in response to her question of whether he’s been drinking on a Saturday after the Kennedy assassination, and shortly before they’re supposed to go to a wedding, “The whole country’s drinking!”Roger Sterling to Don Draper after Don has just met a new girl, “If you hit it off, come Turkey Day maybe you can stuff her.”A spurned woman to Don Draper, “I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things.”The coolness. Say what you will about the people on this show and their drinking and smoking and sex and greed and personal shortcomings and moral ineptitude, but almost every feature character on the show is cool. They’re flawed, but they’re mostly kind. They’re wicked, but they’re mostly good.Joan, the strong female character who runs the office in more ways than one (I want to say more, but don’t want to spoil anything), summed it up perfectly in one episode.“Well I learned a long time ago to not get all my satisfaction from this job.”As long as you don’t expect too much from them personally, these would be awesome people to hang out with.So if you haven’t watched it yet, do it now. The last seven episodes of the series begin in April.Be ready.PREVIOUS POST: The Time I Saw a UFOIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: What Happened to Television Theme Songs?+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, how 'bout you Share this post on Facebook and Like my page Brett Baker Writes.

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The Time I Saw a UFO

Drive-in movie theaters are almost obsolete. If you believe this article, then maybe they’re making a bit of a comeback, but there still aren’t very many of them around.I’m lucky that I grew up near a drive-in theater and now live about forty minutes away. At least once or twice a summer we load up the family and make the trek to the 49er Drive-In, where they only charge eight bucks for a double feature for adults, and four bucks for kids. It’s a fun, inexpensive way to spend a summer evening.I still remember most of the films I’ve seen there. They range from Home Alone, to Mission: Impossible 2 to Brave. That’s more than twenty years of filmmaking, and Brettgrowing.However, not only have I seen a few dozen films there, but the 49er is also the site of one of the biggest unexplained events of my life.Before I could drive, my sister—who’s five years older than me—would frequently load my friends up in her car for a trip to the drive in. Back then they used to charge by the car load, and the price was something ridiculous, like eight dollars for as many people as you could fit into a car.One memorable evening my sister and her friend agreed to take me and my friends to the 49er. My sister’s friend drove a Chevrolet Chevette, and for some unknown reason we decided to take her car. Somehow twelve of us crammed into that tiny car and went to the drive-in. When we got there we scattered all over the grass, and the hood and roof of the car.That’s not the Night of the Unexplained though. I wish I could remember the exact night, but I can’t. I know it was summer. I know it was in the early nineties. I wasn’t yet driving.Since the movie can’t start until after sunset, there’s plenty of time to kill. Some kids play on the playground beneath the screen, some kids bring a ball to throw around, other kids stuff their faces with cheap French fries and nachos.I always staked out a spot on the ground where I could lay down, talk to my friends, and have a good view of the lightning bugs putting on a show in the wooded area beyond the fence.One particular night, after the sun set, but before old-time commercials for Pik mosquito repellant, and the car horn honking song, I saw a bright light above the wooded area where the lightning bugs were doing their thing. It was fluorescent green, oval, and bright.In other words, nothing like a lightning bug. So don’t try telling me it was just a lightning bug, because it wasn’t.I watched the light rise high above the woods and move farther away. Then it seemingly switched direction, lowered closer to the ground, and became a little brighter. I blinked a few times to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing. I looked around for someone to confirm what my eyes were telling me, but my friends were somewhere else.The light moved to the left, which was east, held steady for a moment, and then rose higher into the sky again, while also moving farther away from me.I worried that I might lose it—the light, not my mind—so I kept my eye on it. It continued to move farther away, but not higher, until at some point it disappeared behind some hills in the distance. I waited in stunned silence for a moment, half expecting to hear an explosion or see a flash of light as the aircraft crash landed, but I heard and saw nothing.My friends returned and I asked them if they’d seen what I saw. They looked at me then the same way you’re thinking of me now. I told them what I’d seen, swore that I wasn’t imagining it, and asked them what they thought it might be.Of course they had no answers. Nothing ever appeared in the local newspaper either. As far as I know, I’m the only one that saw it.I’ve never been sure I should call it a UFO, or aliens, or anything like that. It was strange, it was a light, and I can’t explain it. Beyond that, I’m a loss.However, as Jimmy Carter said after he saw a UFO in 1969, “I’ll never make fun of people who say they’ve seen unidentified objects in the sky.”This was written for ChicagoNow's monthly writing exercise, Blogapalooz-hour, where we're given a prompt and then have one hour to publish a post on that prompt. This month's prompt: Write about a time you experienced a remarkable coincidence or witnessed something unexplainable.PREVIOUS POST: Go Daddy's Puppy Commercial is FineIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: How to Tell the Difference Between Kids and Dogs+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, how 'bout you Share this post on Facebook and Like my page Brett Baker Writes.

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Go Daddy's Puppy Commercial is Fine

If I spent $4 million to show a 30-second commercial, which is what a bunch of companies will do this Sunday (there’s a game that day, in case you hadn’t heard), I’d want to make sure that my commercial made an impact.I’d want people at home to go silent as they watched my message on screen. I’d want them to dream about it at night. I’d want them to talk about it at work the next day. I’d want them to go to that crazy Super Bowl commercial website and watch it a million times.But what I’d want most of all is for some group to protest the commercial so my company’s name, and maybe even the commercial, appeared on every newscast in the country for a few days.Smart thinkin’ Go Daddy. Very smart.In case you missed it, the web hosting company Go Daddy posted their Super Bowl commercial online and made some people angry. And as a general rule, nothing attracts more news coverage than angry people.The commercial starts with some puppies in the back of a pickup truck. Oops! The truck hits a bump and one of the puppies flies out of the back of the truck and into the grass. Worry not though, this is a hearty little guy. After a brief whimper, he takes off running after the truck. He crosses some train tracks, runs along side a busy road, and takes shelter at night during a rainstorm.And then the little guy’s persistence pays off! We cut to a shot of an idyllic farmhouse and watch as the puppy runs into the barn, barking, tail wagging, and jumps up to greet a woman.The woman says, “I’m so glad you made it home…because I just sold you on this website I built with Go Daddy.” Cut to the puppy in a cardboard box in the back of a van (at least they learned their lesson about the pickup truck), and the woman says, “Ship ‘em out,” as we see Go Daddy spokesperson Danica Patrick as the van driver for a split second before the door closes.Animal rights supporters didn’t like the commercial. They argue that Go Daddy was promoting puppy mills by showing a commercial in which a puppy is sold online.This seemed like a stretch to me, but then I realized I didn’t really know what a puppy mill is. So I did some research on the ASPCA website. I discovered that puppies from puppy mills are frequently ill or diseased, perpetuate hereditary defects, lack socialization, and are sometimes kept in cramped crates, with barely enough room to turn around.Well that sounds horrible.However, it also doesn’t sound like what’s happening in the Go Daddy commercial.The dog wasn’t in a crate. He was in a box. Had he been in a crate he wouldn’t have fallen out of the back of the truck.If he was ill or diseased he did a great job of hiding it since he ran so far and overcame so many obstacles. Maybe his genes are messed up, but my ability to analyze doggy DNA from a television commercial just isn’t what it used to be.He didn’t seem shy, fearful, or anxious as he greeted his owner in the barn.In fact, the only sign that he might have come from a puppy mill is that he was sold over the internet.Now I like dogs as much as the next guy. And I think puppy mills suck. Dogs should be treated well and cared for and given enough room and all of the other dog-ish things that dogs need. But to criticize Go Daddy for supporting puppy mills because of this commercial forces the viewers to make a lot of assumptions.Isn’t it possible that the puppy fell out of the back of the truck when it was being transported from a purebred dog show where it just won first prize? Maybe one of the judges in attendance liked it so much they bought it and paid for it online.Does that seem far-fetched? Maybe, but no more far-fetched than assuming that the puppy came from a puppy mill, or that by showing such a commercial Go Daddy is promoting puppy mills.McDonald’s and Carl’s Jr. will air commercials during the Super Bowl. Can we expect objections to the treatment of the cows in those commercials that appear as ground pieces of meat?How about the Budweiser commercial from last year that obviously promoted keeping puppies away from their friends and allowing horses to run in the middle of the street?Does the Stanley Steemer commercial that shows a dog dragging its butt across the carpet endorse ignoring your dog’s anal gland compaction problem?My point is, Go Daddy is in the web hosting business. They’re not in the puppy mill business. To accuse them of supporting puppy mills because they show someone selling a healthy puppy on the internet trivializes actual animal rights concerns.Plus, I suspect Go Daddy thinks they got their $4 million worth.PREVIOUS POST: Meeting the Future MeIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: How to Tell the Difference Between Kids and Dogs+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, how 'bout you Share this post on Facebook and Like my page Brett Baker Writes.

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Meeting the Future Me

I distinctly remember wondering what it must be like to be an adult when I was a kid. As an eleven-year-old I couldn’t imagine not going to school everyday. Or being able to drive a car. Or getting married. Or having kids.Yet somehow all of those things have happened over the past twenty-five years. I’m staring down the barrel of thirty-seven and in many ways I don’t really feel much different from that eleven-year-old kid. Hopefully I’m a little wiser. Maybe a little less annoying.If nothing else I’ve come to accept that Swiss cake rolls, Chips Ahoy and a cherry coke don’t make a meal.But would eleven-year-old me recognize thirty-six-year-old me? Would I be someone he’d think was cool, or would I just be some pitiful old dude trying to be funny and act young? And would I feel melancholy as I look at that eleven-year-old kid and wonder how I’d lost what he had, or would I feel relieved, impressed or just amazed at how much that kid has grown?The theme given to ChicagoNow bloggers last week to write about if we so choose was “Who I Want to Meet.” That’s quite open-ended, and I thought about it for days and couldn’t settle on one person. Of course there are people I find interesting, and I’m sure I’d enjoy meeting them, but none really stood out.And then, because she sometimes knows what I should write before I even know what I should write, my wife suggested that I write about meeting Future Brett.Of course! That’s just the type of thing I love thinking and writing about. Plus, I’ll meet Future Brett someday. Granted, I won’t be Current Brett when I meet him, but I’ll still meet him.However, when I began to think about meeting Future Brett, I couldn’t separate that idea from Past Brett. The Brett that I’ve already met, that I’ve already known, that I’ve already been.We sometimes hear people theorize as to whether people ever really change. And your guess is as good as mine. My interests have changed. So have my habits, my desires, my fears and my goals. But how the heck am I supposed to know if I’ve changed or not?And changed relative to what? Recent Past Brett is probably a lot like me. Way in the Past Brett, not so much. Infant Brett, hardly at all, except I still cry if I go too long without eating. (Not really.)Still, I think Past Brett is different from Current Brett, which means that Future Brett is probably different also. And that’s why I want to meet him.To prepare for our meeting—since we never know when we might happen upon a Flux Capacitor and some plutonium—I’ve written a list of things to ask Future Brett.I suspect time continues to speed up as we get older. Is that true? How’s your back holding up? How about the knees? Still running? Grade me as a parent. Grade me as a son. How do you think my wife would grade me as a husband?Take any exciting vacations? What are you eating? Watching? Listening to? Does anyone still read books? Any news on the JFK assassination?At what age were you the happiest? Do you still think your best days are ahead of you? Are you tired? What’s more important to you, privacy or security? What’s the last kind thing you did for someone?Would you do anything differently? Have you failed to notice the importance of something as it was happening? What did you needlessly worry about? Does everyone still fawn over Oprah?What don’t you know? What have you forgotten? How much is gas? What’s a word that you use everyday that I’ve never heard before? Is AIDS still around? Cancer? How big are chicken breasts?What’s going on with the Cubs? Do my clothes look dated? Are they still making pennies? Do you laugh often? Do you have fun? What’s next?I hope Current Brett likes the answers that Future Brett will give. Luckily, I’ll have some influence on those answers, so I’ll keep that in mind. But the best part is, all I have to do to meet Future Brett is stick around.PREVIOUS POST: SkyMall is Bankrupt, But How do These Places Stay Open?IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: My Favorite Year+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, how 'bout you Share this post on Facebook and Like my page Brett Baker Writes.

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SkyMall is Bankrupt, But How do These Places Stay Open?

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve been on an airplane. And it’s been even longer than that since I’ve purchased some completely useless, idiotic item for no reason at all. However, I still felt a tinge of sadness upon hearing the news that SkyMall has filed for bankruptcy and plans to sell its assets.SkyMall, in case you don’t know, is a catalog distributed to airlines and available in the seat pocket of airplanes. It always seemed like an odd publication to me. Why would anyone think they could sell expensive crap to a bunch of people trapped inside a tube of aluminum traveling at 500 miles per hour, thirty-five thousand feet off the ground, who had no way to order at that moment?Perhaps I lack business vision though, because SkyMall has been around for twenty-five years and pulled in revenue of just under $34 million in 2013. I guess people like crap.Unfortunately for SkyMall, the only thing people like more than crap is electronics. So when airlines began offering internet access passengers turned their attention away from SkyMall. Less attention to the catalog meant fewer orders for items like a Tetris lamp, a mounted squirrel head, or a life-size unpainted Holstein cow statue. And for the love of God, if mounted squirrel heads aren’t selling, how can anyone stay in business?I make fun of SkyMall, but in addition to overpriced stuff that no one would ever miss if they didn’t buy it, SkyMall also produced fodder for a few good blog posts by other talented writers at ChicagoNow. Like this. And this. And this.But I should lay off SkyMall. Despite selling things that no one anywhere in the history of the world has actually needed, and causing their customers to ask “Why did I buy that?” shortly after an item arrives, SkyMall managed to turn a profit for many years. And that’s impressive.It also reminds me that even though SkyMall’s days are numbered, there are plenty of businesses still around that cause me to shake my head and ask, “How do they stay open?” every time I drive by.If you own one of these businesses, or if you like one of these businesses, then accept my apologies. I’m really not making fun of you. I just marvel at the resilience of your business. And if you have any insight into how these businesses continue even though they seem to have no customers, leave it in the comments below.--Fireworks stores. Interstate 94 in northwest Indiana extends for about 45 miles from Illinois to Michigan. And along that route there are approximately eight thousand fireworks stores and fifty thousand billboards for those stores. There is one exit halfway through the state where there are two or three huge fireworks stores. I’m talking warehouses that are the size of a big box retailer.That’s a lot of retail space for a product that only sells one week per year. Those places are crazy busy just before the Fourth of July, but what about the other fifty-one weeks in the year? I’ve heard they do some business for New Year’s too, but there has to be something else going on.Like drug running. Or prostitution. Or gambling.Not really. I’m joking. (Mostly.)Maybe the key is to charge an arm and a leg for something that only costs pennies to produce.--Mattress stores. There’s one chain of mattress stores that seems to be opening quite a few locations over the past few months, and it really boggles my mind. There were already two mattress stores by my house, and I never see anyone in either of them. Now that there are three stores the business for those first two stores is going to be cut by one third.Lucky for them a one-third reduction of zero is zero so they’ll see no change.Everyone sleeps on a mattress, so there’s a big market, I suppose. But I’m still sleeping on a mattress my wife bought for me fourteen years ago. So how much repeat business are they getting?Although now that I think about it, I’d like to get a new mattress, and if the mattress stores weren’t there I’m not sure where I’d go to buy one. Maybe I’m just driving by the store at the wrong time. There could be days where there are lines out the door at the mattress store and I’m just not there to see it.At least those customers have a soft place to sit down after waiting in line.--Brown’s chicken. The old slogan used to say, “Brown’s chicken, it tastes better.” But I guess we’ll have to take their word for it because the location by my house always has an empty parking lot.I had fried mushrooms from there about ten years ago, but that’s the only time I’ve ever been there. Maybe I’m just not their target market, especially since I’m vegan this month. The people who eat there must really like to walk because I never see any cars in the parking lot.By the way, what the heck is that yellow thing in their logo? If that’s their chicken no wonder the stores are empty!And don't even get me started on those Fannie May chocolate stores!PREVIOUS POST: How Did I Get to 100 Posts? One at a TimeIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Forget French Toast Crunch, Bring Back Subway's U-Gouge+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, how 'bout you Share this post on Facebook and Like my page Brett Baker Writes.

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