Why Your Neighbor's House is Cleaner than Yours

The other night a friend somewhat unexpectedly dropped by late at night. As I answered the door, my wife and I kicked some shoes out of the way, threw some jackets into a closet, and closed the door to hide the mess.“Just cleaning up a little,” my wife told my friend.“It doesn’t have to be clean. I’m not royalty,” my friend replied.As far as I know I’ve never been in the presence of royalty. Assuming, of course, that a little girl in an Elsa dress doesn’t count as royalty. However, every time we’re having visitors to our house, we clean as if a drill sergeant is going to inspect our living quarters prior to the queen’s arrival.When I was a kid I always knew we were expecting visitors when my dad began to clean. My mom did the cleaning most of the time, so it wasn’t unusual to see her clean, but if my dad started cleaning something was up.I suspect this effort to put one’s cleanest foot forward happens in every household in America, no matter the income bracket.Yet I’m left with the same question I’ve had since I was a kid: why?We all have junk (stuff if you prefer), and most of us have too much of it. So why the heck should I care if you see my eyeglass case on the bathroom counter, or those past issues of Rolling Stone I’ve been meaning to get to, but that instead remain stacked haphazardly on an end table? And God forbid you see that we Bakers don’t place our shoes neatly by the front door, but rather kick them off and let them lie where they may.But if I know you’re coming to my house, then I’m going to clean before you get there.Only recently did I discover the reason why.It’s because I’ve been to your house, and it’s always so clean. No piles of junk. No laundry folded days ago, but still waiting to be put away. Holy crap, you even have a towel on the towel bar in the bathroom. A clean one!I’ve seen how you live, so I don’t want you to know that sometimes I end up with five days of clothes I wore to work piled up in the middle of by bedroom floor for no other reason than it’s easier to walk over or around them than to actually bend over and pick them up.(Although I should point out that you’re not likely to see the inside of my bedroom anyway. We have doors there, too.)But now I’ve come full circle. Everyone wants a clean house when company arrives. No one wants to be the guy with the dirty house.However, I’m on to you. For a little while I was impressed at how clean your house is. “Boy, those people must be very tidy by nature. And so responsible, always cleaning up after themselves, and dusting, and the like.”Is it because you don’t have kids? Or because they’re grown and they moved out? Or because you have a cleaning lady? Or because your wife doesn’t work? Or did you just purge everything you own, so all that’s left is furniture and some trendy kitchen doodad that doesn’t fit in a cabinet so it has to stay on your counter? And how the hell does your house always smell like Febreze, lilacs and cool mountain rain?The jig is up!You’re not more organized than me. You’re not constantly vacuuming, and doing dishes, and buying storage totes from Target.You lucked out. You just happen to have a considerate friend—me—who warns you before I come over. I don’t stop by unannounced, which means you have time to sweep the floor, and alphabetize your DVD collection, and check the corners of that guest bathroom you don’t use to make sure there are no cobwebs.So you should be thanking me, don’t you think?Either way, you can count on more unannounced visits from yours truly. And when I show up, I’ll see the truth.The whole undusted, cluttered, dirty truth.PREVIOUS POST: The Truth About The A-Team Van Changed my LifeIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: When to Eat Food That Fell on the Floor+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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The Truth About The A-Team Van Changed my Life

I defy you to name a better cast of characters than those from The A-Team television series back in the 1980s. If you’ve never seen The A-Team, then I suggest you stop reading, secure season one on DVD, and get ready to be amazed. I don’t think that’s what the A in A-Team stands for, but it could.In case you don’t have seventy-three hours to devote to this jewel of creative television accomplishment, let me give you a quick summary.In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.Okay, so I just stole that entire last paragraph from the opening credits of the show. I’m not proud of it, but it had to be done so you understand the greatness. And as awesome as that paragraph is, things get even awesomer when you know the characters.Hanibal is the leader. Master of disguise. Creates the plan for completing each show’s mission.Face is the good-looking conman. He uses his physical attributes to get whatever items the team needs to fulfill the mission.Murdock is the team’s pilot. He can fly anything. He’s also crazy and lives in a veteran’s hospital.And B.A. Baracus is one badass dude who’s the team’s muscle and mechanic, and says fantastic things like “then I’ll take my fist and put my initials on your brain,” and “she ain’t that smart, she married a guy who wears ties,” and “I wouldn’t let him open my wallet if I had a gun trained on him.”I really liked The A-Team when I was a kid, in case you couldn’t tell.So when I was about seven years old and found out that the A-Team van would make an appearance at the auto show in Springfield, Illinois, where I lived at the time, I couldn’t wait to see it. I think I had some latent hope that some of B.A.’s spectacular coolness might remain in the van and rub off on me.Since my parents are cool, we got tickets to the auto show. And that's the day my life changed.I saw the Batmobile, which I didn’t really care about. I saw KITT, the talking car from Knight Rider. I loved Knight Rider, and as I sat in KITT I briefly considered trying to drive off in it. Then I remembered three problems: One, I didn’t know how to drive. Two, if I stole KITT people would see me driving in him and call the cops, so I’d have to leave him in my garage. And three, KITT can control himself, so he probably wouldn’t let me steal him.That’s why you never read a news story in 1985 about a kid stealing the talking car. I did get my picture taken in KITT though, and we both ooze coolness.But the important moment came when I finally saw the van from The A-Team. I waited in line, watching the van from afar, secretly hoping that B.A. might come out to pummel some fool, or Murdock might emerge screaming some nonsense. That didn’t happen.When I got to the front of the line I read the informational sign next to the van. It said something like, “General Motors supplies a number of GMC Vandura vans for use in The A-Team.”Wait, what? A number of vans? By “a number” of vans, they mean one, right?Oh, no, no, no, no. They mean more than one.More than one A-Team van? How can that be?I continued reading. Different vans were used for different scenes. If the van needed to jump a ramp, they’d use a van with the engine in the middle to distribute the weight. If it needed to drive on two wheels they had a special van for that. If B.A. had to flip it with his bare hands they had another for that. If it was involved in a simple chase they used yet another van.This violated every sense of right in my little seven-year-old brain. There’s only one A-Team van. It’s the coolest car on earth because of all it can do. B.A. is so strong he can flip the van. It gets beat up every single week, but it doesn’t fall apart and is ready for action.What do you mean there are different vans for different scenes? That means there isn’t an A-Team van at all. It’s a charade. Some of the vans they use don’t even have engines.So what did I learn from The A-Team? Trust nothing.Because if you can’t believe a television show about some ex-military dudes who narrowly escape death week-after-week, what can you trust?This post was written as part of ChicagoNow's weekly This Blogger Life series. The prompt for last week was "...and that's the day my life changed."PREVIOUS POST: Your Perfume StinksIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: What Happened to Television Theme Songs?+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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Your Perfume Stinks

Years before I began making bad decisions about food in restaurants, such as eating buffalo wings from a stranger’s plate, I made a bad decision about some food in a grocery store where I worked during high school.I worked most evenings, and one night I hung around for a little bit after we closed at ten o’clock to talk to a friend who was working overnight stocking shelves. Part of the store closing duties entailed covering some items in the produce department, and my friend and I talked while I completed the final tasks of the night.Then, for no reason other than to shock my friend, and maybe gross him out, I grabbed a whole head of garlic and took a huge bite out of it, skin and all. I chewed it for a few seconds, ignoring the almost-intolerable stench and burn, until he was properly grossed out, and then I spit it out.The next morning when my mom came in to wake me up for school, she said something like, “What on earth stinks in here?” Even in my groggy, half-asleep state, I knew that my room reeked of garlic.When I drove to my friend’s house to pick him up for school, he got in my car and asked, “What the hell smells?” Later that day in English class, another friend asked why I smelled like garlic. She had to move her desk away from mine when we were working together because she couldn’t stand the smell.Apparently, no matter how many times you brush your teeth, you can’t get the smell of garlic out of your mouth, your body, your pores, until it’s ready to come out.And despite that assault upon the olfactory systems of everyone who came in contact with me that day, I can still say with confidence that I smelled better than many people who drown themselves in perfume or cologne.This is a public service announcement: For the love of God, ease up on the perfume and cologne. The phrase “less is more” was invented for the application of perfume and cologne.Your Eau de Whatever should be a complement to your appearance and personality. You want people to know your name. You don’t want to be known as “the stinky perfume lady.”Think spritz, not firehose.Do most people you come in contact with sneeze soon after you arrive? If so, it’s because of the three gallons of Elizabeth Taylor perfume you put on before you left the house.I have no proof, but I’d bet that wearing so much perfume makes you a fire hazard. Surely there has to be a story about some poor woman who wore too much perfume and then had to stop, drop and roll after she touched a doorknob and static electricity caused an inferno.Don’t let it happen to you.Also, keep in mind the other scents you’ve already employed. If you wash your hair with one strong scent, and use body lotion that’s another strong scent, and then drench a strong perfume on top of that, you’re just asking for trouble. I mean, I like peanut butter and I like mustard, but I’m not dumb enough to make a peanut butter and mustard sandwich. Two rights can definitely make a wrong.Now on to the hard part. When is enough enough? Or when is enough too much?If you can smell it on yourself, it’s probably too much. If you leave a room and ten minutes later someone else walks into the room and says, “Oh, Bertha was here,” it’s probably too much.If you leave a trail of dead animals in your wake, it’s probably too much. If you suffer from extreme sunburn because you’ve destroyed all of the ozone around you, it’s probably too much. If your clothes have developed holes in them from the perfume eating away at the fabric, it’s probably too much.If the woman at the perfume counter at Macy’s knows your name, it’s probably too much. If you’ve ever said, “Just one more spray,” it’s probably too much. If you’ve ever found an empty bottle in your room and thought, “I just bought that,” it’s probably too much.Take it from a guy who used to bathe in Drakkar Noir, ease up. You’ll be happy you did.But not as happy as everyone around you!PREVIOUS POST: Indiana's Sunday Alcohol Ban Should EndIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: A Breakup Letter to my First Car+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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Donna Day: We Can Beat Childhood Cancer

You know how you crack open your kid’s bedroom door late at night, and peek in just to check on them, and then breathe a silent sigh of relief when you see them lying there, chest moving up and down with every breath, and know that they’re just fine?Or the joy you feel when you take your kid to the doctor and the doctor tells you that the lump on her neck is just a residual symptom from the bacterial infection she had a few weeks before, and not whatever sinister thing you feared it was?Or the moment your heart stops when you see your kid fall from the jungle gym, and you think the worst, but before you can even process a bad thought, your kid is up and running around again?Or the anxiety you feel when you drop off your kid for the first day of kindergarten, and you wonder if she’ll be okay without you for the entire day, and you say a silent prayer that the strangers in whose care you’ve left her will treat her as well as you do?Or the unbelievable excitement your kid experiences around this time of year when he’s able to run around outside without layers of clothes for the first time in months, and the sun is shining, and the birds are chirping, and the grass looks like it wants to turn green, and you can’t imagine anything more beautiful than that particular scene, in that particular minute?Or the way your kid’s shoulders slump, and she looks down at the ground, and mopes away silently after you yell at her for doing something she shouldn’t?Or the anticipation your kid feels with the end of the school year in sight, and the prospect of a long, hot, lazy summer spread out before him?Or the security you feel on a Friday night, maybe just after midnight, when your oldest child comes home after spending time with friends, and everyone’s back in the house, safe and sound?Or the absolute giddy loudness of your kids when you load up the car some Saturday for a trip to the zoo, or the waterpark, or the amusement park, or some other place where you’ll make memories that your kids will still think about seventy years later?Around the world, a child is diagnosed with cancer every three minutes. That means in the time it takes you to read this, another child will be diagnosed. Listen to Penny Lane by The Beatles, there’s another diagnosis. Three minutes is nothing. It happens 480 times every single day.I don’t know this for sure, but it seems to me that if your kid is diagnosed with cancer, then all of those questions I posed above become much less important. The cancer must become all encompassing.I’m among the lucky parents who have not had to deal firsthand with childhood cancer. But since 1 out of 285 children in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer before they turn 20, it’s likely that someone who attends my children’s elementary school right now will be diagnosed.Sometimes I force myself to read difficult things as a sort of barrier to those things happening. Maybe if I’m informed about the horrible things in the world, and I make myself empathic toward the people who have had to deal with them, and I force myself to feel what they’re going through, I won’t have to go through it myself.I’ve spent more time reading about Donna than any other child. She was just over 4 years old when she died from cancer. Her mom is fellow ChicagoNow blogger, Mary Tyler Mom. My wife—who feels these sort of things even more acutely than me—told me Donna’s story and encouraged me to read Mary Tyler Mom’s series about Donna and her illness. I forced myself to read it, and loved and hated every single moment of it.Read it. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything on the entire Internet more worth your time.But after Donna died, Mary Tyler Mom pushed on, and through an organization she founded in Donna’s honor, Donna’s Good Things, she has helped raise $254,000 for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation to be used for childhood cancer research.As part of that effort, she has designated today Donna Day. Many ChicagoNow bloggers will write about Donna and childhood cancer today, and we’re all working toward the same goal: to find a cure that will help parents experience the questions I posed instead of experiencing childhood cancer.My sons and I raised money for St. Baldrick’s before we’d heard of Donna. Through the generosity of our family and friends, we raised close to $2,000 over four years. If you want to donate toward childhood cancer research, you can do so by visiting the Donna’s Good Things event page on the St. Baldrick’s website.Then maybe someday I can write a blog post about the cure for cancer.And that would be my best post ever.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++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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Indiana's Sunday Alcohol Ban Should End

Here’s a way to entertain yourself if you’re bored on a Sunday afternoon. Go to a grocery store that sells alcohol and wander around until you find someone with some beer or wine in their cart. Then go up to them and tell them that Indiana prohibits alcohol sales on Sunday.Then wait.First they’ll look surprised because a stranger just walked up and talked to them, and in today’s America we try to avoid interacting with strangers if at all possible.Once the surprise fades, they’ll probably smile at you, thinking that you’re fooling them. They’ll give you a moment to say, “Just kidding!” or something similar, but when you say nothing they’ll look confused and ask, “Are you serious?”When you say, “Yes,” their look will change to disbelief, followed by dejection. If they’re carrying alcohol, their shoulders will slump. They might put the alcohol down right where they’re standing and then walk out.Welcome to Indiana!The Hoosier state is the only state in the country that currently bans alcohol sales state-wide on Sunday. Other states ban sales of hard liquor on Sunday, or limit the hours that alcohol can be sold on Sunday, but only Indiana bans all retail alcohol sales on Sunday.Well, sort of. Even in Indiana you can buy a case of beer from a brewery on Sunday. And you can order alcohol for on-premises consumption on Sunday.So if you go to a restaurant you can have a glass of wine. If you go to the Colts game, you can order a beer. But if you go to your cousin Jimmy’s Flag Day cookout in his backyard and he forgot to buy beer, you’re out of luck.I feel like I’m writing this in 1925. That can’t be true though because the Internet didn’t exist in 1925. And the calendar on my computer says that it’s 2015, so that must be right.But why the heck does Indiana still have such an archaic law on the books? Who knows? I could say it’s because our state legislators haven’t progressed in their thinking in 90 years, but that sounds cynical, even if it is true.Actually, they have made one change to the alcohol laws. Before 2010 alcohol sales were prohibited on Election Day. That law remained from decades ago when bars and saloons doubled as polling places. I think they try to refrain from using such places now though. But I’m all for selling alcohol on Election Day. Could drunk voters elect worse representatives than sober Hoosier voters have?The Sunday alcohol sales issue came up in the state legislature last month. Some had hoped the measure would pass this time despite its past failures. No dice though. People opposed to the measure killed it by adding a bizarre amendment that required grocery, drug, and convenience stores to sell alcohol only from separate, partitioned areas. The cost of adding those areas to stores that already sell alcohol would have been enormous, so the bill failed.Come on, Indiana! We’ve spent decades trying to convince the rest of the country that there is more than corn in Indiana, but by “more” I’m pretty sure we didn’t mean crazy laws.Surprisingly, in addition to the folks who think God frowns upon selling a twelve pack of some pricey, elitist craft beer on Sunday, liquor store owners are the most vocal in their opposition to selling alcohol on Sunday.Try to follow their thinking:If alcohol is sold on Sunday, then liquor stores will have to open on Sunday. But selling on Sunday isn’t going to increase sales, it’s just going to spread those sales out over an extra day. So they’ll have higher labor costs, but not higher sales, potentially forcing them to close.Are they drunk?Selling alcohol on Sunday will increase total alcohol sales. If they don’t believe this then all they need to do is to go to a liquor store in Lansing, on the Illinois side of the Illinois-Indiana border. The place is hopping on Sunday afternoon, and at least half of the cars in the lot have Indiana plates.Liquor store owners are giving us liver-haters too much credit. They think that I’m going to know ahead of time that I want a beer on Sunday so I’ll just buy that beer on Saturday. Wrong! And I’m not the only one who has killed too many of those memory cells to remember the Sunday prohibition. Go to a grocery store on Sunday and it won’t just be out-of-staters who try to buy the devil’s juice. Plenty of Hoosiers forget, too!It’s time to change the law, Indiana. Calvin Coolidge isn’t president anymore.PREVIOUS POST: Abe Lincoln Isn't On YouTubeIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: How Did I Become a Beer Snob?+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++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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Abe Lincoln Isn't On YouTube

Since just about everyone in the world has a device in their pocket that acts as a phone, a camera and a portal to endless knowledge, we’re living in the first time in recorded history that almost every important event will actually be recorded.For this week’s ChicagoNow writing exercise, we’re challenged to write about a never-before-seen event from history that we wish was caught on video. Since we’ve got all of human history except for the last hundred years or so to choose from, I had to give it some thought.Some things come to mind right away. I’m sure Jesus Christ’s birth was quite a show. Columbus landing in the “New World.” Paul Revere’s ride. Footage of the Constitutional Convention would be incredible, and I’d love to hear the Wright Brothers exclaim “Holy shit, it worked!” when their plane got off the ground for the first time.Of course I have some morbid thoughts, too.Abe Lincoln’s assassination was both public and private at the same time, and even though I’m sure it would be disturbing footage, the magnitude of the event justifies viewing the footage, in my opinion.I would have loved to see Hitler freaking out in his bunker near the end of World War II when it became clear to him that his time was up. I’m certain he probably uttered the German equivalent of “Oh no!”And can you imagine the show when that meteor fell to earth and signaled the beginning of the end for the dinosaurs?The irony of video footage is that even though we often assign meaning to phrases like, “Seeing is believing,” and “A picture’s worth a thousand words,” there’s a certain segment of the population for whom video footage doesn’t necessarily equate with truth. I’m thinking of moon landing deniers, and 9/11 conspiracy theorists. We have video footage documenting those events, yet some people don’t believe what they’re seeing.What accounts for that? Perhaps those people are just employing the most genuine and authentic use of an overused word: unbelievable. If you won’t believe something even when you see it, then what do you believe?A modern day miracle of video footage is its pervasiveness. Harrison Ford crashed his plane yesterday, and this morning I’ve come across three or four different videos of him just before takeoff, then gliding through the air, then moments after he crashed.If James Dean crashed his Porsche in central California today, there’d probably be footage of the accident on YouTube before sunset.Celebrities aren’t the only people whose lives are being chronicled on video though. Go to YouTube and do a search for “Me eating pizza” and you’ll have 263,000 results. Most of the results on the first page really are just videos of different people eating pizza. One of them has 81,000 views. If I want to watch some yahoo eat pizza, I’ll go to a restaurant so I can eat some pizza while I’m doing it.But what does it mean when there are 300 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every single minute?It means that we’re sort of creating a world that will never be history. It will never be past. If I want to see what the streets of Chicago looked like in the 1890s, I might be able to find some photographs, but there won’t be any video. But 120 years from now, some dude will presumably be able to go to YouTube (or whatever technological invention replaces it, computers, and the Internet), and see video of the streets of Chicago from 2015.This may not seem like a big deal to us, but I assure you that it would be mind-boggling for the billions of people who lived before the invention of photography and the Internet.I’ve veered away from the intended purpose of the writing exercise though. Back to it. What never-before-seen event from history do I wish I could see footage of?The Aaron Burr – Alexander Hamilton duel. Burr, the vice president of the United States, shot and killed Hamilton on an early July morning in 1804. Some paintings and drawings of the duel exist, but obviously no video footage.Unless maybe I just haven’t searched deep enough on YouTube.PREVIOUS POST: Saints and Demons, or The Cubs and Every Other TeamIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Interesting Elections from American History+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++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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Saints and Demons, or The Cubs and Every Other Team

Although it’s seventeen degrees in Chicago right now, the Cubs play their first spring training game today. Thankfully they’re in Scottsdale, Arizona, where the current temperature is 71 degrees.Nope, no jealousy here! Why do you ask?They open the spring schedule against the San Francisco Giants. The same Giants who won the World Series four months ago. Jerks. That makes three World Series titles in five years for the Giants. Whatever. Just wait a few million years when California falls off into the Pacific Ocean. Then we’ll see how good the Giants are.I hate the Giants. But even if I didn’t hate the Giants, they’ve been winning so much recently that there’d be no way I could really root for them. Winning teams and I are like oil and water; we don’t mix.With baseball beginning—even if it is just exhibition games that don’t count for anything—I’m ready to reactivate that portion of my body that produces hatred (or at least intense dislike). And who better to shower some disdain upon than the team that won the World Series last year?Here’s the thing…as a Cubs fan, there are two teams: the Cubs and everyone else. Good guys and bad guys. However, White Sox broadcaster Hawk Harrelson always uses the phrase “good guys” so I’m not using it. I prefer Saints and Demons. The Cubs are Saints, and every other team are Demons.This is the way it must be. There can be no “But I like the Cubs and the White Sox.” No you don’t. If you say that then you don’t like the Cubs. Maybe the White Sox permit their fans to engage in bigamy, but we Cubs fans aren’t down with that. You need more than one team? Fine. Keep your White Sox, but you better find another team to replace the Cubs. I hear the Marlins are always looking for fans.Saints and Demons thinking has made sense to me for as long as I can remember.During my formative baseball fan years (age five through nine or so), I lived in Springfield, Illinois. That’s in the central part of the state, 200 miles from Chicago, but only 90 miles from St. Louis. This map shows that in Sangamon County—where Springfield is located--55% of people are Cardinals fans and 22% are Cubs fans.I suspect that map was made by a Cardinals fan because while the Cardinals definitely have an edge in Springfield, I don’t think it’s a 33% edge.As I developed a love for baseball and the Cubs—both of which came from my dad, who grew up in London Mills, Illinois, a tiny village situated across two counties, Fulton (40% Cardinals fans, 35% Cubs fans) and Knox (41% Cubs fans, 33% Cardinals fans)—I was confused by Cardinals fans.How could they not like the Cubs? Ryne Sandberg, Jody Davis, Leon Durham. Come on! And how on Earth could they like the Cardinals? Didn’t they see the wickedness of Ozzie Smith, Vince Coleman, and Willie McGee?Liking the Cardinals seemed like a personality disorder to me. We had neighbors who were die hard Cardinals fans. The boy was my age and we were friends. He was a cool guy and he seemed so normal. But the Cardinals? What the heck was wrong with him?And then in 1986 the Saints and Demons issue hit too close to home.The Mets won the World Series. The New York Mets. Good lord I might have hated the Mets even more than the Cardinals. They were so pompous and lucky and good. Twenty-nine years later they still make my blood boil.How could anyone like the Mets? What’s likeable about Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry and Keith Hernandez? Nothing, that’s what!But then I remembered that my very own grandmother—my own mom’s mom—who lived in New York her entire life, was a Mets fan. A woman who had the same blood as me liked the Mets! Such confusion for an eight-year-old boy. What if I turned into a demon?I gave my grandma a pass though. She didn’t seem much like a demon to me, even though she did like the Mets.I guess we all have flaws.PREVIOUS POST: Penis Size is Settled, Science Asks "Now What?"IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Banning Lorde's 'Royals' Not Enough Help for Giants+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++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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Penis Size is Settled, Science Asks "Now What?"

The title of the study is “Am I Normal?” Like almost every other academic paper ever written, it has a subtitle that describes what the study is about, but that’s boring so I’m not going to include it.No sense beating around the bush though. The study is about penis size. Human penis size to be more precise.Yes, you read that correctly. Science has finally undertaken the work to answer the age-old question “Am I Normal?” If you’re a male and you haven’t asked yourself that question, then the answer to it is, “No!”I won’t bore you with the details, but here’s a summary. The study’s authors reviewed a whole bunch of other studies in which medical professionals measured the size of a man’s penis, compiled the data, and produced a nomogram.If you’re like me, then you didn’t know that a nomogram is one of those charts that doctors use to compare the height and weight of your child to other children. “Your child is in the eighty-seventh percentile for height and the seventy-third percentile for weight.”Except this study has men looking at the Y-axis, following their number until it meets the wavy green line, and then back down to the X-axis to find their percentile.(Note: Worry not, Curious Reader. The numbers on the chart are in centimeters, not inches! Important to know that beforehand so as to avoid any heart attacks caused by disappointment upon discovering that you’re firmly planted in the first percentile.)Before you get too excited about the numbers, keep in mind that the lead author on the study is a man. So the numbers are all likely inflated by at least 20%.Now that the British Journal of Urology—there’s a journal for anything imaginable these days—has settled this question, I thought I’d propose some other questions that are in urgent need of answers. I’m no scientist, so I won’t be of any help, but I do like asking questions.Does size matter? This is obviously the corollary to the “Am I Normal?” question. I’m not certain that science will be able to come to a definitive answer to this question. However, I think it’s safe to say that the answer is either Yes or No. You’re welcome, science. I’ve just eliminated billions of other possibilities.Do blondes have more fun? I don’t know why people think this is true. I suspect it’s to compensate for all the blonde jokes. “We may be dumb, but at least we have fun!” By the way, I don’t think blondes are dumb. I do sometimes think blonde jokes are funny though.Do gentlemen prefer blondes? This is a tough one. It all depends on the definition of gentlemen, and the definition of prefer. Hell, it probably depends on the definition of blondes as well. Good luck answering this one, science.Are you listening to me? I think I already know the answer to this one, but science must have something to say about it. In case they don’t get around to it though, let me tell you that if you’re talking to someone and you have to ask them that question, the answer is no.Why do women…? Science may attempt to answer such a question, but chances are that at least one of the scientists will be a man. And men are too dumb to know why women do anything. So we’re just going to have to wait until we get more women scientists.Why do men…? This question is unanswerable, too. We’ll never move forward as a species until we accept that almost everything that a man does has no explanation. Save yourself for other questions, science. This one will lead you down the rabbit hole, never to return.What goes on when women go to the bathroom together? Women are like the Freemasons when it comes to this. At least that’s what men think. It’s all a big secret. Why can’t they just tell us what they’re doing in there and why they go together? We could try to answer this question without science, but I’m sure there are Peeping Tom laws against it.Get to work, Science! We’re all counting on you. Don’t let us down.PREVIOUS POST: I Failed at No Sweets FebruaryIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: In Online Dating, Beware of Ax Murderers+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++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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