Back to our regularly scheduled inanity.

Gum. I chews it.

Yes, I do. I chew it daily. I have $20,000 worth of dental work in my mouth, and it gets gnarly all up in there, so yes I chew gum. I WILL come up with a substitute - Altoids have sugar, and mints put me at risk to bite them (I have no control) and sprays come in plastic. Mint drops, hand-made by me, naturally? Yes, that's my next plan. But for now, I chew gum, OK? Get over it. As far as bad habits go, I think I'm good.

I digress. Stride came out with a just plain funtastical new gum product called iD gum. All trendy and artsy and downright cool. Gum is so cool. Especially when people chew it like cows and cud. SO hip. The company - Kraft - even calls it a "lifestyle choice." Wow.

Here's the most funnest part: the packaging has a magnetic flap. So your gum stays secure! And fresh! Did you catch that? It KEEPS GUM FRESH. Now, they didn't just stick magnets on it, they actually have a method to integrate the magnetic part into the packaging, which seems pretty cool. In fact, it's so revolutionary that the intend to use it on other things in the future, like cigarette packs! Yay! Cereal boxes! Woo hoo! Talk about taking something like a cereal box which is perfectly recyclable or compostable, and turning into something... that is NOT.

I don't know the science behind it. I don't really care. I just know that now there are resources and chemicals and *stuffs* put into something somewhere they don't really need to be. A pack of gum hangs around for - what - a week at the most? Not even? How effing fresh do we need our gum to remain? And now what happens to the packaging that has magnetic crap in it? It's not longer just plain paper to recycle, now, it has to go somewhere else. I don't even know where. The landfill. Wherever. People probably don't even pay attention to where they throw their gum packs. Because people are known to spit out their gum anywhere. Stick it to stuff. Maybe gum is that bad. Maybe we just suck as a species too much.

Look, I don't really care that much about this gum. Kudos to the man who invented the crap that keeps gum closed and fresh. He's making a lot of money now, so yay for his invention. Woo hoo. It just gets to me that THIS is what we see as important innovation. THIS is what we do, what we celebrate, what companies like Kraft have to do to keep up buying buying buying. Fresh gum. It boggles my mind. Is this the best we can do? Is this progress?

I have never once in my life reached for gum and said, "Oh, man, this gum is totally stale. What a bummer. I can't go on. Life has no meaning for me now." But apparently there are people out there who have because... VOILA!!! Super wonderful product! Resource-sucking, un-recyclable, bound-for-the-landfill wonderful invention. Go for it.

I blame cheese.

All this pre-packaged have-to-have-it-ready-now goodness. Where did it start? Where did it come from? How? Why?

I have to blame Kraft, I think. Remember when Kraft Singles first came out? Little individually-wrapped slices of fake food product. Weren't they SO neat? Yay! Yummy! Cool! Different! So easy!

I'm trying to think why this was ever such a good thing. Luckily, I found an actual ad from 1969 (Wow, they've been around that long???). Here's the text: "Carefree. Progressive. New. That's the thinking behind the packaging of Kraft American Singles. Each slice individually wrapped for freshness and convenience in a wrapper that comes off neat." Ahhhh. There's that word I love: convenience. Because, you know, it's SO inconvenient to take cheese out of any other "group" package.

It's so hard to go to the deli counter and ask them to slice your cheese of choice. It's so hard to keep it in some container and just peel a slice off when you want it. It's so much more superior and progressive to put really seriously needless useless plastic into the environment. Please explain to me what part of this is carefree when we look at the state of things today?

It doesn't even taste better than the stuff from the deli. Neither does pre-packaged Jell-O, pudding, fruit, lunchmeat... shall I go on? IT DOESN'T TASTE BETTER. And it's barely real food.

I don't know how we stop it. We're so automatic at this point. Do I feel better that I figured out where it started?

Maybe a little.