Chairs — September 18, 2024 – John Agliata

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
MEGA🎶
Earth Hate🌎
Have A Seat🪑

THE DAILY UPDATE

Three Things I Am Grateful For Today:

Slip-n-slides.
The simple childhood joy found in Slinkies.
The Snoopy Snow Cone Machine.

Pursuit of Wordle Godhood: Today’s result: Five. The jump from three to four was necessary.

Wordle 1,187 5/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Pursuit of Connections Godhood: Today’s result: PERFECTO!

Connections
Puzzle #465
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟪🟪

The song in my head when I woke up today: The theme song from the MEGA podcast. So that’s a new entry into my morning brain.

Sept. 17: Burn Me Once, by Bella White
Sept. 16: Follow Your Arrow, by Kacey Musgraves
Sept. 15: Burn Me Once, by Bella White
Sept. 13: It’s Not Over, by Daughtry
Sept. 12: In a radical departure from recent morning-brain songs, It’s So Easy, by Guns N’ Roses
Sept. 11: Complicated, by Avril Lavigne, who’s back in my morning brain after a one-day absence.
Sept. 10: Wide Open Spaces, by The Chicks. At least it’s not Avril Lavigne
Sept. 9: I’m With You, by Avril Lavigne
Sept. 8: When You’re Gone, by Avril Lavigne, for the second day in a row.
Sept. 7: When You’re Gone, by Avril Lavigne
Sept. 6: I Will Not Bow, by Breaking Benjamin
Sept. 5: It’s Been Awhile, by Staind
Sept. 4: So Far Away, by Staind
Sept. 3: Banana Boat, by Harry Belafonte
Sept. 2: One Love, by Bob Marley
Sept. 1: Welcome to the Black Parade, by My Chemical Romance

Favorite line from the song in my head when I woke up: We are here. Lord, we are here. And we’re ready … ready to podcast.

Commute Tunes: If the MEGA theme song has been in my head, it’s because I listened to it on the way to and from work yesterday.

Something I’m looking forward to today: A work interview this evening with some colleagues in Japan, where it won’t be evening.

Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: It’s a baseball weekend, and we better win a freaking game.

Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: The fish tacos I made for the Terrific Trio Taco Tuesday came out great.

What I’m writing: Yesterday’s Two Crappy Pages involved editing of a story on ChatGPT 4o1 and its implication for insurers.

What I’ve written: Top 10 Ways The Earth Shows Us It Hates Us

“Where the hell did chairs come from?” This was the thought that randomly popped into my mind as I drove home from work and an after-work happy hour last night. And before anyone suggests this was the alcohol talking and that I shouldn’t have been driving, my one beer over the hour-and-a-half I was there had no impact on my cognitive state, though it was tasty.

No-no … this is just me.

There I was, going about 68 mph (fine, 72 mph) on I-64/61/40 (make up your freaking mind, Missourah! Which one is it?!?!?!?!), and all of a sudden I had this thought that there had to be a time when there was no such thing as chairs and then a time when someone decided the floor wasn’t good enough for him and a chair came into being.

And yes, I’m sure it was a him, not a her. This is guy-level weirdness.

There are some cultures for which the floor still is a perfectly acceptable sitting place. Citizens of some countries eschew the chair for things such as sitting down for a meal in a depression or at a raised tables. But for Mr. Chair, that was bullshit. So he invented an elevated seating place. And now we pretty much give up sitting on the floor as a general rule somewhere around the age of 15.

I imagine this had something to do with either old age, the recognition that knees feel good at 90-degree angles when our butts are supported or a combination of both. Now at age 50, I definitely don’t spring up from a spot on the floor like I did when I was 5. Hell, when I was 5, I used to go up a set of stairs three at a time and go down them by jumping at least the last three. If I tried that today, something — ACLs, Achilles tendons, ankles — is going to blow out veryvery badly.

Ahhh, but chairs.

I brought up my question to the other two members of the Terrific Trio at the dinner table while we noshed on the amazing fish tacos I made. Either said fish tacos were too enjoyable to divert them into such an important conversation or Wifey Boy and Boy The Younger didn’t share my sudden fascination with how chairs came to be, because that conversation went nowhere.

So I turned to Google. Suck it, family.

The first reference to a chair, say the gods of the interwebs, was made in Egypt around 5,800 years ago. This, of course, is nearly Christian Impossible, because the Earth is only 6,000 years old, but even if that’s true (it’s not) big ups to humans for inventing chairs within the first 200 years of the planet’s existence.

Supposedly, ancient Egyptian artisans took benches, which had already been developed (and that begs a question for another day), added a backrest and voila! The chair was born.

Ancient Greeks and Romans were known to have chairs, and such seating devices were common in China in the 12th century.

Ahh, but the white man …

Thomas Moore patented a modern chair in 1867 and so he often is credited with inventing it, which is kind of like saying Christopher Columbus invented North America.

None of which truly answers my question. Sure, I can accept the Ancient Egyptians invented the chair. But that doesn’t tell me which Ancient Egyptian, and I’m quite sure he or she didn’t think of himself or herself as ancient when he or she was doing it. Who was this person who decided the floor was so yesterday?

These are the things lost to history because stupid people didn’t write the important stuff down. Which is kinda why I have this blog, I guess.

Would you please help a brutha out? I’ve created a weekly eNewsletter called News-B-Nuts in which I’ll be sending out news nuggets and witty commentary to subscribers. If you can, would you support this endeavor for just $5 a month via Patreon?

Chairs — September 18, 2024

THE DAILY UPDATE

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