Things I Just Don't Get: Sitting VS Sleeping

Lately doctors everywhere are coming out of the woodwork telling us that sitting can kill you. They say if you work in and office and sit all day you're gonna die early. No exceptions, it's your destiny! Never mind that humans have been sitting since... well, since we first developed asses. Suddenly it's bad for us. In fact it's so bad that they're urging us all to stand at our desks. Like that's ever going to happen.

First of all, I call bull hockey on this. I've been working in various offices since the late 1980s and I've yet to see a single dead body slumped over at a desk. If what these doctors are telling us is true then the floors of offices nationwide should be strewn with corpses.

Secondly, what about sleeping? If sitting can kill you, then sleeping ought to be positively lethal. Every time I go to bed should be my last. At least when I'm sitting at work I occasionally get up to go to the bathroom or to a meeting. And I probably walk back and forth to the printer twenty or thirty times in a day. I don't sit all day.

When I'm sleeping though I lie motionless for eight hours like a big banana slug. So shouldn't that be at least as bad as sitting? Logically it should be worse. So where are all the doctors warning us about the dangers of sleeping? Why aren't they telling us we should all be standing while we sleep?

It's another thing I just don't get!

Things I Just Don't Get: Wood Panel Cars

I try to keep up with all the things the kids today like, such as pogs, Alf and the Rubik's Cube. But hip as I am, even I can't keep up with all the new trends. Sometimes I just don't understand what's going on. 

Some Things I Just Don't Get.

Take the wood paneled car, for instance. I've never quite understood the point of gluing sheets of wood to the side of a car. Are the wooden panels supposed to look stylish? Does the paneling make the car seem more luxurious? More rustic? Tropical?

Obviously the panels are supposed to be an accent of some kind, but I just can't see how a low-tech substance like wood is supposed to enhance the look of a sleek, modern metallic vehicle.

Does a wooden car have more perceived value? Am I meant to gaze enviously at such vehicles as they pass by and think, "Wow, look at that! A car made out of wood! Shucks, my old jalopy's nothing but chrome and steel."

Maybe it's a throwback to a more innocent time when households had one TV set, families dressed up when they went to a restaurant and everyone had basement "rumpus rooms" that were covered in wood paneling?

Perhaps it's some kind of misguided status symbol. I can see it now: a social-climbing suburban housewife looks out the window and sees her neighbor's wooden car parked across the street. "Murray!" she screeches. "Come look! The Goldblatt's have a new car! And it's made of wood! One of the expensive ones, no doubt, like oak or teak. That settles it, we're going car shopping tomorrow night!"

Now that I think about it, why do the panels only cover the sides of these cars? Why not go all out and cover the whole vehicle so that it looks like the entire thing was carved out of wood? Now that would be stylish! You'd have style seeping out of your ears if you owned a totally wooden car!

Once a common sight on the nation's roads, the wood-paneled car's popularity has waned in recent years. No doubt because drivers wised up and thought, "Why am I sitting inside a gasoline powered wooden vehicle?" There are still plenty of them out there though if you look hard enough.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I prefer my car to look like it was manufactured on an assembly line in some sort of factory. I don't want to drive around in something that looks like it was cobbled together by the Professor from Gilligan's Island.

Things I Just Don't Get: Utilikilts

You know, I try to keep up with all the things the kids today like, such as pogs, Alf and the Rubik's Cube. But hip as I am, even I can't keep up with all the new trends. Sometimes I just don't understand what's going on. 

Some Things I Just Don't Get.

For example, the Utilikilt. And just what is a Utilikilt, you ask? It's an everyday utilitarian version of the Scottish kilt. Always festooned with lots of masculine cargo pockets and pouches. It tries its best to be a manly article of clothing, but when you boil it all down it's still nothing more than a skirt. And a pleated skirt at that.

Several times a year I have the misfortune of observing someone wearing a Utilikilt in public, harshly reminding me that they indeed still exist. Whenever I see one of these be-kilted specimens, I always get the vague impression that they think they're on the bleeding edge of a fashion revolution, that they're an early adopter, so to speak. Every day they trot out their little pleated skirts and think, "This is it. This is the year that Utilikilts finally catch on! And I was there to help make it a reality!"

I regret to inform them that this is never going to happen. Not in our lifetimes at least. Oh to be sure, the Utilikilt will always be found in certain fringe areas, such as RenFaires and comic book conventions. But the cold hard truth is that it's never going to be be embraced by mainstream America.

I am aware that kilts are still regularly worn by men in all walks of life in Scotland. That's fine. More power to the Scots, I say! But see, over there it's a part of their cultural heritage. A page torn from their history. We have no cultural heritage here in America. Scots guys in kilts are honoring their forefathers. American guys in kilts are weirdos in skirts.

In the interest of full disclosure, on most days you can find me walking around in a pair of cargo shorts. You may be asking yourself what's the difference? Why are my shorts OK while the Utilikilt is deserving of my scorn? Aren't both garments basically the same? Do both not expose the same about of calf flesh? 

The difference is small, but an important one. Cargo shorts are basically pants. Short pants to be sure, but pants nonetheless. When I wear my cargo shorts I can sit confidently with my legs spread if I so desire, knowing that nothing traditionally covered by a fig leaf is going to be exposed. With the Utilikilt, one wrong move and you can see all the way down Main Street to City Hall, if you get my drift. 

Plus, my cargo shorts are battened down if you will. The legs stay pretty much in place at all times. The Utilikilt though... at any given second it can snap upwards like a faulty Venetian blind, startling passersby and exposing your assets for all to see. When I wear cargo shorts there's no danger of me standing on a sidewalk grate and accidentally reenacting Marilyn's scene from The Seven Year Itch.

Fans of the Utilikilt, please give it up. No matter how many times you wear yours in public, NO other man is ever going to think, "Say, I like the way that guy looks in that kilt! He seems so free, so loosed from the physical and societal restraints of traditional legged garments. A man could get a lot done in a free wheeling, kicky little number like that." It just ain't gonna happen. And no matter how many pockets and pouches you sew onto it, no matter what camouflage pattern you use to construct it, there's no getting around the fact that you're just a dude in a skirt.

Things I Just Don't Get...

You know, I try to keep up with all the things the kids today like, such as pogs, Alf and the Rubik's Cube. But hip as I am, even I can't keep up with all the new trends. Sometimes I just don't understand what's going on.

Some Things I Just Don't Get (Houston, we have a title!).

For example, this. I just don't get this, at all. Not the slightest bit.

Oh, I understand it, mind you. I get that it's a tattoo and you hold it up to your face and it faintly looks like you sort of have a mustache, from a distance. I get the what. I don't get the why.

Is it a joke? Is it supposed to be funny? Should I be "laughing out loud" right now, as all the kids say? If I were to walk through a college campus in Anytown, USA, would I see scores of "with it" students walking around with their fingers under their noses, showing off their hilarious mustache tattoos?

Is it one of those things that everyone is in on but me? Is it like back in high school, when all the popular kids would take a random word, like "doorknob," and try and convince me that it was a cool new term of approval, as in, "Yeah, that party was so doorknob!" And then they'd get me believing them so that I'd walk up to someone and say, "Hey, did you watch Laverne & Shirley last night? It was doorknob!" And then they'd all bray like donkeys at my faux pas. Is that what this is?

That's it, isn't it? The entire internet is in on this stupid meme, and you're all out there just holding your breath hoping that I drive over to the bad part of town and hand my keys to some thug to save him the trouble of stealing my car, go into the tattoo parlor and get one of these things permanently inscribed into my finger. Then I'll be so anxious to show off my hilarious new body art that I'll walk around all day with my mustachioed finger under my nose, and that's when you'll all start roaring with laughter.

Dream on, suckers! I figured it out! Now excuse me while I go into the kitchen and eat a spoonful of cinnamon.