Paranoia paranoia everybody's coming to get me

My quick Wikipedia review of Harvey Danger's classic 'Flagpole Sitta' – a song that stands out to me as easily the best track on 1997's Now Volume 1 – initiated my deep dive into the song's origin which led me to the ancient form of asceticism known as stylitoe, Latin for "pillar-hermits."

A summary: 

To impress God or to look cool in front of his monastery peers or something, St. Simeon Stylites the Elder – an ancient David Blaine regarded as the preeminent pillar hermit – fasted/pretended to fast for an entire Lent in the 4th Century. Naturally, his monastery classmates considered him a freak who tried too hard to fit in so St. Simeon – oblivious to social law which dictates that anyone who goes out of their way to seem cool will, in fact, seem like a pathetic dorkus malorkus – decided to try a new neat trick: Standing for a long time. 

But when plain old standing didn't work, Sim went even bigger: He chilled on top of column in the desert for 36 years. 

He sat, he ate, he prayed. 

But something funny happened: People began building ladders to visit him and get answers to life's big questions.

And Sim's persistence paid off. While most of monk antagonists probably died of diarrhea or the flu, Sim stayed on that pedestal. Artists started painting him, normal Romans started worshipping him and an emperor sought this dorky guru's counsel. In an early-Christian era where basically anyone could become a saint, St. Sim really distinguished himself through unwavering determination and tolerance for pain. He'd be such a sick Crossfitter. 

1,600 years later, a new pillar-hermit inspired craze known as pole-sitting went viral in the U.S. Thrill-seekers climbed flagpoles and sat up there for as long as possible. Some guy in Iowa set a record by sitting on a pole for 51 days until a thunderstorm scared him.

Many historians now posit that pole-sitting influenced a generation of Instagrammable feats of endurance and patience such as Tebowing, Planking and the Mannequin Challenge.

Pros: Get your own Wikipedia page.

Become a saint.

Become a social media star.

See who salutes . . .

Cons: But no one ever does.

It's lonely at the top.

No sex

'Cept with that pole yer sittin on

Stability - 4/5 Poles, pillars, yeah, sturdy. sure. whatever.

Cool Factor - 3/5 Bitter irony: The attention you receive for sitting on a pole for an extended period of time could get you laid, but your celebrity – and, thus, your desirability – ends as soon as you leave the pole.

Difficulty - 4/5 Yeah definitely. Boring. 

Perilousness -  4/5 Lightning. Angry nationalists who are like, "hey, wehre's are flag? what did ya do with are flag?"

Added bonus - 3/5 Excellent way for boring people to fake enlightenment, depth and eccentricity. 

Overall rating - 18/25 Not sick, not well. So hot, in hell. Not sick, not well. Sin to live well. 

Sittin on a bee can get you killed out here

cautionary tale about the perils of careless bee-sitting

he's restin in the sun, 

calm and placid in the pasture.

he's just a gentle one, 

but brahman's bout to face disaster

there's a bee under the tree

slurpin nectar from a thistle

and oh gee, he doesn't see.

he bout to go off like a missile

Abeja stings the cattle

and the cattle goes berserk

so farmer sends him off to battle

cuz he thinks the bull's a jerk

inside the ring, bull faces death:

torero with the power

to take away the final breath

he used to sniff a flower.

but the bull just keeps on chillin,

playin cool before the fans

so today, there'll be no killin.

the bull is a free man.

But sittin on that bee almost got Ferdinand murdered. 

Stabbed in the spine with a slender blade like all his aggro fightin peers. 

Stability - it's a teeny bee. come on. sitting on that is like when a cartoon bear tries riding a tricycle, but even more challenging because bees are generally smaller than tricycles. 0/5

Cool Factor - 2/5 It's only cool if you can play it off like nothing happened. Like you're too tough to flip out from a wimpy lil bee sting. Ferdinand couldn't handle it. Not cool.

Difficulty - 5/5 It's gonna hurt

Perilousness - 5/5 If you have a severe allergic reaction to bee stings. In fact, bee sting anaphylaxis is potentially life threatening according to a cursory Google search. So if the matador doesn't kill you, the inability to breathe through your swollen trachea will.

Added bonus - 1/5 Build toughness, I guess? Develop an immunity to bee stings perhaps? But, look, the bee dies after it stings you. The stinger rips off the bee's butt and it soon dies from loneliness or blood loss. We need bees to pollenate our flowers and resist climate change. When your careless sitting kills a bee, you're worse than Monsanto.

Overall rating - 13/25 

You'll need to sit down for this.

Number Five on a list of cliches to ban from your script that still generates 59 million Google results.

You'll need to sit down for this. 

Are you sitting down? 

You might want to sit down.

Oh jesus, if someone tells you that over the phone, hang up immediately.
No, don't. Because they care about you and they're about to deliver some truly profound news. This is life-altering stuff so you better sit down or else you're gonna ––

Or else you're gonna what?

Might you faint? If so, a chair with arms would be helpful. Because if you sat in a bed, you'd likely just roll off the side and get a concussion. If you sat a on a park bench, someone might rob you after you passed out from the shock of that life-altering news. Now you got two problems.

Might you vomit? If so, standing would be preferable because sitting would make you puke in your lap and ruin your trousers. If you splattered a little spew on your shoes, that's okay. Shoes are designed to handle some gross stuff, like dirt, strangers' shriveled condoms and the occasional coil of doggy doo. Chinos are not.

Might you scream? If so, what good is sitting going to do except to perhaps constrain your diaphragm with the pressure of your contracted abdominal muscles.

Might you spontaneously sprint in whatever direction you are facing and then trip over a rollerblade or slam your forehead in a low doorway? If so, why don't you put rollerblades your rollerblades in the garage (unless you are in the garage – then why don't you hang them up where the mice can't make little nests in the inline) and how tall are you and why can't you control your emotions, man?

Might you pee? If so, you'll ruin the chair.

So I've never really understood the "You'll need to sit down for this" harbinger of doom cliche.

Spit it out already!

Is there an email equivalent for this? What do you even put in the subject?

What about text? I once found out via text that a family member died suddenly. It sucked, but I was standing and I didn't faint or nuthin.

Pros: You won't hit your head if you faint while seated – unless the seat lacks arms or a back.

You won't trip over a rollerblade.

You're successfully reenacting a scene from every network television drama.

Cons: Your urine may ruin a rocker.

You might vomit on your chinos.

Folding yourself up in a chair will prohibit you from adequately expressing your emotions and you'll be dealing with that in therapy later on – that is if you even have the balls to go to therapy.


Stability - 2/5 unless the chair you faint in has a back and arms and maybe even a seatbelt

Cool Factor - 1/5 See: Cliches to ban from your script

Difficulty - 4/5 The news you're about to hear will be hard, but sitting down as your chest cavity rapidly fills with anxiety and dread is not that bad.

Perilousness - 2/5 You could puke in your lap and the ruin the phone in the pocket of your mesh shorts.

Added bonus - 2/5 You're about to build some serious character and test your resolve.

Overall rating - You'll need to sit down for this . . .






















11/25 – You didn't even get to 50%

Go Climb a Tree

Most people read Dr. Seuss and think about his important messages of equality (Star-Bellied Sneetches) and environmental consciousness (See: above) before returning to their daily routine. Others, however, consider Seuss' work canonical -- our culture's moral compass. Like the Lorax, they speak for the trees.

"Get out of that tree and take a shower, you dazed, dirty scum! Shoeless, vegan freak. You're symbolic act of defiance forces our society to consider the depletion of its finite natural resources. That frustrates me and I don't like ideas that threaten my comfortable lifestyle, Hippie."

Before you mindlessly condemn this protester, take pause. Weren't you the one who smoked a bowl, gazed with wide, dreamy eyes at 'Planet Earth' and slowly declared, "Whoa, bro. This is NATURE."

Yes, these tree-sitters probably got high in their perch atop some old-growth forest and said the same thing, but you know they grew their own organic stuff and carried it in a hand-stitched burlap sack. No wasteful, non-biodegradable plastic baggies for them. They have conviction! They made their own trail mix and are resting in some crappy, Swiss Family Robinson-style fort right now making sure there can be a Planet Earth 2.

SoT thinks the tree-sitters realize a few centuries-old trees are inconsequential. Hell, knock them down and sell the wood to Papermate so we can write poems and mission statments. They strive for more than just the preservation of a few big trees. Looney as they may seem, they force us to consider our consumption of nature. Are we being responsible?

You planted a tiny seed in 2nd-grade science class, watered it every day and kept a journal tracking your sprout's progress. You sighed after hearing about polar bears that float into Arctic waters aboard melting icebergs then die of exhaustion when they try to swim back to land. You grimaced at satellite images of eroded soil floating out to sea, never to be replaced.

Now you thoughtlessly side with the chainsaw-toting guys driving bulldozers? The logging company? That's like rooting for the pompous Princeton kid to nail every Daily Double on College Jeopardy, the other two state college contestants to finish with negative amounts and fail to qualify for Final Jeopardy and the Princeton kid to chuckle, shrug and concede, "Well, I do go to Princeton." As a general rule, you should think long and hard before supporting people with chainsaws and bulldozers. And people who put too high a premium on their alma maters.

Pros: This kind of conviction plays really well with the hairy-legged, free love set who you'll easily woo at Burning Man.

Overcome fear of heights.

Subject of an excellent 'Hey Arnold!' episode. Screw Bob's Beepers.

Mock brainwashed, bourgeois society. What you're doing is real, man.

This is what Thoreau and Emerson meant. This is it, man. You're totally doing it.

Cons: Spiders. Allergies.

Uh, toilets?

You now rely on a series of carabiners, tarps and planks to prevent you from falling through foot after foot of sharp pine needles into the handcuffs of aggravated police officers. Sweet dreams. Don't let the bed bugs bite -- seriously, there are insect colonies beneath the bark.

Tree extractor is an actual profession.

In case you forgot, you are stories above the ground without toilet paper or showers hoping the contractors paying their union bull dozer-drivers by the hour don't get too antsy.

If only we all remained so ideological, carefully heeded Dr. Seuss' fables and sat in solidarity with our coniferous brethren. Tree-sitters may be self-righteous dreamers who you can't hang out with because they'll judge your every decision and action ('Really? carrying your lunch in a paper bag? Hhm.'), but they bring attention to our environment. And that is a public service.

Stability - 4/5 Unless of course someone gets trigger-happy with the chainsaw

Cool Factor - 4/5 No matter how little it means, you're a genuine activist.

Difficulty - 4/5 How do you get up there?

Perilousness - 5/5 See: Cons.

Added bonus - 3/5 You'll lose weight.

Overall rating - a civil disobedient 21/25.

That's the Spirit

He gets it.

Jolly Old Sit Nick

This won't end well.

Granted, that's a realistic-looking Santa Claus -- if a mythical figure who whips around the world leaving presents for people who accept Jesus Christ as their savior can look realistic -- but that just makes the situation even stickier. That girl trusts her parents. She has faith in authority. She thinks her dad is the strongest man in the world and her mom never smoked pot. She believes Grandparents Day is a real holiday, George W. Bush invaded Iraq because bin Laden was there and Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs in 1996 because of sheer heart, determination and a consistent weight-lifting regimen. She knows she'll retire at 65 and the same dog her dad brought back from the pound last month will still be sleeping at the foot of her bed when she cashes that final paycheck.

Flash Forward.

Kid, you sure looked cute in that picture. How old are you now? Six? Six-and-a-half? A little bit of wool has fallen off your eyelids in the last two years, hasn't it?

I know you had a funny feeling back then, right after you cooed in that guy's ear telling him you wanted a Hannah Montana backpack and he winked at you and you squealed and your mom and aunt both yelled, "Look over here!" at the same time and you looked at your aunt's camera first but your mom took a picture too so you ended up smiling and looking into the distance.

Something was off. You just couldn't pinpoint it. So, do you want to know what it was? Do you really want to know what bothered you? Because once you take the red pill there's no going back.

You should sit down for this (lolz). Your parents lied to you. Your teachers lied to you, too. The bulk of Western civilization believes it is easier to deliberately fabricate loads of crap until you're eight-years-old and you find out there's no stork from a sixth-grader on the school bus than to treat you with honesty and respect. I'm sorry it sounds like a Spy Kids plot.

It is tough. Believe me. We've all experienced this. But take solace in your own instincts because you knew there was something weird about 5 o'clock shadow beneath a beard and that Santa must have better things to do than hang out at the King of Prussia Mall on a Tuesday afternoon and that human-trafficking awareness groups would probably raise hell about enslaving generations of nasally little men. Elves look like Orlando Bloom anyway. Not Mickey from Seinfeld.

Mazel Tov, parent. You have successfully sewed the seeds of cynicism in your child. You tricked your son into believing Santa was real and he totally fell for it hook, line and sinker! But now he knows.

"So what else is a lie?" he'll wonder. "Obviously the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the WWE. Of course 'States' Rights' is just dog-whistle code for 'deprive the urban poor (see: black people) of opportunities.' But there must be more!"

And so the truth-seeking begins. And when you try to stifle it, it only grows stronger until...

"Wait, just by praying I can make anything I want happen?"

"Wait, how did God create the entire universe in 6 days?"

"Wait, Jesus suffered, died and was buried and on the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures and his kingdom will have no end!?"

"WTF?"

That is exactly the line of thought about 76% of Americans hope to avoid, though they unknowingly initiated it the moment they plopped their nervous toddler on the lap of some guy who just got laid off from AT&T.

Pros: Santa's Lap: Perfect for the family who appreciates instant gratification. Wouldya look at how happy he is right now! I don't even care that his older cousin will deliver some spirit-crushing news in a year! I value pessimism!

Creates the doubt that spawned Punk Music and any other anti-establishment movement. Sid Vicious' mom definitely made him sit on Santa's lap at some local firehouse brunch.

Seasonal jobs for the struggling 'fat, white, unemployed men ages 40-75' demographic.

Cons: Middle-aged men who invite kids to sit on their laps and whisper in their ears? Criticizing this would be cliche.

Jehovah's Witnesses will laugh derisively as they imagine you burning in hell.

Found out it was an elaborate hoax? Goodbye, idealism. We had a good six-year run.

This unlikely scenario:

A wonderful photo opportunity will lead to a lifetime of mistrust of authority. While this wariness is vital for checking power, will it completely displace idealism? In addition, remember the slippery slope from Santa's Lap to the page's of Richard Dawkin's next book.

Stability - 4/5 The soft meaty thighs of a former Wal-Mart greeter.

Cool Factor - 0/5 Why did my mom let me wear a mullet and saddle shoes!?

Difficulty - 1/5 Save face by not crying.

Perilousness - 3/5 Babies can't protect their own soft spots.

Added bonus - 4/5 Initially, discovering the lie will hurt, but later in life you will see past your local congressman's shit-eating grin, consider laundry detergent commercials with skepticism or even topple an oppressive dictatorship.

Overall rating - A disconcerting 12/25 for one of our society's strangest rituals.

Bed sores, beer guts and an eternity in hell

'Idle hands are the devil's tools.' -- Grandmas and CCD teachers.

Unfortunately, SitOnThings has had a pitchfork in its ass these past few weeks, a seamless stream of days spent dawdling across the northeastern United States. SoT has relaxed in a disturbing amount of deck chairs, comfy beds and dimly lit couches. We have, as the idiom goes, sat on our hands -- and for too long.

Not to be preachy and hypocritical, but SoT submits this expose as proof that our nation is toes over a precipice. Yet, contrary to the banal-cliche-loving media and faculty lounge crowd, 'this tough economy' is not at the root of our evils. Subprime mortgages and the federal deficit are not the problem. Nor are gay marriages, universal healthcare proposals and Congressional green energy iniatives responsible for our downfall (Taxpayer-financed Argentinian homewreckers are -- j/k).

But let's geat real. Society's ills can be traced to one thing: Sloth. 

Slacking. 

Deadbeatedness. 

Or, more bluntly, an invitation to Satan. The party's 'RSVP regrets only' and he ain't calling. Inertia is an aphrodisiac to the Prince of Darkness.

Consider the lazy, slack-jawed children pictured above. The little slugs rot on a lunchroom bench (a bench!) waiting for el diablo to have his way with them. This school, like so many others, is failing its students! Attention kids: it's time to finish your hot dog and fruit punch, get off that stodgy seat and exercise your free will and creativity. 

Stop sitting on your hands. Or else:

Pros: Ample time to think about the next great American novel, you know, the one you'll never get around to writing.

Your mom will make you cold cut sandwiches.

Finally have an opportunity to study your old yearbook and decide which girls you "totally could have got with."

Cons: See Post Title.

HBO and Showtime air the same movies all week long.

From bed to toilet to chair to couch to bed. Repeat.

You will forget how to write well.

If you enjoy hearing "And if you call within the next ten minutes, we'll throw in..." with your back to the television as you surf Match.com, then sit on your hands. Do nothing. Watch your hairline recede and rabbits eat your garden. Just remember, you will have an internet girlfriend who amounts to a steamy pen pal. You will be the last person using Myspace. You will fail to make polite conversation with adults who ask the dreaded "So, what are you going to do next?"

At least Sportscenter is live now.

Stability - 3/5 You cannot slip if you're already stuck in a rut.

Cool Factor - 0/5 Dr. J, Leo and Obama are motivated and ambitious.

Difficulty - 0/5 Your dad does your laundry for you.

Perilousness - 2/5 Your health, your mind, your looks atrophy.

Added bonus - 1/5 The OC on SOAPnet. 

Overall rating - A bleak 6/25