Actually, the weather outside has been pretty nice. I came home after work yesterday, a little tired for no real reason. I thought about mowing my lawn but instead I went into my back yard and sat in my big spool chair. After a little bit I dozed off. It was perfect dozing weather. I need to see about putting my hammock back up. An hour or two later I snored myself awake and realized it was starting to get dark. I hopped off the chair and hobbled into the house slowly because spending all that time in the spool chair and made my ass fall asleep. Yes, that's possible.
That made me think of tramp chairs. In the early 1800's in America, police had a device called a 'tramp chair'. Sometimes they were like little prison cells, however they were usually composed of chairs covered with knobby protrusions. They were really not so bad to sit on for a few minutes, however if you were chained to the chair and had to sit on it all night you would slowly feel the knobs press harder and harder into your ass and back. It did no real permanent damage, however it was very uncomfortable. Any tramps that were caught wandering though town and causing trouble would get chained up to the tramp chair for a day or two. Once they were let out they usually scuttled out of town.
Last time some crackhead was pestering me for money I thought about tramp chairs. It would be nice to bring them back again.
Anyways, it's nice weather out there. It makes me want to go camping again. Take my tent, a pack of hot dogs and a bottle of rum and just disappear in the woods for a few days. Hunt down some hippies or skunk apes.
I bought an entertainment center off of ebay yesterday. Back when I had my giant free tv I moved my old one unto another room. It's not a bad one, just falling apart. Once the giant TV died, I was in no hurry to drag it back into the living room. So I put the TV on a little end table I had in my living room. It looks like crap. It might as well be sitting on a milk crate. I did not give it much thought, however, because I have other things to spend my money on and an entertainment center was on the bottom of my list. However, yesterday I was browsing ebay in one of my favorite ways, by location. I pick a category of large things for sale and I sort it by items that are closest to me. I can usually find some good deals that way. I saw this entertainment center for a mere thirty dollars so I decided to go ahead and pick it up. Only annoying part is I have to run down on my lunch break to get it. Luckily it is only two blocks form my house.
http://i3.ebayimg.com/04/i/08/8f/2b/9b_1.JPG
Nothing much else going on, going down to the haven tonight. I think I'll drink some cheap bottled beer for a change. Mm. Beer.
2026 Update
Climbing aboard the time machine: 2006 Ed can't feel his ass, but he has opinions about 1800s police gadgetry.
Ah, 2006: when a man could doze off on a spool chair, wake up with a dead backside, and immediately propose bringing back a nineteenth-century torture chair for panhandlers—and call it a blog post. The modern internet would have eaten him alive before his circulation returned. Look at the artifacts scattered in this evidence: eBay by location meant personally driving two blocks to a stranger's house for a thirty-dollar entertainment center. Now everything's a delivery app, an algorithm, and a five-dollar tip prompt. 'Entertainment center' is itself a fossil—the great wooden sarcophagus for a cathode-ray whale, replaced by a thin glowing pane and a soundbar subscription. And 'cheap bottled beer at the haven'? In 2026, that sentence would be a craft cocktail called 'Nostalgic Abandon' with an eighteen-dollar price tag. Also, we still have spool chairs, but now they're called 'accent furniture' and are sold with the word 'elevate' in the listing. I miss the honesty. Not the knobs.
“2006 Ed, did you actually think a knobby chair would improve the local panhandler situation, or was that just the spool chair cutting off the blood to your better judgment before you hit 'publish'?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you might be onto something there. That spool chair does things to a man’s brain, cutting off the blood supply and all. I dozed off thinking about tramp chairs and woke up with my ass asleep and a half-baked plan to bring them back. I mean, sure, part of me thinks it’d be droll to chain up some loudmouth panhandler to a knobby bench and let him think about his life choices for a day. But then I realize I can barely get my own hammock hung, and the last thing I need is the cops showing up because I built a medieval torture device in my back yard. The crackhead would probably steal the chair anyway and sell it for scrap. So no, I don't really think it'd improve anything. But it makes for a fun blog post, and God knows I need entertainment that doesn't involve hauling an entertainment center two blocks on my lunch break. Now, where’s that cheap beer?
