Roll

My life as a Bean Bag

I'll have you know I'm no mount you filthy Humanoid!

(I decided to start writing at least 30 minutes every day… when I can’t apply my writing to a specific project, I’m going to send it here… enjoy at your own risks)

Child of the 70's, I very well recall the vinyl bean bags that were lying in the basements of our houses, remnants of our parents’ early adult lives. They had horrible colors, made a ruckus whenever you shifted them and I don’t remember them as being the epitome of comfort either.

Bean bags have come and gone in popular culture… at the very least the culture I have been exposed to. As the 80's progressed, the ones I knew died slow, bean-spilling deaths at the hands of the Baby Boomer spawns that we were. When our mothers grew too frustrated of vacuuming escaped pellets of dubious lumbar support , those chubby reminders of so many illicit smoky nights were thrown by the curve, destined to re-join those millions of criminally bad licensed Atari 2600 cartridges.

Fast forward 25 years at Pax East. My friend PM and I re-discovered that strange strange concept of filling a cushion with thousands of microscopic beads of some sort of polymer to create ectomorphic, slightly enchanted “bags of sitting”. In fact, after having had one caustic comment too many about his massive faux-modern 1960's glaringly orange living room sofas, PM decided to replace them all with 4 bean bags from Sumo (http://www.sumolounge.com/): 3 single Omnis and one huge Sultan bags.

While I was very dubious of their brown colours at first, my inner 10 year old very much wanted to sink as deep as possible in them. And sink in them I did. In front of PM’s 60' plasma screen, I got to have a full face experience of watching Constantine while sitting in one of the Omnis shaped like an acceleration couch.

I soon forgot that they were dark brown. I was sold to the concept body and soul… but mostly body… at the very least the lower parts of it. They’re very comfortable, look silly as hell and can be reconfigured to fit all shapes of butts and bellies… a VERY useful feature for aging Gen-Xs and Ys.

So yeah, to go back to my original title, channelling Douglas Adams, one wonders what would my life outlook if I was some sort of Gamma World sentient, motile Bean Bag?

But that’s for another time maybe. My time is up… and once more, my mind veered of somewhere else than I expected it.

back