An Out-Standing Read - It Will Save Your Life* (I stand by that statement)**

(* I am not qualified to verify this statement)
(** literally)

Caution: You may want to be sitting down before you read this. Actually, best you stand up (spoiler alert).

When I first read 'token nondescript online articles' that declared "sitting down is killing you!", I have to admit, I was hungry (it was dinner time).

After consuming a delicious meal of Wessex saddleback pork belly with white eggplant puree, kohlrabi and wakame I sat back down at the computer to read 'token nondescript online articles' and on the second time of reading them I fell off my chair. I was completely floored*. Which, if these said articles are to be believed, I may well have just saved my own life despite bruising my elbow in the process.
(* one of but(t) many bad puns found herein)

For many of us (office workers, truck drivers, 'Rollers' team members, chair compliance testers, etc) our jobs may be literally killing us, as we spend the majority of our time at work sitting on our rear ends. In a previous job, it was my task to sit on my bosses arse for him. You could say he was killing two birds with one stone, whereby the two birds were my boss and I, and the one stone the sitting on of the arse.

Professor Mai-Lis Hellenius says, "standing up stops you ageing". Unfortunately for Professor Tom Marwick, as pictured in the article, it seems he had taken on the advice much too late in life. Though, there are unsubstantiated reports (this one) that claim his age is 123 years old, so you be the judge.

A common quote amongst many 'token nondescript online articles' on the subject is "sitting is the new smoking". Well, I'll be damned if I have to go outside and take my 'sitting' break at work. Further deep-seated investigation into this has uncovered there is a common and worrying link between sitting and smoking. Butts.

Could the Fonz have been wrong all of these years? Should we not 'sit on it'? Was he secretly trying to slowly kill us all? Maybe they weren't happy days after all.

Photo with doodling (doodle removed for censorship reasons):
An artist's impression of Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli -
"sit on it" or "die human scum"?

To offer a counter argument I present the following irrefutable proof. 

Long before chivalry was dead (my wife is constantly reminding me of its sad passing), gentlemen had long waited for the woman (or women, dependant on the number, or the size of the woman) in the room to sit down before they would dare be seated themselves. Likewise, before they would stand back up again, it was the man's job to beat her to her feet (or at least to his own feet, so long as he didn't simply beat her). If riding on a train, tram, bus or carriage, a man would give up their seat for a woman or small child*. Therefore, it could be calculated that women spent more time on their backsides than men.

However, as I approach my conclusion, I present to you the FACT that the life expectancy of men was less than that of women at the time.
(* in hindsight it was smart thinking to have a child sit in light of the findings of this study, given they had a lot more years left in the tank to waste than an adult who had already partly wasted their own)

Despite the inarguable evidence in my antithesis, if the studies are to be true, then I guess it proves my dad was right. I had spent a lot of my time "sitting around on my arse wasting my life away!" It really made me sit back and think.

Cartoon: A 3 legged chair is a stool.
(A posturehumous work by Ron Acme).

Those with dogs that have trained them to sit on command, you now seriously have to ask yourselves - every time you instruct them to sit are you killing your beloved pet? Probably.

So the next time someone offers you to take a seat, remember that you don't necessarily have to sit in the seat. Take off with that seat like your life depends on it. Tick tock, tick tock.