Category: pants

the weekly pants

After my most recent post of seriousness, and being too tired/sleep-deprived just now to put together coherent thoughts, I feel compelled to return to our regularly scheduled silliness. And what could be sillier than pants?

I also feel that while this blog boasts more posts on pants that the average blog, I can do better. I’m sure I can bring you more pants. With that goal in mind, I’ll try to post on a pants topic once a week. I won’t commit to a day. I’ll just surprise you with pants some day each week, out of the blue. Pants! And besides, every day of the week should be pants day.

To get the pants rolling (can pants roll?), I’ll share a tidbit from a lovely book called Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use, by Bill Brohaugh. This book, given to me by the friend who was recently brave enough to be one of our house guests, contains some very entertaining etymological goods. According to Unfortunate English, pants are “a garment that has its origins in buffoonery and farce:”

The word traces back to commedia dell’ arte, an old Italian theatre form (beginning in the 1500s) combining improvisation and standard bits actors could weave in at appropriate moments. One of the stock characters in this theatre form was Pantalone, a mean, miserly merchant and a bit of a dirty old man.[…]

The Pantalone character wore tight-fitting trousers or leggings. Trousers like those worn by Pantalone were called pantaloons in the 1600s, and by the 1700s the word was applied to trousers (as opposed to knee breeches) in general. By the mid-1830s, the word had been shortened to pants… (p. 75)

Another point made by the author is that because of the associations with the dirty old man Pantalone character, a comic figure, the term pantaloons has roots in “making light of old folk:”

…by the 1600s the word pantaloon meant “old codger.” (p. 76)

It’s interesting to see how pantaloon’s descendent pants has matured, having now lost this meaning of mockery of the matured.

a shocking excess of syllables

I stumbled across a couple of meme-like posts last night that sparked both my interest and my concern. First this one, which referenced this one. The task described on the blog icedmocha was to:

Answer all thirty-five questions using only one word. It’s harder than it looks. Give it a try on your blog.

An interesting challenge. A provocative proposition. The particpants I read (the first two I saw, plus this third one) had come up with some fantastic single-word responses.

The problem? The posts, and apparently the meme, are entitled “Monosyllabic.” In spite of this, I witnessed a large number of polysyllabic words. Shocking, shocking. As someone who spends portions of her professional time finding syllables, hunting them down and tracking them in the wild, I felt it my duty to round up some bonafide monosyllables of my own.

1. Where is your cell phone?     bag

2. Relationship?     yes

3. Your hair?     brown

4. Work?     sounds

5. Your sister?     cool

6. Your favorite thing?     sleep

7. Your dream last night?     strange

8. Your favorite drink?     ale

9. Your dream car?     Peel’s

10. The room you’re in?     den

11. Your shoes?     docs

12. Your fears?     war

13. What do you want to be in 10 years?     prof

14. Who did you hang out with this weekend?     Phoebs

15. What you’re not good at?     hate

16. Muffin?     please!

17. One of your wish list items?     trip

18. Where you grew up?     earth

19. The last thing you did?     work

20. What are you wearing?     pants

21. What aren’t you wearing?     socks

22. Your pet?     gone

23. Your computer?     mac

24. Your life?     whole

25. Your mood?     calm

26. Missing?     Red

27. What are you thinking about right now?     words

28. Your car?     gray

29. Your kitchen?     mess

30. Your summer?     short

31. Your favorite color?     blue

32. When is the last time you laughed?     noon

33. Last time you cried?     days

34. School?     grad

35. Love?     John

There we go. 35 monosyllables that are more-or-less true responses. Another challenging task would be to come up with monomorphemic responses to those same questions. Or to come up with 35 questions, the answers to which could all be pants.

monosyllabic1.jpg
A view of a production of the polysyllabic monosyllabic, displayed in Praat, with approximate syllabification into 5 syllables marked. (No commitment to the affiliation of potentially ambisyllabic consonants intended.)

pants1.jpg
A view of a production of the monosyllabic pants, displayed in Praat, with syllabification into 1 syllable marked.

the case of the 54 million dollar pants

This is a tale of a man who loved and lost. He had pants. He loved them. He cared for them. Then in a brutal act of dry cleaning, he lost his beloved pants. “Vengence will be mine!” he cried to the heavens. Setting himself up against the drycleaners who had so wronged him, he decided to sue the pants off them.

But the cruel fates and crueler legal system failed him:

A judge in the District of Columbia has dismissed a case against a dry cleaner who was sued for $54 million in damages over a pair of missing pants.

Roy L. Pearson, an administrative law judge, originally sought $67 million from the Chung family, owners of Custom Cleaners. He claimed they lost a favorite pair of his suit trousers and later tried to give him a pair that were not his.

Man, he must really have loved those pants.

When the drycleaners tried to pull up some other man’s pants, and pass those phony pants off as his own, he was not swayed. When they tried to offer him payment for replacement pants, he was not mollified.

Over the course of the litigation, the Chungs said they made three settlement offers — $3,000, then $4,600, then $12,000 — all rejected.

He demanded satisfaction. The satisfaction that the drycleaners so boldly guaranteed on their front sign. He refused to drop his pants suit.

What price freedom? What price pants?

Thanks for sharing this, jenny. You have become a remarkable source of pants. And thanks, John, for sending me this other article.

a crisis of pants

It is imperative that I produce a pants post, pronto. I’ve had a request from a pants enthusiast for some fresh pants. And I’ve been rummaging through my pants pile, and coming up time and time again without the right pants. I thought I’d hit bottom. What could possibly top the pants I previously posted?

Just in the nick of time, my friend jenny sent me a link to a dramatic pants saga, a tale in which a young woman urgently cries out to the universe:

“Have you seen my pants?”

Read all about it. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll hold your pants close.

putting my money where my mouse is

About a month ago, I wrote a bit about mouse-based activism, suggesting that even clicking on links can be a way to make a small difference: authors who write about issues or causes that concern them feel heartened by getting traffic, and motivated to write, and do, more.

Of course, there are more direct ways to make a difference. Volunteering. Getting involved in local politics. Or going to Africa to help children orphaned and villages devasted by the AIDS crisis. Not all of these options are equal, nor do they seem equally possible for all of us. However, one more way we can make a difference is to give. If not our time and energy, then the other stuff. You know the stuff I mean.

Here’s the story. Jen of one plus two and Mad of Under the Mad Hat are about to celebrate the 6 month mark of their online marriage. For their wedding, they asked attendees to give a gift of a post about an issue of social justice. And so the Just Posts were born. (Hey, does that mean it was a shotgun wedding?) On the 10th of each month since then, they have rounded up a collection of posts relating to social justice and all kinds of activism.

This time, they are requesting not just words as gifts, but something a little more substantial. They’ve set up a gift registry of sorts. Jen has identified a small non-profit that is doing amazing work in a village in Africa. Mad has written up information about another organization that also is dedicated to supporting grassroots projects in response to the AIDS crisis in Africa. Both women have written eloquently about the crisis, and the need for action. (Did you know that 13 million children have been orphaned due to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and that this number is steadily rising?)

This endeavor is also a kind of experiment. Marketers have already figured out that blogs are good real estate for ads. Spammers have figured out that they can try to hawk their cheap crap and porn through unwitting bloggers. But what about the power of bloggers themselves to make a difference about things that matter to them?

I’m planning to make a donation. If you’d like to also, you can follow the links from jen or Mad, or go right to the sources. (Open Arms or the Stephen Lewis Foundation. To help track, put “Just Post” in the “company” line of the donation form.)

Finally, at the risk of sounding like I’m trying to be a comment whore, ah, what the hell. I’m a comment whore. But I’m going to up the ante and increase my donation by $5.00 for each comment I get on this post (before Sunday, June 10th) that contains the word…pants.

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my pants are falling down

Once more, I’ve been shockingly lax of late with my pants. It’s been ages, simply ages, since I’ve posted some serious pants content.¹ And sadly, I don’t really have time do write much today. Not even about pants. (I have work to do.) But I can share a bit of pants I’ve been sitting on for while.

Feast your eyes and ears on this pants musical extravaganza².

Warning: the video linked does feature a brief non-pants bit. As in where the folks in the video are not wearing any. Pants, that is. Of any sort. The question is, will this attract or repel you?

Well, I guess this is a short pants post. But short pants can be good, especially when the weather gets warm.

———–
¹ “Wait,” you’re saying, “has the pants content ever been serious?” Well, no, not really.

² Thanks to jenny for bringing this inspired pants production to my attention.

dances with cheese

Yes, it’s cheese week here at collecting tokens. Because I apparently just can’t get enough cheese.¹

Anyhow, inspired in part by the pants game (wherein a word in a known quotation, expression or title is replaced by the word pants) and in part by a post² I came across on adding the word cheese to movie titles, I offer up my own list of movie titles. (I got all these movie titles, or at least a previous version of them from the AFI’s 100 years 100 movies page. So these are high quality films that I’m making a cheese mockery of.)

Classics of Cheese Cinema

  • From Cheese to Eternity (1953)
    Passion. Betrayal. Cheese.
  • Bonnie and Cheese (1967)
    Partners in crime, partners in cheese.
  • Apocalypse Cheese (1979)
    A dark and dangerous mission of cheese.
  • A Streetcar Named Cheese (1951)
    Glimpse the cheesy underbelly of New Orleans.
  • Rebel Without a Cheese (1955)
    Trouble’s coming. And it’s bringing crackers.
  • Wuthering Cheese (1939)
    A haunting tale of star-crossed young cheese lovers.
  • Gone with the Cheese (1939)
    An epic saga of love, war and cheese.
  • The Wizard of Cheese (1939)
    If ever a wonderful wiz there was…wait, would that be the CheeseWiz?
  • It’s a Wonderful Cheese (1946)
    A sentimental film that shows a glimpse of a world without cheese.
  • 2001: A Cheese Odyssey (1968)
    The awe and mystery of a cheese unlike any other.
  • Raiders of the Lost Cheese (1981)
    When they find it, they really don’t want to smell it.
  • The Silence of the Cheese (1991)
    Is the cheese quiet now, Clarice?

    • —————
    ¹It has occurred to me that I must consider cheese to be a funny word. Much like pants, squid, banana, duck and monkey. However, I don’t see any mention of cheese on the Wikipedia inherently funny word article.

    ²Really, I promise to stop this daily linking to Words for My Enjoyment. What’s funny is that I first came across the blog via my takehome final, as mentioned previously, but then found it again totally inadvertantly and coincidentally while doing a google search for “cheese” and “movies”. (Did I mention that there’s aren’t too many cheese movies?) It was almost as if it was written in the cheese…Wait, “Written on the Cheese.” I think that’s a movie, too.

    just say no pants

    I’m afraid that I’ve been letting my pants fall down. It’s been weeks since my last pants post. For shame. But an important pants event has come to my attention. According to some folks, May 4, 2007 is:

    No Pants Day.

    That’s this Friday.

    No pants day is a holiday (not an official holiday, mind you) where people celebrate by not wearing pants. The holiday has an official website. Supporters have put together a public service announcement. There are promotional materials:

    no_pants_flyer.jpg

    The truth is, I’m not sure I can support No Pants Day. Get behind it, as it were. While No Pants Day does support the saying of “pants,” if not the wearing of pants, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with all this anti-pants propaganda. I mean, just look at this logo:

    no_pants.jpg

    I’m considering protesting No Pants Day with my own No No Pants Day materials:
    no_no_pants1.jpg

    Of course, there’s always the risk that others will protest my protest, which I’ll, of course, protest:

    no_no_no_pants1.jpg no_no_no_no_pants.jpg no_no_no_no_no_pants.jpg

    However, ultimately, I predict that pants will prevail. Power to the pants!

    big win for pants

    I asked for it

    There’s a thing going around whereby folks ask each other questions, and then write some answers. In response to an offer to spread this thing, I requested questions, and The Amazing KC from Where’s My Cape? answered with some questions. Below I’ve answered the questions. Perhaps you will question my answers.

    1. How did you get to live in rural Massachusetts? Is there anywhere else in the country you’d like to live?

    We moved up to Massachusetts from Providence once we’d both finished college. John had been working in Massachusetts for several years already while in school, and during time off from school. We started off in a somewhat more suburban area, in a town next to the one where John worked. Then, when it was time to buy a house, we couldn’t find anything we liked in our price range close to Boston. (Things were run-down, on very busy streets with no yards, or hideous 70s split levels with flood-damaged basements.) We kept looking further and farther out. Our realtor was from this town, and tolds us of the charms and history of the small town. He encouraged us to look at houses here. When we did, we suddenly could afford nice houses. With yards and trees. It was the trees that got me. We live in the woods. It’s quiet. The air is clean. The snow stays white as snow until it melts.

    I love the physical location of our house, but I wish we could be closer to civilization. Most of my friends live closer to Boston, and I love the city. I love the culture, the food, the activities. Museums, restaurants, indie movie theaters, concerts. I love the mixture of cultures and ethnicities. I’d love for Phoebe to go to school in a city. And I know that I could do more in the city. I would love to do away with this commute, which eats up time and energy, and keeps me from doing things I’d like to do.

    My sister is always trying to get me to move back to California, but I’m resistant. For one thing, I’ve become attached to this area, have a lot of friends around. For another, I like seasons. I actually like winter. Plus it’s so crowded out in the Bay Area, where she lives. And so expensive. (I know, Boston is crowded and expensive, too.) Then again, my mother lives out in California now, too…it would be nice to be close to family.

    2. You’ve graced the cover of American Hovel Magazine. What’s another magazine you would like to be on the cover on and what would be story about?

    So you’ve seen the latest AHM? That’s right, you probably have a subscription.

    You know, I don’t really know too many magazines. I don’t really read them. So I’d have to go for something generic or fictitious. Maybe a general news magazine. Time or Newsweek or some such. Or maybe Amazing Stuff Quarterly. I’d like it to be for some accomplishment I’ve done. Some unspecified achievement. Definitely for an intellectual achievement. Maybe something language oriented, or for some ingenious solution I’ve come up with that will address social issues or improve the quality of life of some group of people. I’d like it to be about “the woman who revolutionized X” or “who initiated Y” or “who solved Z.” (I’d really rather not be the person “who slept with X” or “who survived Y disaster.” I wouldn’t even care to be the one “who dazzled Z audience.”)

    3. What are the top 3 things you want to accomplish over the next 10 years?

    1. Get the PhD.
    2. hmm…
    3. well….

    Um…It’s hard for me to come up with a list beyond that. Continued family development will be involved. There will need to be some sort of job at the end of grad school. I have lots of activities I’d like to get back to and/or develop further, but I don’t have specific goals. I mean, take the violin. I want to keep learning, but there is no specific target for how much or how good I’d like to get. I’d like to get back to painting, jewelry-making, martial arts. I’d like to get back to some sort of volunteer work. I’d like to travel. How odd to realize that my goals are overall somewhat vague right now. Hmm…

    4. You seem to like pants. If you were a pair of pants, what kind would you be (details please)?

    Ah, yes. Pants. I am actually fairly ambivalent about pants. I like pants. The word, more than the article of clothing. I like to say “pants.” Pants are functional, and more practical to wear than dresses. (I do like dresses and skirts. My tastes can be quite girly in spite of my tendencies to wear men’s clothing.) I actually hate shopping for pants. I shop the sale racks, and buy what fits, as long as it’s fairly plain. Jeans are comfy, but I wouldn’t consider myself to be denim. So, if I were to be a pair of pants, I’d probably be made of some sort of woven cotton blend, durable yet soft. I’d need to have pockets, because it’s important to have a place to put stuff. (I’m not a purse person.) Deep pockets. I’d have simple lines, and hopefully wouldn’t be falling down, tripping the wearer, or exposing the butt crack. I’d be fairly fitted, not actually tight, not really baggy, hopefully flattering to the butt, even for butts of varying sizes or shapes. I’d be loose enough or stretchy enough that the wearer could sit cross-legged comfortably on the floor.

    I’d be of a style that wouldn’t reflect the latest fashions, whatever they may be, so I wouldn’t look too dated when you’d wear me years after you bought me. I’d be machine washable, tumble dry low. But if you wanted to line-dry me, I’d be okay with that. I’d be made in a dark color like black or charcoal gray, in part so I’d be stain-resistant, or at least forgiving of stains. (I know things can get messy.) I’d be fairly wrinkle-resistant, so that I’d be good to pack or wear on a trip. I probably wouldn’t be totally wrinkle-free, but you certainly wouldn’t need to iron me. I would be moderately priced, accessible, so that any who wanted to wear me could.

    5. You are a superhero. What are your superpowers? What is your Kryptonite? Who is your arch villian?

    You’re trying to trick me! You’ve discovered my secret identity!

    This is actually a question that I’ve enjoyed playing with since childhood. (I remember daydreaming about being a superhero in kindergarden.) I’d definitely have the power of flight. Telekinesis would be handy. I’d also like to be skillful at some martial art. A showy one. Plus I would have the power to befuddle my enemies with my superior wit. Or perhaps render them helpless with laughter. (Laughing due to my wit, not my clumsiness…But hey, whatever works.)

    My Kryptonite? Uncomfortable shoes? No stilettos or pointy toes for me. Or some sort of dissonant or excessive noise. I can’t stand hearing more than one form of music at the same time.

    My arch villain? That’s a tricky one. I don’t really like having enemies. They’d have to be bizarre. Absurd. I like Casanova Frankenstein from Mystery Men.

    ……..

    Okay, there are my answers. So I guess I should continue this thing by offering to give questions to anyone who’s up for being asked. Answer, and you shall be asked.

    [Note: jenny of baggage carousel 4 and ericalee of something bookish and bluegrass in my pocket have both requested questions. You can see jenny’s answers, and follow along with those who in turn asked her for questions. Stay tuned for ericalee’s answers…]