Saturday, June 9, 2007

I don't believe in pants.

A friend of mine recently informed me that he does not, in fact, believe in pants. I'm fairly certain he was afflicted with some sort of common infectious malady which, combined with large quantities of cough syrup and his nearly limitless supply of alcoholic beverages, made him somewhat less than coherent. Nevertheless, I was perplexed by this dementia-fueled assertion of his. Beyond the mere drunken ramblings of a superbly inebriated man, what indeed does it mean to not believe in pants?

We must first ascertain which of many possible, grammatically congruent statements he could have been making. To say one does not believe in something could mean multiple things. For example, I do not believe in Santa Claus, in that I do not believe him to be a real life, nonfictional entity. Such a statement passes no value judgment, beyond a rational analysis of objective data and personal anecdote. However, I also do not believe in Catholicism. This is not to say that I do not believe Catholicism exists - over a billion living adherents would rapidly disprove such a foolhardy assertion - rather, that I do not subscribe to its doctrines, and do not believe it to be the correct path for salvation of one's own soul. (That is what caffeine is for.) That said, I also did not believe in Presidential hopeful Senator John Kerry. Not that I did not believe he existed (the television convinced me otherwise), or that I fundamentally disagreed with him (I didn't), but that I did not have faith he would unseat the incumbent and bring about Chuck Norris's Great Kingdom of Badassery.

So, from the above rantings, it becomes abundantly clear that there are three distinct ways one can not believe in something, and they relate to existence, correctness, and confidence, respectively. Let us apply these to my friend's assertion, so that we may properly infer his original meaning.

  1. To say that one does not believe in the existence of pants is demonstrably erroneous assertion. Pants are all around us, on virtually everyone, even in situations where a miniskirt or nothing at all would obviously be a better choice. Thus, presuming that my friend was not so far gone that he had simply began to not see pants at all, we can conclude that he most likely did not intend to imply that he did not believe in the existence of pants.
  2. To say that one does not agree with the idea of pants is more flexible. This states a personal, subjective opinion which can be true for one person, and false for another. All one can do is debate the relative merits of pants, and weigh the pros and cons of such a form of clothing. Nevertheless, the result will be heavily dependent upon the subjective, personal weighting of each individual aspect. For myself, I support pants, in most forms. This is mainly because my legs frequently get cold, and I find kilts to be emasculating. From this, I think we can agree that this was possibly where my friend was going with his dissertation.
  3. The only remaining option is to say that one does not have confidence in pants. Since the discussion held no context regarding what aspect of pants one might or might not have confidence in (say, as a weapon, or as a method of transportation), we can assume that, were this what he were talking about, he must have been referring to their primary function as leg warmers and genital covers. It is possible that my friend had a crippling fear that his pants would one day become invisible, or perhaps disintegrate and leave him terrifyingly naked and so very, very alone. Alone, where everyone could laugh at him and point and slap him on the ass and call him "Chubs." However, knowing my friend as I do, I actually think such a thing would be amusing to him, and he may even find the nickname "Chubs" to be a sort of left handed compliment. Ergo, I find that this is a most unlikely meaning.
Having examined the major possibilities, I think it is safe to conclude that my friend does not, in fact, support the idea of pants in general. This is an interesting concept, as most of us take pants for granted. It's simply what men wear and, post-feminist-era, what many women wear when they don't want perverted men hoping for a stiff gust of wind to expose their nether regions. Unfortunately, my friend didn't specify whether he was referring to pants on women or men, so we have to assume he meant both.

Assuming for a moment that he was correct in his beliefs, and that pants are not, in fact, the optimal mode of covering one's genitals, that leave us only skirt-type coverings: Dresses and skirts for women, kilts for men. It's worth noting here that the Scotts tried this mode of dress for many years, and all they have to show for it is a subcategory of whiskey, a transparent adhesive strip, and arguably a brand of toilet paper. The only remaining option would be the loincloth, which suffers from most of the design flaws of the kilt, with few redeeming qualities.

After careful analysis, we have determined that my friend is, in fact, a raging drunk, and possibly an idiot to boot. Men should wear pants, women should wear miniskirts, high heels, and thigh highs, and my friend needs to quit drinking.

Join us next week for an exciting analysis of mutual masturbation!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

fuck yes. epic win

Anonymous said...

You neglect to entertain the idea of wearing NO bottoms! I don't believe in pants because I like to be nude! Just sucks that I can't walk outside my front door like that...