On pants

The pant (aka trouser). Has there ever been an invention so fascinating in its origins or so significant in its social and historical impact? Probably. Maybe the Internet, the printing press or the New Zealand accent. At the very least the pant is right up there with these colossus's of man made magnificence. Don't believe me? Then go stuff yourself. Once your done stuffing yourself come back to continue reading and I'll prove to you unequivocally, based on 100% circumstantial evidence, that the pant deserves it's place in the pantheon awesomeness. Before we go there though let’s consider the word pant itself.

Etymologists and pub trivia patrons have long pondered the word pants. If I have a ‘pair of pants’ is there such thing as a pant singular? If shorts are called shorts why are pants not called longs? Can I get away with calling them pantaloons? If not, why not? What were underpants called before pants were invented or were they invented simultaneously removing this temporal anomaly? The potentially highly erroneous answers to these questions can be found in the next sentence but one. If you don't care for any answers then proceed straight to the next paragraph, if you pass "Go!" collect $200. For those that do care, thanks, the questions appreciate it. To the answers then. Yes. They are called longs in Latvia (after translation). In renaissance Europe pantaloon was an accepted and widely used term. N/A. Loin cloths.

"Go!"

Hi and welcome to the new paragraph. If you proceed straight to this paragraph then you missed a pearler of a second half of a paragraph. You missed out dude. If you noticed the "Go!" and would like to collect your $200 then please send a stamped self addressed envelope containing a white powder that looks suspiciously like class A drugs to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 and we'll send you out your $200 along with a cavity search courtesy of the CIA.

Getting back to pants then. I contend that pants have been at the centre of many significant historical events and that the presence of said pants is no mere coincidence. Like the Freemasons, Opus Dei, and The Order of the Phoenix, pants operate like a secret society guiding the course of history as an invisible hand. There is a reason why Dan Brown's next book is called "The Da Pant Code". Not bad for a couple of bits of material sewn together. But that just goes to show how awesome pants are. Anyway, I'm going to take you through some famous historical events and point out how pants have been conspicuously present at all occasions. I'll also point out a number of historical events where pants weren't present and explain how if pants were present then things could have turned out for the better.

So then, as I run through the evidence and you cast judgement I ask you to ask yourself not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your local sports association.

Adam and Eve - Pre-pants

Note the lack of pants.

Probably history's two most famous nude people. We all know the story. They live in the world’s best nudist resort. They want for nothing under the benevolent care of the resort manager (i.e. God). One catch. Forbidden fruit. Don't eat lest ye be banned from the resort. Snake tempts. Eve eats. They get banned. Clothes are created. Ancient Greek Goddess Athena Nike pleased that her new clothing company with characteristic 'swoosh' logo finally has a market.

A tragic tale indeed, albeit with a silver lining for Athena. In a pantless world this is the kind of tragedy you would expect though. At this stage you're probably wondering how the hell a pair of pants could have changed anything in this scenario. The whole thing turns on a metaphor. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the snake in the tale is a metaphor for the Johnson. It's pretty phallic. It's long and it's strong and it's about to get it's friction on. Eve is tempted. Eve yields and wraps her laughing gear around the "apple". Bad things occur. No wonder the catholic church is so anti rooting. It's the original ad for abstinence.

Promo shot for Pirates of the Caribbean 5

 Incidentally, it's also no wonder then where the term "trouser snake" came from. Refer to photo on the right. Now what female wouldn't be attracted to that. Anyway. The resort manager realises what's going on and yells to Adam "keep it in your pants for Christ's sake". This presented two interesting problems for Adam. One, Christ wasn't yet born so Adam had no idea why he should do anything in the interests some bloke called Christ. Second, pants weren't invented so even if Adam was motivated by the sake of Christ he couldn't have kept it in anyway. Hell, clothes weren't even invented let alone pants. Renaissance art would lead us to believe that the only thing keeping Adam and Eve from full frontal nudity was conveniently placed foliage. Notice Eve in the painting. Her privates are covered by some bushes. Hmm. No need to wonder where the term "bush" came from then is there.  You can see where things are going from here. Adam's snake was let loose in Eve's grass and the rest is history.

Pants 1. Nudity 0.

The Fall of the Roman Empire – the age of the pant begins

The Classical Roman Empire lasted from 625 BC to AD 476 (1101 years) and can be credited with many scientific, engineering, military and social advancements such as the Colosseum, pizza, the Aqua Virgo, killing Jesus, the modern alphabet and calendar, the vomitorium, and general debauchery. Not a bad effort for a bunch of wogs.

Still, all good things come to an end. In this case it was at the hands of various European "barbarian" tribes. So how did these so called barbarians overcome the ancient world's most powerful civilization? Pants. You'll have noticed that among the long list of Roman achievements the pant is conspicuously absent. What did Romans wear? Togas i.e. man dresses. Further careful archaeological study has revealed that barbarian tribes were well panted. The artists impression below depicts a typical European barbarian in standard dress.



Pants. Romans learnt to fear them.



Note the well cut pant with secure belt and colourful material. No wonder these guys had it over the Romans.

Pants 1. Togas 0.

Rise of Fascism - pants turn to the dark side



Hitler and Mussolini. Note the epic pants.



Pants. Don't leave the Reichstag without them.



You clearly don't become a dictator without a fancy pair of pants at your disposal. Do you think Hitler would have risen to power if he hadn't done away with his lederhosen? What about Mussolini? Famous for his speeches. A half arsed examination of some Mussolini speeches reveal the importance of pants. See below for one such example:

"It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do."

Clearly the wearing of pants is a prerequisite before you can get kicked in them.

I don't think we need any more evidence here. Let's move on from this dark period of pant history.

Axis (featuring pants) 1. Allies 0.

Fall of Fascism - pants realise the error of their ways



Pants. Back on the good guys.



General George Patton. Well known Nazi head kicker and inspirational leader of men. Also well known for his pants. Clearly. Brilliant off the cuff remarks such as this...

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."...don't come without a suitably awesome pair of pants.

You'll also notice that Patton's pant are disturbingly like Hitler's and Mussolini's pants. The return of the pants to the Light Side of The Force marks the end of the their rebellious teenage years.

Allies (featuring pants) 1. Axis -4,764.

MC Hammer - a famous pants-man

Parachute Pants. Without these baggy bad boys it's highly likely that you could touch this. Enough said.

Black man skydiving.

This (featuring pants) 1. Touching 0.

Me bashing out a classic at Karaoke – pants help with the high notes

Finally to finish. My friends and enemies will know of my karaoke prowess. Little will they know that I owe a fair portion of my singing awesomeness to my pants. Check out the pic.



Tight pants. Bring out the inner rockstar.

Like many great rock stars over the years I've invested in a pair of 'stove pipe' jeans. Lethally tight, it's recommended that you don't wear stove pipe jeans for longer than 6 hours at a time lest you risk permanent damage to your jatz crackers and potential for fatherhood. Still, like financial markets, with risk comes reward. Like a severely Alpha small cap stock, investing a few hours in a pair of stove pipes returns wildly awesome high notes. This is what all good rockstars know and why more good rockstars recommend stove pipe pants than any other pant. If high notes persist, please see your doctor.

Huw (featuring pants) 1. Karaoke 0.

Final Tally
Pants 5. History 0.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

And here's one I prepared earlier...

I'm still testing out this whole blogging caper so to get the ball rolling I'm going to do what every good comic or Greenpeace activist would do. Bomb a French nuclear powered ship while at harbour in New Zealand territorial waters...recycle something!

A bit of background for you. The below musings came to me after a night out on the lash. What was so special about this night on tiles to warrant me writing something down? I'll give you a multiple choice quiz and you can guess what about said night was so special:

Question
What was so special about Huw's night out?

Answers
(a) None of the above.
(b) He'd consumed so much Absinthe that the worm root caused him to hallucinate a conversation with Wordsworth, Geoffry Chaucer, Oscar Wilde and Will Smith the topic of which he later captured in an experimental blog post.
(c) Nothing. There was no night. This whole thing is just an excuse to write an introduction to what would otherwise appear to be an irrelevant and unrelated story.
(d) 42
(e) I grew concerned after a night out overseas with a bunch backpackers none of whose first language was English and my usual charms and wit went down like Hitler at a bar mitzvah.
(f) All of the above.
(g) Other...please comment in space provided below.

If you guessed (c) you would be totally wrong. Dumb ass. If you selected (g) Other and wrote something along the lines "you are a total douche avec bag, I can't believe I'm reading this, but like Kanye West I'm gonna finish reading your blog post, but Daniel Murray like totally had the best first blog post of all time!" then you would be correct in your assessment of me and Murray but wrong in relation to the question at hand. Dumb ass.

To find the actual answer read the post below and all shall be revealed.


Slang – the trouble with foreigners
The English language is well known to be, at times, obtuse and confusing. From the well known homophones such as “to, too, two” or “there, their, they’re” and homonyms such as bow. Beau the bow legged man stood on the bow with his bow resting across his back while he tied a bow in his hair in preparation for the bow he would deliver. Good luck to Adolf my German freund reading that. Without context you would be at sixes and sevens.

This brings me to the phrase of the day, “Ruben Wiki”. Can I have that in a sentence spelling bee style it could read something like “Daniel chucked a Ruben Wiki”. By now I’m sure some of you have guessed what a Ruben Wiki is. Ruben Wiki is a former Rugby League player. Daniel is strong man, like Stalin, who is capable of throwing large men. Of course, in this context, Ruben Wiki is the unholy marriage of traditional British rhyming slang and lazy Australian vernacular. You can imagine the chaos this brings to old mate Klaus. It’s like a grammatical version of a Mr Squiggle puzzle where you have to turn a seemingly random collection of words into a comprehensible phrase.

To make it easy on Franz let’s break it down to its component parts. Ruben Wiki, the former Rugby League player of minor repute, rhymes with Sickie, the slang term for taking a day off work under the false pretence that one is sick but in fact more likely to be found at the beach with a pie and chocolate milk in hand. With Sickie being a noun (of the abstract variety, remember this as it will become important before this paragraph is out) it thus requires a verb and subject to make a complete sentence in the context we desire. Enter Daniel, the subject. What does Daniel do with this Ruben Wiki? Daniel thinks about it. Daniel decides to chuck it. Oh dear. More confusion for Dieter. How can Daniel chuck or throw something that he cannot touch? I really don’t know the answer here so I will speculate wildly. I think it may have something to do with the fact that a when taking a sickie you have to sound convincing. It’s like acting. You are pretending. You really need to throw yourself into the performance to sound convincing. That may sound tenuous but it’s what I’m going with.

To the advanced user of the English language you can further confuse Jürgen by shortening the whole phrase or mixing it with other verbs. For instance one could “take a ruben” or “have a sly wiki”. For poor old Hans this is starting to look like the Von Schlieffen plan. A complex military manoeuvre that will ultimately end in failure.

So the moral of the story is simple. Don’t use too much slang at the hostel pub crawl when trying to chat up the hot German backpackers.