House of Eratosthenes

Now this is why I have a blog. Wall Street Journal, online ed., presents us with a story about the dark seamy underbelly of our society, all that is wrong with the world in which we live. And yet, how come it is that every paragraph I read I can’t stop giggling?

One sunny afternoon in January, Vicki Chandler, a 55-year-old underwriting associate at Cigna HealthCare in Chattanooga, Tenn., was walking to her car when a teenager in loose khaki pants approached her, pointed to her pocketbook and said, “I need that.” As she recounts the incident, he snatched the purse and took off. But then he ran into trouble. As he ran, his loose trousers slipped down below his hips. As he reached down to hold them up, the teen was forced to throw the purse aside.

“That boy, he could run fast but he got caught up by his pants, which were real big and baggy,” says Ms. Chandler, whose purse was retrieved by a parking attendant who had heard her cries for help. It’s a problem for perpetrators. Young men and teens wearing low-slung, baggy pants fairly regularly get tripped up in their getaways, a development that has given amused police officers and law-abiding citizens a welcome edge in the fight against crime.

James Green might have made a clean getaway when he stole seven DVDs from a Blockbuster store in Ferndale, Mich., last October. But he, too, was undone by his baggy pants. Mr. Green, 30, rode away on a bicycle, with copies of “Donnie Brasco,” “The Bourne Identity” and “Sin City.” When a patrol car knocked over the bike, he fled on foot. As he ran, his trousers slipped down past his hips, and he tripped. He hitched up his pants and ran a few more yards before falling again.

Things got worse and worse for Mr. Green. He finally kicked off his pants and shoes and “ran into the yard of 1720 Beaufield,” police officer Kenneth Jaklic said in a report of the incident. “I ran after [Mr. Green], yelling at him to stop.” Instead, Mr. Green jumped over a fence behind a garage, and Mr. Jaklic immobilized him with two Taser darts in the back.

I was discussing this last year, the phenomenon of men “wearing looooooong shorts that extend past your knees, almost to your ankles, and the ass of those shorts dangles so low that you could zip up a cantaloupe in there.”

Qualified It is yet another thing I just don’t get. It’s like the Clintons’ marriage; you know, this world is fairly neck-deep in things of which I personally disapprove, but things that I, nevertheless, get. I don’t understand the baggy-pants look. You see it on one guy, and you think okay, hmm, well that’s kind of different. A little on the silly side. Just a little. But you see a room with a hundred guys in it, and ninety-nine of them look like they’re wearing their wearing daddy’s pants when they’re not big enough, and it looks ninety-nine times sillier.

Isn’t fashion supposed to start to look “more hip” when more people conform with it?

Now watch me get all confused and bollywonkers yet one more time — because in the world from which I come, if you have a widespread phenomenon of people getting tasered because their getaways don’t quite work, and their getaways aren’t working because they can’t run, and they can’t run because of the latest fashion fad, this is the beginning of the end of said fad. So I would expect the baggy-pants look to be starting its fifteenth minute right about now.

But better than even odds, I’ll be surprised one more time. Just watch what happens.

How do they keep those pants up, anyway? Do they use tape?

A cantelope? I’ve seen ’em where they could stow a prize-winning watermelon in there.

I remember a few months back an underaged kid, clearly at the height of “cool” was ahead of me in line at Walmart trying to buy cigarettes. The clerk wanted to see ID, and he spent the better part of two minutes fumbling around in the 60 zillion pockets — including the back pockets which were practically down at his ankles before he of course had to drop the “I forgot it at home” excuse, but of course he was 18 yada yada yada.

Dude, cut out that crotch seam and make it a skirt already! (an UGLY skirt, but probably an improvement).
- Phil | 06/21/2006 @ 11:37
[…] Original post by House of Eratosthenes and software by Elliott Back […]
- shoes - Uttaruk.com » House of Eratosthenes | 02/02/2007 @ 15:52
[…] Hello 2003! We have captured Saddam Hussein and he’s been executed; we’re having a lively debate about whether this makes the world any safer. The folks who think it was a bad move, have pretty much won the debate, even though they are never — ever — called upon to say what should have been done differently. Hello 2002! Evidence has been produced that the people in the U.N. voting against an invasion of Iraq, are on Saddam Hussein’s payroll through the oil-for-food program. To the tune of billions of dollars. What are we doing to bring them to justice? Nothing. Actually, hardly anyone ever talks about it. Hello 2001! I dunno what to say to you…just hug your kids. And may God be with you. Hello 2000! If you give Republicans control of all three branches of government, Democrats will try their very best to win you back by…calling you a bunch of fucking goddamned idiots and hoping that will change your mind. Ultimately, it will. Hello 1999! Don’t worry about President Clinton’s legacy. He’s doing more to try to hide it, than anyone. Hello 1998! Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California. Hello 1997! Little kids are going to start performing oral sex on each other because the President said it wasn’t really sex. He’s going to stay just as popular as he is now, if not moreso. Hello 1996! We’re debating about whether Saddam Hussein was ever a dangerous fucknozzle; the people who insist he was a harmless misunderstood old teddy-bear, are winning. Hello 1995! We got a “Pelosi Revolution” that’s just like your “Gingrich Revolution.” It involved between a quarter and a third as many House seats changing hands, as what you just went through…but our media tells us it means far, far more. And you wouldn’t believe how differently they’re treating it. It’s working, too. Hello 1994! Your “co-President” is going to get her husband’s ass handed to him in the upcoming mid-terms with her socialized-medicine scheme. It’s going to make history — and yet, twelve years later, she’s going to start pushing the same product all over again, running for President “in her own right.” Hello 1993! I’m from the future. Your brand-new President is going to lie to you. About a marital affair. On television. Waggling his finger at the cameras…and I mean that literally. And then he’s going to get caught by his own spunk, spurted all over a blue dress. DNA tests and everything. He won’t be run out of town on a rail, in fact, there will be a cult following devoted to him and how he “got away with it.” Hello 1992! James Bond is gone for awhile, but eventually he’s going to come back. But while you’re settling into this era of political-correctness and female-friendliness, I can’t begin to describe what you’re about to do to the White House. Hello 1991! Saddam Hussein’s going to be left in charge. This will be proven to be the wrong decision. The United Nations will make every single mistake about him they possibly can, including — get this — taking billions of dollars in bribes from Saddam himself, to veto enforcement of Resolutions 678 and 687. And yet, I daresay, there is no one in my time who is opposed to the U.N., who isn’t also opposed to it in yours. Not a soul, so far as I know. Hello 1990! In about five years, it will become highly fashionable for mens’ pants to slip WAY down so their butt cracks stick out. You won’t be able to get away from it, and it will remain highly fashionable for about a dozen years. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/05/2007 @ 20:53
[…] Even though nobody reads this blog, the nobodies who do, are well-acquainted with my attitude about droopy trousers. In a way, I’m grateful that they’re here because they help to clarify what goes on when people think in groups. The question that would remain unsettled, if not for them, goes something like this: When you make a decision as part of a large group, are you simply less likely to reach a rational conclusion? Or could it be that you are predisposed to arrive at conclusions that are irrational? […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/15/2007 @ 09:04

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This Is Good XWednesday, June 21st, 2006

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Wednesday, June 21st, 2006