The plagiarism situation is seriously, like, stressing me out, dudes, but I can’t post anything about it for the moment.  I’m sure it will make an amusing story at some point in the future, however.

Which reminds me!  I had this ridiculously crazy and entertaining story last year which I refrained from writing here, and it occurs to me that now I can tell you all about it.  Not just now, though, because I am up late, drinking wine, watching America’s Best Dance Crew, and making sure that the play-fighting between the dachshund and the chihuahua doesn’t escalate into real fighting.  As such, I am equipped for light updates at best.

In that vein, I have finally caved.  You know what I’m talking about, right?  I have a lifelong (or at least a decade-long) aversion to short pants of any type: shorts, capris, pedal pushers, cropped trousers, etc.  I just do not do them.  I have been heard to proclaim, loudly and on many occasions, that any person over the age of 12 should not be wearing shorts or short pants.

Well, I finally had to buy some. It is fucking HOT down here, y’all, as I believe I have mentioned on many an occasion.  A few weeks ago, my friend B. and I took the dogs to the park on a get-acquainted mission, and I found myself rolling my jeans up to the knee just to get some relief from the horribly steamy air. At that point, I figured I may as well buy some pants that wouldn’t require such rolling measures.  I mean, in these conditions, it is only practical, right?

I tried to buy some on oldnavy.com, but they all wound up being longer and more tapered than the website had led me to believe, and I had to return them.  I didn’t want anything longer than knee length (few things are less flattering than pants or skirts that cut your leg off mid-calf, unless, of course, you like looking stumpy!) and I cannot deal with tapering, people, I just CANNOT.

[Incidentally there is some insaaaaane krumping happening on ABDC right now.]

Anyway, the tapered pants: not happening on the Vague figure.  They’re good for a stick-thin person who wants to create the illusion of having more curves than they really do, but on a person already well-equipped in curvature, they can be very unflattering.

All I managed to find in the various stores I frequent — both online and brick-and-mortar — were of the tapered variety.  I had spotted one pair of straighter-legged ones on gap.com, but the next day they were sold out.  Of course.

Anyway, I finally had success today!  And do you know where?  THE MEN’S DEPARTMENT.  Oh yes, that’s right.  I am wearing short pants designed for a dude.  And I am rocking them.  Maybe the pants are disappointed, since they expected to be encasing a dude’s equipment and now they’re confronted with mine.  Nonetheless, they seem resigned to their new and unexpected task, i.e. cradling my butt cheeks like a sleeping baby, all the while leaving my knees free in the breeze.  With no goddamned evil tapering.

I had forgotten how much better the men’s department can sometimes be.  Back in Zembla, I always used to go clothes-shopping with my friend Suomichris (a dude, who is very fashionable!), and we’d always peruse the ladies department for me and the men’s for him (duh), and when I got frustrated with, say, the prevalence of shrugs [OOPS IT’S A SHRUG] in the women’s sweater section, I could always find an equivalent, non-shrug sweater in the men’s.  Granted, a sweater from the men’s section might bag out a little in the waist, because if a woman buys one, she has to buy it to fit the boobs, and then the waist will be too big.  Still, cool sweaters, hoodies, and such can be had there.

I usually don’t look at the men’s pants and shorts these days, but back in high school and college, I clothed my lower half almost exclusively in men’s Levi 501s from the thrift store.  I can’t believe I have been looking for non-tapered short pants for this long and only now thought to check the men’s section. The day they start tapering men’s pants (again) it will be time for us all to just start running around town clad in garbage bags, because all hope will finally, truly, be lost.