Walt Whitman Likes Pants

This morning I went to the dentist for a routine filling, and it turned into an emergency root canal. In case you're wondering, I did not enjoy the experience. It made me realize that they really should make you pay for dental services before they happen. Otherwise, it's insult to injury (although not literally--while it certainly felt like I was being injured, my dentist claimed that that searing pain in my mouth was actually for my benefit; I told him to eat shit; we agreed to disagree). Seriously, I just had a thoroughly miserable time having a dentist drill holes into my head, and I immediately follow that up by giving someone money for it? Kiss my dong. Kiss it till the cows come home.

I write a lot about spam in this blog, but my life isn't just about electronic junkmail--I also get nonsensical crap sent to me via the Post Office. For example, the other day I received a catalogue from The J. Peterman Company. I had always heard that these catalogues were weird, and of course I know that they were parodied on Seinfeld; but, having never actually looked at one, I didn't realize just how fucking ridiculous these things are. For example, one of the items that the catalogue advertises is named "Walt Whitman Pants." Apparently, they are replicas of the types of pants that Walt Whitman used to wear. I can't even begin to describe how stupid that seems to me. Why would I want old-timey pants? Are they super itchy and uncomfortable? Do they come with plague on them? Sign me up! Even more absurd is how these pants are introduced in the catalogue: "When Walt Whitman heard America singing, these are the kind of pants it was singing in." WHAT? What the fuck does that mean? Was America wearing these pants collectively in a metaphorical sense, or in a literal sense? More importantly, I've read Leaves of Grass, and I don't remember any mention of pants in there. Like, at all. Why is The J. Peterman Company assuming that they know the type of pants about which Walt Whitman was writing? WHAT KIND OF WORLD IS THIS? Okay, perhaps I'm overreacting. Perhaps not. The point is this: I'm dressed like Walt Whitman today, AND I'M LOVING IT.

By now I'm sure you've seen footage of/heard about the Miss Teen USA contestant from South Carolina, who, when asked about American students and maps, utterized one of the greatest statements ever to be fully uttered in the English language. Regardless of if you've heard about it or not, I present it to you here, fully transcribed, so that you can use it as your email signature, or print it out and hang it above your monitor for inspiration, or print it out and then eat it so that you can try to ingest its essence: "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uhmmm, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and uh, I believe that our, I, education like such as uh, South Africa, and uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uhhh, our education over here in the US should help the US, uh, should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us." INDEED.