ARE PANTS REALLY NECESSARY?

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    At 9:42:02 a.m. on January 6, Baby X (we'll call him Max, although his name is Frederick.  Sometimes we'll call him Baby X.  Sometimes we just won't mention him), was born.  At that precise moment, Baby X became the youngest person never to have sailed around the world solo, or to have scaled Mount Everest, or to have worn pants.  Baby X held this record for 0.000000000.18 of a second. After that, he became just another has-been in the world of youngest record-holders. As Baby X soon learned, there's always somebody at hand to snatch away the prize.  Glory is short-lived.  What  does any of this have to do with the title of this piece? Virtually nothing.

    Some people, of course, have to wear pants.  Farmers should wear pants most of the time. So should windowashers. Traffic cops are better off with pants, as are firefighters, mail carriers, and tree surgeons. But for lots of people, pants are superfluous, like a pre-appendicitis appendix.

    Some on the list are obvious, and we've all heard it over and over.  News anchors don't need to wear pants. Even a child knows this. Telemarketers are as annoying with or without pants.  Obvious. Others, however, are not so readily identifiable.

    The chairman of the Federal Reserve has just as much power to alter the prime rate pantless as panted.  Ditto the secretary of the Treasury.  Speaking of power, the guy at NORAD under that mountain in Wyoming whose finger is on the button that could obliterate three fifths of the world and parts of New Jersey could start World War III wearing no pants --stark naked for God's sake!

    Queen Elizabeth surely doesn't need pants.  But, as everybody knows, she wears the pants in Buckingham Palace. Rumors about who wears the pants in the White House are just that -- rumors. The Pope doesn't need pants. The Dalai Lama doesn't need pants. The grand ayatollah don't need no pants.

     The Archbishop of Canterbury doesn't need pants. The Archbishop of Canterbury was under doctor's orders not to eat chocolate. He was almost caught sneaking a Cadbury bar, and tried to hide the evidence in Westminster Abbey by digging a hole and covering it up. He soon discovered that the Archbishop of Canterbury can't bury a Cadbury in Westminster Abbey because the floor is made out of stone. Chaucer is buried there, btw. And whe al knowen wat he I-þank abouten breech.

    Also Voltaire, while we're on the subject of whatever it is in this bizarre stream-of-consciousness rant. "I may not approve of your pants," begins an aphorism widely attributed to him, "but, well... that's it. I just don't approve of your pants."  (This is a lose translation because the French "..." doesn't have a precise meaning.  Sort of like a pause about to give birth.  We don't have a word for it in English.

    Dogs definitely do not need pants even though they do it all the time.

    In some quarters, there is no rule of thumb -- or pants. Evidently, Mickey Mouse needs pants.  Yogi Bear doesn't need pants. Strangely, though, Rupert the Bear does need pants.  And scarves!  He spends a fortune on scarves -- mostly Hermes. Puts even Suha Arafat to shame. 

    Speaking of which, Yassir was said to have been indifferent in regards pants, unlike his Uncle, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, a favorite of the Führer and Adolf Eichman. The Mufti was just wild about pants.

     The people who monitor terrorist cell phone chatter and Internet web sites have concluded that Osama bin Laden (who, like most people who live in a cave)  probably pawned his pants a long time ago.  Nobody at Al Qaeda wears pants any more, and it will be important to adapt new strategies to cope so that we are not caught with our pants down, so to speak.

    And now the government's pants pyramid has been blown out of the water.  The old canard about needing to change pants five times daily turns out to have been nothing but an old duck foisted on an unsuspecting public by an industry hell-bent on market share and mind control. We should have known. Teddy Roosevelt would have called it a breech of trust. (TR knew a thing or two about pants -- and trusts).

    Where does all this leave Baby X at 9:42:02 a.m. on January 6? Out in the cold, I'm afraid. Also the youngest person never to have read this blog. But, as we have seen, that doesn't last long.