From Cleats to Pleats

My mind races in the morning when I drink too much java. Nonsensical flights of fancy that quickly become tiresome even to myself. Sometimes I just have to snap myself out of it and say out loud, "shut up!". Sometimes I do this in the bathroom, because I find peeing very boring and I do it a dozen times a day, so my mind wanders or races depending on the aforementioned level of coffee, and I'll just catch myself making up silly wordplay and puns in my head, and I just have to stop! Whew.

I also have a problem where I'll take certain song lyrics and change a few words to make them dirty or "funny". The outcome is always so stupid and 7th grade, that I can never repeat them in public, except I will now for you, dear reader. At the same time, these stupid phrases ingrain themselves in my mind. I don't know if it's something I should see a psychiatrist about, but 80% of the time that I go pee I sing, to the tune of the Youngbloods' Get Together, "C'mom people now... shine on my buttchecks.... Everybody get together... etc.". This is wrong, I know. But is it actionable?

I also make horrible sophomoric doggerel out of street names. I lived for 2 years right off of SE Ankeny. And EVERY SINGLE TIME I saw that street sign I said in my head "Wankin' me." Every time.

Driving down I-5 south of Portland there is a sign for Terwilliger. Every time I see it, I think to myself "turd wiggler". There are more, but I'll spare you.

Anyway, today someone jokingly at work suggested we try to naturally work the British slang word "chap" into a conversation. We had a meeting recently where all 10 of us were in the same room on a conference call with a guy from the U.K. He was a very charming guy and he used some classic Britspeak that we are all silently cracking up over, trying not to catch each other eyes, such as "brilliant!" and another time when one of us made an obvious and dull comment, "Well, that would be the sensible thing to do". Well, maybe you had to be there, but we all went around saying Brilliant! for the rest of the week.

So, this morning I was thinking of "chap", which led me to "chaps" and then quickly to "assless chaps". And then I thought The Assless Chaps might make a fine band name, with a cute little double meaning. And then I thought again - shut up!

Then we were talking about leather pants and I remembered that our college buddy Brad wore leather pants back in the day. I believe they were red, a la the Loverboy album cover pictured. We were very young and impressionable and tended to copy each other's wardrobe constantly. We followed Brad down a few blind alleys, including a craze for wearing cleats, even though none of us played sports.

But I really dug those leather pants. I decided I wanted some, too. With no shame at all, I asked my parents to get me some for Christmas. They dutifully bought me a pair of leather pants - WITH PLEATS. Yes, nothing says wild rock & roll rebel like pleated leather pants. Just in case you're driving your motorcycle to a formal event. I think I wore them once and then they went into the closet forever, just like this guy's pants. Much like another college buddy, Tim, he was "led by the cock into a major purchase". That phrase was coined when Tim came home from Chess King with a very tight and extremely ugly pair of black pants with red pinstriping and tales of a very hot and flirtatious sales girl. Ah, youth...