Now that Everyone Who Yearned to Wear Long Pants Has Essentially Achieved Them, Long Pants, which Have Themselves Been Underwear Repeatedly, and Underground More than Once, It Is Time Perhaps to Cherish the Culture of Shorts

Resuming regular programming: I don't know what to do with Fleabus photos. What can I post? There won't be any new ones until Thanksgiving and probably not then, and to be honest, Fleabus' official photographer hasn't produced any new photos the wow of the old photos in a year or two, and YAY! FOR HER! she's brave and strong now for having gone out with friends instead of staying at home and taking Fleabus photos then! She txtd excitedly last night, on her first day of true adulthood and independence, she's having a blast.

Earthgirl's an artist, Planet's an artist, I'm a shitty poet - you do know these are poems, yes? - and I take photos of Fleabus too but because of my sillyass self-straitjacketing code of bleggal ethics can only post photos I've taken of Napoleon or Frankie or Creamy or Momcat or Sarah or Jess or Woof or Moo or the Cuddle-Slut Orange Cat of Middle Path, yes? with the above and below exceptions:

• If pictures were arguments.
• Sliding into slaughter.
• August in Tripoli.
• On libertarians.
• On Zizek once, twice. Long-timers here can vouch I've been calling Zizek the preeminent fraud and con-man of Pwoggle Township for years even while admitting he could beat me in a game of subject/object//object/subject/object, as can anybody (though I refuse to play).
• Commence fake outrage!
• Of the Tea Party, by the Tea Party, for the Tea Party.
• Pastor Sanctiomonius says love your theocrats.
• Ryan says no, pig-jeebus still sought.
• Screw you.
• Austerity kills.
• Of course. 
• Tiny watershed? 
• Obamadick.
• The further delusions of Tony Blair.
• Libya.
• Revolutionary loaves.
• Clown suits for whores. 

• On the above.
• Gah is dead. The two people who complained the white on noxzema bottle blue hurt their eyes have decided I'm not worth reading in any format, so fuck that.
• A special circle of Hell.
• I confess I've tried reading Revolutionary Road countless times, and nope.
• The organized efforts of the program.
• Haven't read anything since Thursday. Gaddis resumes soon (I hope).
• Motherfucking shoot me.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• I like good pop songs. Vilify me!
• Wonder why.
• I love this song, no matter who's covering it. Ostracize me!
• Countdown.
• Pseu put many of today's songs in my head, including this almost perfect pop song (45 seconds too long, yo, make me want to here it again now).
• More than fine.
• I like solo Lindsey Buckingham. Berate me!

THE DREAM OF WEARING SHORTS FOREVER

Les Murray

To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass, 

to camp out along the river bends
for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife,
a fishing line and matches, 

or there where the hills are all down, below the plain,
to sit around in shorts at evening
on the plank verandah - 

If the cardinal points of costume
are Robes, Tat, Rig and Scunge,
where are shorts in this compass? 

They are never Robes
as other bareleg outfits have been:
the toga, the kilt, the lava-lava
the Mahatma's cotton dhoti; 

archbishops and field marshals
at their ceremonies never wear shorts.
The very word
means underpants in North America. 

Shorts can be Tat,
Land-Rovering bush-environmental tat,
socio-political ripped-and-metal-stapled tat,
solidarity-with-the-Third World tat tvam asi, 

likewise track-and-field shorts worn to parties
and the further humid, modelling negligee
of the Kingdom of Flaunt,
that unchallenged aristocracy. 

More plainly climatic, shorts
are farmers' rig, leathery with salt and bonemeal;
are sailors' and branch bankers' rig,
the crisp golfing style
of our youngest male National Costume. 

Most loosely, they are Scunge,
ancient Bengal bloomers or moth-eaten hot pants
worn with a former shirt,
feet, beach sand, hair
and a paucity of signals. 

Scunge, which is real negligee
housework in a swimsuit, pyjamas worn all day,
is holiday, is freedom from ambition.
Scunge makes you invisible
to the world and yourself. 

The entropy of costume,
scunge can get you conquered by more vigorous cultures
and help you notice it less. 

To be or to become
is a serious question posed by a work-shorts counter
with its pressed stack, bulk khaki and blue,
reading Yakka or King Gee, crisp with steely warehouse odour. 

Satisfied ambition, defeat, true unconcern,
the wish and the knack of self-forgetfulness
all fall within the scunge ambit
wearing board shorts of similar;
it is a kind of weightlessness. 

Unlike public nakedness, which in Westerners
is deeply circumstantial, relaxed as exam time,
artless and equal as the corsetry of a hussar regiment, 

shorts and their plain like
are an angelic nudity,
spirituality with pockets!
A double updraft as you drop from branch to pool! 

Ideal for getting served last
in shops of the temperate zone
they are also ideal for going home, into space,
into time, to farm the mind's Sabine acres
for product and subsistence. 

Now that everyone who yearned to wear long pants
has essentially achieved them,
long pants, which have themselves been underwear
repeatedly, and underground more than once,
it is time perhaps to cherish the culture of shorts, 

to moderate grim vigour
with the knobble of bare knees,
to cool bareknuckle feet in inland water,
slapping flies with a book on solar wind
or a patient bare hand, beneath the cadjiput trees, 

to be walking meditatively
among green timber, through the grassy forest
towards a calm sea
and looking across to more of that great island
and the further tropics.