Fashion ideas I'll never understand

Long cardigan sweaters are quite the popular fashion item right now. But these aren't your father\'s cardigans. These cardigans have been put through some type of trend machine, and now females are wearing them like they're going out of style. \nYou know what I'm talking about. These new-wave cardigans appear to be long sweaters genetically blended with robes, complete with a belt at the waist. Some have hoods and some have zippers. Some are longer than others, and they come in many different colors. When you think about these cardigans, they're really quite disturbing. I don't think the robes knew what they were getting into when they agreed to do this venture with the sweaters.\nThere really is no other way of identifying these bits of clothing. They are cardigans, or "dress cardigans," if that suits you better.\nIf you feel compelled to refer to these items as "smocks," as I have been doing, I must warn you of the consequences. The female subjects I've tried the word on have not been receptive. I think one even tried to smock me with her smack. That could be the other way around. The details are still a bit hazy.\nBut you really do have to hand it to those girls. The fashion monster they've created for women\'s clothing is really something. Every year, it seems females are covering up something different and showing us something new. It's mystifying, to say the least.\nBut I take the issue for what it's worth. It will be something I never figure out, and that goes along with the rest of my theory on females. It's never going to be completed.\nAnd while I'm content with this realization, there are people in this world who swear they have the answers for men and women. They publish books, write columns (some published in college newspapers) and offer the shortcut that will send us on our way to relationship bliss.\nThese people are all barking up the wrong tree. They've just identified a problem, and the enigma that stupefies men and women is not that hard to define. It's actually pretty simple.\nMen are men and women are women. No big epiphany there. That's how it is. And that's how it's going to stay, barring any type of surgical procedure.\nBut the nonsurgical suggestions people want to pass on to the masses are not really going to help anyone. And while some of these ideas seem to be based on a solid foundation, they're not practical for this universe.\nFor example, some people love the idea of clear communication. But this type of action is not for just men and women. Clear communication is for fathers and sons, mothers and daughters and it could even be applied to lions and zebras. Yet it's not the solution that's going to end all the squabbles in the universe.\nDo you actually think lions will stop eating zebras if one of the zebras can suddenly speak lion? Do you think the lions will change the way they live if a zebra says, in his best lion accent, "Hey, you lions eating us is really hurting our self-esteem?"\nThis is never going to happen. Lions are never going to stop eating zebras because lions are meant to eat zebras. And zebras are never going to fight back because they still can't find a place where their stripes act as camouflage.\nThis could also be applied to men and women. We coexist in a world we see differently. We are built, wired and brought up differently. And this isn't anyone\'s fault. It's just how it is.\nThose people who tell you anything different are either lucky because they've found someone with whom they're compatible, or they're trying to sell you their new book. And beware of those people with the books, because they're selling fast-food answers for 10-course problems.\nI'm through trying to figure anything out. All I know is that we have two lives -- the life we plan and the life we live.\nNo matter what you do, the life you live will continue to hijack the life you plan. I've given up on planning anything around the opposite sex. All I want to do now is figure out how I'm going to live with that smock.