Thrilling sweepstakes with incredible prizes below. But first, this...

Dispatch 1 / Dispatch 2 / Dispatch 3

For months, Cordarounds headquarters has been besieged by its most dastardly foe: Vertical Corduroy. By land and by sea, the vicious vertical villain has squeezed our supply lines like a giant, fabric Kraken. Yet Horizontal Corduroy did not succumb. Outnumbered literally millions to one, our horizontal lines have held strong, true...and velvety-soft to the touch.

Now, at long last, reinforcements have arrived! An armada of schooners laden with horizontal corduroy has docked in San Francisco Bay, and our hale and hearty stevedores are unloading cargo around the clock.

Khaki Cordarounds in all sizes are now stockpiled and ready to be deployed. The popular brush-pebble cotton trousers are also back in action. And small- and medium-sized corduroy warriors have black reversible smoking jackets of their very own.

Only yesterday, our troops were addressed by none other than General Milbrooke Standish of the Continental Corduroy Militia. We hope his words inspire you as much as they did us.

Men, this has not been an easy year. You are tired and weary from battle. Many of you have large and unsightly wounds. And you have faced deprivations few could imagine; I suspect the thought of dining on horse hooves or the amputated toes of your fellow warriors no longer strikes you as wholly unpalatable.

But through it all, gentlemen, you have worn your horizontal corduroy with pride, equally confident in your battle skills and fashion sense. And now the tide has turned! Tomorrow we shall ride forth to the shores of Trouser Beach, and we shall leave the surf frothing with our enemy’s rotten blood!

To hell with Vertical Corduroy! Let Lucifer himself choke upon its un-virtuous verticality. Huzzah, huzzah!

New Khaki Cordarounds and Black Reversible Smoking Jackets in all sizes!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WIN AN URBAN SNIPER JACKET! 

Yes, it's time to push your new digital camera to the limits and win big in the process. We're awarding TWO (2) urban sniper jackets to the Cordarounds customers who send in the best pictures of themselves in horizontal corduroy pant, skirt, short, or jacket action.

Mail in your pictures to us, and all entrants will be posted in our customer hall of fame. The winners will be featured in our very special Valentines Day newsletter.

Speaking of which, do you have great tales of Cordarounds romance we should know about?

Posted by cordarounds at 07:19 AM | Permalink

Whether you're aware of it or not, each day you slip into a pair of Cordarounds, you're waging war on imperial Vertical Corduroy (known colloquially as the VC, but not to be confused with the Viet Cong.) Though it's a battle each must fight alone, we can find courage in the deeds of our comrades in legs. Today, we broadcast a message from Robert Hall, Cordarounds customer and leader of the legendary Hanover Commando Squad.

By Robert Hall

0500 Hrs. Cordarounds Northern Observation Battery. Somewhere near Hanover, NH.

The front lines of battle, and our trousers, are creased with friction, sorrow, even bloodshed. But the initiative, the element of surprise is ours. Thanks to the meshing wales of Cordarounds, we operate in silence. No "voot, voot", "swish swish!" or other onomatopoetic alarms to signal the enemy. And, with a little battlefield ingenuity, I've rigged my Cordarounds for even stealthier maneuvers (see below).

Yes, my Commando Edition Cordarounds*, like commandos themselves, sneak in unnoticed and free up space so that the troops can fight another day. Breathing room. Fresh supplies. Missile deployment. That's what commandos promise. That's what my Commando Edition Cordarounds deliver.

For warriors like me, operations like fortress-storming, wall-shimmying, tire-sneaking, ground-scuffling, and of course, commando-crawling are best done commando style. I remember a mission where my squadron pants-ed 450 hostile vertical corduroy owners near the Sea of Okhotsk. Due complete friction-freedom (inside and out), we moved silently and pants-ed them decisively. For years, Navy Seals, Green Berets, the Ball State basketball team, and even Donald Rumsfeld have been going commando to gain a tactical edge in the field. This lifestyle shouldn't only be lived by men at the front--we can all take a lesson from these unwitting sartorial innovators and do something ourselves. Whether it's a strategic office park landing or a business junket forward deployment, your orders are clear: Henceforth, you will go Commando, Cordarounds-style.

* Like normal Cordarounds, only worn without underwear 

Posted by cordarounds at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

LIVERMORE, Calif. — Yes, our engineers are savants.  They’ve constructed a trouser that offers a lower crotch-heat index and greater aerodynamics than common corduroy -- marvels of science to comfortably hang one’s hat on.  But they can’t call themselves the best of the best until they’ve bested vertical corduroy in every conceivable manner.  Today, we visit the Cordarounds Advanced Pant-Testing Facility to see what happens when our cords are pushed to their limits. Their musical limits.

This test pits Andreas Wagner, harpist, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (representing common, vertical corduroy) against Trippy Frost, Wednesday night air guitar champ of Reno’s Gold Crown Karaoke Lounge (representing Cordarounds.)

 Wagner, playing a mid-wale, pleated corduroy trouser from a leading brand, set the tone with a stirring rendition of Beethoven’s Allegro Molto.  As his fingers furiously fanned the final notes of the concerto, the Austrian shot his competitor an icy glare and, with a passionate flourish so common to international harp competitions, let out a mighty Tyrolean whoop before collapsing to his knees.

Frost shrugged off the taunts from his vertically oriented competitor, then set about performing an impossible medley of Van Halen’s Eruption, Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner, and Satriani’s Surfing with an Alien.  Fingers bleeding, the Reno native roared through two encores and then smashed his air axe against the stage and also kicked over several unseen amplifiers.

An international panel of judges declared Frost (and Cordarounds) victorious.   The only abstaining vote came from Sweden’s Dr. Torliff Swenson who declared the competition a farce and a disgrace to science.   

 Note 1: For the harp enthusiasts out there who say, “If they had used Georg Hammerman of the Berliner Philharmonic Orchestra, the results would have been different,” note that he is already Cordarounds owner, and has accordingly joined the metal band MutterSchrien.

Note 2: Jug band enthusiasts may also use Cordarounds for air washboard playing.

Posted by cordarounds at 07:09 PM | Permalink