Random morbidness.

One of the ways I combated boredom in Iraq was contemplating how I would use my inevitable maiming as an opportunity for self expression and personal adornment. "Let's see, if I lose a hand AND a hand AND an eye, I'll have the best pirate costume EVER!" That sort of thing.

I think I was starting to run short of actual good ideas, when it occurred to me that if I lost a leg far up enough to require a partial hip prosthesis, I'd be able to get it chromed, and tell people to "Bite my shiny metal ass!" While this wouldn't have really made up for losing a whole leg (and probably some genitals in the process), it would have been funny, for a while at least. And even after it had _stopped_ being funny, I could still keep saying it, because who's going to tell a one-legged eunuch that his jokes are wearing thin?

Random question.

Why are leather kilts more expensive than leather pants? They use less material, after all. Do they really take $200-300 more worth of labor to produce, or is it simply a matter of economy of scale, and if more people bought them, the price would go down?

Edit: OK, I will defer to the experts who say it does in fact take more material, and a lot more labor. Still, the discrepancy shouldn't be that severe in an "ideal" situation where both were manufactured in the same numbers with the same degree of mechanization and overhead. I wonder if there's any way to estimate what the cost would be if that were the case? Any Economists here?