tag/shirts

(show newest first)

from the navel stares back

2001.06.19
Quote and Link of the Moment
"Bill, have you ever heard the expression 'It's easier to catch flies with honey instead of vinegar'?"
"Dave, have you ever heard the expression 'Only a hillbilly sits around and tries to figure out the best way to catch flies'?"
NewsRadio.
The other day memepool.com had a link with way, way too much analysis of this show. It was pretty astounding all in all, but I do appreciate the thing a lot more now... it's almost like I have an excuse to enjoy it.


Navel Gazing of the Moment
In high school and college, I had a really good collection of T-shirts. I was really fussy about what I'd add to my collection, and was a Pain in the Rear to buy shirts for, since there was a good chance I wouldn't wear what was bought for me. Entropy took its toll, however, and many of these shirts became unwearable, but I was loathe to get rid of them since many were irreplaceable in a very literal sense-- I couldn't get another of most of these designs if I wanted to. I didn't want to fill my closet with a huge array of unwearable shirts, however. I finally stumbled on the idea of using digital photography to make a record of these shirts. Once I had that, I felt free to ditch the actual material object. There's a logic in here somewhere, and a study in how it's the pattern and not the object that I really find important. Admittedly it's hard to find abstract pattern in my size, but hey. So:


T-Shirt:#1 of a Series

"AIDSGATE". Reproduction of a silkscreen with Ronald Reagan's portrait, except he has pink eyes, and looks a bit daft. Bought in the NYC Salvation Army thriftstore that was around the corner from my mom's old apartment. When Mo invited me to a TTGLBC meeting, I considered wearing this as a political statement of support. Didn't wear it much besides that.

from money and miller and men and women

2001.06.20
E-mail of the Moment
>  in other news, i am trying not to worry
>about having no money at all.
They say money is the root of all evil but being that "virtuous" sucks ass. I think an artist can pretend he or she is "living like Henry Miller" for only so long before that idea wears really, really thin.
Kyle P. and me

T-Shirt:#2 of a Series

"Blue Man". From the Blue Man Group show, probably when I saw it NYC with Marnie, circa... 1994 or so, give or take a year. Back when making fun of the flying toasters was kind of fresh. I've gotten another, better Blue Man shirt since then. This one is odd, it's a minimalist image of them behind their welder's masks.

News Link of the Moment
From Salon.com, studies on what men and women look for in a mate. With women it's smell, which puts me in pretty good stead I think, though I'm a little worried about that 'ambition' thing. (Oh, and in another Salon piece, let's hear it for minimum sentences! Nothing like the legislature sticking its nose where it JUST DOESN'T BELONG. Cut judges some damn slack! Foolish liberals try to restrain "Maximum Bob" style punishment and all the stupid conservatives can see are judges who are "soft on crime".)

from last call

2001.06.24
Wow. Last night was the combined bachelor/bachelorette party for Mo and I. That's probably the reason this entry's gonna be a little sparse... we started the evening at Lee and MZ's for cocktails, and then went en masse to Jasper White's Summer Shack for seafood and more. We then took the T downtown and went to see Jacque's Cabaret... the place in Boston for some pretty amazing cross-dressing lipsynchers. It was a fun time, Mo and I got some attention from the ladies there in honor of our soon to be wed status. Finally we finsished up with an hour or two at the club Man Ray. Let's see... we got to Lee and MZ's about 5:30, closed the joint at Man Ray's at 2... man, that's over 8 hours of celebration, a solid work day. Whew, no wonder I'm tired.

Surprsingly, I'm not sure if even this shindig has really 'brought home' the fact I'm going to be getting married in a week.


from the T-shirt Archive: #4 of a Series

"Head of the Charles". If I had to guess, I'd say I got this when my jazz band came to Boston, all the way from Cleveland. That was the fateful trip I first started flirting with Veronika, Spring of 1991. For obvious reasons it was a cooler shirt to wear in Cleveland than in Boston, but still, it had a nice design.


Quote of the Moment
I AM WORTH 530 DOLLARS
This was actually a very moving line; the golem was trying to weakly defend himself from a rampaging mob, crouched behind the slate it uses to 'talk' with. The golems are odd creations, not alive, not even undead; tireless speechless workers, clay given life by the mystical words written on paper in their heads. As the slate is smashed, one of the mob yells "Money? That's all you things think about!", and the heroic Captain Carrot steps into stop the next hammer blow, saying "Money is all you can think about when all you have is a price."

It sounds odd, but it was quite well done.

from optimal prime?

2001.06.27
Mo got her old job back. Guess her company has their budget tightly plotted, both from a finances and work that needs to be done standpoint, and they had another engineer (same level, but there longer) leave. So, while we worry that that guy may be giving up his deck chair on the Titanic to Mo, overall it's happier situation.


Link and Rant of the Moment
Working with E-Prime. The idea is that our thinking can be improved if we eliminate the verb "to be" not just from our vocabularies, but from our thought processes in general. It seems like madness to me. I can see what they're getting at, and maybe I can even see that I don't really grok it, but still, pursuing this idea that nothing "is" something else, really, just leaves us like Douglas Adam's "Man in the Shack", the man who doesn't know that it's raining outside, just that his visitors seem, to him, to be wet, that he hears what may, or may not be, rain, etc etc.

Look, I walked outside and I thought "It is sunny today". Should I say "it seems sunny today"? (And isn't that just short for "it seems to be sunny today"?) Some stuff in that link (which I think maybe an excellent example of writing in E-Prime) makes me think they want me to think of direct effects: "I feel sunshine on me." But again, isn't that short for "I feel that sunshine seems to be shining on me". (E-Prime link via memepool)


from the T-shirt Archive: #5 of a Series

Simple black and white design from a pottery place on Martha's Vineyard, where I bought a vase for my Aunt, a "sorry for making out with this chick from Cleveland in you living room" vase.


Quote of the Moment
My mind is especially empty today.
goofy looking buddhist monk to second monk in a New Yorker cartoon

from wedding bells

2001.06.30
THIS IS MY WEDDING DAY! WOOHOO! I'M THE LUCKIEST GUY IN THE ROOM! AND THEN SOME! (yes, I'm writing this in advance, far too busy getting married and all to journal this day.)


Advice for the MOment
Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware of such an attitude! A selfish and sensual husband can easily take advantage of such a bride. One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: GIVE LITTLE, GIVE SELDOM AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY. Otherwise, what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.
Ruth Smythers, from Instructions And Advice For The Young Bride, 1894
(2019 UPDATE: of course this is a hoax)
Link of the Moment
Salon gave me the analysis and breakdown of the the movie Momento that I had been looking for. (You can still see the original short story here)


from the T-shirt Archive: #6 of a Series

This is from the Cleveland International Film Festival. It was one of my first really cool shirts, interesting design, referring to a relatively obscure cultural event. It was having to give up shirts like this that made me want to have the archived photos.

from mmm, coffee

2001.07.11
Lines of the Moment
"I like my women like I like my coffee...hot, black, and with one of those little croissant things on the side."
"Oh yeah? Well I like my women like I like my coffee too... stuffed into a burlap sack the back of a donkey."

Link of the Moment
Interesting salon.com piece on The Day The Brands Died. Brands are the shorthand we use to tell the world our stories these days, they aren't always as trivial or shallow as they usually seem. Even if you're not really brand conscious, you're probably sending the message that you're not brand conscious, like it or not.


from the T-shirt Archive: #7 of a Series

"Einstein Simplified". Kind of a cute idea, a complex line drawing of the man turned into a simple cartoon in three panels. I think I got it at the Boston Computer Museum, and used to show off my geekiness in high school. One of the few black T-shirts I'd wear after middle school.

from braver new world

2001.07.14
Moral Issues
Heard this on the BBC on NPR Friday morning, couldn't find it on the US Wire Service: France upholds 'right not to be born'. "France's highest court of appeal has ruled that disabled children are entitled to compensation if their mothers were not given the chance of an abortion.", the families argued that the doctor's had not acurately diagnosed the children's condition. A rather disturbing factor is how the lawsuits are being brought in the name of the children, rather than of the family. Over all the issues are so weird and complex that I can't wrap my head around them.


MicroSquish
Recently I was on a carnival ride called "The Drop Zone" with my nephews when I saw a similar Windows error message.

The Drop Zone is rather fun. They strap you in the ride, you are lifted to the top of a tower, about 100m from the ground. There are computer screens at the top which give you a narrative about how some spacecraft is going down and the whole crew are going to have to bail out, and then they drop you. You experience free fall for a few seconds. The kids scream. You land safely.

The second time we did the ride, we got to the top and Windows had crashed. This time it was my turn to scream...

from the T-shirt Archive: #8 of a Series

"Hand With Reflecting Sphere". A lot of geeks have an Escher shirt. I thought this shirt, by having a single Escher image, was much classier than the ones that had like 6 images all around the shirt.

from low down dirty brow

2001.08.29
Quote of the Moment
I beat up my boyfriend when he told me he likes sex rodeo style! I asked what rodeo style was and he said "I'll show you". He got in me from behind and then whispered "your sister likes it like this too" - then he tried to stay on for 8 seconds!

Link of the Moment
Actually, lowbrow.com is the link of the moment. An interesting site, people posting their humiliating or just plain dumb moments. You can reload and reload and hardly ever get any repeats. For a while I was amazed at the consistency and quality of the works, but they've been slipping lately, especially with some schmuck who doesn't really get the idea but posts a hell of a lot: "sorry_e_e@hotmail.com". (He (or she) tends to rip off the style of Don Marquis more than e.e.cummings, actually.) Still, I like it because it's generally always an interesting way of spending a few minutes, but it doesn't really tend to suck me in.

from the T-shirt Archive: #18 of a Tedious Series
"NEOSA tanktop". Camp Neosa was my summer bandcamp during middle school and high school. (NEOSA stands for North East Ohio Salvation Army.) I had some great times there, from my first girlfriend to the reign of the Water Mafia (I still have the old combined WM logo from that) which is part of why I was so partial to this shirt.

from shirt stories

2001.11.07
from the T-shirt Archive: 23-25 of a Tedious Series
This is the final installment of this set of shirts, thank goodness.


Raunchy Funny Adult Link of the Moment
Ok, only follow this link if you're not a kid and you're not easily offended. Some aspiring young woman claims to have made herself a "Trainer for Ladies". Lets just say it's a real hummer-dinger.

from shirtfest 2009

(1 comment)
2009.09.15
In June of 2001 I started posting a series of photos of T-shirts I had gotten rid of. I apolgetically explained doing that back then. And I'm doing it again-- Amber helped me weed out my wardrobe, getting rid of about half of it, at least shirt-wise.

Here are the shirts I thought I might sort of miss, arranged roughly in descending order of coolness. Most of these shirts are technically irreplaceable, but that's the way the entropy bounces.
You know what, browsers? If you can only give me a readonly FTP view, no upload, forget it; don't try to grab ftp://
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1920944 - dark but funny, stormtroopers say "The Deathstar: never forget"
huh, things are afoot in Boston sports radio, like I mentioned with the iPod/FM thing. ESPN's AM affiliate is gone... preferred their "Mike + Mike" to the WEEI political bozos.
Then: The Wealth of Nations
Now: Invisible Hands: The Mysterious Market Forces That Control Our Lives and How to Profit from Them

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101778.html -5 Myths About Health Care Around the World

from getting rid of t-shirts

2012.06.09
Time to clear out my T-shirts. Some were just getting old and dingy, others just didn't work.

Let me know if there's anything you want...
It's the remix to Ignition / hot and fresh out the kitchen / no we can't make you an omelet / our chef only does remixes

from February 16, 2020

2020.02.16
Shirt Retirement! Graphic Tees are funny - ultimately expendable, but also often literally irreplaceable. Here are two I'm especially going to miss:

This one I got in Japan in 2008, a Manga-ish frame of a boxer being knocked down. It was my lowkey message shirt when I was expecting a bad day, like layoffs at work or whatever.


Probably my dorkiest and most pretentious shirt - Kay and I collaborated to screenprint a batch of these - it's my favorite exchange from "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" where the titular characters realize they're below decks on a ship, but the last thing they remember was being ready to be hanged...
"We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?" "No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat." "I've frequently not been on boats."

People CLAIM they like gum, but as soon as I describe it as "putty you put in your mouth so you can drink you own flavoured saliva" they're all "ew gross" and "Ryan why"

Fascinating digging into how No congenitally blind person has ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia - implications for the connection between vision, timing, and how are minds model and predict the world.