Nov
12

Funny Shirts Changed My World

I don’t know if you have visited the retail part of this website yet, but I happen to have what I feel is several hundred of the funniest shirts ever created. I know that not everyone shares my sense of humor, some will likely be offended, and some people will just not get it, but to me I have the greatest collection of funny shirts in all the world. Believe it or not though, when I first started selling funny shirts, I was not the type of person who would actually wear them, in fact my original idea with this website was not to sell any funny t-shirts at all, but to sell a line of great tribal shirts I used to buy and wear. However by the time I was ready to sell the tribal shirts, the manufacturer of the shirts did a ridiculously stupid thing, he fired his artist, and stopped printing his great designs. I had already built the website and had to sell something, and so began my quest for really funny shirts.

As time went on, the website grew, and with it my collection of funny shirts, at the same time my own tribal t-shirts were becoming old, and my girlfriend used to laugh at how I was this great internet t-shirt retailer that wore old shirts with holes in them. I did see the humor in it, and having such a large collection of shirts on hand at any one minute, it was very easy just to toss the shirt in the trash and grab a new one. So one summer day, I tossed out my old shirt, grabbed one of my fresh beautiful funny shirts from my collection, a shirt I like to call Hypno Monkey featuring a chimpanzee wearing headphones in the middle of a yellow swirl, and stepped out the door to the public.

Hypno Monkey Shirt

I live in a very large and busy city that has a great public transportation system, so have not owned a car in years, it is not a matter of money, it is just to me cars were supposed to be a convenience, and the transit is so good here, to me they are actually an inconvenience. So after thirty seconds or so waiting for the bus, it arrived and I stepped on. Unfortunately no seat was available so two or three of us were forced to stand.

The bus left the stop and I was looking out the window enjoying the view, and looking around a bit at the other passengers, there was a young kid smiling at me, that was nice, and a very pretty brunet smiling at me, that was nice also, I of course smiled back at both of them, and the bus continued down the road. I looked around the bus again at a few people and noticed most of them were very friendly towards me. This seemed to continue with me all day long as I went to the mall and ate some lunch. I was feeling particularly handsome this day, since I must have had smiles and eye contact from about ten or so women by this time, and also a couple of men smiled at me, that was uncommon, and a bit mysterious. I didn’t really put two and two together until I went to wash my hands and looked in the mirror, which of course reflected back to me not only my face, but also that of the silly chimp on my shirt.

Wow I thought, if you smile the world smiles back at you, but if you wear a good funny shirt, the world smiles at you first, and then you smile back. Now that is something cool. I can’t believe I never knew this before. Also I found that I was actually walking around with a smile on my face more, not just because of the motion of smiling back, but because I was actually happier.

I wear funny shirts now most of the time, and my son does also, because of this we live in a happier world than we did before, people around us are all very nice to us, occasionally laughing can be heard around us, and sometimes people that normally would not talk to us strike up friendly conversations.

I understand the world was not changed by me wearing  funny shirts, but without a doubt, wearing funny shirts changed my world.

Aug
25

Beware of Gríma Wormtongue

A couple of decades ago, I slowly but surely made my way through the trilogy of The Lord Of The Rings while I was away for a vacation with the family. I found it a difficult to read, but it was still a worthy investment of my time as the story, as most of you should know by now, is a great one.

There are plenty of nasty creatures and characters in the trilogy, from Trolls, and Ring Wraiths, to the wizard Sauramon the White, and the main antagonist Sauron, but for me, the most vile of all the evil characters, was a man by the name of Grima Wormtongue.

Wormtongue

Gríma Wormtongue Waits To Advise King Theoden In “The Two Towers” 2002

If I remember correctly, Grima did not have any true magic in the books, but was still an enchanter of sorts, if you do not recall his character, or his name Grima (Meaning Grim, or Helmet) Wormtongue, does not give it away, he, like his name implies, was particularly skilled, and practiced, at worming his insidious ideas into others minds. Wormtongue often liked to stand next to King Theodin, and whisper things into his ears, to influence his decisions, therefore leaching on the King’s power, and being the true controller of the Kingdom.

I think the reason the character Wormtongue stuck with me so much throughout my life, is because he was the most common type of real world villain, and most perverse of them all. I find him worse than Sauron, who at least was honest enough to openly declare war on people, or Sauramon, though he did hide his evil from others, at least did not pollute peoples’ minds with lies.

Wormtongue’s are so unfortunately common in real life, you can see them going into the bosses office after some difficulties with others, or going to lunch with them, they may have even wormed their way into the bosses chairs themselves. Sometimes you find them actually whispering right in your plain sight in real life, just as Wormtongue does. You don’t know exactly what they are whispering, but you can be sure by the way that they will not say it in the open, that it is not good. Most likely they are trying to align others against their antagonists, to make a team, and grab some power.

At times of course, they may come to whisper in your ears, this may make you feel like you are part of the inside crew, but there is no inside crew, you are only another tool needed to achieve the goals of the Wormtongue.

Don’t be fooled. Heed Tolkien’s warning, and beware of Grima Wormtongue.

Jun
15

Welcome To Earth

When the aliens make their arrival, this is the first thing we should show them.

Feb
20

Sometimes They Actually Are Out To Get You

When I first started this business, I thought I had a great idea, I would be a reseller of hard to find and interesting products from all sorts of factories I had sourced out. I would sell the things I liked, and get to deal with customers that were just like me. This has worked to some degree, I enjoy my work most of the time, and almost all of the customers we ever deal with are cool and fantastic ones.

The online world is a bit different that I had imagined though, I thought I could build my own little online home of cool items, deal with only cool people and kick any uncool people out of the house forever, never having to deal with them again, but unfortunately it is not quite like that, just as a percentage of the real world contains some of confrontational, narcissistic, non empathetic jerks, so is the Internet, but unlike the real word, where none of these people would be allowed in my house, my online home with its millions of visitors, tens of thousands of them will be the type of person I do not want a visit from. Some of them even bother to write my Inbox with threats, though they are not physical threats, but legal ones, they are still very disturbing to read.

Justice Scales

Justice Scales

I do not make any of the products I sell, I buy them all from large companies, they are branded, trademarked and copyrighted already, but still the shirts that I pick, especially the funny ones, often have messages the corporate world does not like. Once they decide they do not like your product lawyers are often unleashed at you to try and stop you from selling any more of the offending products, the first tool the lawyers usually use are cease and desist letters. Cease and desist letters, for those of you that don’t know, are like legal declarations of war threatening severe, business destroying legal action if you do not surrender your suppliers names, products, sales records, and even your website immediately. Please know that these letter are not from courts, as they pretend they are, and do not actually hold any legal value, but are usually the first step taken before any legal action.

The most recent legal threat against us was from a massive massive company who were very offended by an original image drawn on a shirt I was selling, though it contained no logo, trademark or even words, when I named the image for the shirt, I used a very common English word to describe it. They sent me a letter saying that this word can only be used by them, and even claim to have trademarked it. From what I know of law, having only studied it for one year, I find this highly unlikely. Even though it has a strong smell of BS surrounding it. I have taken the product down since the letter seemed to come from an actual lawyer, and although they might not be able to win a case on this particular shirt, I do have other ones that they may win cases on. So better safe than sorry I guess.

I find I am itching to fight with them, but I still have other shirts I can sell, and had best use my energy elsewhere, though it is unjust for this multi billion dollar corporation to try and control such a common English word, and to deny the world not only the word, but the sight of the funny t-shirt, not to mention my bread and butter. I will let them win the battle they started. I will not currently post the word, company, letter and shirt image here, but I may in the future.

These actions might not sound not so bad to people that believe in a fair world, where all these letter are coming for upright and moral persons, where only people who know they did something wrong, and yet did it anyway had to face such things, but I have found that sometimes lawyers are impersonating customers, sometimes our competition in to hope of having us take down a competitive product are impersonating lawyers, and sometimes lawyers admit they are lawyers, but you never know which is which, and whether they do or do not have a legitimate case against you. I can say that in the twenty or so legal threats to ourselves here over the last four years, only one of them was legitimate, I was new to the business and did not know any better, I apologized and they let me go. The other nineteen however, were just aggressive mean companies trying to seize our products, business and website with absolutely no right to it. I would shutter to think of all the business they have closed, and things they have seized from others over the years with these immoral practices. The cost of lawyers to find out what is a legitimate threat and what isn’t is also no laughing matter.

Chuck You Tee

Chuck You Big Business

You would think I should know which is a legal shirt and which isn’t but sometimes the lines are a bit blurry, for example a shirt such as Chuck You! obviously refers to the famous martial artist and movie star Chuck Norris. I would think that it was perfectly alright to sell such a shirt, so long as it does not offend Mr Norris, and trust me I would not ever want to offend Mr. Norris. I do understand that Chuck Norris has some legal rights to the shirt, if he were to contact me, since the shirt uses both his name and image, I would have no moral reason to ever refuse him, as far as I am concerned it is his shirt, the same would of course go for many of the Star Wars inspired shirts we sell, if Mr Lucas was offended by them, I would simply bow my head down, saying “I am not worthy” and slowly and respectfully place the shirts at his feet. But it is not like that, what happens is some lawyer, or maybe competitor pretending to be a lawyer, who knows, wants to get your whole damn website, and put you out of business forever for using lets say an image of Chuck holding a gun, and they say any image of Chuck ever holding a gun is owned by them forever, even if the image is an original hand drawn piece of art.

I have written and called some of the actual lawyers back that have contacted me on occasion, and was surprised to find out that they are not actually there to help, they do not understand your position, lack any sort of empathy, have no sense of humor, and are only asking you questions to build a case against you so they can accumulate more power for themselves. As if they needed any more power already being backed by billion dollar companies. I find they are very similar to a schoolyard bully flexing their muscles, expressing their dominance, and hoping very hard to have a good fight with you so they can use their foot to grind your head into the dirt. They are not trying to avoid confrontation, they are creating it. In fact the more they get to fight with you, the more hours they can bill for and the more cash they make. Like some of the most evil corporations in the world, they make money from battle, lots of money, and do not wish for peace.

I was doing a Google search on “Corporate Bullying” the other day to see what it came up with, and came across a video which I will place below, of one guy that has started to put up a bit of a fight against this type of action, he is commonly known as the “Eat More Kale” guy. I respect this guy, and I hope he doesn’t give up the fight. Since he really only sells one product, and the massive billion dollar a year chain called Chick-fil-A decided they were going to put him out of business, he really has no choice but to fight.

Have a watch and let me know what you think.

The guy has raised almost one hundred thousand USD on kickstarter.com already to do a film on this, I have nothing against Chick-fil-A, in fact I never even heard of them until now, but I hope they lose a lot of money due to this, I hope they lose so much money that all the other companies that do this kind of stuff start thinking a bit more about their actions before doing them, as currently there doesn’t seem to be any repercussions for putting the little guy out of business, and sadly it is a very very common practice. I might start posting all the threats against us here similar to the Piratebay, but I will not do that yet.

Here is his campaign if you wish to contribute: Kickstarter Campaign

Google documents any such practice they find out about on chillingeffects.org, one particular story here I found very interesting as it resonates quite a bit with my current issue:

 

Letter To Warner Bros. From Groucho Marx

1947 Letter From Groucho Marx

 

Jan
08

We Need Something More Productive To Do

I have been wanting to write something on this for quite a while, but have not been able to put it all together into an article that would really express my feelings of chaos towards the modern consumer world. Consumerism was all I knew until I started traveling in my early twenties through many “Undeveloped Countries”, and “Developing Countries”, but since then, I have seen the effects of consumerism change these societies, and I do not like it very much. I have been accused on occasion of being the “Anti Consumer”

The funny thing is, I have never been able to escape the consumer model, I have sold electronics and cars, been a travel agent, and done tech support for computer companies, I also taught for a few years, but really I was just teaching people how to make money in the modern consumer society.  I still sell things for a living on my website, I tell myself it’s OK since we all need clothing, but the real reason I do it is because it’s he only way I know how to feed and clothe my family.

Wikipedia defines Consumerism as the following:

” Consumerism is a social and economic order based on fostering a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. ”

I had someone mention to me the other day how some of the very religious countries I have visited  such as India, Laos, Nepal or Myanmar spend far too much energy on their religions, some of these country’s religions employ over 80% of their work force in temples and other religious activities, and with so many National religious holidays, no one really has any time to do any work.

Religion of Consumerism

I responded to the comment that hardly anyone does any necessary work in our society anyhow, last time I checked, less than 15% of the western population actually has a job producing anything at all. The work most people do is just paper shuffling, managing, serving, selling,  and general nothingness just to keep us all busy. The only thing most of us ever actually produce is more waste for the landfills.

My friend responded something to the effect of, “What are all the super religious people producing then?” I told them they were producing “Peace of mind, happiness, and hope”.

Now I am not a very religious person, and do not feel that utopia would be created by everyone simply running out and joining the closest religious institution to their house. I actually appreciate the critical, and often out of the box thinking a less religious society is able to produce. I am just saying that sometimes the very religious, sometimes referred to “Backwards” or  “Overly Religious” do quite well with producing happy  places for everyone to live, that are far less destructive to nature than consumer societies, and in case your confused, we are a part of nature, also needing clean air and water to survive.

I can hear people saying to me now “Where I live is clean and beautiful. ” and maybe it is, there are still some places far enough away from the car fumes everyone is used to breathing, clear skies free of smog, haze and acid rain without industrial chemicals and fertilizers tainting the streams near their house, and still have beautiful lakes you can swim in and drink at the same time some places on this earth, but there are not very many of them. People have gotten used to where they are and can no longer dream of a time without our very polluted, over consuming, industrialized world.

I saw this video below recently, and I thought it did a pretty good job of summing up the modern world, and consumerism. I vote we make things better that last longer, and stop throwing out things that still work.

Have a watch, it is worth the five minutes.

So what do we do then if we scrap the consumer society?

The following video has all sorts of ideas about what is right and wrong in society, and all sorts of ideas about how to fix them. I am not in favor of overthrowing those in power,  for I believe seeking power will always be in some man’s nature, fighting it would only lead to unnecessary bloodshed, since once the rulers are thrown out of their castles, it will then be occupied by another, so what is the point?

The movie below is two hours long, and again it is worth the time, if you do not have two hours right now, you may want to come back and watch it later, I do not agree fully with all of it’s solutions, but I do agree with the problems it points out:

I am surprised where only 30% of the world actually needs to work for all of us to have the things we need, and yet so many people work until they are dead, or face starvation, doing things that in the grand scheme of things don’t really do anything for anybody. Why can’t we all just work two days a week or retire at 35 or something instead? I would rather see people producing things that we can all enjoy,  than filling out forms and filing them away where no one ever sees them again.

Rather then the bureaucracy, inflation and consumerism we have, I would prefer to see a new age of art and innovation, a new Renaissance. We don’t need to throw out the monetary system, but we do need to stop printing more money if we want to end inflation. Since it seems that giant banks tend to control most of the world, it would be nice if they allowed us all some slow, measured, and painless change. Ending inflation would give us all much more free time, free universities would give us the means for new innovation, and hopefully through it all, society can find more productive things to do.

Sources – Civilian Employment by Industry and Country: 2000 and 2010

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