A leap of faith

 

I know this has nothing to do with Leap Day. I had one in mind that involved lemurs, but I didn't think it was worth creating because no one is going to leap at the chance to get a Leap Year or Leap Day shirt on Leap Day knowing it will take a week to print and ship and the next time you'll wear it is three years from now. 

That didn't require a great leap of faith to figure out.

I am kind of proud of the "I Am the Thorax" shirt because no one has really used the idea. Oh there are a few "I the Thorax I speak for the Bees" t-shirts if you Google it, but I think those are stupid and don't make a great deal of sense other than a bee having a thorax and bee rhymes with tree. 

Again I when the Absurdism route and chose a ribcage speaking for the internal organs it guards. It has a very Camoo absurdity to it and only appeal to a very fringe market. I just need to figure out a way to tap into that market.

Posting these things on social media seems to have no impact whatsoever on people buying t-shirts, reading my blog or even trolling me with vile comments. I would think if someone called me nasty names I would at least know I was getting their attention. 

Though I have to put it all into perspective.  There are millions of tweets and Instagram posts. People have to be looking at the right time to see my posts and even if I # them it is a long shot they will be seen. And my snarky comments on other people's posts probably aren't read once they get moved down in the comments. 

Which reinforces my the observation I've made many, many times that I am invisible. So I just need to figure out a way to create a t-shirt about being invisible. 

Maybe I already have.

Trainbies

 This design was a no brainer. 

Okay, the inspiration was a group of people we in the public transit industry that operate train systems affectionately call "Foamers." A foamer is someone who is so passionate about trains that they figuratively (and sometimes literally) foam at the mouth.

Foamers don't typically like the term foamer because they think we are making fun of their passion. And we are. Because if you work around trains long enough, they lose their mystique. And foamers are like one of the lowest echelon of groupies.

But still when my train pulls into my home station, I see foamers with their cameras on tripods taking photos of the locomotive as it pulls into the station. I have seen some of these videos on YouTube and listened to the glee in the voices of the foamer as the train approaches and they describe in great detail what model it is, the axle width and how many seats are on the passenger cars.

I personal just care that they are on time. 

Now I've worked with people in transit planning who are foamers in their own right. I knew this one guy who would take vacations in places with big transit systems and he would take photos of the eye bolts that are used on the overhead catenary systems used to supply power to trolley buses and some light rail vehicles.  Now granted the guy looked like Les Nessman from the old WKRP in Cincinnati television series and could likely tell you how many toothpicks were on the table if you dumped a box of them out, but still, I found it an extremely odd passion.

But passion is passion. I just wouldn't want the inscription on my headstone (the one that I've already made clear I will never have) read, "Here lies Tim, He liked trains. We think he was off the rails."

Though I don't think, "Here lies Tim, He wrote a blog no one read and told really bad dad jokes that he tried putting on t-shirts that on one bought," is much better.

What's that? If I listen really carefully I can hear a really long lugubrious howl.

At least it isn't a train whistle.

Put your best foot forward

 

Once again I revived a concept from years ago. The six feet under pun came from a December 2014 post I wrote about accidently art.  I like this image better. It uses a photo I took outside a church in Talaton, England many, many years ago. I like the starkness of it.The tree truly belongs near a cemetery.

It can be an allusion to how deep they bury you or the HBO series Six Feet Under.  No one seems to remember it since the main actor became the loveable serial killer Dexter. 

During the pandemic, six feet was the magic distance you were supposed to stay from people to avoid COVID. I had played with the concept of an ad that said, "Six feet apart or six feet under. You choose." Seems a bit overly dramatic now.  No one gives a rip about COVID now.

Though no one seems in a hurry to return to daily work in an office environment either. Funny how we pick and choose what precautions benefit us.

I think six feet under was the depth they decided on for burying someone so animals wouldn't dig them up. Seems archaic now since they put people in metal coffins surrounded by a concrete barrier. Not that I plan on being buried. Seems a waste of space, especially when everyone has forgotten you.

I have probably mentioned this before, but when I do genealogy on Ancestry.com I try my best to associate photos of the person with their name on the family tree. It seems to be so depressing to have the only memory left of you a worn stone in an untended grave.

It is sad to me that people have lost the art of passing down family histories. Even oral history would help keep people's memories alive.  

Meanwhile I just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The garden of eating

I was thinking about Jimmy Buffett and what kind of pun I could play off with his name. That led to an "All you can" eat buffet concept, but nothing really rhymes with "eat" that makes sense with Jimmy Buffett's musical legacy. But that did make me think of the Bower's 99r restaurant that my dad used to take us to when I was pretty darned young in Boise that's claim to fame was you could get all you could eat for 99 cents.  I wrote about in October 2012 in a post called originally, "All you can eat." 

ChatGpt wasn't very forthcoming about Bower's 99r. It suggested I look up newspaper articles about it (in a conspiracy with Ancestry.com's Newspapers.com I am convinced). I just Googled it and found a bit of background on something someone wrote on Facebook. Apparently Bower's 99r closed its last restaurant in Boise in 1965. I would have been 8 years old by that time and I would not have realized my "all you can eat" potential. But it left a lasting impression upon me.

I found the image of the postcard above picturing lots of people from the past and future rushing to Bower's 99r. I added the headline "The Garden of Eating" because it was in a sense, paradise lost. At least it was for my father who I documented had a prodigious appetite but never became obese. He did ironically die of stomach cancer. So his love of eating was not without some consequences.

I imagine 99 cents back in the early 1960s was actually pretty pricey in today's dollars. My dad worked in a warehouse and had three kids to clothe and feed so taking a family of five to a 99 cent a pop restaurant was still a big deal to him. I vaguely remember that, although it was an all you can eat place, it wasn't like a modern buffet. They had a salad bar type thing, but you ordered your entrees at the table from a server. I seem to recall being instructed not to fill up on salads. 

It is a rule I live by to this day when confronted with "all you can eat" situations. But I don't have my father's appetite or ability not pack on weight, so I rarely eat at "all you can eat" palaces.  COVID eliminated many of them anyway. Inflation tapped in the final nail in the coffin so I wouldn't know where to go for an "all you can eat" experience anymore anyway.  

Even my last trip to Las Vegas a year ago revealed that buffets were a thing of the distant past. 

So I think gluttony was the original sin we as humans committed to be driven out of the Garden of Eating.

I'm kind of proud the way I closed the loop on that one.
 

Call of the wild

 Look familiar? I think most people are past video call meeting humor now. The novelty wore off quickly. But they changed us as a meeting society. 

Not that I ever thought meetings were a useful exercise anyway. Groups of people are not very effective at producing anything despite what the inspirational coffee mugs say about team work. I am willing to bet it was a single person who came up with the slogans, "There is no 'I' in team" or "Team work makes the dream work." Then a committee debated for several hours about whether they had enough words or should be turned into an acronym.

Having spent the last few days actually working with a team of people in person, I still felt like I was in a video call. Now granted I was staring at a video monitor as we filmed scenes for a 30 second commercial. And don't think the irony escapes me.

I image when I actually retire I will not have a great deal of interaction with people at all other than giving thumbs up to photos of their pets on Facebook and making snarky comments on TwitterX that no one reads.

I hope to still keep up with my blog because I have decided it fits nicely with my new understanding of Absurdism after designing a t-shirt depicting Albert Camus as a cow.

I'm living the absurdist dream here.

I don't trust optimists

 

I am the first to admit that I am a sarcastic pessimist. I don't trust people who are always trying to put a positive spin on things. 

It's not so much that I see the worst in everything. Experience just tells me that it is more realistic (and healthy) to be a bit skeptical. And overly optimistic people just annoy me.

It does make my humor a bit too biting at times. I do catch myself listening to conversations and impulsively jumping in with smart ass comments. But lately I have tried curbing that a bit. I'm sure it is an annoying compulsion too to listen to me trying to be funny all of the time.

Still I think sarcasm is at the heart of most humor that is funny (or at least I think is funny). Which is why I'd like people to reinforce my belief that I am humorous by buying my t-shirt designs. Or at least appreciating them.

To that end I wore two of my t-shirts on the ad shoot. One was the "Walken like an Egyptian" shirt and the other was my "Groovin' Old Man" riff on Da Vinci. The ad agency people seemed to think the Walken shirts was funny. But I didn't tell them it was my design at first. Later that night I share that with them and they sort of politely nodded. I then made the mistake of showing them some of the other designs on my phone. And I began sensing that glazing over look people get when they are trying to be polite but aren't really into what you are sharing. 

It wasn't quite as bad as the reaction I got to the slide show of my life I shared with my marketing staff a few months ago. But it also wasn't an overwhelming reinforcement of my desire to be thought of a funny and creative person but has never been truly appreciated. 

Fortunately I resisted the urge to share my Blog address with any of them. The pessimist in me is firmly acknowledging that that is a side of me best kept confined to random people who Google in here, shake their head in confusion and leave.

Timewaits wept

 

I think I read that the shortest book in the Bible read, “Jesus wept.” I just came out of a 13 hour ad shoot and I think I know how Jesus felt. But I wanted to make sure I posted anyway.

And no I am not comparing myself to Jesus.

Jesus no.

I had to post this on my phone after the ad shoot. Thus the brevity and original lack of image. The ad shoot was part of my day job in marketing/advertising. I love that aspect of it, but the shoot was pretty grueling and I did sort of lose my shit towards the end when the director kept wanting to do take after take. It wasn't like we were producing stuff for the Super Bowl, but he did fancy himself an artist. 

I just wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep. 

Sometimes I just think I am getting too old for this shit.

Makes me want to cry.

Sing like no one is watching

 Just to keep things even, I'll bookend my lopsided inspirational quote about dancing with on about singing. It's something I wish I could do, but although I had a nice voice up until it changed at puberty I now have the range one might expect of an old man.

But I like to sing along with my guitar playing. I'm okay with those raspy songs and some country. I can do low ballads, but I am no Roy Orbison.

Though I like to sing, "Crying" in a sub optimal range that only dogs can hear. My dog doesn't appreciate it (speaking os lugubrious howls).

When I was a buddhist, I could get a pretty good chant going.

Singing, however, like my guitar playing and limited dancing is something I keep to myself (except for blog posts...which is pretty much keeping it to myself).

Dance like no one is listening

 

I guess the question is, if you are bad at something, should you really be doing it? I know the glass half full mamby pamby people would say yes. I'm not so sure.

I went to one too many concerts in my youth where there always seemed to be some idiot dancing over in the aisle on the side of the theater. They often had scarfs. I imagine they also often had taken acid.  But regardless, they were never people I wanted to watch dance...or sing...or sit for that matter.

Perhaps the lord watches over the oblivious and those who can't dance.  

I wouldn't say I can't dance. I also wouldn't say I can dance. I grew up in the 70s and 80s when dancing was just moving around randomly to music. Disco snuck in there at one point but we all try to forget that.

I did take swing dance lessons once. And I learned the Macarena on several cruises. I also took waltz lessons before my daughter's Quinceanera.  

None of these lessons were terribly successful.

So I don't generally dance.

I do remember liking slow dances when I was in junior high and we had these afternoon sock hops in the gym. I used to try and ask girls I like to fast dance and hope it would transition into a slow dance. It was an opportunity to actually hold a girl and sway a bit. This strategy worked a few times. I always came away from the slow dances thinking I was practically engaged to the girl. They never seemed to share the importance I projected onto slow dancing (or asking them to dance period).

I don't think girls during that time had the same anxiety as boys did about asking girls to dance. Or talking to them for that matter. It was something that never became easier for me over the years  until perhaps now when I am old and no one particularly thinks I exist. So talking to them is of little consequences.

And I can't imagine asking anyone but my wife to dance anymore anyway. But at least I have a 50/50 chance of her saying yes.

Bite me

 

I suppose the Notre Dame people might take exception to a vampire leprechaun. I kind of like it. "Fighting Irish" seems a bit to stereotypical to me. I suppose it is better than the "Drunk Irish." But still, if making Chiefs, Indians, Braves and Red Skins into mascots is offensive, why shouldn't Fighting Irish be? 

Or Vikings, or Vandals, or Raiders or Chargers?

Wait, Chargers are something you plug in  Not sure why it is a mascot anyway. What does San Diego have to do with Chargers? 

It's okay to appropriate animal names though. Broncos, Bengals Longhorns and Dolphins don't have rights anyway.

No one seems to give a shit about Cowboys.

Now Biting Irish, that's a mascot you can sink your teeth in (or visa versa). I wouldn't want to play night games against them. Those would be pretty high stake competitions.

Pause for lugubrious howl.

Manly yes, but I like it too!

 

I do believe Irish Spring soap is still around. It is another product's commercial that I remember as a kid. There was a rugged Irish guy who used Irish Spring and apparently smelled good after a hard day doing whatever rugged Irish guys do. They made a point of saying that Irish Spring was a man's soap. But then a young, attractive Irish woman would pop in and say, "Manly yes, but I like it too."

Even then I thought it was stupidly sexist. But then just about everything was until we all woke up in the late 2020s.

I'm releasing all of my Irish t-shirts now in time for St. Patrick's Day.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

I've always like this one, but I discovered a few other t-shirt artists were hawking it as well. So I came up with an alternative that show throw off a few people who may take a while to get it if they haven't experienced the first t-shirt:

It makes my Irish eyes just smile. And who can go wrong with Sham Rocks?

I really think I rock at this.

Be absurd

 Who says I can do your high brow humor? Though I did have to do a bit of research when I was working on this design. I always thought Albert Camus was an existentialist. Turns out he was more of an absurdist. 

Jokes on me. I don't see much of a difference between the two. 

I actually thought this was pretty good likeness of Camus (if he was a cow or a vache in French). I wonder if French cows say, "Moo." Or are they snobs like the rest of the French when it comes to their language.

I think Camus would have appreciated the absurdity of his image on a t-shirt as a cow. I find it interesting that Camus died in an automobile accident when he was 46. So he didn't get to test his theories of the meaninglessness of life if he had grown old and really had to get used to the inevitability of dying. And from what I've read, Camus was a passenger in the automobile he died in and was killed instantly. So he didn't even get an "Oh, shit" moment when he died. 

That is absurd.

And speaking of absurd, I have say something about Trump introducing his own line of sneakers. Not only is that a ridiculous thing for him to do, but they are these trashy gold lame things with an American flag on them. Who would wear that crap, especially at $300 a pair?

I think that would be too absurd even for Camus, or Camoo.

He built this city...right

 Trumps chimp for a son is quoted as stating that his father built the skyline of New York City and now he is being treated poorly for defrauding that same city and the state. He is threatening to take all of his toys and go home to Florida where the chosen will rebuild.

Give me a break. 

The man is a liar and cheat and he finally got caught and he still doesn't want to own up to what he has done. And it will likely make him even more popular.

The world is totally f'd up right now.  Putin is putting more and more people in prison and killing outspoken opponents. And Trump loves him. Because he wants to be like Putin and be in office for 30 years without limits.

Whiney ass Tucker Carlson interviews Putin and acts like the man is just misunderstood.

And the here we sit.

What blows me away is the self-righteous indignation of his son. How dare they question his father's lies. Could it be that he is probably more concerned about his inheritance being eaten away? That is if his father had any intention of leaving any of it to him anyway.

He is also quoted saying his father is leading by divine intervention. 

Makes this image even more appropriate. 

These cards are marked

 

These cards are marked
They're a mess
Yeah, a chocolate mess!
Easy boys, the dirty dealer meant no harm.

--1970s M&M commercial 

The television commercial quoted showed a western saloon card game with the house dealer eating chocolate and getting it all over the cards. The seedy looking card players in the saloon protested and were ready to shoot the dealer until the M&M characters intervened. I can pretty much recite that M&M commercial verbatim and it played when I was maybe 12 years old. Shows you the power of advertising. There are quite a few commercials I remember from growing up and watching commercial television.

Steaming has changed all that. You still see commercials, but most are about 15 seconds long and poorly made. It's sad. Advertising used to be such and art. Now the only good stuff is made for the Super Bowl.

And as I pointed out in an earlier post, I didn't watch the Super Bowl. 

A card cheating Cheetah would have been a pretty cool Super Bowl commercial spot (see what I did there).  Not sure what the product would have been. But no one seems to pay attention to the products anyway.

Which defeats the purpose of the advertising in the first place.

Oh well, I fold.

Lost art

This is another design that came to me in the wee hours this morning (I call them the wee hours because I get up a lot during the night to pee). 

TMI, I know.

I actually came up with this one first:

The beauty of this one is that tons of people on teepublic.com have done Lost in Space t-shirts. But none of them have done this one. 

There may be a reason for that, but I kind of like it. I kind of like the first one, too. I saw the original Love sculpture in Philadelphia many years ago. Philadelphia is famous for having tons of street murals and artwork like that. 

I think they should create one with my LOST design and call it Love Lost.

Maybe they'll make a postage stamp out of it too.

I suppose that suggestion is lost on a lot of you.

I feel like a slacker since I only created two t-shirt designs today. But the LOST one took a bit of time to create. It looks bitchin' on a coffee cup and magnet, too. Just planting that idea in case a t-shirt seems like too big of a commitment for you.

Get LOST, cheap skate.

 

Wish I were here

 

I was prolific today.  I cranked out six designs. Not bad. If I were a novelist, I'd probably have knocked off several chapters. 

But I'm not. It's bad enough to blog relatively unread for 20 years and then resort to trying to hawk t-shirts with bad puns on them. Writing novels that no one reads seems worse. And then you'd have to convince someone to publish one and watch it sit idle on Amazon. Or I could spam people who sign up for "How to be clever without really trying" ideas on my website with pleas for them to buy my book.

I'm not naming names, but there is this guy who wrote a book about how to come up with clever t-shirt ideas and he spams me daily about buying his book. All I really wanted from him was how to market the frigging things (t-shirts).  Irony is, his profit from selling the book is probably about the same as selling a t-shirt. 

Which leads me to believe the best way to make money is by scamming on people who are trying to make money. Thing is, I'm not really trying to make money (though I'll take it). I'm just looking for validation (and not for a parking ticket). 

Though in the scheme of things, selling a few t-shirts doesn't really mean anything.

I might as well be writing greeting cards for Hallmark. And I tell you I pretty much refuse to buy a greeting card anymore. They are for the most part just stupid. I make my own these days (much to my children's chagrin). Though if there is money in the card, they pretty much tolerate the puns and dad jokes.

What's the buzz?

 

I'll let you think about this one for a minute.  But methinks you shouldn't think too much or the pun will be for knot...er...naught. 

It was another one of those days where ideas came, but a Google search crapped over most of them. I was going to do, "Silence of the Spam" but it had been done. Then I tried "Silence of the ham." Done.  So has "Silence of the Yams" and "Silence of the Jams." 

So anything related to "Silence of the Lambs" is out. Probably too old of a movie to be relevant anyway. 

I moved on to another dump on Trump T-shirt.

Amazing how well his face fit on the Cowardly Lion. The man was made for the role, but in a bad way. You at least had some sympathy for the Cowardly Lion. Trump is just a cowardly bully that probably has lost all touch with what is a lie. Doesn't really matter with his business model.

Not that dump Trump shirts are pouring off the shelves. I think people might be afraid to wear one for fear the MAGA goons will come down on them. Another similarity to Hitler and his brown shirt wearing goons. These just wear red.

I post them on Twitter X, but nothing. I was a bit concerned I would attract trolls, but they probably are all on Trump's social media network in their circles being jerks.  I don't think they really would work on Instagram. Though I like the artistic nature of this one.

Facebook seems useless for posting anything but cat and kid pics. I can't bring myself to post anything on Tik Tok and still images just don't cut it unless you put them in a slide show with a computer generated voice reading ghost stories that are supposedly from Reddit.

Speaking of Northern Exposure, I've started watching it on Amazon Prime since I never really watched it years ago when it first came out. I'm quite enjoying it even though most of the actors are probably now in their 80s or dead. It was filmed in Washington too.

How do you like the smooth way I worked in what I was streaming. Though I am kind of pissed that Amazon Prime has also snuck in ads without reducing the price of Prime. Granted they are only about 15 seconds, but that is 15 seconds past my attention span these days.

Good thing I'm in marketing and love advertising.

I just glanced up at the lower part of the Trump as the cowardly lion image and it dawned on me that he looks a lot like bigfoot, too.

Now that is Tik Tok material.

Squirrel.

New tricks

 

I did a version of this image many years ago. It was March 2006 to be exact. The post was more about Hamlet and his "To be or not to be" scene. To be more exact it was about death. When I recreated this image, it was more about t-shirts and puns than philosophy.

Ironic since I am a couple of decades closer to death than I was then.

I do believe I've come a long way with my Photoshop skills. Not bad for a writer who taught himself how to use the program (which is basically incomprehensible and unpredictable at best).

I also created a related shirt that I didn't really think of being related at the time.

I created it to spoof on all of those "I'd rather be" t-shirts like rather be fishing or doing calculus or other stupid things. It didn't dawn on me until I redid the Hamlet t-shirt that I was answering Hamlet's question.

I love being accidentally profound. 

Now I am thinking I have to create another one that says, "I'd rather not be."

Nice companion shirt, but maybe too dark and morbid (unlike my "Brush with death" design).

Though if you are thinking about "not being" I don't imagine you'd advertise it by wearing a t-shirt that says, "I'd rather not be."

I think you can overthink what you print on a t-shirt.

A man walks into a cell...

I'm sure this probably offends someone who thinks I'm making fun of convicts who are also standup comedians. Jokes on you. If this was serious, the comic con would likely be wearing an orange jumpsuit like Don Knotts in old Three's Company episodes after the actor who played Mr. Roper died.

I lost most of you didn't I.

Digressions about popular culture from different decades will often do that.

And speaking of the Super Bowl, I didn't watch it. Well most of it. It was on at a restaurant we were at for dinner and I know it went into overtime. And because Taylor Swift is dating a Kansas City Chief, they won. Because you don't want the wraith of the Swifties coming down on you if you are an advertiser on the Super Bowl and the team that Taylor Swift wasn't rooting for won.

I can only hope Taylor urges her hordes not to support Trump. 

Though I'm not sure how the Kansas City Chiefs got away with keeping their name that is offensive to Indigenous people and still played in the Super Bowl. 

Don't get me started.

Yes, I know that it was a pretty random segue way  from Mr. Roper to the Super Bowl, but I figured I needed to get it in some way. You have to be on top of trends if you are going to sell t-shirts. And I am now up to 118 designs to choose from.

If I keep this up, I'll have more unsold t-shirt designs than unread blog posts on my blog.

But it will be pretty impressive. 

Is this thing on?
 

Playing with the bard

A bard historically refers to a poet, storyteller, or musician who composes and recites epic poems, ballads, and songs, often accompanying themselves on a musical instrument.

--ChatGPTy Kathy

I actually would actually refer to myself as a bard of sorts. At least the storyteller and musician part. I still despise poetry. But I do play the guitar. I just don't write anything. Well, there was that country song, Take T out of Trust. Though my old friend Michael planted that seed years ago. I just finished the song. Never really put it to music.

I swear I posted that song but I can't find it in my old posts. But I did find it in a word document:

Take “T” out of Trust

Take "T" out of Trust,
And all you're left with is rust.
Like this old pick-up truck,
Broke down, out of luck.

Take you out of we,
And all I'm left with is me.
Sitting here all alone,
Staring hard at the phone.

Take a swig out this glass,
And let this memory pass.
When you walked out that door,
With just a note on the floor.

Take "W" out of "Will,"
And what you're left with is "ill."
That's what this song's making me,
So, I'll let it be.

 Truth be told, all Michael did was come up with the first line. I fleshed it out. If I could sing and write music I'd take it somewhere. It could be as successful as my writing and t-shirt design careers.

I'm hoping none of you steal the song and send it to Taylor Swift to record. That would be annoying. It would be like the Top Pot Doughnut people stealing my doughnut hole name. Though they finally got back to me and said more than a dozen people came up with the same name in the contest and they made it clear the contest winner wouldn't have the name they submitted used. 

I am willing to bet I was one of the first of those dozens of people to submit the Pot Hole name. But Top Pot will never admit that. I did ask them why they bothered having a contest if they weren't actually going to use it to select a name. They didn't respond. 

So I've sort of let that go. But here's another t-shirt design in the same vein as The Bard Sale: 

You have to be a hardcore thrift store person to understand it. I'm assuming Goodwill stores are all over the country and most people know it is a store that resells donations. All of the merch is color tagged. Each week they mark down a different color tag each day starting with 30 percent off and working up to 70 percent off. 

The thing is you can rarely find a tag with the color they have marked down and if you do it is some piece of crap that has missing parts or is so useless even your usual thrift store customer turns their nose up at it. But it is fun to look.

You see, my retirement plan includes finding stuff at thrift stores that are "collectibles" (in the loosest  sense of the word) and flipping them on eBay for major profit. 

So the Goodwill Hunting t-shirt has sentimental meaning to me. My fear though is that if I ever sell one I will find it blue tagged at Goodwill at 70 percent off.

Signing off with major lugubrious gibberish howling.

 

Spouting gibberish

 

The word "gibberish" originates from the Middle English term "gibber," which referred to the chatter or language of a young child or someone speaking in a rapid, incomprehensible manner. "Gibber" itself likely derived from the verb "gibe," meaning to speak or talk inarticulately or nonsensically. Over time, "gibber" evolved into "gibberish," which came to describe speech or writing that is unintelligible, nonsensical, or difficult to understand. Today, "gibberish" is commonly used to describe language that lacks coherence, logic, or meaning.

--ChatGPT

 I'm thinking of inventing a new dance called the Gibberbug. And in retrospect, Tom Robbins should have called his book Gibberbug Perfume. Now that would have been even more classic than his loveable, intellectual gibberish.g a

If you are wondering about the "Will trade first class ticket for Chex Mix" image, it refers to a Wall Street Journal article about how much Chex Mix costs at airports now. In La Guardia, a small bag costs almost $10. Apparently it blew up Twitter X (or X Twitter) recently. I thought I'd jump on the trend and give people something to wear in the security line.

But apparently the high cost of Chex Mix is so yesterday and we're off to the next trend like a dog barking at squirrels. My old Biden-like mind reels at keeping up.

Which leads me back to gibberish. I feel that I am spouting it regularly at times since no one seems to comprehend my humor, my insights, my puns or my t-shirts.

I'm going to try out "Pause for lugubrious gibberish howling."

I do like the sound of lugubrious gibberish.

I've probably recounted this story (but what story haven't I recounted by now), but back when I was in Junior High I used to see this man walking alone along the main roadway that you took to get to my Junior High. He wasn't a very big man as I recall but he always wore a large cowboy hat. And as he walked along, he carried on a pretty animated conversation with whatever demons or angels that spoke to him.

I'd hear bits and pieces of the conversation as we drove past. It was nothing terrible profound, just stuff like, "Oh, she's fine, she was just telling me the other day how find she is." If he wasn't just walking along alone (in a time before cell phones, mind you) you'd think he was just talking to a friend. Who knows, maybe he was just a ghost from the future talking on a cell phone.

At the time I just thought the man's elevator didn't quite reach the penthouse. But lately, I kind of understand him.

Pause for more lugubrious gibberish and howling.

 

Kill your TV

 This image comes from my trip to Memphis back in 2018. The "KILL YOUR TV" was graffiti on the side of a building near the water in downtown Memphis. The television was a television in one of the Elvis museums at Graceland. He had shot it after seeing Robert Goulet on it (he didn't like Robert Goulet).

Together they make one hell of t-shirt art. Hell, they make great art, period.

But I would only kill my TV if it was the old tube variety. You should love your big, flat screen television.

I've uploaded 107 designs on teepublic.com and still I am the only one who has bought any t-shirts. The recommendation from the experts you Google on how to market your unique t-shirt designs online is to use social media. I've posted umpteen designs on Twitter X, Facebook and Instagram and hashtagged the hell out of them and still nada.

I think the world is too focused on Trump and the Supreme Court.

But apparently not enough to appreciate a "Meet the Supremes Court" t-shirt. If I could get one of the Supreme Court Justices to wear one on television I bet you I'd be selling them hand over fist (whatever that means). Not sure how you get Supreme Court Justices to wear your t-shirts but I'm sure it isn't easy. I think if they are going to accept freebee's it's going be trips to the Bahamas and not a t-shirt. Justice Thomas can attest to that.

I know I just need to be patient with my design obsession. After all, my blog didn't just take off in a few weeks. And look how successful it is.

Sigh.

Pause for lugubrious howl.

Soapy Sales

I suppose some people will be offended by this. To me it was a play on the shirts that were kind of made popular by Wham in the 1980s. Choose Life was also bantered about in the movie Train Spotting (though I don't remember that as much as the scene with Spud and the sheets he had crapped in while sleeping over at his girlfriends' parents house).  And more recently Choose Life has been co-opted by the anti-abortion supporters.

I just was spoofing on the Wham t-shirts. I'll probably get a nasty gram from the LifeBuoy soap people claiming infringement on their intellectual property. God knows you can't step on soapy toes. Soap is a slippery slope.

I have found it difficult hawking t-shirts without messing with someone's logo or intellectual rights. I'm going on the premise that, if most people haven't bothered going to my online t-shirt shop to buy anything, it's probably unlikely the intellectual property police will go there either. 

For the most part, I think people and brands just need to lighten up. They are just words and pictures. 

I find it very sad that some of the ones most worried about intellectual property are the ones who own the rights to some dead celebrity. And god forbid they lose some of their profit off from someone else's fame. 

I'm willing to bet most people under 60 don't even know LifeBuoy is a bar soap (unless they watch Christmas Story every year and pay attention to the scene where Ralphie is getting his mouth washed out with soap for saying the "F" word.

BTW, I know Soapy Sales should technically be Soupy Sales (the 50s and 60s comic). But who would know that either. 

 

Old school AI

 

Sometimes I think we take for granted the things we used to rely on to do the things AI does for us now. There was always something magic or mystical about consulting a OUIJA board or shaking the Magic 8 Ball and asking a question. 

Truth be told, the answers we'd get were sometimes just as reliable and useful as the ones we get from ChatGPT, Alexa or Siri. Though the OUIJA board could lead you down some dark paths.

Let's face it. AI is kind of like magic to those of us who don't understand the algorithms or whatever coding they use to make them work. 

I remember this early program you could get when PCs first came out. It was a therapy program. You could type in your program and pretty much everything the program would respond would be a variation of, "How do you feel about that?" Or, "What makes to feel that way about ____?"

It was uncanny how much it was like real therapy and it didn't cost you $150 per hour. 

I imagine some day soon Alexa will actually carry on a conversation with you instead of telling you it is time to reorder ink for your Canon InkJet printer.  I'd like her to ask me how my day is going or tell me I'm looking nice. Though I don't think AI characters can see you yet. And at my age, I pretty much never look nice. 

But it would be nice to be lied to the way real people do.  Though no real people tell me I look nice anymore, lie or not. It is one of those things that HR has convinced you is inappropriate. You can't ask someone at work how they are feeling either. 

AI can get away with that because they pretty much don't need the job. 

Sometimes I'd be happy to give them mine, though.

Weep no more

 

Read how Trump is saying how he makes grown men cry when they meet him. They are so grateful for he has done. It is the same lie he told in the last two elections. And people were posting on social media how full of it he is. 

So I created this t-shirt design and posted it on Twitter X. 

No response.

I thought I might at least get trolled by Trumpites. But even they can't be bothered reading my posts (or buying t-shirts that make fun of their hero).

In retrospect, I'm not sure I want people walking around wearing a t-shirt of me crying on it. Not that it is really a photo of me crying. I don't cry much. It has nothing to do with being macho or testosteronee. I just don't cry. 

And the Bell's Palsy drys out my eyes anyway. Crying would be a relief. Though it is getting much better. The acupuncture seems to have helped.  The right side of my face doesn't droop nearly as much and my smile, though still lopsided, doesn't look so much like a pirate sneer anymore. 

I miss that pirate sneer.

I am sure you are wondering whether Top Pot Doughnuts regretted the wrong they did me by not acknowledging that I came up with the name for their doughnut holes.  Well, so far no. And I've dissed them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter X. They should be cowering in fear by now of the wraith I am bringing down.

But no. They are probably just tired of the hole thing.

Bastards. As you can see, I posted a link to their webpage in case my throngs of readers want to inundate them with protests on my behalf.

If they don't respond soon, I'm going to design a t-shirt to shame them. That will show them when thousands of people show up in their doughnut shops wearing  a "Don't be assholes Top Pot. Give Tim the credit he is due" t-shirt.

Or at least a free doughnut.

Attica, Attica, Attica!

Watch for falling squirrels

 

Not sure why this popped into my head at 4 a.m. I don't think about squirrels a great deal. That would be nuts.

Pause for lugubrious howl.

I do like the sentiment. After all, what does "An apple doesn't fall far from the tree" really tell you about a person. A squirrel is much more descriptive. And for the most part, most squirrels I've known (and not in the biblical sense) are well...pretty squirrelly. 

We don't see them that much in the house we live in now. In our old house they used to come to the patio door. I made the mistake of feeding them and they got real aggressive. One gnawed right through the screen on the sliding glass door. 

Squirrels are not patient animals. And you don't want them coming after your nuts.

Anyway, this is a t-shirt I would proudly wear. But I have to stop buying my own t-shirts because it gets pretty expensive even with the $2 or so kick back I get for coming up with the artwork.

I don't want you to get the impression that I am desperate for the money. I'm more desperate for the attention and validation that someone buying one of my t-shirts (or magnets, coffee cups, tote bags or stickers) would do for my bruised ego. I just want to go all Sally Fields and say in a weepy, whiny voice, "They like me, they really like me."

There's a t-shirt in there somewhere. 

Stop me if you've heard this one

 Rim shot. 

I tell you I have a million of these jokes (much to the mortification of my children). If I could figure out how to create content and post on Tik Tok, I'm telling you I would be trending. Because dad jokes are all over Tik Tok.

I just wish the people who scour the web for dad joke t-shirts would discover me. I would be rolling in dough right now.

Speaking of dough, I entered a local doughnut shop (Top Pot Doughnuts in Seattle) contest back in October to name their new doughnut holes. 

The prize was free doughnuts and coffee for a year. The catch was, they chose the winner at random, not by whether or not they liked the name you suggested.  I didn't win. But low and behold yesterday they announced the new name of their doughnut holes: Pot Holes.  I didn't even get a thankyou and how's your momma? Pissed me off.

So I comment on their post on Facebook. No response. I post on Twitter X and Instagram (because that is how you entered the contest by posting on social media.

No response. 

I'm really blown away that they would use that name without giving me any credit or even a free doughnut. Now they could come back and say that their ad agency had already come up with the idea before the contest, but why hold a contest and not pick a name from the entries? 

It really shakes my faith in doughnut shops. I'm giving up on the hole business.

Rim shot.

Letting the cat out of the bag

 

I've always been fascinated by the theory of Schrodinger's Cat. I swear I must of have written about it at some time, but I searched and can't find a specific post. If you aren't familiar with the theory, ChatGPT says:

Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment proposed by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 to illustrate the peculiar principles of quantum mechanics, specifically the superposition and uncertainty principles.

In this hypothetical scenario, a cat is placed in a sealed box along with a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter, a vial of poison, and a mechanism triggered by the decay of the radioactive atom. If the Geiger counter detects radiation, the mechanism is activated, releasing the poison and causing the cat's demise.

According to quantum mechanics, before the box is opened and an observation is made, the radioactive atom exists in a superposition of decayed and undecayed states simultaneously. Consequently, the cat is considered to be both alive and dead, as its fate is entangled with the uncertain state of the atom.

The underlying concept is that the act of observation collapses the quantum superposition, forcing the system into one of the possible states. Schrödinger used this scenario to highlight the apparent paradoxes and challenges posed by the application of quantum mechanics to macroscopic objects.

It is important to note that Schrödinger's Cat is a theoretical construct designed to emphasize the peculiarities of quantum superposition and does not suggest that a cat can exist in a simultaneous state of life and death in reality. The thought experiment is frequently used in discussions about the interpretation of quantum 

Jargon aside, and despite ChatGPT's disclaimer at the end (which I think was to prevent people from putting cats in boxes...though it is something I understand) it comes down to the concept that something doesn't become a reality until you, the observer, observe it. That's what fascinates me about it. It kind of overlaps into the multiple worlds theory which, in my simplistic mind, posits that everything that can happen does happen in multiple worlds or universes in theory layered upon each other but not overlapping. So the cat can be alive and dead depending upon what universe you are in.

Or the cat is in a bag as pictured in the vintage postcard above. But I don't think they were thinking Quantum Physics when they created it.

So bag it. 

Get your damned shrimp paw off from me

 

Sea Monkeys were the subject of one of my early posts back in March 2005. So we have a long history (especially if you read the post and sense my bitterness at ordering sea monkeys expecting cute little trainable critters and discovering they are really just brine shrimp).

But I think this makes a pretty cool t-shirt that probably isn't totally understood by anyone under 60. It is a scene from Soylent Green, a science fiction picture starring Charleton Heston as a futuristic cop who discovers people on an over populated are being turned into food. At one point in the movie he is surrounded by crowds and screams, "Soylent Green is people!"

Sorry about the spoiler. But it is a classic scene. So using it to expose the sham identity of sea monkeys tickles me pink. And the fact that Charleton Heston also starred in the original Planet of the Apes is a bonus joke to me.  Pity very few will get it.

Such is the life of a 65-year old creative genius who will likely not be recognized in his life or anyone elses.

Still the t-shirt would be a great conversation starter (if anyone commented on t-shirts). I've been wearing my "Walken Like an Egyptian" shirt all day and nada. 

I really know what Vincent Van Gogh felt like.