Mine eyes have seen the glory

 

Today would have been Newt Gingrich's 83rd birthday.  I first posted my "Eye of Newt" concept back in January of 2024 when he was still alive. He has since passed on to whereever nasty conservative Republicans pass on to. So to a certain extent me creating an Eye of Newt t-shirt and promoting it on Blue Sky is in poor taste. But it is not like anyone is actually going to buy the shirt or that anyone knows or cares who Newt Gingrich was. 

As for poor taste, that's what comedy is all about. Saturday Night Live has been around for 50 years or so capitalizing on poor taste. So I am in good company. 

Yesterday I posted on Blue Sky about it being the anniversary of the death of George Reeves, the actor who played Superman on television back in the 1950s. He reportedly took his own life by shooting himself in the head. My post made a point of saying that apparently he wasn't really faster than a speeding bullet. I also posted a link to one of my hero sandwich t-shirts.

Again, another example of questionable taste. But you have got to admit that the bullet joke was funny (and a bit morbid). I'm just trying to get attention in an ocean of endless social media posts.  

A couple of days ago was National Megalodon Day and I posted this:

I didn't think it was so much in poor taste as a spot on depiction of the Orange Menace. But all I got in response was crickets. Apparently there isn't much about Trump that you post anymore that gets a reaction. The irony was that ChatGPT had no problem creating the image, but when I asked for it to add the Maga-low-don headline it started declaring it would violate it's policies.  AI hypocracy is becoming tiresome. 

I imagine the people who do see my posts on social media think I am desperated for cash because I hawk three or four t-shirts a day and occasionally try to push people to my ebay store.  I will go on record that I don't try to sell t-shirts because I think it will make me rich. I try to sell t-shirts because I've become to think of them as my primary creative outlet. I'm a Dad Joke Bad Pun machine and I want to be acknowleged for it. Writing this blog for more than twenty years hasn't got me the attention I think I deserve. So I've resort to producing hundreds of funny (and not so funny) t-shirts to get my Horton-Hears-A-Who-like attention in the universe. 

I will prevail.

Or not. But I'll leave behind hundreds of bad t-shirt designs to baffle generations to come.

A little light please

 

At first I created this design for National Random Acts of Light Day. Then I realized that National Random Acts of Light Day is trying to cheer up people with cancer and I quickly deleted the post on BlueSky and Instagram.  I could only image the response I would have got by encouraging people with cancer to walk into the light. 

This illustrates the challenges of humor and not paying attention to details. I'm trying to be witty, not callouse. 

That being said, I've been experimenting on Blue Sky with not blatantly showing t-shirts for sale and trying just to get people's attention with a quick joke.  For example, today is Boy George's 65th birthday (can you believe it). Ironic that he shares a birthday with the Orange Menace in the White House. But I suggested that perhaps Boy George should change his name to Ol' Man George and that would be fitting karma.  Then I posted my design for Carmen Chameleon.

Of course, the joke only works if you are familiar with Boy George's song "Karma Chameleon" from the 1980s.  And you also need to have some idea who Carmen Miranda was. 

I should have just posted this image on Blue Sky instead.

But I suppose it would have been bad karma. Or Bad Carmen.

It doesn't Ad up

 

This is what I fantasize about looking like and being thought of. In reality my hair never looks like that, my beard is more like John Brown, the militant abolitionist. 



At times I'm afraid I look more like this when I pander for advertising awards.

Though my hair also never looks curly and that isn't my shade of lip stick.  But to be fair, I did recently win an local Emmy. I just never got to go to the awards show and pick it up.  It was delivered to me yesterday in a box.  Not that I would have gone to the show in an evening gown and jewels. I'm not that senile yet.

I have worked in marketing and advertising a long, long time. So you would think selling my own freaking t-shirt designs would be a slam dunk. But since I was ousted from Teepublic and Red Bubble and moved to a Printify pop up store, I haven't sold squat despite some pretty aggressive  social media marketing.  I've posted ads and videos with more hash tags than a bad 1950s truck stop.  I have hung my hat on the National Day Day posts religiously to the point I believe they are going to get a restraining order. 

I've started desperately trying to use stuff from the "onthisdayinhistory" people.  Today was the anniversary of the burning and sacking of Troy in ancient Greece. So I posted this:

You would think I'd at least get a few likes or reposts out of it but nothing. 

I just think the world isn't ready for my genius.

No sugar, just spice, and not very much that is nice

 

It is National Herbs and Spices Day, but I didn't really have a t-shirt design to go with it. It did make me think of the book (and movies) Dune and the spice planet Arakis. I read most of the Dune series and saw both the David Lynch movie and the latest versions.  The more recent movie version was probably truer to the book since David Lynch can't help but be well...David Lynch.  I always got a kick out of the way Paul Atreeides was given the Fremen name Muad'Dib in the movie with the Fremen leader dramatic stating, "We will call you Muad'Dib." I thought he was saying Moabdib and for years that was my go to password until it was compromised on the Dark Web. 

But I digress. National Herbs and Spices Day also reminds me (as if I could forget it) that I've stopped eating carbs and sugar and anything that tastes half way decent.  

Growing old sucks.

Home on the range

 

It is National Prairie Day and at first I didn't have anything in my t-shirt bag of tricks.  But that has never stopped me. I was pleased the way this design turned out. Though I imagine referring to a stove as a range is probably dated.  It works for me though. It makes a sweet t-shirt and an apron.

It is also National Drive-n Movie Day (another things generations of people know nothing about). And believe it or not I had a drive-in themed design ready to go.  

I realize these realistic designs don't seem to go over well.  It just isn't a concept that works well as a more cartoony, t-shirt design. It makes a great tote bag, too.

It was National Eyewear Day, as well. I didn't really have anything for eyeglasses, but I did dig out an old sunglasses design.

I could have dug out a related design.

I still may. But it seems to be a bit too close to the current world political climate.  Again, both of these designs are based on 1980s songs that most people probably won't recognize. But then again, if they did, I might get flack from the Intellectual Property Police.  Other than actually selling t-shirts, I sure don't miss Teepublic.

Starting over, and over and over...

 

It is National Start Over Day. I can kind of relate because each day I load several t-shirt designs on Blue Sky. And each day nothing happens. And the next day I do the same thing. It is very much like National Repeat Day. 

It is all very Sisyphian like mowing the lawn, making your bed and going to work.  

Oh well, it is something to do.

It's frowned upon

 

It is National Smile Day, and contrarian that I am, I posted a new design with frowning faces. It made me wonder why they say "Let a smile be your umbrella" when frowns look more like umbrellas. And they keep people away. After spending maybe 16 hours over the last three days in airports or on airplanes, I lean more toward frowns than smiles.

I was in Austin, Texas picking up an award for an ad campaign from my day job. It was a national award so it was supposed to be an honor. But after a three-hour awards show I was never actually asked to go to the stage to accept the award (we won a silver and not a gold) and then when I went to pick up the award afterward, they couldn't find it.  I posed for a photo with a borrowed trophy. They actual award turned up the next day just in time to put it in my carry on bag and trigger a search at the Austin Airport where they searched the trophy box lining for drugs or explosives.  The one bright point was that I saw this t-shirt in a gift shop in the airport.

Our ad campaign this year is all about aliens and their dismay at only being able to move one cow at a time. So I bought the $30 shirt only to get home to discover that, despite getting a size that normally would fit me, I look like a Kelbasa. So the t-shirt went into a drawer just in case I lose some weight.

Once again I am reminded that the gods don't like us getting too cocky about things like awards. I've got a couple of bookcases full of them at my work office for almost three decades of work and the only one mildly impressed by them is moi. But let someone in Contracts get an award for outstanding contracting and it ripples through my agency like Moses parting the Red Sea. 

I can't wait to retire and bask only in the laurels of my creative designs that seem to apeal to no one. But I did buy a couple last week (because I'm not sure a hair club member as the commercial used to tout). And I am very pleased with my D.B. Cooper t-shirts.

There is a certain amount of pleasure I take by being the only person in the world who is wearing one. 

How exclusive. 

Put up your Dukes

 

The National Day Day people seem to be running out of National Day Days. Today was National Paper Airplane Day aNational Blueberry Cheesecake Days. I couldn't work up any inspiration around either of those days. So I turned to the OnThisDay webpage for inspiration.  Today is John Wayne's birthday. Or it would have been, because the Duke died in 1979 and for years there was this urban myth that an autopsy found a 40 pounds of impacted fecal matter in his colon that was attributed to his manly ingestion of lots of meat. In reality he died from stomach cancer and there never was an autopsy conducted.

Despite the fact that the legend of his colon was a myth I remember going to a large restaurant chain many years ago called the Claim Jumper. Their menu came in a larger binder and contain page after page of menu items chock full of excessive amounts of meat. I asked the server why they didn't have an item on the menu called, "John Wayne's Colon" and she just stared at me blankly.  This is a look I'm quite familiar with.

Today is also the day in history when The Beatles' album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was released and went to #1 for 22 weeks in the UK and 15 weeks in the US. I'm sad to say that while there were many famous Hollywood stars in the background on the album cover including Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy,  neither John Wayne nor his colon was featured.

This is not an actual cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." It is an imaginary band I dreamt up a year or two ago called The Big Beats. They were a Beatlesque band made up of Big Foot individuals. As with all of my obscure t-shirt designs, the several I did for the Big Beats never caught on.

And on this day in 1910, U.S. General George S. Patton married Beatrice Ayer in Boston, Massachusetts.  I don't believe he was a general at the time or was wearing the pearl handled 45 caliber pistols.

That's the way it is and was, Tuesday, May 26, 2026.

Mambo King

 

I was in a bookstore yesterday looking for signed editions. It is kind of my latest obsession.  I try to sell them on my ebay store, but part of me is just fine with keeping them.  Anyway I was looking for books by Oscar Hijuelos. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1990 (the first Hispanic writer to do so) for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. It wa later adapted into a movie starring Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas. The movie didn't quite capture the book. They rarely do.

I loved the book. I read some of his other books, like Our House in the Last World and Mr. Ives' Christmas. But as with other authors I really admired like Tom Robbins, I lost track of his work (mainly because I stopped reading much).  So I was looking for his books in the book store hoping to find a signed one but there was nothing. I asked ChatGPT if he was still alive and it informed me he died in 2013 at age 62 after suffering a heart attack while playing tennis in Manhattan. 

And just like that another of my favorite authors was gone without me having a clue. I felt this same loss that I felt when I learned Tom Robbins was dead.  When I found out he was dead I started looking for signed editions by him and got one. It was kind of my way of having something he'd touched in my life. 

I started looking for signed Oscar Hijuelos books on ebay and I was kind of shocked at how low the prices were. I was assuming that since he had passed and wouldn't be signing any more the things were be worth alot. Apparently not.  It is like everything in life. New generations come along and they sprint past the past to their own futures.  So Tom Robbins and Oscar Hijuelos mean little to current generations. I imagine it is the same with Hunter Thompson and Douglas Adams.

But still, they left behind amazing books that will continue to amaze...if someone bothers to look for them.

Snailed it

 

It's National Escargot Day. And just in case you forget that they are snails, they are served up in snail shells with lots of garlic so they taste like chicken. It's not something you find at most of your local restaurants. The only time I ever ate them was on a cruise. And in reality, they weren't half bad.

It was also National Family Fun Day. No joke.

And it was National Scavenger Hunt Day so I scavenged some old designs for National Yucatan Shrimp Day (recycled the Sea Monkeys are Brine Shrimp stuff) and National Wyoming Day (dug up my Gyros Have Always Been Cowboys design). 

I passed on Brother's Day and Aviation Maintenance Technician Day.  Even I have standards.

Sail on

 

It is National Maritime Day, and despite having never actually captaining a ship, I used to go on lots of cruises. And the times I helped people who actually owned sail boats, I felt like it was way too much work. So I'm not truly a seafaring man. But I've always been fascinated with the Titanic.

Today is also National Road Trip Day.  I have been on quite a few road trips in my day and I think I prefer cruises.

It is also National Buy a Musical Instrument Day. So I posted several of my guitar designs.

And it is National Cooler Day, so I got deep with my designs.

Finally, it is National Solitaire Day and I urged people to stop playing within themselves and play with these instead.

I think my future is written in the cards.

Don't Stream It, Be It!

 

It is National Streaming Day, National Be A Millionaire Day, National Juice Slush Day, National Rescue Dog Day and National Sugarbee Apple Day. What a day. 

Since National Day Day doesn't seem to like my postings anymore, I am getting the sense they don't appreciate my humor.  For example, National Sugarbee Apple Day seems a stretch for a National Day to me (especially since I've never heard of a Sugarbee Apple. But I have heard of Road Apples.

National Juice Slush Day just seems random. But I tried squeezing a t-shirt out of it anyway.

National Be A Millionaire Day doesn't seem relevant anymore since everybody and their dog are now billionaires. But living is living.

And speaking of dogs, I think every dog should have their day, especially rescue dogs.

Oh well, those were the days.