the underwear drawer

your civic duty

OK, so this post is for purely selfish purposes. As noted previously, I am among the many people who are unduly fascinated with the t-shirts at Threadless. It's not like I don't have enough t-shirts, but these t-shirts are cool, and also superior to nudity (mostly). OK, exposition: how Threadless works is that people can design t-shirts and submit their ideas. The designs get voted upon by the general populace, and the most popular designs get printed. Sometimes the t-shirts are very extremely coveted and sell out, after which point you can either mourn the fact that they are gone forever, or you can vote (yes, more voting) to get them reprinted. This is, I'm sure, what the founding fathers were envisioning when they founded our fair democracy. Voting for t-shirts.

Anyway, there are a few t-shirts that I have been voting for to get reprinted, but I am just one small voice. (Reminder to self: talk about "One Small Voice" at the end of this entry.) But I thought to myself, "Self, if we just post pictures of the designs, might not other people be interested in voting for them as well? And might not the mighty chorus of internet voices eventually lead to these designs being reprinted? And might not the reprinted designs possibly be available by late fall, making me the best and most thinking-ahead Christmas shopper ever in the history of EVER?" I had to admit that I was right. AS USUAL. So anyway, without further ado, here are the t-shirts that I am campaigning to have brought back. You can click on the designs to see them big, and then if you like them, you can vote to have them reprinted, which would be GREAT. (Don't worry, you don't have to buy anything. Unlike the presidential election, your vote is free.)



This t-shirt is funny to me, although I'm sure someone will say that it's racist somehow, because not all cowboys are white and have lassos, GOD.



This t-shirt is funny for medical people because it's all about coronary artery disease and hyperlipidemia, which is a serious, serious topic, but look how cute that can of lard is! With the rubber mallet! Ha!



I think Joe would like this t-shirt. As would your friend who likes bacon. And hot dogs. And clown flesh. In addition, the artwork reminds me of Chris Ware, who is my favorite.



And this shirt is...I don't know. It's just random. But I'm hoping that they reprint it in kids sizes, so that I can get one for Cal. He wears clothes quite often.

Fine, ending shameless prostitution. But I just really want these shirts to get reprinted, OK? I will stop at nothing. Well, maybe I will stop at murder. But otherwise, NOTHING.


* * *


OK, so "One Small Voice." Back in the days of yore, I used to be editor-in-chief of our high school newspaper. Which actually was not a big deal, because our high school had something like six newspapers. There was one, the "official" newspaper (which was called What's What--terrible, I know) and several others, including The Observer (a New York Times knockoff, very serious, but successful in that a good number of my classmates who wrote for The Observer actually do write for The New York Times now); The Forum (a political newspaper headed up by the one right-wing Republican in the entire school); and my paper, Witness, which was the school tabloid. Seriously, we were a tabloid paper, and we were awesome. Not celebrity-tabloid, like writing about That Thing Britney Spears Did (actually, Britney Spears was probably only about nine years old at the time), but just writing these ridiculous, sensational news stories, like about students that got mugged in the courtyard of the school (EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW!) or about a box-cutter accident in art class (I believe that was our cover story that month, heralded by the headline "TRAILS OF BLOOD"). Anyway: awesome.

When I started with the paper, one of our features was a column written by a seventh grader (my high school was 7th through 12th grade), called "One Small Voice." The columnist, Sean, was supposed to highlight the plight of the underclassman. How it felt being the youngest students, starting a new school, learning to use deodorant, all that. I think it was kind of revolutionary, in that most of the columns in school papers were just sort of upperclassman ramblings either written to pad ones college application or crammed with inscrutable in-jokes between the writer and his (the columnists were invariably guys) friends. So yes, anyway, we had a column written by a seventh grader. And yes, it was TOTALLY WORTH IT, especially because the seventh grader's uncle or someone worked in show business somehow, and got us an EXCLUSIVE interview with Matt Groening. I got an autographed Simpson's publicity still and everything! Yeah, so that was cool.

Anyway, after Sean finished seventh grade and eighth grade, I sort of assumed that we were going to find a new columnist, not because he wasn't good, but because the point of the column was "One Small Voice," not "One Medium-Sized Voice." Only I didn't quite know how to break it to him, and he just kept writing those columns and handing them in. I suppose we could have just changed the name of the column to something else, but like I said, the whole POINT of the thing was that it was a COLUMN written by a SEVENTH-GRADER. Who cares about ninth-graders? No one. Not even their parents.

Anyway, it didn't really matter anyway, because we ran out of funding in the middle of the year and had to shut down the paper until Septever, when our grant was renewed. And I'm not really sure why I told you that whole long story, but there it is.