Free your nuts

 

I realize I've posted this image before. God knows I rarely repeat myself. But every one has Alzheimer's on social media and it is National Peanut Day. So nuts to you.

I saw some video compilations on Tik Tok the other day of squirrels attacking people. It cracked me up. I of course root for the squirrels. Because if you are stupid enough to tease a wild animal with a peanut you deserve the consequences. 

Take your best shot

 

It's National Day of Encouragement!  And you know how I feel about inspirational shit.  Don't get me wrong, I believe everyone should try and do their best, but as Dirty Harry once said, "A man has to know his limitations." Athletics were never my forte. 

I played on the basketball team in 9th grade. Pretty much anyone who tried out made the team, but they then divided you into sub-teams based on your ability. The A team was basically varsity and played in all the regulation games. Then there was the B, C, and D teams. The B and C teams got rotated in if the A team was beating the crap out of the other team. The D team only played in the 5th quarter. I know what you are thinking, there are only four quarters in basketball. They added one for the D team. So when the custodial staff was sweeping the gym and the spectators had dispersed, the D team took the courts and awkwardly threw the ball around.

I pretty much hate basketball to this day.

Oh, and I wrestled one year in junior high as well. I wasn't any better at wrestling than I was at basketball. It wasn't pretty. Fortunately my parents never came to any of my games or matches. 

But I gave it my best shot anyway.

TV Dinner

 

This is a television that was in one of the warehouses across the street from Graceland where they meticulously catalogued all of his shit that frankly should have been taken to Goodwill long ago when he was still alive. Though I am not sure they had Goodwill back in the 1970s or in Tennessee. At the very least they could have just sat it outside the gates with a "Free" sign on it.

Not that anyone likely would have wanted a television that had be shot and more than likely no longer worked. But the bigger question is why did the people working for Elvis at the time keep the television. 

I know enough about Elvis to know logic should not be applied to his behavior or his staff's behavior. I imagine he shot the television and someone scurried in and whisked it off before he came out of his drugged stupor. The rationale for Elvis shooting the television was apparently that Robert Goulet was on some program he was watching and he didn't like Robert Goulet. ChatGPT says Elvis didn't really dislike Robert Goulet, he just came on the television when Elvis was in a mood. Robert Goulet chalked up the story of Elvis shooting the television as being because of his playful personality.

That's crazy talk.

Regardless, I was able to use the image of one of the televisions Elvis shot (apparently there were quite a few) to create this. The "Kill Your TV" image was ironically from a photo of some graffiti I took a photo of when I visited Memphis back in 2018.   

And of course I turned it into a t-shirt. I also promoted that t-shirt on social media today in honor of National TV Dinner Day.  The irony is is that I don't think too many people remember TV dinners or tube TVs anymore.  

Unfortunately, I think it is also true of Elvis.

It is a sad world we live in.

 

Who Sartre'd?

 

Who doesn't like a good fart joke or high-brow existential humor?  Those are rhetorical questions. I have to assume you know who Jean-Paul Sartre is and have a sophomoric sense of humor to get this design? Those two things don't go hand in hand except for people like me. 

Humor is subjective. I've discovered that in my day job. I launched what I thought was a perfectly harmless and funny ad campaign showing zombies mindlessly driving their cars and doing the things we hate like driving in traffic, pumping gas and trying to find parking. The point was to encourage people to go off auto-pilot (pun intended) and take public transit.  But apparently the campaign billboards frighten small children and offend the mindless because I've got lots of complaints. One a couple of days ago suggested who ever came up with the campaign and the one who approved it both be "let go." 

If I wasn't so close to retirement and quite jaded, I probably would care more. But seriously, when was the last time you wrote a company because you thought their ads were stupid? We live in a time when a convicted felon, sexual predator, misogynist, racist, lying narcissist, fascist craps on our country on a daily basis and these people are offended by zombies driving cars?

What is that smell?  

Pizza on earth

 

It is National Cheese Pizza Day.  This isn't the t-shirt design I posted on social media today. This is actually a pizza place in Washington D.C. or at least it was until Trump got in office. He probably drove by it and didn't understand it so sent in the National Guard to rough up the owners.

This is the pizza design I'm hawking today:

I posted it last year for some National pizza day but that was when I was on Zazzle and it never sold. Now that I'm using Printify, I still probably won't sell anything, but you gotta keep putting them out there. I did seel a couple of t-shirts on Printify last week. They were samples for me that I wanted and I only had to pay for the production cost and shipping, not my mark up. 

But still it is a sale.

I don't get much traction on the posts I do every day on Blue Sky, Threads and Facebook. I did get a reaction to a comment I left on a post saying a Newsweek poll showed Newsom was more popular than Trump. I couldn't resist commenting that a turnip was more popular than Trump. For the most part I got a positive response, but there were a couple of Trumpers that tried saying if he wasn't popular how did he get elected and I was living in my own universe.

I do live in my own universe, but it is faulty logic to assume that winning an election makes you the most popular person. It does if you are an asshole and there are more assholes voting than non-assholes. But I didn't think that comment would go over well.

Besides, I should remain neutral if I ever hope to sell a t-shirt.

I don't think most people want a pizza of my mind. 

Belabor Day

 

I've belabored the fact that I repeat myself at times (and increasingly so as I age). I've also belabored the fact that one of the few things I remember from my High School German class is the phrase, "Horen Sie Zu und Wiederholen Sie," which means, "Listen and repeat."

So as I struggle to find new ideas for t-shirt designs I also find myself repeating things, especially as I cycle through the National Day days on the National Day of site. They notoriously repeat the National Day of each year.  And there are only so many humorous designs you can come up with for National Days of when they are stupid things like "National Hotel Employee Day." It doesn't scream t-shirt design.

Not that my attempt to corner the t-shirt market on National Day of t-shirt designs has been successful (another topic I belabor).  But they are sort of unique and you would think the geeks who come up with those days would be all over my t-shirts (or at least all in them).

Today is National Forgiveness Day, National Burnt Ends Day, National Acne Positivity Day, National No Rhyme (Nor Reason) Day, National Chicken Boy Day and National Pastor's Spouses Day. I've exploited Burnt Ends, No Rhyme Nor Reason, and Chicken Boy. I forgive me for not thinking there is any humor in National Forgiveness Day. Acne Positivity Day and National Pastor's Spouses Day are just too stupid to bother with.  But there is some PR flack proud of themselves for creating them.

National Chicken Boy Day was just random enough for me to appreciate. It's about a giant chicken statue that used to be outside a restaurant. It was known as the "Statue of Liberty of Los Angeles" (which is a stretch). Now is is front of an art director's design studio is exploiting the poor Chicken Boy for publicity.

So I jumped onto the chicken bandwagon with my "Chicken at a crossroads" design. 

Hate to belabor it, but I have no pride or obvious standars.

There's a light

 

I've decided to mix it up and show designs that I've made for events that I didn't create a t-shirt for (especially since I posted about Matchmaker Day last year at this time and you know how I hate to repeat myself).

I hate to repeat myself, but speaking of mixing it up. It's also National Trail Mix Day.

How does this semi-rejected design represent Trail Mix, you ask? They are snacks dressed up and on the trail to a mixer. I hate it when I have to explain everything.  I bet you Vincent Van Gogh didn't have to explain Starry, Starry Night to anyone.  

But then again, he didn't really sell any paintings until after he died. So we have that in common too.

Don't marsh my mallow...er mellow

 

I can't believe I've been on this National blah, blah, day for more than a year now and already have designs to post for the ones that are coming up again.  Like National Toasted Marshmallow Day.  We need s'more designs like that.

It's also National Beach Day. So I dug up this design featuring me on the beach in Isla Mujeres off the coast of Mexico across from Cancun. It was many, many years ago. I had been at a conference in Atlanta and used it as an opportunity to meet some friends who were staying at Isla Mujeres. The island is about five miles long and less than half a mile wide. I flew into Cancun and took a ferry across to Isla Mujeres. I stayed in a hotel above a place called Pizza Rolando which proclaimed that you had televisions in your room. And indeed there was, it was a portable black and white television that was on a shelf in the closet and had no reception if you plugged it in.

It was an interesting trip. My friends were an older couple -- Jerry and Flora (I won't use their real names). Jerry had been in Vietnam and freaked out a bit when we rented a jeep in Cancun and drove to Coba, an ancient Maya site located in dense tropical forests. He was having flashbacks to Vietnam. Jerry and Flora smoked a lot of pot and had brought some into Mexico (which freaked me out). Years later Jerry told me he used the trip to Coba to make a drug deal that helped finance his early retirement. I was freaked out about that too because if it had gone sideways I could have ended up in a Mexican jail without my black and white television. Jerry and Flora have long since vanished from my life.

Oh well, I got a t-shirt design and memories out of the whole experience. Maybe I'll toast a marshmallow to Jerry and Flora and wish them well.

Showing your true colors

 

It is National College Colors Day.  I couldn't resist posting a design I did awhile back in my Teepublic days that got the ire of the people at Notre Dame, the University, not the church.  Of course it was removed by the weasels at Teepublic. So I created an alternative version that was less religious than the Notre Dame football version.

No one at the church as complained about this one. Victor Hugo can't complain because his works are now public domain. And it is not the first time I've messed around with a post about hunch banks. So I'm free to turn it into a t-shirt (which I did). 

I have a hunch it won't be a big seller. But it might ring a bell for a few.

Sanctuary....sanctuary!
 

Out of the box

 

It's National Red Wine Day! And once again I am shilling this Adult Juice Box design. I think it is funny because I think boxed wine is just fine. But it is kind of the moped of wine. It is fun, but you don't want anyone seeing you with it.

Speaking of boxes. I found this intriguing item at Goodwill yesterday.

It's a simple wooden box that is only about 7 inches across. But it is made entirely of wood, including the clasps and the hinges.

So my guess is that is tramp art. Tramp art is a form of folk woodworking that was done in the US from about the 1870s through the 1940s. It was generally created with scrap wood and simple tools. 

This is a bit more refined and simple from your normal tramp art, but that's what I think it is.  I truly appreciate it and hope to flip it on eBay for major bucks.

I'm just a sentimental kind of person that way.

Taking it in the shorts

 

I may buy a pair of these myself. I do like Tiki stuff and Dizgraceland is near and dear to my heart. So these board shorts would make my day. They aren't that expensive actually. I can't vouch for the quality. But how often would I wear them? Once or twice a year, tops, while on vacation. 

Or I could wear them on my commuter train. I'm old enough that people would just think I'm a touch senile and shake their heads sadly. 

They do that anyway, so I might as well be wearing a pair of Trader Tim's.

Here's what the back looks like:

I'll end with that even though it seems a bit short-sighted. 

Every dog has its day

 

It is National Dog Day! And what better way to celebrate it than to buy your dog a mat to go under its dog food dish. This are flying off the virtual shelf as we speak. People (and presumably their dogs) are eating them up.

Not really.  But I can dream.