But then, I have sort of thing for bad puns.

This shirt is geektastically delicious.

The first time I saw this shirt I was unneccesarily influenced by its title; I approached it with a deep sense of irony in that I saw it as portraying a dead cat whose gumption had simply got the better of him.

And then I looked at it again and saw a live cat caught in the middle of an unfortunate but escapable circumstance.

And then I realized that whether the cat was alive or dead was purely a function of the external observer; this is in fact Schroedinger's cat let out of his box and captured in a wee bit of innocent mischief.

It was at that point that I bought this shirt.

There was something about this shirt that just really jumped out at me and I had to buy it. Now that I have it, I think it's my new favorite.

I saw it and I realized that very often in life, we find ourselves without a clear path forward, confronting tasks that on first glance seem insurmountable.

When you face those situations, you have two choices. You can stay where are while you endlessly ponder the myriad of choices and possible courses of action in front of you. But at the end of the day, you still haven't moved.

Or you can say "gosh darn it", pack up your turtle, and seek your destiny. You may not know exactly where you're going, but at least you're making progress.

Sometimes, I am George.
Sometimes, I am the Turtle.
And sometimes I am the Seal, just happy to be along for the ride.

If you're a Phillip K. Dick fan and are lucky enough to live in one of the few cities that "A Scanner Darkly" is currently playing in, you should go see it. It's way good.

If you're a fan of the whole "brain in a blender" genre, you'll enjoy it.

I like this shirt because of juxtaposition.

The slogan expresses a deep conviction undermined by a fundamental conflict -- a situation not unfamiliar to many.

I also like the crisis of stereotypes presented when this aggressive, violent imagery is worn by a skinny non-threatening granola-eating white guy such as myself.

This was the first Threadless shirt that I bought, and it's currently the favorite of the (admittedly few) Threadless shirts I own right now.

This shirt has a very Far Side quality to it; it seems like something Gary Larson might make, if he were to come out of retirement and enter into the T-Shirt business. I tend to think that Gary Larson and Bill Waterson represent the ultimate achievement in visual comedy, and all those who have come after them are merely dancing in the shadows of these great giants. I attribute my current sense of humor to heavy consumption of The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes during childhood.

I like this shirt partly because it's an understated commentary on the accuracy of science. Here's a case where The Smart People have taken some form of scientific evidence and extrapolated back to arrive at a plausible yet fundamentally flawed conclusion. Inaccuracy is funny when expressed authoritatively.

I've always been skeptical of artists renderings of prehistoric beasts...this shirt nicely captures that feeling and expresses it without needed to resort to any sort of verbal explanation. The non-caption is brilliant.

I often wonder what conclusions future archaeologists will divine from the detritus of our current society. I wish I had a time machine, so I could go forward and see what they got wrong.

This year I'm celebrating the fourth of july by going to Whistler. Whistler, for those of you who don't know, is in Canada. They don't have the fourth of july in Canada. Instead, they have Canada Day, which is a lot like the fourth of july except it happens on the first.

In general, I'm a big fan of Canada. It's very much like the United States, but with oddly elongated vowel sounds. Books cost a lot more up there, though. And they have Tim Hortons in Canada, which is a big plus.

I found out that Randy Walker, the football coach at Northwestern, died suddenly last night due to a heart attack.

I was at Northwestern for during the whole Gary Barnett/Randy Walker transition period. Heck, I remember when the restaurant on the first floor of the Omni Orrington was named "Gary Barnett's" (I guess they give you a restaurant if you take the team to the Rose Bowl). I guess I was as much a football fan as the next guy -- sure, I went to every home game (but mostly for the tailgates...the football was, I confess, something of an afterthought). But what can I say, I'm a Wildcats fan.

Anyway, I remember when Gary Barnett left NU under circumstances that were less than great. Lots of anger there. Randy Walker showed up from Miami of Ohio and brought a lot of hope with him. He was a great coach, and it's sad to lose him. I'm sure the team and the fans will miss him dearly.

The wierd thing is that to me, when I think of Randy Walker, I think less of "the NU football coach" and more of "my friend Jamie's dad." Randy's son Jamie joined my fraternity my senior year and I got to know both them them (Jamie, of course, more so than Randy). I got the feeling that Randy approached life pretty much the way he approached football -- with energy, optimisim, passion, and dedication. He was a great example to everyone around him.

J-Dub, if you're out there, I hope you're doing ok.

I like to consider myself a fan of Stanley Kubrick's epic 2001, A Space Oddessy, but I confess to fast-forwarding through large portions of that film. Particularly the first act, with all the guys in ape suits. Pretty much everything up to the point where australopithicus africanus discovers tools is pretty much a blur. As are the spacey bits at the beginning set the to the Blue Danube. The parts at the end are pretty cool, though, with all the flashy lights and Dave Bowman turing into the giant Star Fetus. I think that's what acid trips must have been like, before computers.

Anyway, I think if you look at that movie, it's pretty clear that 2001-the-movie-version vastly overestimated our potential for progress. 2001-the-real-version was notciably lacking in areas of both interplanetary space travel and well-meaning-but-sociopathic AI's. Clearly, we have some catching up to do here.

The subtle undercurrent of righteous indignation running through this shirt combined with the dangling last line is what caught my eye. I'm not sure what "this diseases" is that we're seeking a cure for, but I suspect it's not rheumatoid arthritis. Maybe it is, and I'm getting all depressed and nihilistic for nothing.

This is all Steve Swartz's fault. You can blame him.