Militant Geek Custom Shirts

Continuing in the long tradition of made-up holidays who’s intent has be co-oped to prop up corporate bottom lines (Valentines with its manipulatory cards and flowers, Halloween with its candy and costumes, etc.) today is CyberMonday. Unlike Black Friday, however, CyberMonday doesn’t result in people getting trampled at the local sprawlmart.

Today (Nov 26) Spreadshirt is having a CyberMonday sale for all those shut-ins that insist in buying stuff online. Use the code CYBERSALE6 on checkout of any Spreadshirt-powered store (like ours, for example) and get 26% off.

You can browse other user submissions on the Spreadshirt product page.

Normally, the TShirt Hell store has the type of humor I thought most people left back in junior high. However, there’s some clever designs there - if you can get beyond stripper jokes. Taking the greek symbol that is the bane of many a college trig-taker (pi) and bumping it up against an ‘mp’ is impressive. The shirt will run you $18.

Now if they could just do something interesting with Theta beyond a fraternity reference and my obscure mathematical reference collection would be complete.

As hard as it is to believe, the retired circus monkeys and I take an occasional break from scouring the web for the best in geekdom. And, being the faux rock gods that we are, we get our guitar hero going. We even made a rock playing robot to handle some of the harder songs (Dragonforce, I’m looking in your dexterous direction). Imagine our surprise when we discovered that John Nissen had captured our coolness in this Zazzle store shirt.

Or maybe its just a robot playing guitar. But a plastic guitar slinger can dream, can’t they?

Most geeks have a hardcore gadget fetish. Combine geekdom with an insatiable need for electronic music, however, and you’ve got lust of Japanese otaku proportions.

A few weeks ago we briefly highlighted the NoDemo guys during our Etsy week. Today, we’ve got another great design featuring one of those gadgets of geek musician obsessions - the Casio SK-1. No Demo shirts are hand printed on ring spun cotton t’s - meaning that they’re incredibly comfortable. And this design will run you $15.

In the second of our Split Reason double header to open the week we have this lovely Defragmentation T-Shirt. Like most Split Reason shirts this one will run you between $18.95 and $19.95. Also of note is that this shirt is on Amazon. Like many of the more successful niche creators the guys at Split Reason have realized that just having a kickass site is not enough - they make it a point to get their designs in front of as many people across as many stores as possible. Is that more work for the tshirt manufacturers? Absolutely. But taking time to add their inventory to a site like Amazon means that people can now add it to their wish list, keep their credit card info with trusted partners, combine the order with other holiday shopping to save on shipping, etc.

It’s a nice touch in an age of fragmented storefronts.

Stateside geekdom owes a lot to Japan - and I’m not just talking about J-Rock Groupies or Yatta. Whether is gadgets to fawn over or reliable cars to commute to the cubical Japan is responsible for a major portion of this country’s productive output. And, in an irony that exists only to me, it destroys that productivity with each and every video game import.

Split Reason celebrates this bevy of time wasting triumphs with this lovely design. The shirt will cost you $18.95. L33T skills to pwn N00bs with is extra.

So there I was trying to explain to the very stern looking firemarshall why there were more than a half dozen power strips daisy chained together behind my entertainment center. “Don’t you know what a fire hazard this is,” his voice rising in faux authority. “DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF JEOPARDY YOU’RE PUTTING YOUR FAMILY IN!”

“But,” I replied, unblinking, “I’m a geek.”

And, chances are if you’re reading this, so are you which is why today I’m highlighting mashPOTATO’s Super Plug TShirt. It’s perfect for anyone who looks the dangers of circuit overloading in the eye and goes “meh”. Buy right now and the superplug can be yours for the sale price of $11.

Props to the T-Shirts Around the Internet Blog for the spot.

Recently Threadless announced a verifiable slew of new inks and print methods. These expanded options for TShirt creation now allow up to 8 colors per shirt, a number of color ‘effects’ (specifically super glow, puff, high density, suede, UV color change, shimmer, metallic clear, glitter, blister, flock, vinyl, foils, embroidery, and gradients), and something very industrial sounding - belt printing.

While any gadget geek will tell you the more features, the better, T-Shirt Island drops what I was thinking: will the vast, aching void in my life really be quenched with a metallic/glitter shirt design? Or is this just novelty bait? From Rannga’s post:

I don’t know about you but, really, my love for tees are because its simplicity and ease of care-taking — just throw them up to wash machine if you want to get it clean. But some specialty inks might be too fragile that you can only wash manually “with care and love”. That’s why, sometime T-shirts with specialty print can put me off although they’re pretty good looking.

Here-here: if I wanted to wash delicate things I’d get all metrosexual in this here hizzhouse. As is, give me some nice designs that don’t fade and I’m a happy killroy.

Am I wrong?

I came across Shirt Empire’s ‘The Launch’ a few months ago but never got around to sharing the awesome find. Turns out my negligence is your gain! The shirt, which was $18 this summer is now an extremely attractive $10.

Sure, the Shuttle - once the darling of manned space flight - is beyond due for replacement. But 25+ years in its still lugging the dreams of social misanthropes, science obsessives, and Trekkies to near earth orbit. Now if only Nasa’s manned program was as elegant as this shirt we wouldn’t be so bitter.

Some geeks got a foretaste of their futures the first time they played Pacman. For others, it was the thrill multiplication time trials. And for others it was watching the mullet wearing (and one day StarGate jumping) antics of MacGyver.

Threadless conjures the ridiculous possibilities of the mundane that permeated that show brilliantly in this shirt by Glenn Jones. Recently reprinted, it’ll cost you $15 - that is, unless you can Macgyver up some other form of payment.

What Would MacGyver Do - Affiliate Link
What Would MacGyver Do - Non-Affiliate Link