Militant Geek Custom Shirts

So CNN recently opened up its own tee shop. The idea was that when you found a headline you like you could order it on a shirt with the words “I’ve got nothing better to do than shill for CNN” “I saw it on CNN.com”. By itself that was only as titillating as a portrait of Bee Arthur on velvet. Luis, over at the Signal vs Noise blog, discovered that by manipulating the URL variables you could create something vastly more interesting - headlines that were actually funny. The subterfuge was made all that much more satisfying when ‘I saw it on CNN.com’ continued to be appended to whatever outrageousness could be divined.

Initially the only problem was that a checksum prevented people from ordering the shirts they actually wanted; “I’ll put Blitzer in a Situation Room” and “Anderson Cooper Has No Flag Pin” could only viewed, not bought. However, new reports show that even the ability to approximate physical impropriety has been nixed. Instead we’re left with “Shelter Dog Nurses 9 Orphaned Kittens”. Awesome…. and Fail.

Boing Boing has such amazing timing. Just the other day I had sat down to watch my soaps when the thought occurred to me: “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if I had a keyboard affixed to my crotch“. I mean, geez, I get anxiety attacks just contemplating that an input device might be an entire arms-reach away.

Seriously though, this is the kind of apparel idea that only a clueless technosexual could love. And while a pair of speakers built into the knees is begrudgingly cool the placement of the ‘Enter’ key is disgustingly suggestive. Final verdict: fail.

Valentine’s Day is coming and love is in the geekified air in the offices of Militant Geek! Monday through Thursday I’ll be bringing you the best Geek TShirts that say “I love you… and your brain.”

For those that haven’t yet seen this shirt on scads of sites on the series of tubes a quick recap: the hearts are an homage to video game characters. When you’re close to your special someone all the hearts light up. The farther away the pair of tees are from each other the fewer hearts light up.

This shirt is extremely frustrating to me because it should have been fantastic: proximity sensors, illuminated leds, and high quality, geek-friendly black fabric. However, the implementation is lacking. First, the shirt is completely worthless if you don’t have a second person who agrees to wear a matching outfit (heading to the store in matching sweats is lame but nobody will notice - but here the blinking hearts only highlight your co-dependence). Second, unless you’re within two meters of your significant other all the electronic gewgaws you paid for don’t do a thing. Third, what happens if you split with the person who has the other half of this shirt? I mean, geez, its not like a kid that you can just share; these things come in fitted sizes people!

However, if that’s not enough to dissuade you the 8 bit dynamic life shirt is available from Think Geek (Affiliate Link, Non-Affiliate Link) for between $11.99-$24.99. Remember, get a pair. Or just buy one shirt and a transmitter pack. But that isn’t very romantic now, is it?

AOL company moral has to be soaring. Rumors of a mid-December layoff where confirmed when a number of employees didn’t receive invitations to the company Christmas party - classy. Opportunistic photoshoppers (and these days, who isn’t?) spent the time between the initial discovery and the ensuing stuffing of pink slips into stockings working on a number of fake shirts now posted on Flickr. The ‘2007 Annual AOL Xmas Layoff’ collection doesn’t actually exist outside of images (at least not yet). But for those who’s perceptions that AOL was a good career choice have now been popped the shirts-that-could-be might be worth a look.

I wanted so badly (ok, moderately bad; bad like a Lindsey Lohan movie bad, not a Wayans Brother movie bad) to like this shirt featured predominately on Boing Boing today. Why?

1. It’s for a good cause: proceeds from the sale of the shirt go to help the emergency medical fund for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
2. The meaning behind the phrase is obscure and tenuous which sometimes enhances the uniqueness.
3. There simply isn’t enough props given to the SFWA.
4. Cory Doctorow pimped it and no one, no one opposes the Cory without unleashing all the pent up, sexual frustration waiting at the gates of geekdom.

But, despite those things going for it I simply can’t recommend this tee. I suppose the irony here is that a shirt that features fart humor would look like ass. If you simply can’t be bothered with style over your substance you can get yours from Zazzle.com for $22.95. And, if so, here is some entertainment you might be interested in.

It was with much fanfare that LinkedIn launched its very own store. On the corporate blog is the breathless proclamation “Start Your Holiday Shopping Now!”. For a moment lets set aside the fact that most people don’t wait for their 3rd or 4th favorite social network to tell them when to shop. This is LinkedIn, the network that you join when you haven’t yet worked up the cajones to really look for a new job. Buying a shirt from LinkedIn doesn’t carry the gravitas of the One Campaign, the geek cred of Mozilla, or the awesomeness of the MySpace/Zazzle band schwag announcement. It’s as if LinkedIn woke up one morning and thought it could win back some cool points lost to other social networks like Facebook or Bebo by opening a frickin’ T-Shirt shop. What’s next in the misguided attempts for Web 2.0 credibility - the LinkedIn Segway?

The takeaway is as follows: if your core membership is unemployed or soon-to-be unemployed corporate, tie-wearing management, don’t try selling them tees. Or if you do, at least have something more creative than something that screams “I have found nothing else to fill the vast void in my life than to shill for a boring, business website”. It’s just too sad.

If you’ve been following the recent depressing news coming out of Intel you know that there’s a lot of fine geeks who will be ‘transitioning’ and taking on ‘new creative challenges’ - 10,000 to be exact. Militant Geek wanted to release a special design to celebrate this special occasion. After all, how often does massive, livelihood upheavel happen? How much longer can I continue being facetious?

Unfortunately, vengence of the apparel sort will have to wait. Our store rejected our design of pink slip anger. The reason?

“you have one or more products or designs that are likely copyright protected by a third party.”

*Yawn. I’m simply too tired to read legaleese at the moment. But surely there is some parody-ic justice?