#183 Pa-pa--paparazzi

I've come to regret the decision to include my face in these picture posts.

Anywho, I got this shirt from Stacy. I believe it was part of some skit she had to do for German class in high school. Apparently that's all they did in her German class because one of the other big stories I've gotten from her also involves a skit in German class (if you haven't heard it before, the punchline is that Stacy had to play the ugly one). Kind of a meh shirt. I pretty much just wore it as a black undershirt.

Instead of talking about the shirt, I'll relate how I spent last Monday. I perhaps foolishly spent the day at Disneyland in the rain. However, unlike last year I was infinitely more prepared this time around (and the rain actually let up in the late afternoon). Highlights included singing along to "Part of Your World" with Nuno for no apparent reason and going with it anyway, riding on the swinging ferris wheel cars with people that are terrified of it, and riding the roller coaster twice with the rain whipping us in the face (I'm pretty sure it was also raining the hardest while we were on it too).

#177 Mind Bullets

I'd like to take this moment to apologize for this photo. Just awful.

Anywho, this is one of my favorite shirts. Another threadless shirt of course, since they've really cornered the market on clever shirt slogans. You can find it here.

Sadly no funny anecdotes for you today. Try again later.

#175 Suck It, Morrissey.

I believe I last wore this to one of Darrin's BYOBBQFFs. If you are unfamiliar with the BYOBBQFF concept it is as follows: Darrin provides the grill and the grillmastery and you provide the food items of your choosing. So you Bring Your Own BarBeQue and make Friends Forever, or something like that. These usually also involve some Rock Band and hot tubbing.

BYOBBQs are perhaps my favorite common party gathering theme. Now we've had some pretty fantastic ones; Ugly Prom, Cinco de Seis, Rex Manning Day; but there's something nice about the casualness of the BYOBBQ. I mean, it's a small gathering with close friends centered around good food. What isn't comforting about that?

This is another tasty shirt from Threadless and you can find this specific shirt here.

The title of this post by the way is inspired by perhaps the whiniest song I've ever heard. Morrissey a man that built a career on being whiny and sad wrote the song "Meat is Murder". You can perhaps guess what the lyrics are about. I was going to post some of them, but they're awfully morbid and dramatic and would taint the warm fuzzies I've got from recalling the BYOBBQs of yesteryear (plus we musn't dwell. We can't. Not on Rex Manning Day!).

# 174 Don't be a drag just be a queen.

This is the shirt that I wore on my birthday this year. To celebrate Ali and Brandon and I went to Disneyland for the day and then Ali and I went to the Glee concert. Because I'm the biggest, cheesiest nerd ever I made a shirt for said concert (if you've been following this blog, yes, I did this for the second year in a row and yes, I just made you regret your decision about following this blog).

If you don't watch the show, they did a "Born This Way" Lady Gaga number and all wore shirts sharing the things they were born with that have been an obstacle in their lives. Brittany, the show's caricature of a dumb blonde makes this shirt for the show's lesbian character Santana (Brittany thinks that the shirt in fact says, "lesbian". These characters, they're wacky).

This shirt of course was the one that I related to the most. I feel like I've talked a lot about my whole gay struggle thing (that or it was only once and I felt so nakedly emotional and awkward that I balk at the idea of rehashing it) so I won't go into it again. I will say though, that despite being a pretty stereotypical looking lesbian, I still felt uncomfortable wearing a shirt that obliquely outs me to the world (of people that watch Glee) in public. I don't care if people know of course, but I've never really been someone that shoves their gayness in people's faces. No rainbow flags or clever pins or bumper stickers for me. I like to treat gay like any other trait of mine (like Asian or nerdy or douchebag) and I don't want it to be the one trait that defines me (If I did have to choose one trait to define me, I'd rather choose "awesomeness"). I suppose thinking about it this sentiment seems to go against the whole spirit of the shirt, but hey; it's just a silly shirt for a concert, not a political statement (I'm much too apathetic and lazy to attempt anything like that).

Alright, I may have slightly contradicted what I said at the beginning of that paragraph, but it wasn't really about too many deep issues so for those of you that shy away from emotional intimacy (I'm looking at you, self), I think I've spared you.

#146 Aww, Huggy Hugs

This is another one from Threadless and can be found directly here. If the squanchy text is hard to read, it says "a hug is my favorite adhesive", a phrase that I just find relentlessly adorable.

#119 Utensils

This is a shirt I got from a Kappa Kappa Psi Western District convention one year. Boise State made them as chapter shirts the previous year and I was excited to see them selling them the next year. Just a simple, cute, shirt.

The Iota Kappa chapter at Boise State kind of had a reputation for being a little weird. My first convention they had a twister board set up near their merch table. They had modified it with some sort of Halloween theme so you'd randomly hear things like "left hand pumpkin" and "right foot Frankenstein". This might have almost made sense, but convention is held in the spring every year.

#112 The helmet's a nice touch, right?

This is a shirt I got as a gift from Krista way back when. If you can't quite read it because of my boobs (sorry...though you would think that with a girl's cut shirt such as this one they would allow for that) it says "I fergot to run spel chek".

#105 If I were to be summed up by one t-shirt, this may or may not be it.

This is one of those shirts that is pretty fitting for me I think. Those who know me best would probably be pretty quick to describe me as indecisive. That or awkward, I'm also pretty awkward. Really, the indecision just adds to the awkwardness.

Anywho, I'm terrible at just choosing stuff and being okay with said decision.

We built this city on a concrete foundation in accordance with proper building codes

This shirt is another one from Threadless and you can find it on this page. It probably would have been a cooler picture if I had kept my shiny shiny wristband on from the festival yesterday OR better yet if I had grabbed the drumsticks from downstairs and a headband; also pyrotechnics. Pyrotechnics are what any good blog needs. Groupies would be good too.

Anywho as usual if you end up buying something from Threadless after reading my blog, do me a favor and use this link: http://www.threadless.com?streetteam=allisonrocks to get there since having a profile means I get credit for referrals. It's like a bonus for me for introducing you to the wonders of cool shirts.

Proper Engrish

I got this shirt way back when from Engrish.com. Engrish.com features fabulously failed attempts at English translations, mostly from Japan. That should be a clue as to why the shirt makes sense. You can find the shirt directly right here. It's apparently been discontinued. The rest of their store features a lot of funny and just downright bizarre designs. I think Trevor and Emiko were probably the ones to direct me to that site in the first place since I'm pretty darn white (you can tell because I just used the word darn). Also I neglected to think to do the squinty peace sign face in my picture and that definitely knocks me down a peg on the Asianity scale (which I assume goes from Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's to Jackie Chan playing the violin in a rice paddy hat).

Okay I'm just going to quit while I'm behind.

Jaime Sucks.

I have become self-conscious about my face. Jaime has pointed out that I often make the same face when taking a picture so now I just end up in a panic when my photobooth app starts counting down. Also, I need a haircut.

Anywho. This is one of the new shirts that I got from threadless during their mega end of summer sale. It can be found here. If the text is hard to read it says "Cashiers are always checking me out". Fun fact: Jaime's immediate reaction upon seeing it "...You're a dork." So there's a nice insight to our friendship.

Mother Folk-er

This is another shirt from the grab bag that I got in 200?. I generally don't go for orange shirts. It's probably my least favorite color. Well maybe it's not as bad as like safety green or anything, but I'm still not a fan. This shirt's still kind of neat though. It makes me think of Flight of the Conchords (the fourth most popular folk-comedy duo from New Zealand). I feel they would appreciate it. I don't wear it much because a) it's orange and b) it's kind of big on me.

Fun fact about my day yesterday. I met Kobe Bryant. Background: Yesterday around lunchtime I got an email from Eric our band director that the band was just invited to a Q and A with Kobe Bryant that was being held for the UCI Athletics Department. So it was all of the student athletes and then me, Brandon, Adam, and Orville. Orville was flipping out a little bit. It was adorable. We were seated behind the women's soccer team who were pretty friendly. They were like, "We don't recognize you, what do you play?", and our response was like, "uh...drums."

Kobe was pretty cool. Learned some fun facts about him. For example the one that stands out is that he's apparently really good friends with Hilary Swank (actress from Boys Don't Cry and the seminal Next Karate Kid). We got to take a photo with him at the end and afterward I shook his hand. My immediate thought was that his hand is both surprisingly and understandably gigantic. So yeah that was pretty interesting.

Radish

This is one of the new shirts that I just ordered from Threadless during their 10 dollar sale (which is going on till the 30th, yo). If the crazy 90s script is hard to read it says "If I were a vegetable I'd be a radish because I'm only kind of rad". As a general rule of thumb, text tees are terrible and unfunny (i.e. ones sold at Hot Topic and Target and Walmart and other purveyors of cheesy shit). However, I haven't come across a Threadless one that I haven't liked. Oddly enough those are the ones that I'm most likely to snatch up.

Find it: Right here. As I said earlier, their 10 dollar sale is going on until 8am Monday ad I highly suggest giving it a looksee.

This is maybe my favorite shirt. I'm wearing it in honor of the fact that I'm going to go see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a movie that probably does more video game fan service than the Mortal Kombat movie (and certainly more than Street Fighter: Legend of Chun Li).

Find it:
This shirt is from Threadless which is one of the premiere T-shirt companies out there right now. They take submissions from artists and for the most part the designs chosen are based on user votes (there are also some artist exclusives). Whether a shirt gets re-printed or not is based purely on demand. They take complete designs and they also take ideas for text based tees like the one I've featured in my blog today. They often have various design contests running and pretty decent sales occasionally. Definitely worth checking out. This shirt in particular can be found here.

Today's shirt was a gift from my super fantastic housemates Tim and Sarah. Apologies for the weird face I'm making in the photo. Perhaps it should say, "Proud to be Awkward" instead. Not too much to say about this shirt other than I got it for my birthday a few months ago and that I'm flattered they think I'm awesome. That or they are aware of my raging egomania and know how much I think I'm awesome and feel the need to advertise it to the world.

Find It:
At your local Target. I can't find it in their online catalog but I just saw it at one of their stores a few days ago.