Stranger Things Shirts (Fan Merch/Replicas)

There is no denying that Stranger Things delivers in terms of pop culture nostalgia for every Gen X’er who has ever spent a weekend staying up late, consuming huge amounts of junk food to fuel an hours long campaign in DnD, going to the mall unaccompanied, or just generally hanging out with their small circle of friends while never checking in with parents once except to get a change of clothes, shower, a hot meal, or an advance on their allowance to go and try to beat that high score on Dig Dug at the arcade.

The 80s were a different time of being out of pocket. We didn’t have cell phones or social media or any other ways to get a hold of us except for yelling out the back door, down the street, or calling our friends’ land line phones to tell their parents to send us home. But we usually came home, eventually, and without incident. It’s probably a good thing those ways of contacting us or documenting our childhood adventures hadn’t been invented yet or we would have been grounded until graduation.

Stranger Things takes everything we experienced or felt in the 80s and encapsulates it into an 8-10 hour horror/sci-fi marathon, complete with all the sights, sounds, and bad fashion choices we yearn to have again secretly during our mid-life crises.

And speaking of fashions… It also produces a ton of merch, either fan inspired or replica of what you see in the show, every year. From the subtle to overtly in your face, here are a bunch that you can find over at TeePublic from each season.


Season 1

Hawkins Radio Club



Strange Number 11 by djkopet



Hawkins Middle School A.V. Club by redbaron_ict










Season 2

Palace Arcade





Bitchin’ by Vincent Trinidad Art






Season 3
Hawkins Pool Life Guard





Operation: Child Endangerment By BoggsNicolas





Dustin’s Roast Beef Shirt by Polomaker






Season 4
Murray-Do Karate




Rink-O-Mania






Dustin’s Thinking Shirt by BiggsNicolas






And of course, how could we not sneak this one in…
Hellfire Club replica design

How CafePress' Admin Bot Shops Charge You Blindly

   Please stop creating these admin shops and listing products that are not added by me, the account owner.  You are putting products out for sale in the marketplace that are not configured for the best use of my designs.  The latest sale that came from one was black lettering on black apparel.   

   Yes, I see a royalty from that sale, however, I did not approve of that design for that type of apparel, nor does this shop fall inside my payment setting for a premium shop.   In addition to paying my yearly fee, I also would be responsible for a fee attached to this sale because the default setting for that shop is to only pay royalties on items sold (10%).   You are essentially selling my designs and charging me a fee for something I did not approve as the designer.  I have had to close several of these admin shops or make them private in order to stop this from affecting my sales. 

   I have stuck with CafePress since 2009 even though nearly every other Print on Demand site offers the same benefits with no fees.   You’ve stripped us the same royalties for marketplace sales as shop sales, halved our royalties for 3^rd party and fan portal sales.    I have been loyal to this site because of the benefit of the exposure and that scale is being tipped towards the negative ever more with these frustrations. 

   Please consider changing this practice as I am sure that while I am simply a small time designer and one voice among millions of designers who use CafePress, shopkeepers like me are how CafePress got its start and has grown.    While I don’t expect anything to come from this request, I must make it as it has been far too long for me to sit idly by and not voice my frustration.

Thank you,
AngryMongo

 Not the most eloquent of messages, but one that needed to be sent for a long time.   Yes, it's almost passive aggressive in tone.  "If you don't stop being corporate bad guys, well, then, I'll just shake my fist and yell really loud with no ramifications."  Quite frankly, if I struck any kind of nerve and CafePress just decided to say, "So long, we're closing your account because of x" I would be kind of happy.   I have sort of let my shop languish because it just generates a minimal amount of monthly income that I am willing to accept for hardly any work, while I focus my attention to more robust, up to date, and shops that don't charge me a fee like TeePublic or Redbubble.

  In fact, it's been a long slow hospice for my CafePress shop since they changed the rules to only give designers a flat 10% royalty on sales from the marketplace, whereas previously it was whatever royalty you decided.  And actually, that should read "up to 10%" because they nail you for sales that come through fan portals and 3rd party sales like Amazon.  Shop sales prices can't compete with Marketplace prices and no one in their right mind will pay more for something just because the designer gets a higher cut.  

  The latest trend is for CafePress to add these Admin shops to your account and pre-populate a handful of categories with select items and select designs under the guise of "We're trying out things that you may want to be aware of".  Nothing you actually have any hand in when it happens.  They do it and unless you constantly bird dog your account, you don't find out that something is wrong until you get a weird royalty email stating that you made a sale on a no name item.  You check the sales report and see that it came from the Marketplace, featuring a design that you already offer in your regular store and already pay a monthly/yearly fee to operate.  Then, on top of only getting 10% of the royalty, because these admin shops are default settings, you pay a 10% fee on your royalty for every item sold up to $10 a month.  So, $60 in shop fees, plus up to $120 a year for these bot shops they set up on your behalf.  

  The argument here is kind of moot because I continue to do business with them, but that's only because the fees have been about 3% of my sales.  It's an easy revenue stream that doesn't require a lot of work other than to guard every penny by shutting down these stupid bot sites.  Still, I should stand up to this kind of behavior, closing my shop and walking away.   Unfortunately, there are millions of designers using CafePress, losing me would hurt only me every month, when I don't see a paltry line item on my PayPal account from CafePress.


UPDATE 2/8/16:  CafePress did respond in kind.... but I already knew this would be there response, if any.

Thank you for contacting CafePress. To Opt Out of marketplace listing, go to the shop management page and click on your shop settings. at the bottom you will see a check box marked Opt Out of the Marketplace. Your designs will then be removed from the marketplace.
If there is anything else I can do for you, please let me know.

Please use this code in any further communication.
Best Regards,
CafePress

Well, I did those steps and lo and behold, today, a new order for an item in that Admin shop, which has been marked as opting out of the Marketplace.  Look at the quality of their product with my design.  It doesn't fit the product.  This is what happens when their bot stores add my designs to their products...  This is horrible quality product that goes to the customer and has my name associated with it.  AND I GET CHARGED A FEE FOR THE SALE?!?!?!

I've removed all products from the Admin shop, but they'll be back.  In a few months time, there will be more crap in there that I will have to remove, again.


UPDATE 2/9/16:  Now, they're just trolling me.

Thank you for your response.  I am happy to assist you today.
I am sorry to hear of your frustrations.  At this time I would like to suggest closing your Admin shop.  In order to do so, go to "Shop", click "Admin_CP7374716".  This will bring you to your "Manage Your Shop" page.  

On the right hand side of the screen you can click "Close this Shop".  This will close this shop all together.  You then would not have to opt out of the marketplace.  

When opting out of the marketplace, it takes away the option of customers finding any of your items on our website at all, unless they have your shop HTML.

I hope this information is helpful.

 OK, so I have done these steps before.   Within days, the Admin bot shops reappear.  So, I asked a stupid question of them.

If I close this shop, will another one be added in the future?  (Included screenshot with email that shows only one shop now exists)  I have closed it and should not see any more of these Admin shops appear in my account.

Thank you

Of course, I fully expect there to be a new wonderfully awful bot shop in my account within a few days.   This is how they responded to my message...

Hello, I will be happy to assist you with this matter. I apologize that you are having issues with the admin shops. Unfortunately, another admin shop will produce its self. You can opt it out of the marketplace and mark it as private. This way the items can not be sold in the marketplace and will not be found on search engines. I also recommend removing any products from the admin shops as well. This will only need to be done once and no additional admin shops will be added in the future.  
To mark you shop as Private follow these steps:

1. Log into your CaféPress account.
2. Click on the Shop ID of the shop you wish to edit.
3. Click “Edit Shop Profile”.
4. Towards the bottom of this page will be your Preferences. Check the Private box and Market place Opt out.  Click on “Save Changes”.

Are you kidding me?  We're back to opting out.  Yet, clearly, the opting out still allowed items to be bought through the Marketplace.  


Sigh.

UPDATE: 2/22/16
  Yep, they're trolling.  The steps above outline how I am to mark the shop private and opt out of the marketplace... which I had done.   Then, yesterday, another shirt was sold out of that shop.  The products just happened to appear. 

  Well, one other option presents itself.  There is a 500 section or folder limit on shops.  If I add 500 blank sections, I can force them to stop adding them.

  Shouldn't be this hard.

UPDATE: 2/24/16
  So, apparently, Cafepress' rule about maximum number of sections allowed on your shop is a lie.   I tried to do an end run around the bot shops by adding 500 folders or sections, maxing out the allotted number.  The hope was that it would stop them from adding their own, which clearly are still selling products, even though I've removed that shop from the marketplace and opted out of search engine indexing.

 Well, today, there were 503 sections in the bot shop, which means that they refuse to be stopped.  I removed the products from the newly created sections.  However, these new sections are automatic and not done by some lackey in their offices.

UPDATE: 3/28/16

I sent a new message to CafePress because it has been over a month since I opted out of the marketplace with this bot shop and still orders get generated in sections that they add above and beyond their supposed 500 section limit.   I can't be bothered to go in every day and remove products from new sections.  This shouldn't be what a shopkeeper has to do.

It has been over a month since I opted out of the marketplace with this store.  And yet, orders keep getting placed from the Marketplace.  See Attached.   Also, your limit of 500 sections does not seem to apply to this admin bot shop as there are 522 sections in the shop itself.

So, what gives?  I get a lot of apologies and understanding of frustrations, yet no indication of anything to actually fix this issue other than I have to manually go into newly generated sections over the 500 limit and remove all products, but as you can see from the attached, unless I go in every day, continually and remove products, orders get placed.

Fix this.  Stop adding items, sections, orders, whatever!

UPDATE: 4/4/16

Now, this is a new one.  Logging in today, expecting to delete more products from the Admin shop, I found a new wrinkle in the mess.   Someone removed the exclusions from my Admin shop, opting it back into the marketplace and making it public.  They also removed all of the sections that were there.  Lastly, there was a strange product in my shopping cart.  Seriously, something is loco here.
Here was their response:

Thanks for your reply. I am sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused you. We do not reset any shops unless the owner advises us. The sections and products in your store we also did not get rid of. No, changes are made to your store from us. Looking into what's going on with the Admin shops, you can close them at anytime. 
If there is anything else I can do for you, please let me know.
Your ticket code is [redacted]. Please use this code in any further communication.
Best Regards,

Their explanation of how they wouldn't have done such things is ridiculous as is their advice on how to handle this as even if I close that shop, in a week, another one will open.

Now, why would I undo all the work I've been doing to stop these sales from happening?   I emptied the cart, reapplied all the same exclusions, and changed my password.   Even still, there's some residual cookie thing going on because even though it shows empty, I still get a one item in my cart icon on each page.   You can see that all the sections are gone from the picture above, to here. 

Kickstart My Art

As an entrepreneur, and I guess I use that term way too much but it works for me, I’ve spent countless hours entertaining tens of people with content.   (That wasn’t a misprint, literally tens of people have enjoyed my work.)   But, as much as I’m in it for the joy of creating and sharing my work with others, I’m in it to make money, too.  This blog, my shirts, and videos are aimed at having fun with media and design but also serve to make money for the purpose of proving that I can make money doing these things.  Now, I have my 9-5 job and that’s fine.   It affords me to be able to indulge in these other ventures to the point where I don’t have to work hard at producing content and that has probably been a detriment to my profit margin.  I guess it depends on what your definition of success is.

But, as a shirt designer, blogger, and YouTuber, I’ve found that I’ve had to reinvest a substantial amount of my profits back into the business to try and expand.    Granted, it’s all spent on games and gadgets, but that’s not that point.   I’ve made it this far without having to rely on the kindness of strangers to just hand over money.   Yes, strangers do hand over money, but there is an immediate transaction of money for goods.   I’ve never just asked blindly for funds and there’s a couple of reasons why.

The Risk

I’m not a huge risk taker when it comes to the business side of M.A.M.S.  I’ve operated under the guise that if I cannot make a profit from what I am doing, I won’t do it.  That was the model I’ve followed for paying $50-$60 a year for a premium CafePress Shop, pretty much a necessity if you want to make any real money without social media traction of your own.  If and when I stop making a profit above that overhead, I will quit it.  There are other non-paying sites that can do just as much if not more in terms of products, but CafePress holds the majority of the marketplace among Print On Demand sites.

Even YouTube isn’t that risky of a proposition, even though I’ve made all of $2.00 from videos I’ve produced since January.   The reason being is that I am doing basically what I would do anyway, I’m just filming and producing it.   I’d still play the games.  I’d still need the hard drive space.  So, I’m not too worried about that.     Still, I would probably get more views and more traction if I spent more on my work, but I don’t have the capacity to do it that way.   This is one of the things I can’t stand about businesses, especially ones I’ve worked for in the past.   They see this all encompassing need to spread themselves into so many categories that they can’t manage their base.  Soon, quality across all platforms suffer because they are more concerned with profits and market share that they don’t see that for every new customer they gain for one shiny piece of crap, they lose three loyal ones who bought their goods when it was quality stuff.

The Results

Here’s the meat and potatoes of my post, Kickstarter.   Now, don’t get me wrong, I have friends that have used Kickstarter to fund their projects and I give them all the credit in the world.  Me, I just don’t see me spending effort and making promises I may not be able to keep in the long run.   With Kickstarter or other crowd funding platforms you ask for the money on the promise that if you get funded you can then give some sort of return on their investment.   Usually, it’s in the form of a copy of whatever you’re trying to get funded but sometimes you promise more for higher amounts of pledges.   Because I would simply be funding the promise of producing more of the same content with better infrastructure, I can only offer what I already do, now.  So, why would I try to entice people to give me money to do what I already do, now.   I would just be creating the sales, proactively.   Hey, that’s actually not a bad idea.   A Kickstarter project that simply aims to sell what you already sell, a “PRE-SALE” if you will.

The Negative

Still, Kickstarter is a great way to use social media to get the word out on your venture.  What I don’t like is how it’s become a tool for people who shouldn’t need to use it.  Case in point,  Zach Braff recently held a Kickstarter project to fund a film he was trying to make, called Wish I Was Here.  It’s not that I don’t like Zach Braff, I just don’t see the need for someone who is worth $22 million dollars to hijack a platform that is primarily for those without the funds themselves to produce a movie.  Yes, the budget is set around $6 million dollars, nearly a quarter of Braff’s net worth, but it’s not like Braff is an unknown filmmaker or actor.   And the cast has some talent in it.  Why not secure producers in your own backyard.  

Also, don’t get me started on Spike Lee using Kickstarter.   The director is trying to raise $1.25 million, of which he’s $700k into for a film.   The dude is worth $40 million.    I also can’t stand that he’s remaking Old Boy, but that’s another story.   George Lucas built an Empire with his own money.  He was smart.  Granted, he went back to the well one too many times and ruined it, but that’s beside the point.   Kevin Smith maxed out credit cards to make Clerks and that worked out fine.   I guess that’s the “Risk” thing I’m talking about.   However, using Kickstarter, you’re not risking your own money.  If it doesn’t get funded, it doesn’t get funded and all that money goes back to the people who have pledged.   If you’re unlucky, you may have a diva or two that will be pissed that they put other projects on hold, with the promise that your project would get funded, and then proceed to sue you for lost wages.   I’m sure that kind of insurance gets baked into the contract.

I just don’t think that celebrities should be using Kickstarter to fund things that upstart filmmakers and artists rely on to produce their work.   It’s trendy and hip to be a project, I get that, but you are making millions of dollars a year.  You’re neither hip nor trendy.  You’re rich.   You’re also diluting the waters of what was considered a great place for people to collaborate.    

It’s like when you find a great little restaurant or bar that no one goes to.   You walk in and own the place.  After awhile, your drinks and appetizers are already ordered before you sit down.  We had a place like this in college.   It was quiet and laid back with no hint of jocks or drunken frat asshats.  Then word got out and the place got noticed.  Granted, due to various infractions by other establishments that forced them to close, our quiet little tavern became the only port in the storm on campus.  I went back about ten years after college and the place reeked of cheap beer and Axe cologne.   Christmas lights and lattice work destroyed the ornate mahogany walls and there were crappy bands and DJs spinning Jock Jams 13.   It was a mess.   It was ruined.  That’s what Kickstarter will become.     It will be the house in Beetlejuice that gets renovated after the Maitland’s have died and the Deetzes have moved into it.

So, while I applaud my friends that have used Kickstarter to their credit, I hate to think how it will look in three to five years when Justin Bieber starts a project to fund his new tour, Douchebag 2016. 

Greetings From Fayette Nam

Breaking in with a shirt related post today. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about my hometown and the surrounding areas.   Sites like Champ Yinz and My Fresh Factory have capitalized on the local flavor of Pittsburghers.  Being from SWPA or more to the point Fayette Nam as we call it, we don’t have a lot of catchy “wink, wink, nod, nod” shirts.  Well, I am hoping to change that.

Happy To Be Hungry

A couple of years ago, I did a pseudo homage/replica shirt of a local eatery which used to be a well known place in my hometown of Connellsville.   Winkys was pretty well known in and around the Pittsburgh area.   Some of you may remember the “There’s no Winkys in Wilmerding” saying of the 70s.   Eventually, in the late 80s, our Winkys was replaced with a Chumley’s, then an Arby’s.  Now, it’s a Rite-Aid store.

But for those of us old enough to remember the 70s, we’ll remember these.

And for those of you looking for a sense of nostalgia, pick up a Winkys shirt.

 

Winkys Shirt From Zazzle

Mammoth Park

Another well know place in and around my hometown is Mammoth Park.  It's located in Mammoth, PA… more commonly known as Mt. Pleasant.  Mammoth was founded as a Coke mining town and a park was built nearby.  

One of the main features of the park is the Giant Slide, which was built into the hillside.  The metal sliding board takes a double dip and ends in a long straightaway, which is needed to slow you down.   The reason was that, instead of flaying about three layers of skin from the back of their thighs, most people would bring wax paper to ride down the slide, increasing speed.   So, I wanted to capture that idea by putting together an classic/retro parody of the idea with a shirt for a fictional paper company in the area.  Hence, the Mammoth Wax Paper Company was born.

Even though it's considered Westmoreland County, us Fayette Nam residents still claim it as our own.

Mammoth Wax Paper Company Dark Apparel
from Skreened

Mammoth Wax Paper Company
from Skreened

East Park and Shady Grove Pool

These two ideas are still in the mix, but one of the features of East Park is either the tunnel or the newly restored Castle Lookout.  I’m still theorizing how to approach the idea.  The same goes for Shady Grove.  That one may not be a reality as it is still in business, I think.

Design It - The Westeros League

I finally got around to putting up my first “Design It” video.  With the 3^rd season of Game of Thrones starting this weekend, I needed to hurry and get these up.

These are different than the regular game play videos.  I do not have the ability, yet, to record my desktop (Windows 8) with FRAPS.  Therefore, I have to download all the images from the sites and add them to the Windows Live Movie Maker Project as stills.   Then, I can adjust their timed length, add transitions and animations bridging two images together.   After that, I can add in the music and save the video.  Then I have to go back and record the commentary with Sound Recorder in chunks and splice them into a new project with the saved video as a clip.

Because of the time constraints, I have to somewhat plan my commentary in order to hit my marks and not go over on time.

In all, a three minute video can take an hour or two to produce.

It might be a great way to reach your audiences but there are some manual hang-ups I have work through.  

In any case, here is my first effort at the “Design It” series.   I am also going to post this on the Store blog as well.

The Design It Series - The Westeros League #1
The Storm's End Baratheons

The Angry Cast

It’s official!  I have launched myself into new self serving, egotistical, “look at me” heights.  I’m on YouTube.

The AngryCast made its debut this month with a couple of test videos, an ad for the upcoming series, and the first in a series of videos showcasing my lack of building skills in Minecraft.  The kicker?  You get to hear my voice.  Shudder.  Well, actually, in the first video, you can barely make me out, but it’s there.

 

Why am I torturing you with this?  Well, as the ever enterprising entrepreneur, I thought it was time to explore a new avenue and build the brand.   OK, Let’s face it.  It’s about money.  LOL.

When I first started the blog it was a war cry.  It was rage against the machine that is Hollywood.  An idea was formed for a stupid novelty website that would provide people with bad advice in the monosyllabic mumblings of myself as Mongo.  And when neither the capital or tech know how was available to realize that dream, I shelved AskMongo.    I wasn’t about to shell out money to domain sit while I got older and still no closer to designing a website. 

But, something snapped and I started writing posts about how bad Hollywood had become and it turned into  this blog.  Then, I got the idea to maybe sell merchandise for the blog and if that proved profitable, I would revisit the website idea and use the merchandise to fund it.  But that didn’t work either.  So, AskMongo crawled back into his hole.   Then, I started thinking of my rants in graphical terms and came up with the idea to sell t-shirts with pop culture parodies and an homage to my childhood cinema memories.   So,  I launched a shirt site and separate blog to cover that.

That blog, still exists today as a place where I can showcase my work and talk about how you can do what I’ve done, only better. 

Now, I’m taking it one step further.  YouTube videos to cover it all.

Of course, you know, this means I will have even less time on my hands.  Here’s why.  Once again, these stories are for your benefit.   Use me as an example of what not to do.

I am the lazy and cheap ass entrepreneur.  My design business costs me all of $50 a year and manages to bring in about a 25,000% ROI.  Trust me.  That’s not a lot.   It pays for my mortgage, a week’s worth of vacation, and Christmas. 

But still, it doesn’t hurt.  I put in maybe 10 hours a week of work towards it.  (I know.  It shows.)   So, I splurged and bought FRAPS to record videos.  I can record my desktop as well as games.  Yes, Minecraft.  LOL.  There will be others as time allows. But I also want to do older games.  Games I loved back in the days of MS-DOS.   However, I spent all of $37 dollars on this new media empire.  The microphone I got when I purchased a replacement PS3 for $50.  Windows Live Movie Maker came with my laptop. 

And as far as music is concerned, I’ve been sticking with Royalty Free music that is covered under the Creative Commons License.  That means you can use any music listed under this license for whatever purpose, including monetized YouTube videos and you are only obligated to give credit in the description. 

I will say that I can understand why it takes so long for videos to get produced. I spent a good 12 hours putting together a five minute video.  That included eight hours of actual in-game recording, two hours of video editing, one hour of narration recording, and one hour of uploading to YouTube with tagging and descriptions.

I’m still getting my legs under me and working out the bugs of the process.  For one, Windows Live Movie Maker is free and you get what you pay for in terms of quality.  It’s not bad, but there are times where the application chokes under the pressure of all that data.   It corrupts clips just to spite me, which cannot be compressed into a video file format, forcing me to do it in layers.  Many, many layers.   The different settings for each layer get confusing and in the first video, I had to go back and redo parts which led me to forget to turn the music volume down when I added the track back into the project.   It can be really frustrating to do all this at 11:30 at night. 

I’m planning on four main series of videos with no real schedule.

Mongo Smashes _____ (Insert Game Title):  Basically, me playing a game, badly,  and hopefully being interesting. Minecraft to start, more to come.

Build It Series:  Minecraft specific videos that will involve me giving a play by play narration of building anything in Minecraft, some items will be comment driven.

Rants:  Sometimes in games there are periods where you have to do menial tasks that take a long time.  In Minecraft it might be gathering material or exploring.  In these cases, I will use the time to just rant.  Think of it as a blog post set to music and video.    I will probably even read or expand on some of my favorite posts in this series.

Design It:  This is the shirt side of the video series as I give showcases or walkthroughs of designs I’ve done.

For those of you looking to get into this business, I will keep you posted on how the process is going.  I haven’t monetized the videos, yet.  I need more of a following.   But, with a little luck and creativity, I might be able to pull it off.  We’ll see.

Come take a look, subscribe, drop me a comment, and I’ll keep making more.

Help Support Captain Feline on Kickstarter

I posted this over on the Store Blog and I am putting here in order to get the word out. 

Indie shirt companies are what’s going right with the world.   It’s not a big corporation sucking the life out of its employees and not rewarding their hard work.   It’s not a huge conspiracy to mask some political gain.   The pureness of the indie brands is that it’s a person or a handful of people committed to something they love to do, regardless of failure or success.     They care about their work and they care about their fans and customers.   They also care about their peers.  

A few years back I was a struggling entrepreneur and blogger.  Let’s face it,   I still am.   I started putting some designs up on some Print On Demand sites just to see if they’d sell.   They did… a little.    Then, the community of shirt designers stepped in and noticed.     And, we’re not talking a friend of a friend of a brother’s former roommate.   We’re talking folks from Spain, England, and Australia.    I started seeing some tweets and shares, of my stuff, around the net.   Their kindness and welcoming attitude paid off in brand awareness.   Soon, I was getting mentioned in Podcasts and on their sites.   

Eventually, I was being asked to participate in giveaways.    I felt like part of something great.    That’s what being a part of the shirt design community is.   It’s being a part of something great and exciting and stimulating.   Nothing smells so sweet as the blood, sweat, and tears on your hard work.   Looking at that finished project and just sort of smirking, as if to say, “FUCK YEAH!”   Pardon the expression, but “FUCK YEAH!”

So, because that community was so inviting and supportive to me, I pledged to help a Kickstarter project for one of those businesses that I’ve benefitted from over the years.  I am paying back a fraction of the rewards I’ve reaped from being part of their world.   And I’m not even part of their world, really.    These folks do so much more than my lazy, cheap ass, hack of a shirt designer.     There is some pure talent and creativity in this work and I am giggling at the work because it is pretty awesome.

Take a look at their work over at Captain Feline.  

Here’s the gist.   Amanda and Dave of GritFx shirts have taken the leap of launching a full indie brand line of shirts.   It mixes iconic characters or scenes from pop culture with cats.    

Imagine the following visages as anthropomorphic cats; Frank N. Furter, The MIBs, Gandalf, Ripley and Newt, The Usual Suspects, The Bride from Kill Bill, and even Easy Rider…. CATS ON MOTORCYCLES.

They are in the hopes of raising the funds needed to launch, maintain, and improve the brand through Kickstarter, and you even get some awesome swag if you pledge.I’m getting a shirt, some postcards, and some comfort in knowing I helped make this awesome idea a reality. 

Better hurry, their deadline is around the last week of August, so GET TO DA KICKSTARTA! GO NOWWWW!

WUMF: July 2012 Edition

Summer just be flying by.  I didn't realize it was time for another WUMF.

Olympics 2012
I’ve been waiting to watch the Olympics for awhile now, but since the games are not being shown on Qubo or Nick Jr. the odds of me actually watching much of them are slim to none. I did manage to get my kid interested in the diving and gymnastics events only because they were flashy. Once they went back to showing just the races, she tuned out and asked for her show. I sort of almost decided against the entire thing after catching a few minutes of the God awful opening ceremonies. That trip through history to return an iPhone was pretty awful.

Other than that, the Internet is doing a great job of covering the games. All of the results are coming in WAAAAY before NBC gets off their asses and airs the actual event. Waiting for NBC to show you the swimming competition is like working in IT and waiting to see Dark Knight Rises after the crowds die down a bit. You’re expecting your geek coworkers to not spoil it for you the minute after it comes out.

Does NBC understand that with Twitter and Facebook and oh, I don’t know Google and every other news site, that the results will be announced as they happen at the games and not during prime time when you choose to air the events? Maybe this is just proof at how vapid of a culture we’ve become, expecting the rest of the world to wait for us to show up… much like Michael Phelps at the pool. All that Subway made him slow.

Actually, I’ve got this vibe of treating this like it’s a reality show house competition. It seems very unpatriotic… or maybe uber-patriotic… like the bad kind of patriotism.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Beetles!
When we moved into our house in 2004, we were told by the exterminator who was doing work for the previous owners as part of the contract that we have a lot of bugs. Not in the house, but on the property. With two big oaks, two big maples, and a shit load of pines, there are plenty of reasons why there are lots of spiders, ants, and termites. Now, we’ve got beetles.

I had just cut the grass and we were relaxing in our patio chairs. I could distinctly smell the all too familiar scent of cat shit from our neighbor strays and it was pissing me off as usual. As my daughter wandered around playing and looking at bugs, she told me to come check out these strange, HUGE bugs. Sure enough, there was these gigantic beetles crawling in and around a pile of cat shit. Three to five of them were just frantically crawling out from under a pile of dirt and grass and poop. I walked throughout the yard and noticed another set of beetles doing the same thing. Apparently, I was lucky enough to not have stepped in either pile during my cutting of the grass.

We checked the Internet to try and find out what kind of beetles these were but no such luck. They are either dung beetles or hister beetles from what we could narrow down.

I went back out after dark with the camera but could find no trace of them.  I even looked again this evening and no trace of them. 

Squirrel Hill Tunnel Traffic
They have been working on the Squirrel Hill Tunnels for what seems like years.  This past weekend they closed down from Friday through to Monday at 5:00AM to do more work.  Traffic was still backed up at 6:30AM this morning as we were backing up to the Churchill exit.  I thought they had gone late or there was an accident.  No such thing.

Do you know what was backing traffic up so badly, this morning?  Hundreds of commuters didn't expect to see half of the roof missing on the inside of the tunnel and had to slow down to inspect it REEEALLLL close. 

Now, you may think I'm exaggerating, but for the 600 yards the roof had been ripped up above us, traffic slowed to a crawl.  However, when we reached the end of where the work had been done, everybody took off like a shot.  Literally no traffic exiting the tunnel.  It's like, "Is it going to fall on me? What the hell is that curved thing up there?"

I was inspired to parody a meme that has been done to death, but it's been selling pretty good in my online stores.

Keep Calm and Maintain Speed Thru Tunnels

I even got a shout out on Twitter from PittGirl

Best "Keep Calm and ...." shirt ever? Yes. #pittsburgh #tunnels skreened.com/mongoware/keep…
— Virginia Montanez (@JanePitt) July 30, 2012

I love this town and the people in it.  Just... not... the ones staring up at the roof of the tunnels instead of actually driving.

Drive on, Pittsburgh