365 T-shirts - the reasoning

This blog should be sub-titled: a journal of my life in geek.

I get my geek on with things about which I am geeky: comic books, Baseball, Ultimate, science fiction, my favorite bands, books I have read and loved, and Jungian psychology to name some of the most frequently traversed subjects.

I began this project simply as a way to count my T-shirts. I own a lot of T-shirts. But how many do I have? Do I have 365? We shall find out.

When I started this blog, I thought about how each T-shirt means something to me. I bought it for a reason, after all. I set myself the task to post an entry about a new T-shirt every day as a way to simply write something every day, a warm up for writing fiction, which is my passion. Writing is like exercise. Warm ups are good for exercise. But after completing a month of blogging about T-shirts, I have learned that this blog serves as a journal; it documents my life in geek, sort of a tour of my interests in pop culture. The blog serves as a tool for self-inventory, for assessment and analysis of self and the origins of self, for stepping through the process of individuation in catalogues, lists, and ranks.

The blog also made me aware that I have some serious gaps in my T-shirt ownership, and I am in the process of collecting some new T-shirts for several of the great popular culture icons that I truly love. Stay tuned.

I was also a bit surprised that people checked out my blog and continue to check it, read it, and even comment on it. I am very appreciative of this readership. Please feel free to share your thoughts in my comments section. I will respond.

Also, please note that I have moved the original introductory text to the side bar. And now, I present to you the most recent entry of 365 T-shirts: a journal of my life in geek. Thank you for reading.
(Second Update - 1310.24. First Update - 1306.05 Originally Posted - 1304.25.)

Saturday, February 8, 2014

T-shirt #324 - WMU - Big White Basketball shirt

T-shirt #324 - WMU - Big White Basketball shirt

I am not wearing this shirt.

It's a XXL. It's a little big for me.

An XL is big on me, but just big enough. That's how I like it.

I went to Western Michigan University for several undergraduate courses, even before, technically, I graduated from Kalamazoo College.

For awhile, I considered studying to be a secondary education teacher in the public school system.

I changed my mind.

I decided instead to earn degrees in literature and creative writing: fiction, and so I did graduate studies at WMU earning a Masters and a Masters of Fine Arts, the latter of which was, supposedly, a terminal degree.

This is a "short" entry because I am supposedly on "hiatus," at least that's what the boilerplate I keep pasting in here says.

READER: How's that "hiatus" working out for you, T-shirt Blogger Man?

T-SHIRT BLOGGER MAN: Not great.

READER: How come?

T-SHIRT BLOGGER MAN: I am not getting ahead as I planned. If anything, I am falling farther behind.

READER: I have noticed. I visit your blog every day and the unfinished entries are... unsettling.

T-SHIRT BLOGGER MAN: For you and me, both.

READER: Are you ever going to finish that Abbott's entry? And what do you have to say about Robin? And aren't some of your drafts in the drafts section MONTHS old, and if you promise to kick it, I promise to hold the football and not snatch it away at the last second.

T-SHIRT BLOGGER MAN: ARRRRRGGGG!!!!!!

BLOGGERY REPORT:  Thursday's Curious George entry, which I finished last night as of this writing, which was Saturday, even though this entry was published on Saturday, and now it's Sunday as I type....AND I updated it on Sunday, which is today, though in terms of when this entry was published it's tomorrow AND two days ago.
Is your mind blown yet?

ANYWAY, the Curious George post, T-shirt #322, has sky-rocketed the page views of the blog for today and the WEEK. In just a few hours, T-shirt #322, has vaulted into the top five posts most viewed this week AND climbing... It just gained one more page view since I started typing these comments. It's about to overtake the top post just since this morning.

This is the power of Sunday. Maybe I should wait and announce all my posts on Sundays.

Oh, right, short.

I am sure I can come up with more to say about WMU, but I have at least one other WMU shirt, so I will wait.

I will restrict myself here to how I came by this shirt.

For the last few years, I have been teaching a reading class at WMU. The day before WMU had its big basketball game with the University of Michigan, I wore this shirt, seen above right, to class (It's Michigan in Chinese) without thinking about my student, one A.J. Avery who was on the WMU Varsity Basketball team.

Talk about rubbing it in his face. Geez.

WMU lost, of course. But the next class period, A.J. brought me this nice, white WMU Basketball shirt as a gift.

Now, who was feeling ashamed of himself?

Not so much that I did not wear the shirt to the left later that semester.


Even more embarrassing is the way that the Michigan basketball team was thumped by Iowa yesterday as of this writing (which is the "today" of this entry's original publication). UGH.

After posting the Curious George entry via Twitter, this band started following me, so I am following them back.

Described as a "drunken Steroelab," I was intrigued. Not bad.

Monkeys In Love - An Owl With Hands



HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 41 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published - 1402.08 - 20:32
final publication - 1402.09 - 14:34

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