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.)

Thursday, January 23, 2014

T-shirt #308 - Bell's Solsun

T-shirt #308 - Bell's Solsun

Today's shirt is something of a collector's item.

It features the logo for the abandoned Solsun beer produced by Bell's Brewery here in Kalamazoo (also known as Kalamazoo Brewing Company) but became Oberon in 1998 "as a result of legal action by the Mexican brewing company Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma, makers of a beer with a similar name: El Sol (The Sun)" (Bell's Wikipedia, 2014).

From what I can tell with a Google search, my Solsun shirt is a bit rare and could fetch a fair price if I were to auction it off. (Make me an offer readers. I am willing to sell pre-auction. It's an XL like all my shirts and in near mint condition despite being over 16 years old).

I like beer. I like Bell's beer. But I don't have much more to say about that. I have another subject to tackle today, plus, as you may know, I am in hiatus.

My previous Bell's post and my preferred shirt is to be found here: T-shirt #186.

WHY T-SHIRTS?

I have not really addressed the central question most important to this blog:

WHY T-SHIRTS?

What's the deal with all these T-shirts? How did I get so many? Why are they important to me? Why am I spending so much time writing about T-shirts?

Obviously, I am doing more than writing JUST about T-shirts. I use T-shirts as a way to write, period. Just to write and then publish what I write and see what readers think. But even without any reader feedback, I am writing, I am exploring, I am producing.

So, the blog is dedicated to writing more than just about T-shirts, but the question about the T-shirts still lingers, and it's time to tackle it.

I have a "Wearing T-shirts" category with five posts in it. And now, I am adding the "Why T-shirts?" category to contain all the content I plan to produce in this series.

But first, here are the contents of the "Wearing T-shirts" category:

T-shirt #77: Narcissism

T-shirt #83: X-Men Logo

T-shirt #96: House of Secrets

T-shirt #93: Free Katie

T-shirt #87: Aliens, Robots, and Zombies

The last one, T-shirt #87, has the most content that applies to this question, some of which I will reprint as I am working on this series.

Even though I am on "hiatus," I am going to parcel out, one point at a time, the answer to "Why T-shirts?" Here we go.

WHY T-SHIRTS #1: T-SHIRTS ARE COOL (and I mean temperature)

I am always hot/warm. I go around my house in shorts and a T-shirt year around. My favorite work outfit is shorts and a T-shirt. I would wear shorts and a T-shirt outside all the time if it didn't get as cold some days as it is today. It's 14 degrees outside my house at this moment. When I woke up, it was eight degrees. Wind chills are as low 20 degrees below zero. I do not leave the house in shorts in that kind of temperature if only to run to end of the driveway to get the mail or the knocked over herby.

Otherwise, I feel most comfortable in a T-shirt. So, being cool means COMFORT. T-shirts are comfortable, and obviously, I am not the only who thinks so. And so, I slowly accumulated many of them over the years. But more on this in the next item, tomorrow.

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 - 57 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1401.23 - 15:58