The secret ingredient

For some reason, corporations just don't like people spilling their secrets.

And it doesn't make a lick of sense to this Shirtmaster.

After all, isn't that the nature of the 'free market' which so greatly benefits these lumbering behemoths of commerce? That, armed with solid information, us consumers can make rational choices about how we exercise our purchasing power, thereby letting the market 'decide' who succeeds and who doesn't. It's the invisible guiding hand of the market place.

But wait; if corporations have secrets about their products, that don't allow consumers to have all the information that they might like to have about a product or organisation, than it's not possible to 'make rational choices about how we exercise our purchasing power.' Thus undermining one of the founding premises of the 'free market.'

Whew! Disproving the viability of free-market capitalism is a hard way to start a work-week! Time for a nap! Oh, and the secret ingredient is one goatee hair per order, from the artificially preserved and sustained head of the founding Colonel (who, by the way, is no General; that's for sure.) Enjoy your lunch!

And now, for something a little different...

Are you sitting down?

Because, seriously, you're about to see the shirt like you've never seen it before. A whole new side to The Daily Shirt, if you will.

No, this isn't some sort of paparazzi-type pic feature the shirt with his pants down (which in and of itself is an interesting idea - how would a shirt wear pants?!), nor is it some sort of artistic statement like Shirty shopping for a dinner jacket (though there's another idea!).

Simply put, it's a brand new angle to The Daily Shirt that makes the almost-18-million-years-remaining of original heads for Shirty into many, many more. And depending on how you feel about this little space on the Whole World Web, it's either time to party or time to pack it all in and call it a life.

Either way, you finally have a use for that combination noose/silly party hat.

You're welcome.

Non-stop ralphing

Greetings web-traveller, I hope you're always looking both ways before crossing the blogosphere...

Today's Daily Shirt is another tribute. Getting sick of these yet? Really? But there's only been one other. It's not like we're making you eat chocolate 'till you barf.

But really, you had to know it was coming; this blog in and of itself is a tribute to various forms of hilarity, so to not do another explicit tribute would have just been unpossible. A crime against nature. I can't just choo-choo-choose not to post a particular Shirty face because it offends your delicate sensibilities.

So, just calm down; it'll be over soon enough. We don't want you to get carsick in your fancy office, with all sorts of big, important diplomas from Bovine University. Living that dream, I see; didn't manage to grow up to be either a principal or a caterpillar, so there you sit, getting free entertainment when you probably should be doing something more important. Look, these tributes won't happen that often, but even if they did, there's always tomorrow to see a non-tributey face on Shirty. Possibly. In this crazy world of bent wookies and legs that don't know how to be as long as other legs, who can say for sure.

E = MC Sly-Dawg

We've had some truly great heads on Shirty over the time that we've been doing this. It's really been an honour meeting some of these folks who Shirty - through it's mystical powers of Shirtentology - has animated.

By today's head might be the pinnacle of the peak; the top of the best of the number one greatest heads on a shirt since the dinosaurs created heads and shirts to frolic without sin in the Garden of Iran.

And that's not because this is the Shirtmaster's first head-on-a-shirt since Frank went on vacation.

And it's also not because today's addition represents some grand statement, prolific point, or awesome observation.

It's because today's Daily Shirt is the rare combination of nerd and 'playa.' Yup, the man who gave us the Theory of Relativity was also something of a ladies man in those days, and a bit of a dirty dog at that (dude did, after all, marry and pop out a kid with his cousin). He was also named Time Magazine's Person of the Century in 1999, and, perhaps coolest of all, he's got his own chemical element; number 99, 'einsteinium.'

Here's to you, smartest non-virgin in history!

Mystery head - Part I

Well look who's come slinking back...

I have to confess, I have no idea who today's Daily Shirt is. Well, that's not entirely true. I had no idea until Frank told me, but...things like that tend to slip through the ol' memory-cracks, ya know? It's not like important things like the home address, which allergies are lethal and which merely hilarious or the list of Roman emperors in order of height.

I do know that it looks like some bizarre elf-type creature and that it's from a kid's show; further, that Frank's daughter picked it. As for a name - sorry, can't help you.

I also know that it looks sufficently silly on the shirt, and in the end, isn't that really what matters?

Fallen from grace (Part I)

Welcome back! I hope the guards weren't too rough...

Today's Daily Shirt seems sooooo 1999. You remember 1999, don't you? The year before the Y2K bug broke the world. If I remember correctly, it took a good 3 or 4 whole nanoseconds to recover from that one. Those were desperate times full of desperate people desperately being desperate about desperation.

It was also the year that the Euro was introduced, Stephen King was hit by a car, and, who can forget, Jorge Batlle being elected President of Uruguay? I know I can't. All around good times - except for Stephen King. That didn't work out so well.

Oh, and the Earth was destroyed when the sun supernova-ed.

That sucked too.

But anyway, back to the topic at hand; Shirty's was just saying the other day how it had never been to prison, so it figured the best it could do is take on the face of a jail-bird. I mean, what kind of trouble could a shirt get into in the first place, to land itself a spot in the bighouse? Well, aside from taking on the face of a copywritten image like Mickey Mouse (oops!) or slandering a public figure like GWB (whoops!)...

Yeah...so anyway, here you go...

S-Dawg

I don't know how Frank does it. Nor do I know how Shirty does it. And honestly, I'd like to keep it that way. This shirt is creepy.

Anyway, Frank brought his child into the office the other day - probably to trade her for office supplies, I suspect - so The Shirtmaster has the sneaking suspicion that the child could possibly have had a hand in Shirty's transformation on this particular day. What's weird is that one could also infer (from the choice of face) that he very possibly might have gone back to the 70's via some form of time-travel mechanism and brought a child back from that era to be his daughter. One is just as likely as the other around here.

Now, I haven't kept up with cartoons as much, perhaps, as I should, so for all I know, this particular child-amusing creation is still popular in this day and age of internet tubes. But what I do know is that I remember this character from when I was a kid. And that makes me feel old. So very, very old.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Drella

Shirty has been playing the resurrection card again. After the rousing success of the Elvis head a little while back, it decided it was time to put on a heavy metal album, paint it's fingernails black and try it's hand at necromancing again, this time conjuring up another dead American icon for the shirt.

This time, we have an artist who made a name for himself - in part - by painting every day things, and then acting snotty so that these paintings would go up in value. Oh, The Art World; why must you be so fickle? Anyway, I never met the man, mainly because 1) I was 11 when he died, and 2) I had no reason to be in the New York Pop Art scene at that time (that was my Italian Baroque sculpting phase), so that assessment can't be vouched for personally. But suffice to say, all great artists are moody. So, if you're an artist and are generally well-tempered and good-natured, you probably suck. Sorry. I didn't make the rules...

Piecing one together...

Today's post is a little later than usual because, honestly, I couldn't think of anything to write this morning. So, I decided that we're going to do a little stream of consciousness rambling and see where this gets us. Probably not very far, but hey - I'm already three sentences in! That's wickedly killer to the max.

Unlike that statement, which absolutely reeks of dated, cliche, teenage colloquialism that is so devoid of relevance to today, that's it's almost embarrasing to see those words strung together. Almost. Where does this garbage come from?

Anyway, that should do the trick. I can't believe you actually read that. Sorry.

Here's today's Daily Shirt.

The elevator at the Paris Hilton doesn't go all the way to the top

Congratulations on surviving to today! That's quite the accomplishment! We're all proud of you!

Further to the topic of hard work and accomplishment, you might have guessed by the title of this post that today's face is the simplest life of them all, Paris Hilton (and if you didn't manage to guess that, are you certain that you should be driving on the internet by yourself??).

Now, Paris has been kicking around for awhile now, and it's just today that she's making it onto the blogulator. If you're asking yourself 'really? What gives?' I can assure you that you ARE alone when you think that, and should consider having that looked at. Anyway, it's just that there's been such an abundance of facial transformation lately that, well, she just kept getting pushed back, and pushed back - much the inevitability of the social collective's realisation that Paris Hilton's new hand bag has precisely zero relevance to anything beyond that one grey-matter-rotting second when you can actually feel that brain cell die from simply dedicating a moment to the consideration of Paris Hilton's new bag.

However, according to the e-mail I just received, Paris got a rolex and apparently I need to get one too. Finally...something important...

(Disclaimer: I have no idea if Paris Hilton actually has a new bag. Really, I don't. If that got you all excited, I apologise for the false start. But I'm sure that someone famous will have something new to gawk at soon enough, so just keep checking Yahoo news.)

Just Smashing!

Well here we are again...

Today's Daily Shirt is a tribute to a famous Hollywood monster!

Aren't you excited? Shirty hasn't been a monster yet (unless you don't count Vader... or GWB), and Frank thought it about time we help make it's dreams a reality. Not like lucid dreaming, where a person is supposed to be conscious of their dream, and actually be able to 'direct' the course of it, in a sense, making it reality - mainly because Shirty isn't a person. But anyway...

Why this particular monster? Is it because Hollywood felt the need to screw with this particular legacy recently, and Shirty wanted to 'keep it real,' as shirts are wont to do? Or is it because Shirty is in reality a destructive behemoth ready to cause chaos, author anarchy, beget bedlam and all sorts of other alliteration pertaining to one who incites mayhem?

You'll have to ask the Shirt...if you dare!!!

Tribulum ad hilarity

Consider today's Daily Shirt a tribute of sorts; but instead of using something valuable, we're stickin' a face on the shirt for your (but mostly my) amusement.

It's like when you were a kid, and everyone would want say 'I'm Wayne Gretzky' when they were playing hockey or 'I wanna be Akashi Shiganosuke' in Sumo wrestling class. Everyone did it. It was a right of passage. A way of feeling better about yourself by associating your negligible skills with a famous name. You don't honestly think that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald got to where he is without pretending once or twice that he was Matlock, did you?

Boy...this takes me back. I remember being a little Shirtnovice Captain and playing '14th Century Italian Painters' - everyone always picked the easy ones, but I'd proudly stand up and say "yeah, well I'm Giovanni Cimabue" and then everyone would stand back while I finished some Byzantine mosaic or another. Those were the days...

So...if you don't know who the face is on Shirty today, you haven't been visiting the links! Do yourself a favour and make with the clicky-clicky. Those folks are making some funny stuff EVERY DAY (sorta like here, but they're way funnier) and tend to be something of an inspiration for the head-twisting madness that goes on here.

So, without further Apu...

Guess what happens in 17,884,545.4 years

According to www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html, the current projected population of the world is 6,527,859,090 (as of 07/12/06 at 14:29 GMT) .

This means that, as of just about right now, there are only 17,884,545.4 years left of The Daily Shirt before we run out of faces. This assumes that in the next 18 million-or-so years that we'll all still be here and that there will be no births or deaths during that time. Completely reasonable, we can all agree...

I know. It's scary. We're witnessing the end of The Daily Shirt. In less than 18 million years...that's it. It's done.

But all is not lost. In that count, not included are other faces that could realistically show up on Shirty - as we've seen, the currently dead, like Elvis, or fictional creations like Mickey Mouse or Stephen Harper are fair game. So, that buys us, what? What's the count on all those (for whom we have pictures) who have come before, as well as copywritten intellectual property? We'll just assume that it's about 100 or so... So that's another 3 and a bit months - plus 18 million years. It's like it's right around the corner.

Here's today's contribution...

The Bard

Shirty hath donned the visage of greatness today!

Behold with wonder and maybe confusion, the image of the Dean Koontz of his day, he who hast created (if legend hold) many quotations and phrases that have passed into everyday usage though written hundreds of years ago now ("...a rose by any other name still f**king hurts if you prick yourself...", "to be or not to be? Make up your mind, son!" and "you gotta fight - for your right - to party!" just to name a few). The man whose plays and breakdance moves are still re-enacted to this day and studied by students, as the pinnacle of mastery of the English language (and rhythm).

You've got it; it's Willy Shakes. Forsooth? Really!

The Boat Lady

Hey All,

We have a small problem.

See, Frank, The Official Fixer Of Heads To Shirty (or TOFOHTS, as he's known around the office - it's true; it even says so on his business card) will be going on 'vacation' for a couple of weeks soon.

(I know what you're thinking: Why did I put single quotes around the word vacation? Is it to infer that it may in fact not be a vacation at all? Or maybe I just don't know how to use punctuation properly. I:ll let you. Be the, judge.}

Why is this trouble? Are you new? Who is going to help along the transformation whist he's at his 3 million dollar beach house??? (By the way, feel free to ask for some money when you see him; he loves it when you do that!)

Well, it seems like there's only one solution...well, there are probably more than that; I mean, in life, is there ever only one solution to a problem? Sure, other answers may be inadequate because, say, they don't take into account the precise amount that a woodchuck can chuck, but rarely is there ever ONLY one choice. That's the beauty of being an adult; you can seal your own grave with one wrong move. Ahh...responsibility.

Which brings us back to this business of Shirty and faces. So, I propose that I'll take over said duties, but! If any of you folks out there would like to see Shirty sporting a specific head, hook a Shirtmaster General up and we'll get 'em up there! No person is too dignified, nor noble, nor revered that they can't be made to look a little silly on ye ald enstarchenated, varnishified Shirt.

So, without further delay, we present a VERY dignified woman, who perhaps takes herself and her position in the world a little too seriously. But she's had an oil tanker named after her, so maybe she is a little important. Oh, and I forgot , she's got a doctorate too. Say hello to Ms. "Smoking gun = mushroom cloud" herself: Doctor Tanker!

Oh man...I got totally (ship)wrecked!

Today's Daily Shirt is a little obscure. Not so obscure that you'd have to know Jimmy's little brother - jimmy - to know the face. But obscure enough so that a number of people who typically pass by Shirty on any given day, and exclaim "oh! It's ______ today!" actually walked by, stopped, and pondered for a minute who this vaguely familiar face staring back at them was.

I'm not sure if that makes Shirty more fun or not.

For there's just something utterly ridiculous about seeing Darth Vader or Stephen Harper on Shirty; instantly recognisable faces in a context heretofore unknown.

But, what I do know is that it's really cold in here.

What does that have to do with today's Daily Shirt? Exactly...

From beyond...

Shirty never ceases to amaze.

Is there no limit to the reach of the shirt? Whether it's conjuring up the images of fictional characters or famous faces of today, every day is a new, bizarre adventure in the life of the ugly laminated shirt.

And today is no exception, as Shirty has taken on the guise of another famous face - but, for the first time, a dead famous face. Is this an indicator that Shirty may 'be in too deep' with some kind of cult that walks around with q-tip's in their ears, boisterously humming The Popcorn Song whilst summoning the energies of the dead to learn the secrets of history? The alarmist in me says "YES! YES IT IS! We must take drastic action to save this shirt from itself!"

But that alarmist side has a tendency to go off the deep end, so, like, whatever.

Here's today's Daily Shirt...

Evil, thy name is Shirty: Redux

Shirty did a strange thing the other day.

And, frankly, we're a little worried.

Typically, the appeal of Shirty is that it - in all of it's hideous hilarity (or, hidelarity - thanks Eric!) - makes the face look creepy. Notwithstanding the usually-whited-out eyes. That messes you up on a whole other level.

But, that's the thing; once in awhile, Shirty will throw you a curveball just to see if you're paying attention. Shirts these days; nothing but belligerence...and comfort. But mostly belligerence. And Shirty is no exception.

So...yeah. Into the office I trudge, only to be confronted by a spectacle unknown before. For, in it's transformation, the new face of Shirty actually made the shirt creepy instead of the intended opposite result.

At this point, it can be deduced that, simply, all the properties of the universe have become their inversion - "hot snow falls up," in the words of the great poet Homer - as a mystical object with unlimited potential to increase the creepy-factor of any face has in and of itself become more creepy via it's natural transmogrification.

I have looked into the yawning abyss, and oddly enough, it looks like a ranch called Neverland.

The Church Of Shirtentology

Hey Peeps!

Today we have a very special (and I mean VERY special) edition of The Daily Shirt!

Why, you ask, would today, of all possible days, be special? What makes this particular Tuesday any more magnificently Tuesdayish than any other?

Is it because it's the 4th of July - Independence Day - for our American friends?

Naw, too easy...

Is it because it's the start of another work-week and you get to add some meaning to your life by living vicariously through Shirty and it's various persona?

Maybe...

Or, is it because people can be gullible and ignorant, acting independent of rationality and sense, and are celebrated for it - especially if they are famous and wealthy - by a population who are generally able to give you a complete bio of said celebrity but stare blankly at you if asked to find Afghanistan on a map?

Bingo!

To distraction!

To diversion!

To today's Daily Shirt!