A Sad Day Indeed

A company that is perhaps my favorite company (not named Apple) on the face of the planet is closing it's doors. T-Shirt Hell, a company I've purchased many a T-shirt from is discontinuing business effective February 10. What a shame.

The owner wrote a pretty detailed letter about it here.

For those of you unfamiliar with the site, they sell T-shirts of a rude, crude, and undeniably funny variety. Aside from being crude, the shirts provide an offbeat social-political commentary that you just can't find anywhere else. The problem is, I suppose, that people are narrow-minded douchebags and don't understand humor when they see it. The monthly newsletter always provided some examples of the hate mail they received, always from a narrow-minded viewpoint. 

I have a very open sense of humor, provided there is some intelligence to whatever is supposed to be funny, and I'm not easily offended. I personally love the shirts sold on T-shirt Hell and have purchased several shirts from them over the years. My first shirt said "There are two women fucking on the back of my shirt." Then on the back, it said "Just kidding! Believe in Jesus!" I wore that shirt to a concert one day, and on the way, me and my friend stopped in at Toxic Hell for some burritos stuffed with nigh inedible goop. The lady in line behind us apparently saw the back of my shirt (the just kidding part). After we got out of line, she asked to see the front of my shirt. After taking a few seconds to read it, her eyes got a little bigger, and she reread it. She then looked up at me and asked me very sincerely "Are you Christian?"

To which I responded "Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"Ok, so if I am, you'll think it's funny and go on about your day. But if I'm not, you'll get all offended and tell me how wrong it is that I'm making fun of your religion. Does that about cover it?"

Stupid stare.

"No, I'm not religious in any way, shape, or form."

Cue offended huffing and buggy eyes. 

She walked off rather than confront me on the subject. But it struck me at the moment how completely oblivious she was to the humor in the shirt. The obvious (to me anyway) social commentary. I love that shirt, even to this day.

I knew a guy when I worked at BK; his name is Jeff. He came from an uptight Catholic upbringing, right down to the black-clad-nuns-with-rulers nazi school (did that offend anybody reading this?). One year for Christmas, I bought him a shirt that said "What about all the good things Hitler did?" Again, obvious social commentary, again, very funny. He loved it. No joke there, he thought the shirt was awesome. His parents found it and threw it away and got all mad and forbade him to hang out with whoever had given it to him. He never told them who, so we hung out anyway, but still. 

And no, for those of you that read this blog regularly, that shirt is not even close to being on the same page as the nasty folks who named their kid after Hitler. Don't go there.

See, the thing is, there's an intelligence to T-shirt Hell's shirts that I guess you have to dig to reach. Certain people with no lives see the word "black" or "Hitler" or "slut" or something and go off the deep end of offended. T-Shirt Hell, believe it or not, doesn't propagate hate, racism, sexism, nazi-ism, or any other negative -ism that you can throw at it. What it does do is force people to question what they think they know, and yes, it does it in a very straightforward manner, but what else really gets people to stand up and take notice?

I gripe about society as a whole rather often on this blog between ranting about video games and music. The closure of this site, which is in large part due to the quantity of idiots who consistently get offended, is a terrible loss I think. People like to live in their shut-in, watered-down worlds. We live in this ridiculously politically correct society where you can't say boo without worry of stepping on somebody's delicate sensibilities. Anybody that does step on those sensibilities is subject to criticisms, ridiculous name-calling, sometimes even lawsuits. It's not every day a company says "fuck it" and carries on with business as usual anyway.

T-Shirt Hell released a t-shirt that said "It's 16:20 somewhere" and showed a soldier getting high. Wow the torrent of emails they got about that one. "I can't believe you'd print a shirt that defaces the people who are fighting for your freedoms" yadda yadda. Yet, there wasn't, to my recollection, a single soldier who wrote in and was offended. There were plenty of them, however, that wrote in saying, My name's Bob, and I'm with the something-something unit stationed somewhere in Iraq, and I think that shirt's hilarious. Keep up the good work.

Question: If it's not offending the people it's poking fun at, who the hell is anybody else to jump up on the soapbox and get all bitchy?

Answer: The people who are too lazy to get up and support a real cause. They sit around and wage their mini wars through email rather than stand up and do something with their lives that actually benefits the world around them. Armchair PC police piss me off.

The argument that people use (that one about the people fighting for your freedom) is hilarious and hypocritical. Think about it. The troops are over there fighting for our freedoms. That includes my freedom to jump on this blog and call all the people who are easily offended (and want the world to change so as not to offend them) douchebags. 

Newsflash to all these people: the world does not revolve around you. It is not the responsibility of society (no matter what you may think) to water itself down so nobody is ever offended. Not only is that not possible, but in doing so, each member of the society loses his individuality. You know, the thing that makes us unique, special, human.

Here's a new year's resolution for everybody reading this. Grow up. Realize that no matter how much you whine, there are going to be things that happen in this world that offend you. Realize that no matter how much you whine, the people who are offending you probably aren't going to change just because it offends you. Let things slide, roll off, stop taking it personally. You'll be a happier person for it, and people will probably like you more as well.