8.13.2005

Keep reading, I might do a trick

Last night while watching the Illinois State Fair Parade, I had a revelation about the continued devolution of the human race. That revelation was this:

Sometime in the future, there will come a day when the youth of America communicate solely through message T-shirts.

It's an epidemic that has already reached alarming proportions. It seems everywhere I looked, at least half of any given group of teenagers were wearing shirts with inane messages on them like, "Keep staring, I might do a trick" and "I'm with him because he requires perfection" and "Seriously, I swear I'm not an idiot."

Are these really considered clever amongst the youth of today? Are they wearing these to school and walking through the halls with huge laughter rippling in their wake? And can you even wear message T-shirts* more than once? The second time around, aren't all your classmates just like, "Hey, Ronald's wearing his camo 'Ha! Now you can't see me' shirt again. How about that." The surprise seems like it's only good once. I feel like if you need your T-shirt to say something clever and witty** for you, you need to just give it up.

Mark my words: the teenagers of the future will have no need for verbal communication. They will all be issued high-tech T-shirts upon reaching the age of 11 (teenagers are getting younger and younger). These T-shirts will have microthin LCD screens on the front and can display thousands of "witty" sayings that will be used in all forms of communication. Teens will have no need to communicate anything that isn't a prepackaged T-shirt saying.

And then Pestilence, Famine, War, and then the world ends***.



*Message T-shirts: very easy to mistype and leave out the "r," thus turning the phrase even more appropriate.
**I think it's very rare when a message T-shirt is clever and/or witty and/or even funny. However, in doing research for this post, I discovered a series of musical instrument-based message T's. And the line "Pianists Love to Tinkle" did earn an honest chuckle. What can I say, I loves me some musical puns.
***I used the footnotes bit again.

Feel free to leave your favorite/least favorite saying from a message T.

5 comments:

Scott said...

Favorite: (On a shirt for Dogs) Bitches Love Me.

Least Favorite: ANYTHING SOME FRAT BOY WEARS.

Rob said...

I have my "Chicks dig scrawny pale guys." T-shirt. I don't really think its witty or funny... just true. I don't see it as a way to humor your peers as much as it is an education.

C_thegreat said...

Gosh, I have a whole library of t-shirt phrases after a summer of sitting in a stupid mall.

I think I started to write them down somewhere, you stupid-head, stealing my post...

I'll have to dig for that list. I'll get back to ya.

Oh, and some people from Maryland were at my kiosk today and wanted me to talk so they could laugh at my accent, IN MY OWN STATE!!!! (could I possibly be getting worse with it? nooooooooo!)

~c

Kyle Lobner said...

Tim, you hit me right where I sleep.

Today, I'm wearing this shirt:

http://www.80stees.com/images/products/Seen_weiner_t-shirt_link.jpg

But it's clever, cause I really do have a dachsund.

tara d. said...

least favorite:
"i'm with stupid", arrow pointing to jock.

saw it at a giant eagle grocery store on 20-something dude... with my mom. she laughed, but hated him.