Misanthropy Today

Last night I was at my chalet and as I was sliding into 500 thread-count egyptian cotton sheets I looked down at the t shirt I was wearing with a pair of drawstring sleep pants which read:  “Same Shit, Different Island ‘Mon: Punta Cana, Dominican Republic”

(picture of shirt coming soon)

There’s a cartoon of a Rastafarian type guy who looks drunk and some topographical cartoon map of some islands.

(will add picture later)

Why are the messages on souvenir t-shirts always so offensive or retarded?

Sure, most tourists are slack jawed morons, and sure some hipsters will buy these shirts because they are ironically funny (witness my old refrigerator magnet that read: Keepin’ It Real).  That someone would buy something like that in earnest is funny to those of us who carefully craft our image.

Come along and let’s take a  look at some other stupid souvenir shirts.

The Tourist-Phobic Tourist Shirt

You’ll find shirts like this anytime you find a state full of libertarian-New York Jew hating-naturalists. The message here is “we don’t want tourists, but hey, we gotta move these shirts”– or something like that. Or possibly its just your garden variety reverse-snobbery— rather than to be looked down upon by all the city slickers visiting their national parks they decide to reject them first.

One thing is for sure though, from a state that ranks 5 lowest in per capita income at $17,151 they should cut their bullshit and start letting us city slickers take pictures of their mullets without getting all pissed off (side story: I took a picture of a Montanan’s mullet once and he got super pissed at me).

 The Chain Restaurant/Bar Tourist T Shirt 

Nothing proves to your friends that you infiltrated the cultural center of a city like a Hard Rock Cafe T shirt.

Hard Rock Cafe’s T shirts celebrate each city’s local flavor and identity by printing the name of said city in Arial Black under their logo. Sometimes, chain restaurants and bars will co-opt a stupid phrase or saying from a non-tourist shirt and place it on one of their branded tourist shirts. Something like this:

The Offensive Tourist T Shirt

Many tourists only travel a few times and year, and while their on vacation spending their hard earned money, they don’t want to be fucked with. In order to prepare for the unavoidable onslaught of people bothering you in a city where you know nobody, they let their t-shirts do the talking (I once saw four black guys in venice beach, all of them wearing the shirt below):

A variation of the offensive t shirt is the offensive “don’t bother me t shirt”, which often carries a financial message:

Nothing like a shirt that retails for $5.99 to let the world know that you’re tired of being hit up for stuff.

The “I Survived…” Shirts

These shirts were more popular 10 years ago, but you still see them around sometimes. I think they’re supposed to be funny. They had a renaissance after hurricane Katrina, and now are usually sold at places where city people come to experience animals or nature in a sterile environment– like a rock-wall climbing center or something.

These shirts would be cool if they were given out to people who had actually survived something brutally dangerous and could be used as a conversation piece, like a bear attack or a 1:30 am trip the liquor store as a white man in my friend Jeremy’s West Adams neighborhood.

 I guess overall, I might make fun of a lot of stuff but I really like stupid tourist shirts. My self esteem and confidence isn’t strong enough that  I can wear them in public without over-explaining my intent, but I like wearing them to bed.

My favorite shirt came from a birthday party that I never attended, and was probably 10 or more years ago. I don’t really know because I bought it at a thrift shop (not a vintage store, you goddamned hipster) It reads:

Harry Thomason Is 50! 

What I love about that shirt is that it’s this really cool blue hue and also that this HT fella was popular enough to warrant a printing of a bunch of t shirts is heartening.

 Also, this shirt is sorta funny though not a bonafide tourist shirt:

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