THE CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN

There are perhaps four categories of t-shirts I wear. This is a change from college. During college there was really only one category: free. Well, I guess you could further subdivide that if you wanted: gifts from my parents, gifts from credit-card companies, gifts from promotional event organizers, and so on. The important point to note, however, is that I was not in control of the designs available to me. A certain cliche comes to mind regarding the ability of beggars to be selective.

Well, I have surpassed my t-shirt beggar status. I have begun to experience and enjoy my new role as chooser. It's quite fun.

So now my t-shirts fall into four categories:

1. Plain - These shirts are solid colors or have simple designs upon them. They're great for wearing under other shirts and are also fine alone.

2. Reminder/Souvenir - These are the shirts I get to commemorate a trip or an event (or even four years of college). It's my smallest group and the reason for that is a holdover from college habits, when these shirts were given away for free. Well, those free shirts are ratty enough now that I can't wear them in public and I have only recently decided it's alright to pay money for such things. So, like I said, it's my smallest group, but it's growing.

3. Cool - These are the shirts with a symbol or image that looks "cool" (duh). Slightly more advanced than plain, but not as entertaining as the next category. Examples of "cool" include anything that references the Thundercats or the Transformers.

4. Witty - My fastest growing collection. These shirts mostly consist of funny phrases and images or just text alone. A few, like my t-shirt t-shirt, are just images. I love these shirts, the subtler the better. I am a big fan of the subtle visual joke. Hence, my appreciation of the t-shirt t-shirt, a shirt with nothing upon it but a picture of another shirt. That shirt was a gift (one of the nicer shirts I possessed during my "free" period) but since that point I have been adding to the collection. Generally I do so with the idea of amusing others, but if I'm the only one who is amused (as sometimes happens), I'm okay with that.

A visual demonstration is perhaps in order but it will have to wait. See, I'm at the beach and this restricts my ability to upload images (you're lucky you're getting text). Also, as I am at the beach, I have better things to do. Like show off my new t-shirts.

UPDATE: I have pictures. They're not pictures of me, per se, but they are designs I now own (except the one in the middle, that one's yellow).