today's .plan

[fflo]

Hearing the NPR report this morning on last night's college football championship, including how, in Austin right after the game, fans were already wearing their 2006 Champion t-shirts, I was reminded of how we made up t-shirts at the bookstore in Kansas prophylactically like that. In particular we had hundreds of Fiesta (or Holiday?) Bowl winner shirts on hand one year, ready to reap the bounty of bucks if the team won. I asked what we'd be doing with the shirts if the team lost (which it did); the answer was that they'd probably be donated to charity heading out of the country (no doubt for a tax deduction). Somewhere in Central America---where there had been an earthquake, I think---had gotten a truckload of the last no-good-after-all optimistic-for-a-cash-in shirts.

I never did find out where specifically the K-State Fiesta/Holiday Bowl loser/winner shirts ended up. It's a funny and embarrassing thought. But I guess we couldn't have thrift stores in Junction City selling 'em, or the homeless of Ogden wearing 'em, could we. Walking around bearing false witness on who won the big football game could prompt serious fights, or maybe even arrests.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

You know, I think I've seen pictures of people in the third world wearing garixh, non-sequitur clothing. Didn't pay any mind--just things like African goatherds wearing shirts with English words and garish logos that I couldn't identify. I thought it kind of sad--seeing these people wearing those shirts instead of some sort of traditional garb. Kind of like finding litter in a nature area. But I figured, who am I to impose my aesthetics on someone else's life.

Now suddenly I get it. They must be wearing decades' worth of Dewey-defeats-Truman shirts throughout the third world.

Imagine a nuclear holocost, destroying the nations with wealth, making them uninhabitable, and even unvisitable for centuries. Scholars would put together a history of world athletics based on the evidence on hand--all the shirts declaring the victory of the teams that lost.

Hmmm...

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Garish and litter-y, indeed.