1. Demand. After learning that I used to screen print, lots of people ask if I will print them a shirt that says something. Usually it’s some nerdy or niche idea and they only know one other person who would buy one. Of course screen printing 2 shirts would cost about $60-$100 and of course they would not want to pay $50 each for a t-shirt. If only there was a way to let other know about this niche t-shirt. Hmmm…

2. Tuangou. Tuangou is a Chinese term that goes something like this:

Tuangou (團購 or 团购): Where several people – sometimes friends, but possibly strangers connected over the internet – agree to approach a vendor of a specific product in order to haggle with the proprietor as a group in order to get discounts. The entire group agrees to purchase the same item. The shoppers benefit by paying less, and the business benefits by selling multiple items at once.

After I learned about this awesome practice, my motivation for building the site went way up. Power to the people. na mean?

3. Threadless. Of course there are very similar sites that are awesome and successful. The reason this is third on my list is even though we practically do the same thing (user submitted designs are chosen by popularity and printed for everyone), our goal and market are quite different. Other sites allows those with the most skill, wit, and internet presence to get designs printed. The only problem is how often are you the BEST at anything when compared to EVERYONE on the internet. That’s like me thinking I might get picked to perform for Cirque du Soleil.  Again, those sites are awesome, but different.

So anyway, the site just went up last week and it’s doing great. Building users and Shirts. I am super excited about the first approved submission: Somethings Wrong by TKozar:

We need more submission so please sign up, and submit a design!

Thursday: Climbing at Green Valley Gap and bouldering at Moe’s

Friday: Racquetball at the Rec center.

Saturday: Mountain biking at the 3 fingers of death (fall) and small hike to look for desert tortoises

Sunday: Wicked game of Ultimate and more bouldering at Moe’s.

Monday: Slack lining and more racquetball. Maybe Mystic Hot Springs on the drive home.

I would really love to see the same process for being plastic-free as for veganism during the last decade.  When I went vegan 10 years ago the vegan  foods available were ‘rice’ cream, veggie dogs, and veggie burgers (ok, maybe a couple more, but still it sucked) only in large or specialty stores. Now, any product can be found in a faux version. Even in small convenient stores vegan products are not a rare sight. Plastic-free could be even more successful because using plastic is not an inherent instinct like consuming animals is. And as far as I know there are no plastic advocacy groups, and everyone knows that plastics are terrible for the environment.

I found a blog of a girl who is on year 3 of a plastic-free lifestyle (Envirowomen), who has established great rules for living this way.

Basic Rules:

Cannot purchase anything  new that has any amount of plastic  (lids, linings, stickers, etc…)
Can Rent, buy used, borrow, find, re-use any plastic.
Cannot throw away any  rented, used, borrowed, found plastic.
Cannot ask someone else to buy plastic for you or for themselves.
Can accept gifts from unknowing givers.

I just now decided I am going to do it. The only thing it needs now is a catchy label so other can feel like part of the community if they jump on the bandwagon. Sans Plastique? ideas? The girl who has done it for 3 years calls it NoNewPlastic Pledge but pledges aren’t lifestyles and are easy to break.

Hi my name is bookis, I’ve been Sans Plastique for 2 days.

Hna sleep talks all the time. This is the first time I’ve succesfully captured it. It’s hilarious. At one point she says “in my dream…” which would make you think she is awake, she is probably 95% asleep.

This is an ad that we’re running in Seattle based Dirt Magazine (Young Local Art and Music). It is quarter page.

This shirt (“Beneath The Paving Stones… The Forest“) is available for $15 (USD) from The Resistance Army.

This is an ad that we’re running online in a few places (Global Guerillas to begin with).

This shirt (“The Revolution Is Just A T-Shirt Away“) is available for $15 (USD) from The Resistance Army.

I’m super stoked about these painting I did over the last couple of years. I just finished the Jeff one. They are for Mothra. If Anyone wants this style of painting done of them or someone let me know

That pretty much sums up my Holiday and New Year.

We arrived at the Seattle Amtrak station at about 4pm on the 17th, they told us the train was delayed and wouldn’t be there until 6:40. So we waited. The train actually showed up at some time after 9. But it turns out the train has a bunch of broken pipes so they attached a few cars from a local christmas train tour. We all piled into those and headed for Spokane where we were supposed to switch to a real Amtrak train. There were a few small delays but we made just fine.

In Spokane they tell us that the train we need to get on is full of people that need to be transfered to our train, and it was going to take some time to figure out how to go about doing the switch. Well 2 hours later they realized people should just use their own legs to transfer trains. So we pile out into the abyss of snow and frantically find a empty-ish car with a nearby outlet. At this point were like 10 hours behind schedule.

The next day or so there are no major delays, and during this time we make friends with 4 or 5 people around us. Were all pretty comfortable and having a good time, joking about how this trip is doomed and everything is going wrong. A few of us noted how HOT it is. Then a few hours later our new friend Jamie is downstairs and a heater in the wall makes a pop sound and shoots sparks across the hallway and the power immediately goes out, Jamie finds a conductor and shows him where it is. Anyway the conductors spend the next several hours trying to figure out what is wrong with the electricity. A few time we moved a few hundred yards, one time even stopping in a small town so every one can use the bathroom (train ones are electric). During one of our moves we stopped right in front of a foundry where a worker was ramming big smoldering sand casts to get out big metal fixtures. Around this time, every 30 minutes or so we would see HUGE sparks shoot out from the side of our trian car.  They finally decide to just move the car we are in to the back of the train so it can’t cause anymore electrical problems.

We arrived in Chicago the next morning 17.5 hours late, they put us in a hotel and gave us 44 dollars cash for cab and food. The train to Noblesville wasn’t near as momentous but we did get stuck behind a freight car for 2 hours and a lot of the time we could only go 15mph for some reason. But we finally made it.