The Friday Rant #1: Mr Blackwell’s Guide to Astute Tee Shirt Management

In his first regular job fresh out of school in the 1980s, Mr Blackwell performed administration tasks for an insurance company and, to be honest, he is still unsure exactly what he did. But his boss seemed happy with his work and he presented himself in a business shirt, tie and sensible pants to earn a starting salary of $8,350 per annum. Somehow, he managed to save some of that.

A decade later, Mr Blackwell started his advertising agency and, tragically attempting a cool vibe, started wearing tee shirts to the office. The tee shirt thing really took off when he morphed the agency into a tech company and started pitching to Silicon Valley billionaires. Mr Blackwell’s tee shirts were exceedingly cool but Mr Blackwell never reached the pinnacle of Mount Coolness. He instead loitered at the basecamp.

Two more decades later and Mr Blackwell feels his accumulated tee shirt wisdom can be shared with younger lads who are now attempting to carve their personal brand on the world by wearing edgy cotton billboards. Three top tee tips:

1. You’ve got between eight and twelve months of weekly wearing before the tee shirt needs to move from work-wear to chores-wear. No matter how powerful your deodorant, the rest of your torso and shoulders seep into the tee fibres and create what is known as ‘presence’. The hottest wash and the most toxic fish-destroying laundry detergent cannot remove ‘presence’, which builds strength with every wearing. Wash all of your shirts together? It’s like simmering the shirts in You Soup. Other humans, including best friends, can detect ‘presence’ before you can. As soon as they do, that shirt needs to be banished to the lawns / fence painting / leaf raking  / spouting maintenance drawer and should never be worn in a social situation again.
2. If you were gifted a shirt at a convention or conference and it sports a slogan like Breaking Barriers 2019 or Anything is Possible 2020 and it is 100% cotton? It is also 100% compostable. Do your garden and the rest of the universe a favour.
3. If you’ve decided to become a musician, amateur thespian or are currently mid-detox, and want to impress someone new with how ‘indie’ you are, the mass market chain store tee shirt is not for you. A couple of senior idiots at Blackwell and Sons spend way too much time coming up with their own line of exclusive tee shirt slogans and graphic designs like the ones shown here, which are the opposite of mass market. In fact, so far, they are the only ones who have bought them. Their whole wardrobe consists of Blackwell and Sons tees. This is basically a plea for your compassion and generosity. Please prepare your credit card and click here.

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