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20 February 2009

Survey: What's the dorkiest t-shirt you own? →[More:]Mine is homemade. Royal blue with the word "Acelgas" ironed-on white fuzzy letters (Cooper Black). "Acelgas" means "Swiss Chard" in Spanish. I also made one that says "Stew," but after that I ran out of letters from the iron-on pack.

post by: Stewriffic at: 13:22 | 46 comments

I have two I'm particularly fond of - one says "Trust Me, I'm A Lawyer" and the other has the figure of Justice on it and says "Never Trust A Document That Begins With A 'Whereas'"

posted by essexjan 20 February | 13:26

This one.
I'm wearing it now.

posted by kellydamnit 20 February | 14:00

I've got one that is bright blue and says "Metafilter" on it.

posted by cortex 20 February | 14:02

A tie between this one and this one. Or maybe this one.

posted by dersins 20 February | 14:07

I have one that says "Ithaca is GORGE-ous".

Get it? It's pretty clever, so let me explain it to you: they have gorges. In Ithaca.

(Apparently. I didn't actually see any when I was there.)

posted by loiseau 20 February | 14:12

Picture of a snowman ringing handbells: "Handbells are cool."

I work for a heart defibrillator company. The company shirt says "Occasionally, I shock people." (I don't actually, not in my department.)

Oh, and I mustn't forget the T shirt of the 2nd Great Gilbert and Sullivan Sing Out of 1998(?) in Maryland. We sang all 13 G&S operettas in a row with no breaks. It just has a picture of a clock and a listing of all the operettas.

posted by Melismata 20 February | 14:13

Every year for my birthday or Christmas, my partner gives me a Joss-whedon-franchise T-shirt. That's a pretty high dork factor, right?

posted by Elsa 20 February | 14:16

Elsa, do you have the one I have? (see above). Jayne wore it in firefly.

posted by kellydamnit 20 February | 14:24

I bought a shirt to keep Pandemonium Books from going out of business a few years ago. I've never been there but the shirt gets a lot of comments.

A good friend of mind went to Caltech and gave me his house shirt for my birthday one year - they're apparantly impossible to buy unless you're a member. I always thought we'd date at some point but it was Never Meant to Be.

I've owned dorkier t-shirts in my day, but I don't tend to hold on to them for very long.

posted by muddgirl 20 February | 14:26

Kellydamnit: not yet! Ooooo, that's one I actually want. (Mine are all out-Verse T-shirts that refer to the show, not in-Verse promotional T-shirts.)

Oh, wait! The actual dorkiest T-shirt I own is from the prep school my grandfather, father, uncle, and brother attended, purchased when the school named a house for my uncle, who was also a teacher there. It bears the school's crest and the legend "[Lastname] House."

So, that's the dorkiest shirt I own... at least until Santa delivers Kellydamnit's shirt, or the Planet Express T.

posted by Elsa 20 February | 14:35

Green Lantern.

posted by middleclasstool 20 February | 14:47

The best t-shirt I ever owned, which I wore until it fell to pieces, was one that had what looked like handwritten note pinned to it. The note said.

"Auntie Em,

Hate you, hate Kansas.

Taking the dog.

Dorothy."

posted by essexjan 20 February | 14:57

this one

posted by danf 20 February | 15:03

I bought a "Firefox 1.0" shirt in 2004, I was so excited. But I'm most proud wearing my DSNY shirt.

posted by steef 20 February | 15:04

Tie between:

- the baby-blue T-shirt I got for doing summer stock Shakespeare at the Forest Theater in Snoqualmie, WA back in 2005.

- the t-shirt I got from the downstairs ice cream shoppe, Annabelles, which is basically beige and red with a big nosy cow on the front.

posted by Lipstick Thespian 20 February | 15:25

Oh, this'n'. Not just for the content, but for the back story. Plus, I wore it to a meetup.

This one's a close second, though.

posted by mrmoonpie 20 February | 15:26

I have an incredible hulk shirt and a glow-in-the-dark shirt from a hardware store in Montana, both of which I got in Jr high. But those aren't dorky, they are awesome (I think).

posted by rmless2 20 February | 15:27

White BVD

posted by Ardiril 20 February | 15:30

I've also got a t-shirt that has aliens on it, and a little tiny battery pack, so when you touch the aliens they say "Greetings Earthlings" and "We Come In Peace". and the spaceships make spaceshippy noises.

posted by essexjan 20 February | 15:31

I have the Metafilter one and also this Chairman Mao RTFM one that I bought from some French web site after seeing it worn on the first episode of the first series of The IT Crowd. I've also got "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" and a BBC Backstage one from years ago.

I've got no idea which is the dorkiest one, though.

posted by TheDonF 20 February | 16:07

I've got several years worth of Summer Reading Club t-shirts. That's dorky, right?

posted by box 20 February | 16:12

My evolution of the AT-AT t-shirt is probably my dorkiest recent purchase. A close contender in my household is my wife's Sunnydale High t-shirt...

posted by greycap 20 February | 16:47

Oh and my wife also has a Chinatown Ice Cream Factory t-shirt with this guy on it that she's very proud of.

posted by greycap 20 February | 16:53

I don't do dorky. My t-shirts are all cool.

posted by jonmc 20 February | 17:14

Ooooo, that's one I actually want

if you prefer men's cut shirts to women's cut go for it now- they have an overstock on the men's cut of the same shirt, it's just $11.

posted by kellydamnit 20 February | 17:34

Just got this one in the mail today. I have to pic this one up at the post office tommorrow. see? cool, not dorky. Dorky on purpose is dead.

posted by jonmc 20 February | 17:45

Mine isn't dorky on purpose. It's just dorky, period. I really, really like Swiss chard, and so I made a shirt about it. And then I realized as I was putting the shirt on today that such slavish devotion to a leafy green is a bit over-the-top.

posted by Stewriffic 20 February | 17:49

Yeah, y'all are doing 'dorky = cool'. I got real dorky: I still have a bunch of my old frat rush t-shirts.

posted by mullacc 20 February | 18:08

I have a terrible garish ABN-Amro one, with a picture of some racing yacht called, imaginatively, ABN-Amro.

Not dorky-cool at all. Ugly and terrible. It's my "working on the car" t-shirt, and I hope to, one day, spill lots of oil on it.

posted by pompomtom 20 February | 18:41

It's a tie between my "official" KeepCon II shirt for the Amber DRPG Throne War that me and a small group of friends did in Lawrence, Kansas a few years ago and the International Baccalaureate shirt I got which features a version of Leonardo da Vinci's perfect man on it, but wearing Einstein's face and a set of Groucho glasses.

posted by TrishaLynn 20 February | 19:14

An EFF shirt or an anti-DMCA shirt. I also have a shirt I did the art for, for a Newton web browser called Web Hopper (circa 94-96). Another shirt that was a parody of Code Warrior logo, that showed their stylized Worker carrying a big fish with the name changed to Cod Warrior.

posted by doctor_negative 20 February | 19:17

Extra large men's tee shirt that says "You're Killing Me."

posted by rainbaby 20 February | 19:18

I don't have any dorky t-shirts. :-(

posted by deborah 20 February | 20:03

I've got a whole dresser of dorky tee shirts. EFF shirts, Ultimate Frisbee shirts, a /. shirt, a Monty Python shirt, an XKCD shirt, etc.

posted by octothorpe 20 February | 20:08

Mine is the same as cortex, but it's even dorkier since I don't work there.

posted by stet 20 February | 20:28

Mine has AN EMBROIDERED grizzly bear and says "BITE ME"

posted by desjardins 20 February | 20:40

Bright yellow, with lurid red lobster, says "Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier."

The absolute nerdiest one, which also happens to be my very oldest, says "Yale Mechanical Engineering" and has some sort of diagram which is supposed to be a joke if you are a mechanicla engineer. I don't remember the joke and I'm not a Yale Mechanical Engineer. A friend who was gave it to me, in like 1992.

Oh, no wait, the oldest one is more like from 1982. It says "Toledo Bend Reservoir: Fishing Capital of the World" and has a big...fish of some kind...breaking the surface of the reservoir. Light blue, and the words and design are in royal blue flocking. It's pretty great, but I don't wear it any more - it's an heirloom. My grandparents used to have a little retirement cabin out there. Well, OK, it was a doublewide. But it was nice.

posted by Miko 20 February | 21:00

My niece gave me her tshirt from Goode's BBQ that says "Thank your lucky stars you're in Texas" which I wear in Maine to absolutely no comment whatsoever. And I have a bunch of shirts from the New England Folk Festival and other Folk Dance nerd-y shirts.

posted by theora55 20 February | 21:49

ooh, neat, theora55. I have a wooden pie box from Goode's with that saying and hope never to part with it.

posted by Miko 20 February | 22:02

Heh, I wear shirts, not T-shirts. Apparently I'm hanging with the wrong crowd.
Don't you smoke pipe either?

posted by jouke 20 February | 23:01

My fiancee got me this one.

posted by pieisexactlythree 21 February | 00:21

≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by BoringPostcards 21 February | 00:51

lol, BP!

I don't wear these kinds of T-shirts, but I bought one for my husband from a thrift shop that has the Teletubbies on it. It's his fave, and most popular among his friends and associates. Sadly, it's on its last legs.

posted by taz 21 February | 01:56

My wife and I have these. They light up whenever we're near each other.

posted by eamondaly 21 February | 02:51

A white t-shirt with a wretched drawing of penguin reading that says "Chill out with a good book!" I actually wear it. I got to wear a penguin suit and appear in a PSA when I worked at the library.