etherbrian

CLOSED. Please call again.

Because I wanted a tshirt emblazoned with the logo of the film production company that has given the world 50 fabulous years of one giant, radioactive lizard, I decided I'd simply create one for myself. Because I'd been experiencing increased dissatisfaction with the company which I'd chosen to produce my plethora of tshirts, I had often considered divorcing myself from them. Because of my complete and utter dissatisfaction with the quality of the cotton homage to the aforementioned Japanese movie studio, today is the day I cut the ties.

I will, however, continue to feel about for an alternative method of shirt production and distribution. Please stand by.

Noël

Joyeux Noel! Zalige Kertfeest! Kurisumasu Omedeto! Gledileg Jol! Schone Weinachten! Boze Narodzenie! Feliz Natal! Shubh Naya Baras! Boas Festas! Frohliche Weihnachten! Hristos Razdajetsja! Mo'adim Lesimkha! Hartelijke Kerstroeten! Sheng Tan Kuai Loh! Buon Natale! Gledelig Jul! Glaedelig Jul! God Jul! Mele Kalikimaka! And Feliz Navidad!

Because next week I'll be engaged in my annual holiday monkey business, there will likely be no updates. I will greet you good people again in MMVIII! And to all a good-night.

Interloper From Beyond The Heavens

Steampunk + retro Taito arcade-a-go-go = a Threadless submission which covets your favorable vote:

2008

New downloadable goodness will be arriving in January. It's tiny. It's huge! Stay tuned.

infinibunny

Yours truly is back in vote-for-my-tee-if-you-please action! Any favorable fives are much appreciated:

Also Sprach Miyamoto

The Kubrikian Donkey Kongism pictured above actually began its life before it made its appearance as a Threadless tshirt submission. The purpose for which it was originally created didn't pan out (a long story featuring some odd people) so I hoisted the design up the tshirt design competition flagpole to see if anybody would salute it. Despite a rather high final score, it was never printed, likely due to a nagging fear of a legal response of barrel-throwing primate proportions. In the meantime, it attracted a great deal of worldwide geeky attention. On a regular basis throughout the 15 months since then, I've received email either asking whether the shirt has been printed someplace (anyplace!) or if x amount of dollars would entice me to sell the rights to it.

Because the dollar enticements all seemed kinda paltry, I decided I'd distribute the 21st century monkeys on my own. And because I wanted to stay on the legal straight and narrow, I made contact with Nintendo to get the skinny on the DK sprites regarding fair usage, parody, and the like. To be more precise, I attempted to make contact with Nintendo. And to be entirely precise, the only party making any attempt whatsoever at contact has been me. The silence from Nintendo has been deafening, and I'm taking that silence to mean "You're better off not waking the three-headed canine guardian of Hades" or some other metaphor of legal disaster like that.

So, to bring this tale to a close, it looks as if Also Sprach Miyamoto will be going into cold storage. Good night, apes.

Book him, Danno.

Once every blue moon I make mention of my forthcoming book. Actually, said book has undergone several incarnations during this extended time I've been blue-moon mentioning it. The details of what it was supposed to have been - and how the art intended for it was snatched up and thrown at another project - is a long and uninteresting tale. Suffice it to say that eventually I settled on something and began production.

Zero Percent Cotton (subtitled One Man's Near Complete Failure as a Tshirt Artist) is an inventory of the beaucoup designs I submitted to the ongoing, unending tshirt design competition that is Threadless.com. Each page features a design, its score, and (with heaps of tongue in cheek) why it failed to be chosen to be squeegeed onto a shirt. But the book is not to be. Or very likely not to be. Or not to be at this time, its destiny perhaps being discussed once again next blue moon.

There are two reasons I've put the book on ice: 1) Of late I've been reaching into the cache of Threadless rejects in an attempt to actually bring some to torso-emblazoning life in other places. I'm not entirely comfortable asking nice people to part with cash to have art on their chests and then asking them to part with more cash just to see the same art printed on paper. 2) Though I pounded the podium and made the pronouncement that I'd no longer submit designs to Threadless (I'm getting too old, I'm becoming too freaky, etc.) today I scratch my chin, stare into space in deep thought, and hope there's no videotaped evidence of that podium pounding episode. There's a distinct possibility that the book would be out of date before it was even published (because, you know, I fully expect angry mobs of rejectors welcome my return with a barrage of zeroes).

In conclusion, good people, here's a sampling of what might have been:

CLARIFICATION

For those who may be wondering: NO, I don't live in the Czech Republic and, NO, I don't make money by redirecting web traffic to porn sites. To make sense of what I'm saying, let's travel backwards in time, shall we?

Beginning in the year 2000 I began maintaining a dot com portfolio (etherbrian.com to be precise) and kept it going until February of this year when I instituted this humble blog. I developed such a strong preference for this newer personal presence that when my dot com expired on September 30, 2007, I didn't bother to renew it. I didn't think that anyone who peddles cheap meds, hot stocks, enhancement miracles, and/or OEM software would find "etherbrian" to be a name which would have any sort of draw on potential dupes ... uh, I mean customers.

Imagine my surprise when I inadvertently learned that the dot com had returned! It was back with the same eyeball and info I'd put there in February, the eyeball and info that had disappeared at 12:01 a.m. October 1. I hadn't had a hand in it, so who had?

Enter someone from the Czech Republic with a mind to generate a few koruna by pretending to be me while embedding links to pornography. I'm doubting there's anything I can do about it other than let the world know (the world being those of you who know what an etherbrian is) that this is just more of the dirty underhandedness that regularly emerges from the foul underbelly of society.

oranges to apples

About a week ago I plastered some analog chickadees onto these pages. Within the wee span of time since then I've transmagically applied them to the front of a Bountee brand tshirt and it's been awarded a "Most Wanted" status.

I hold the Bountee tee in one hand and a Zazzle tee in the other, lifting one while lowering the other (using that classic yet ineffective method of comparing and contrasting via weight). In other words, after a bit more research into this wondrous world of colorfully emblazoned cotton pullovers I might make some changes in the ethershirt distribution operations. Please forgive the confusion and please stand by.

(wings not included)

Weren't we just talking about tshirts? No matter. My ladies-only signature tee is ready to roll!

And in case the subject is broached once again: If you're a guy and you want to wear it, I couldn't care less. But be advised that the tshirt was designed (both art-wise and stitch-wise) for the fairer sex.