Uppityshirts - Want to Smarten Up?

December 3, 2011

Soaked.

Are you kidding? We thought we were clever, funny and original and then 90% of the entries to our Dry (wit) T-Shirt Contest made our best efforts look like an amateur nerdfest. Thanks for sending us back to therapy - we thought we were over our low self-esteem issues.

Seriously, here are the Top 25 entries, in no particular order, with the winner announced at the end for dramatic (and comic?) effect. Drum roll please.

Hi Timothy,

Thanks for "writing" Mr. (Ha!) Also, thanks for remembering my yearning for more Uppityshirts. Received an e-mail from the website on my other account and was making plans to order; however, I was distracted by the tee shirt logo contest.

I wonder if "Droit D'oubli" or its English counterpart, "The Right to Oblivion" or the "Right to be Forgotten" is appropriate? The current debate regarding the protection and redaction / deletion / forgetting of personal information available on the internet provoked me to find a way to make a statement. Your tee shirt logo contest might be just the outlet. Is "Droit D'Oubli" protected by copyright? Perhaps the phrase is too abstract... nah... not for this crowd. Perhaps too political?

Two other ideas / themes on the same topic

"I Want To Be Redacted"

"I Want to Be Deleted"

(a variation of the Ramones song I want to Be Sedated)

"Please Redact Me"

"Please Delete Me"

(a variation of the song Please Release Me)

There are a few other ideas but perhaps I have already gone too far.

My nephew and sister love the Uppity Tees, Smart Pills, Comeuppance, One Up, etc.

Hope you are well.

Best,

Sondra

At the time of the last earthquake in California, (long before I visited or even heard of the Uppity website with its 'Wit Happens'), I conceived of a shirt that I'll submit to you.

On the front in double struck, wobbly letters (use some imagination since I can't reproduce it below) meant to portray shaking, it states:

SHIFT HAPPENS

and on the back the patriotic message:

But I (heart) California Anyway...

A.J. Coco

Dear AWAD and Uppityshirts--

I love "Pretentious? Moi?" and "Got Recalcitrance?" But I've always dreamed of this T-shirt, and it's my entry: "Solipsists Unite!"

Thanks for a great contest. Sounds like fun. Can't wait to see what comes out of it.

Beverly Sanford

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's intolerance.

Catherine Clifford

One man's meat is another man's poisson.

First submitted by Stephanie Shlasky

Nothing lasts.

And only nothing.

Kenneth Pitchford

eaT Shirt

Bill Lieske

We loved this one from Jared Pace, but decided to editorialize it a bit and add an adjective:

Kvetch-22: a(n intractable) problem you cannot complain about

Jared Pace

Susan Gawarecki sent in this droll little observation with her regards, after living in east Tennessee for 24 years:

The wider the tires, the narrower the mind."

How about this for brevity:

fck-kfc

Vernon Stuttard

Dr. Mike Wagner sent in this variation on one of our themes:

"Gravity Sucks!"

"I was culturally irrelevant before it was cool"

Meredith Wenger

This is an old joke, but we still think it's very clever:

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world -

those who understand binary and those who don't.

John Kofler

apathignorant [ap-uh-thig-ner-uhnt] adjective

1. don't know; don't care.

Amanda Palmer

I hate bigots.

First submitted by:

Gordon DeWitte

How about this one for Becket-esque humor:

Exclamatory?

Pat Curnow

Don Mosely sent us this, explaining it was "in place of the ubiquitous 'No Fear'."

PERHAPS JUST A BIT APPREHENSIVE

We like this one from Jack Riley of Paraparaumu, New Zealand because it seemed so random itself:

I don't like monkeys, they are too random."

Falko Swadzba

This one from P. Larry Nelson was the driest of the lot and would make a perfect New Yorker cartoon caption. It still makes us smile every time we read it.

Bartender, I'll take an entendre - make it a double.

And for the last of the best that didn't win, we think this is just about perfect:

Non-Sequitur

Josh Dym

The hands-down runaway favorite entry (at least a dozen people sent it in) was, without fanfare:

Eschew obfuscation

The first person to send this in was Marc S. Williams of Salt Lake City, Utah. So we're going to declare him the winner. Congrats Marc!

p.s. There was one more we thought we'd throw in since it's our kind of sly and wry:

Front: Eradicate Condescension!

Back: (That means don't talk down to others.)

Al Williams

Want to Smarten Up?

One Up! is the ultimate mind game - it's not only faster and easier than Scrabble, it's also way harder too. Seriously, do you think you have enough intellectual soup in the kitchen, so-to-speak, to whip out the biggest words and win?

Top This Toponym.

We believe that words can still startle and sparkle, and have created a couple of fun brain brush-ups for you to show us how much you love them too.

The first challenge is to come up with a contemporary word derived from a place, such as Shanghai (abduct by force, from Shanghai, China), Paisley (design, from Paisley, Scotland) or Timbuktu (metaphor for a distant land, from Timbuktu, city on the Niger River in Mali), along with a definition. We're looking for originality and humor.

Our attempt:

Chicago - to railroad (someone) INTO office.

Or this one from Michelle List:

phrank: honest but slightly derogatory phrase; to phrank out: to cause one shame by besting one in understanding, argumentation, or verbal agility

It really phranks him out that I can explain the significance of his project better than he can.

Can you beat that? Of course, I can.

State (your name).

While we're thinking about it, this contest is kind of topical too. We're trying to rebrand our state "Connetiquette" - if you were to give yours a new name, what would you come up with?

We got the inspiration for this from a reader who said "Connec'tick'ut" was good, but she liked "Br∞klyn" even more. Ha! If you'd prefer a city or a town (since they're in the spirit of the thing), or even a country - "Japanned" comes to mind - then feel free.

Smart-Alecks? Yes, I've got one.

Stuff we make

We've just introduced our newest product Comeuppance - Just Desserts in a Can. It's the perfect smart-alecky gift for everyone on your love/hate list, and we'll even throw in some Smart Pills on all orders until Labor Day.

Why don't you spring for a back-to-basics, no-frills Old's Cool Uppityshirt - they fit old farts to a Tee.

All three kids are playing lacrosse, and every other adjective out of their mouths these days is "awesome", so the mental leap was small, even for me. Check out the newly-minted LACRAWESOME.

The ONE UP! CUP 2011 is a yearlong contest (with prizes every month) we came up with to see who has the most cerebellum soup in the can, so-to-speak. Check out the challenge for November.

The "Smart Pills" we've been giving out as a jokey premium to our best customers have proven so popular we've decided to add them to our permanent product line. Take two and call us in the morning.

We recently unveiled the follow-up to our preppy (and polite) "Connetiquette" Line, which we're actually hoping will tick more than a lot of people off. In a good way, of course.

Operation Brain Storm, the initiative we started to show our gratitude to the men and women in the military, features the semi-facetious Well-(Read) Uppityshirt.

Our web heroes

Anu Garg's delightful and quixotic A.Word.A.Day is, according to the New York Times,"The most welcomed, most enduring piece of daily mass e-mail in cyberspace."

Jim and his extremely talented crew over at Coudal Partners is our role model in terms of what a website can do to fulfill a designer's dream, while completely dispensing with the idea of having to kowtow to clients, or even having any at all. Prepare to be humbled.

We'll bet Heather B. Armstrong bites. Seriously, one of the reasons we like her and her blog dooce, besides the fact that she's beautiful, smart and funny: she's a class act all the way.

"Eclectic little excerpts delivered to your email every day" from Richard Wade Vague, editor over at Delancey Place. Marvelous.

Liz Danzico tries to strive, to use her own well-chosen words, for "interestingness over happiness" and her website Bobulate succeeds in doing both well - with a droll, honed, designer's eye.

One of our favorite addictions we mean websites, which we browse daily for inspiration is fffound.com - check it out for the depth and breadth of its sometimes ungodly-gorgeous visual delights.

The best of the best, and pretty funny too, McSweeney's just appeared on our radar screen recently. We have to laugh.

Stay tuned in

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