"Yay, let's try a new thing called 'tombstoning'! I'm sure it's not called that for any specific reason!"??
This has to be the thought going through someone's brain when he decides to take a 30 meter plunge off a cliff into a channel laden with rocks and featuring a strong undertow current.
Every superhero has a nemesis. Meet Walter, winner of the "I Am Shining Star" real-life superhero contest.
On May 9th, to commemorate our Issue 54"I AM SHINING STAR", T-post invited everyone to unleash their inner superhero by performing a good deed, capturing it on video, and uploading it toYouTube. The video with the most views over the course of one month would be crowned the winner of $1,000. And the video with the most artistic merit would receive a T-post subscription for life.
In the end, only 10 videos were submitted but our good intentions caught the attention of some major news media, including Time Magazine and Springwise. Some of the videos made us laugh. Some made us all warm and fuzzy. Some made us really proud. And some made us scratch our head. All were valiant efforts, but one video in particular made us disappointed. Not so much the content, but the number of views it received virtually overnight. Either one gianormous superhero-wannabe, a.k.a. Walter, had a ton of superfriends or he figured out a way to outsmart us.
We did our research and discovered that the video in question was featured on a website where you can actually buy YouTube views (somanymp3s.com, somanymp3s.com/walter). Who knew? Well, we sure didn't. If we had, we would've strictly prohibited it in our contest rules. Unfortunately, we had no idea that such a dishonest service existed. After all, we're not attorneys. We're just a small company who wants to do some good in the world and hopefully inspire a few others to do the same.
We tried to reason with the big lug and get him to concede but his mask was on too tight and it had obviously clouded his judgement. Our hands were tied and we regretfully forked over the $1,000 prize money to someone who was clearly not SHINING STAR but instead his evil nemesis.
In our minds, the video with the second number of highest views is the real real-life superhero. And for this, Martin Schürger from Hannover, Germany, gets our Editor's Pick Award and a T-post subscription for life. Congratulations! You are truly a SHINING STAR. Thank you.
We honestly believe that good always prevails. And to prove it, we've decided to give all of the remaining contestants a year-long subscription to T-post.
Bombo!, a.k.a. Maurizio Santucci, was bornin Barga, Italy, where he still lives and works.
Using artful cuts of colorful paper, Bombo! successfully brings a new dimension and fresh whimsy to illustrations that we haven’t seen anywhere else. It’s no surprise that his unique style has been in high demand ever since he left a short-lived career in advertising to become a freelance illustrator.
There are the numerous solo and group exhibitions he’s done. The amazing books and posters. The impressive list of clients that include Rolling Stone, ABN Amro, Mini BMW, and Vodafone. And then, of course, there’s little ol’ us, T-post.
When we sent Bombo! the news clipping with Karen’s story, he responded with a super simple idea.
“It’s a hypothetical campaign to support Karen,” says Bombo! “If someone asks who Karen is, we can explain to them who she is and talk about ecology.”
Americans alone throw away 4.5 pounds of trash a day, far more than people in most other countries do. Yet, to most, it’s just another empty statistic. The amount of waste each we all generate doesn’t seem to bother anyone, partly because no one sees the problem.
Everyone puts their waste in a trash receptacle or recycling bin, the garbage truck comes along and whisks it all off to a so-called bottomless landfill or recycling plant, and then the problem is solved, right? Trash only becomes a problem when we have to look at it, smell it, or compete with those nasty little creatures that feast on it.
No one knows this more than Karen Herzog, a self-proclaimed trash recycler who lives in New York, a state that must now export their trash to available landfills in surrounding states.
The whole world's got World Cup fever. Which is pretty convenient, since it's a cup for the entire world. And everything reached its peak yesterday.
Viva La Espana!
But some apparently didn't think the party was reaching its expected peak and found a way to help get the party started.
According to Colombian police they began to suspect something was wrong with a particular replica of the World Cup trophy when they noticed damaged, substandard gold paint on one model. When tested, it was revealed to be made completely out of coke.
That must have been why Jimmy Jump entered the stadium yesterday. He was obviously making a spectacular diversion when he was in fact making a switch.
Let's check in on the Spanish players today and see how they are doing, shall we.
The 58-year-old motorist said she crashed her car into a canal in Mesa County because she was trying to get away from a vampire. Authorities told KKCO-TVthat the driver claimed she spotted the bloodsucker while driving on a dirt road outside Fruita, Colorado on Sunday – so she threw the car into reverse in an attempt to escape.
Law enforcement on the scene said they found no evidence of Vampires.
Who knew that money could become more valuable after it's been digested?
Last week, it was reported that Steve Wilson, of the St. Louis company DoodyCalls Pet Waste Removal, found $58 worthof chewed currency in a pile of doggy doo. And it turns out that these now-famous bills might be worth far more than $58 to the Humane Society of the United States.
Dog owner Karen Linn is auctioning the actual bills, eaten by her dog Fozzie, on eBay.
This is something to inform my senior citizen neighbor about since she just posted a "DON'T TAKE A DUMP HERE!" sign neatly in her yard.
But then again, the sign might not be directed to dogs.
Finally, the summer is here! As a resident of the northern hemisphere, I'm not to spoiled with sunshine, or warm weather all together.
But yesterday the long wait for sunshine was finally over. We caught an ice cream and got to hang out in the sun for a few hours. All in perfect time for the Solstice. So today it is starting to get darker and colder again.
Where is that global WARMING I’ve been hearing so much about?
In the three months since the spill began, over 2,000 graphic designers have been channeling their frustration into their work, creating emblems they say better represent a company now associated with oil-drenched water fowl and a seemingly unstoppable leak.
Here's Jakob Arevärn rocking his T-post logo tee together with his band "Håll Det Äkta" (translates "Keep It Real"). You can download their first album for free here.
And for all you Swedish T-posters you can read up on them here.
A shaky camera turns on, out of focus inhaste to capture something of terrible importance. The camera zooms in, and theimage emerges in awful clarity: the space shuttle, destroyed and coasting inhelpless orbit, the astronauts almost certainly dead. The impact debris coastsalongside the ruined shuttle in a funeral procession of atmospheric flotsam.
The most disturbing thing is that no story is explained. We see the destruction like a live news feed, without context,without explanation, and our imaginations paint the back story with our deepest fears: collision, terrorism, tragic accident.
With no commentary except the occasional audio interruption of the NASA controllers, the video feels like the pause in a historical retrospective, the quiet stillness between scripted voice-overs that lets the audience reflect on the tragedy. A moment of silence for the dead.
In an age where special effects are getting cleaner and more elaborate, this one steals their thunder by slipping past our increasing skepticism with decidedly low-tech methods.
The man who created this video is known online as The Faking Hoaxer (TFH for short), and he has a talent for creating footage that earns the rarest of compliments: It feels real.
The designer of Issue 55 - Do I Look Illegal?, Nikki Farquharson is a London-based designer who absolutely loves color, patterns, shapes, communication and typography.
She draws and colors by hand, using pencils, fine liner pens and felt tip markers, because she enjoys the process and prefers the results to a computer-generated one.
She often approaches her mixed media work differently depending on whom it’s for. For her personal work, the original photograph typically inspires her concept, providing a context for the patterns. Using the photo as a prop or part of the canvas, she changes the surroundings by including abstract details in bright colors and meticulous patterns. When creating mixed media work for clients, she believes that the illustration should be secondary to the real imagery, choosing to enhance the photography rather than drown it out.
“I wanted to show a couple with their garments visibly altered so it shows a juxtaposition of casual and smart clothing,” says Nikki about her T-post interpretation. “The concept is to confuse the authorities as their final look does not fit into any specific box.”
In a desperate measure to reduce the numberof drug- and gang-related crimes that allegedly occur in states that borderMexico, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer recently signed the U.S.’s toughest bill onillegal immigration into law, making Arizona the first state to demand thatimmigrants—specifically those of the brown-skinned variety, meet federalrequirements to carry identity documents legitimizing their presence in “theland of the free”.
It doesn’t matter when you or yourancestors got off the boat and came to America, or simply walked across thedesert, if you don’t look right, police officers now have the power to demandproof of citizenship and detain anyone they reasonably suspect are in thecountry without authorization.
The legislation has caused quite the heateddebate in the streets and in the major media, with many accusing the state ofsanctioning a racial profiling program that flies in the face of residents'civil rights.
No, I’m not making these up. They are real labels on real products. In past years, I've seen labels that warn users not to use a wart removal product if they "cannot see clearly to read the information in the information booklet." A small LCD panel comes with a caution: "Do not eat the LCD panel." And, of course, my all-time favorite is the stroller that warns parents to "remove child before folding."
Imagine what would happen if all the warning labels disappeared from our everyday lives. Would the world come to an end, in chaos, with a torrent of lost limbs and explosions? Or would ordinary common sense take over?
As a superhero you're suppose to do good deeds. That's not to be confused with plane deeds, which seems to be the case with the Brevard County doctor who was arrested for groping a woman while dressed as Captain America with a burrito in his pants.
Here's the video of Dr. Captain America being booked at the Brevard County Jail. And no, this is not an entry for our real-life superhero contest.
Our subscribers make us who we are. They are the ones spreading our stories outside the T-post circle. This is the first in a series of short films highlighting people in the T-post family. Enjoy the sweetness of David & Martin.
I just saw a sweet article in the Swedish Magazine Grip about us. Grip is a magazines distributed to all the passengers who fly domestic here in Sweden.
Does this mean that I'm now a member of the Mile High Club?
My name is Peter Lundgren and I'm the founder and editor-in-chief on T-post. 'A Day in the Life of a T-shirt Maker' is a daily update on T-post, the life around it and stuff that simply interests and inspires me.
Should you ever have any thoughts regarding what we have or haven't done, don't hesitate to send me an e-mail on peter@t-post.se and let me know. I'd really enjoy reading your thoughts and opinions.
