I’ve never done an open letter before. I doubt this constitutes as one, probably more like airing out my dirty laundry in public. (Rimshot!)
Subject: Damaged Product
Regarding my pits.I have to say, I admire quite a bit of the products that you have available on your online storefront. A large majority of your shirts have a witty air about them, where the art or prose display a message that touches this sweet spot of comedic graphic tees. There’s one end of tees that are generally comprised of over-the-top shirts with stupid textual messages like “You’re dumb, go away.” or “No, I will not fix your computer.” Then you have the shirts that are purely based on internet memes, and will only be entertaining to those who are in the know. I see the latter as turning your nose up to the common, unconnected man in a very snooty way. (I do know that some of these are in your inventory, and while they are not of my liking, I do realize that they should exist.)
However, I would like to think that my collection of shirts transcends both of those extremes. They generally contain a visual punch line that is just enough for someone to chuckle to themselves, and oftentimes illicit a “hey, cool shirt”. Oddly enough, the main theme I seem to collect revolves around some sort of sadistic fashion.
Let me describe some of my shirts to you: An orange juice container being pierced in the head with a straw, looking up in pain as juice drips down it’s face. Cookie Monster, overdosed and passed out after having five too many shots of milk to go with his cookie binge. Big Bird, shot by a guy that you’d expect to find in a better rendered version of Duck Hunt.
Let me take a side bar here for a minute and explain something. I work at a video games company. To be more specific, I work at Harmonix, the guys who make Rock Band and Dance Central. It’s a bunch of young people who are either serious about music, or serious about games, or both. T-shirts are basically a damn uniform over there, and they are either advertising some awesome underground band you don’t know about yet, an upcoming or classic game, or they’re funny. I enjoy keeping my wardrobe fresh, and thus I have my eyes peeled on multiple tee sites to pick up a new shirt now and then.
Imagine my glee when I found that you guys were having a sale, and better yet, had this beautiful shirt, nearly calling my name. A rhino had attempted to play with a beach ball, and popped it. The beach ball not yet deflating, but the sadness in the rhino wasted no time. You could see the pain in his eyes — he had done it again — another attempt at enjoying some frivolity in his life, injecting some fun into his mundane routine of eat grass, stand around, and poop. But no, that hypodermic needle of fun wasn’t enough to pierce his thick skin, unlike his horn, which had just previously pierced the balloon. And to everyone looking at this piece of art, they can only think one thing; is that deflating beach ball a metaphor for the hole punctured in the ozone layer, slowly depleting what greenhouse gasses we have left? Will this rhino ever get to have any fun in his life, or will he die, barbecued in the Savannah as the temperature rises, year after year? Will he drown, as the polar ice caps melt and flood the world-over? My wife tells me I’m looking too deep into this, but dammit, some questions just need to be asked. Who is going to teach the rhinos how to swim?
Anyway, I digress. After one simple wearing of this shirt, and getting the appropriate chuckles I was hoping for, I continued to live my life. That weekend, I threw the shirt in the laundry with the rest of my weekly work-wear, and washed it. What happened when this shirt got out of the dryer saddened me incredibly. This light gray shirt had pink pit stains! Now lets back up a little bit here, the A/C at work has been working wonderfully, and work isn’t intensely strenuous. Full disclaimer: I am a normal male, using normal male deodorant, and nothing more. My pits do not require extra strength goo to keep them in check, and I do not sweat profusely when I engage in any sort of social interaction. On top of that, I have a collection of shirts, which are colorful as a rainbow. In fact, with the amount of shirts I have amassed, I almost have a full-on double rainbow. Let me tell you, it’s pretty intense. But what isn’t intense, are my pits. They aren’t radioactive, nor require any specific clothing discoloring chemicals to keep them in check, nor discolor any of my other clothing. Yet somehow, I now own an awesome gray shirt with pink pits.
I hope this email finds you in good faith, for I am a customer in good faith, and I intend to be a customer further, and tell all my customer friends and customer colleagues about you. How you rose to the occasion to help me get this shirt back in action, for I am merely a canvas of which to display industry-relevant and humorous art. I really hope it’s not raining where you are, and you got to work late, and stepped in a puddle, and spilt your coffee on yourself because that jerk on the bus wouldn’t move to the window seat and let you sit down, forcing you to stand up while the bus driver slammed on the breaks and forced you to spill your coffee on your sweet new chucks. I hope you weren’t warned by your boss never to be late again, or he’d be finding someone else who would do your job for you, no matter how thankless it is. Above all, I hope you don’t hate reading 1044 word diatribes about some dude whose shirt got ruined.
Please help me help you help me. It sounds quite selfish of me, but please, think of the rhinos. If we can’t teach them how to swim, the least we can do is show people how pathetically sad their lives truly are.
Sincerely,
Michael
