The troubles of life

Since shrinking shirts (as opposed to shrinking violets) keeps coming up on my HitTail search results all the time, I thought I’d have another look at what’s out there on the topic.
Google picked up a site called Threadless Nude No More (Google seems to have a bit of a thing about nudity and nakedness) and coincidentally, when I checked out what a threadless t-shirt was, I came across one that had been sold recently on Trade Me, a site I’d spent a good deal of the afternoon on (between sorting out the house still). They sell t-shirts too, and advertise them thus: Don't trade naked, buy a Trade Me t-shirt!
See what I mean about nakedness? You can't get away from it.
The Trade Me seller wrote: This is one of the collection of threadless t shirts. Threadless is an organisation where artists submit their artwork to be printed on t shirts. Each t shirt has its own name and an idea behind it. this one is called "in the event of a playground" and is printed on a blue t shirt. T shirts made in USA
Anyway, the original TNMM site is also a social site, where people discuss things (mostly related to their threadless tees, I think). Under the heading, Shrinking Shirt, Alex Tong, whose user name is secondfate, asked: “I want a Threadless shirt, but they only have it in Men's Large.
If I put it through the wash @ warm, and dry it, would it be feasible for it to shrink to a Mens Small?
Advisable? no? yes?”
Not surprisingly, Alex got some very odd responses, but the general consensus seemed to be that it would better for him to tone up his body for three months and then he’d fit the shirt. Seems a rather drastic approach, and Alex was of the same opinion. Firstly, being Asian he was naturally small, and secondly, if he did build up his body in order to fit this particular Threadless, he’d then be too big for his billion other shirts.
Ah, the troubles of life.

That's Alex in the photo - he actually seems to be a bit of a shrinking violet, if the picture is anything to go by.

Shrinking Neck on Shirt

I haven’t checked my old friends Hittail.com for a week or so, because I haven’t had easy access to the Internet. As my Travel blog notes, we’ve had to sit in pubs (!) and listen to noisy music, and get the laptop out and connect to The Cloud, in order to be linked to the big wide Web.

So when I got to look at HitTail just now, I find that the top search phrase, virtually, (apart from the ubiquitous Brent Stavig – who comes top! – and yours truly, who comes second!!), has to do with shrinking shirts. Shrinking shirts? Is this such a topic already that the whole world wants to know how to deal with them?

One person checked out ‘shrinking neck on shirt’. I presume they meant the shirt’s neck, not the inhabitant’s. No doubt they quickly discovered that this blog is of absolutely no use when it comes to giving advice about shrinking shirts – or even shrinking violets, if it comes to that.

The composer and pianist Gao Ping, who writes piano music he can sing along to, also comes fairly high on the list of search terms. I hadn’t realised that Gao Ping is the same person as Ping Gao (these Asians!) who is a music lecturer at Canterbury University in NZ.

Well, there you go. Perhaps I should occasionally call myself Crowl Mike, just to see if it has an effect on my reputation. (It could only improve it.)

Translated!

Fame on the Net is widespread. Or so I’d like to think. Back at the end of May I posted a short piece about shrinking shirts. Someone did a search on the German version of Google for the following odd selection of words: ‘she should lose weight church’. Don’t ask me what it’s supposed to convey. Anyway, they picked up my piece about shrinking shirts, which has a small amount to do with weight and nothing, as far as I can see, to do with church. It came up in English, of course, but alongside it is the German equivalent of Translate this site: diese seite übersetzen. Just for fun I thought I’d get it translated into German. No doubt the German it’s become is as grammatically odd as the English that we get if we ask Google to translate, but for the record, here it is:
Schrumpfende Hemden
Es ist eine ärgerliche Sache, zum etwas zu kaufen und es dann zu finden schrumpft auf dir. Vor drei oder vier Monaten kaufte ich drei Hemden vom K Handelszentrum. Alle drei von ihnen sind geschrumpft: zwei von ihnen gerade wenig aber eins beträchtlich. Meine Frau setzt es unten zu meinem gewinnengewicht während dieser Zeit. Aber ich weiß für eine Tatsache, daß eins der Hemden kleiner ist. Als ich es kaufte, würde es oben um den Ansatz tun. Jetzt wird es nicht. Du kannst nicht erklären mir, daß ich an Gewicht ringsum meinen Ansatz gesetzt habe!

Shrinking shirts

It's an annoying thing to buy something and then find it shrinks on you. Three or four months ago I bought three shirts from K Mart. All three of them have shrunk: two of them just a little but one considerably. My wife puts it down to my gaining weight during this time. But I know for a fact that one of the shirts is smaller. When I bought it, it would do up around the neck. Now it won't. You can't tell me I've put on weight round my neck!

I tried to find an image of a person in a shrunk shirt, but couldn't: all the images that came up were for shirts that wouldn't shrink.