So here’s a story of a t-shirt hunt with an almost-perfect ending. The other day I got an email from Liz, check this out:

Hello!
Stumbled across your blog, loved it, realized I had found a shirt a week ago that I loved but, unfortunately, it was too small (I was thrift-store hopping, they only had one). So I was wondering if you couldn’t hunt it down seeing as you seem to enjoy that sort of thing.

I looked for it online because the brand of the shirt itself was on the tag but it turned out that someone had simply silk screened it after buying plain shirts in bulk from that company.

Anyways, the shirt was black and it had an outline of Texas on it with the words, “Let’s Mess With Texas” written over top. It was pretty funny at the time.

Thanks in advance if you can find it. If you can’t, no worries, just thought I’d give it a shot.

Liz

This sounded like a tall order simply because of the sheer number of items you can buy with “Don’t Mess With Texas” plastered all over them. I also wanted to weed out as many print on demand (POD) items as possible, since Liz indicated in her email that the had been silk-screened by someone.

I got lucky, and I think I found the shirt:

Hopefully that’s the shirt you were talking about, Liz. I found it on Storyville Times, from a post dated Oct 1, 2007. The post tells me that the shirt was designed by a group called “Metro Three.” Some Googling brought me what looks to be their homepage and Twitter account:

Metro Three Homepage

Metro Three Twitter

I half-expect a tumbleweed to roll across that Twitter profile, it’s been deserted for so long. Nevertheless, Metro Three seems to be active, though that shirt doesn’t appear to be for sale right now. I’m thinking your best bet, Liz, is to contact them and see if they can’t make one appear in your mailbox one way or another.

If they can’t, here are some alternatives:

That’s Mess With Texas from Threadless, currently sold out but you can request an email notification for a reprint.

Here’s "Please Mess With Texas" from Protoculture Apparel. It’s a bit pricy IMO for the amount of print that’s on it, but it’s available in blue and green.

I also found this one on Cotton Factory, "I Messed With Texas." This one’s more reasonably priced at $16.

Hopefully you found something here you can run with with, Liz! Thanks for shooting me a message about this shirt you’re looking for. If anyone else has a shirt they’d like to see, hit the submit button up there on the right and let me know about it!

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Sometimes I’ll be lounging around the house and I realize a run to the store is in order. Nothing major, just a quick trip. That may or may not be a beer run. Right. So I take off the old t-shirt I was wearing around the house and toss on something a little more respectable to run to the store in.

I’m back to the house in 20 minutes, what happens to the t-shirt? Do I put it in the laundry? Do I hang it back up? I mean, I wore it for less than a half hour. This t-shirt is suddenly in cotton limbo. What do you do? Almost invariably, the shirt will see a second run before it sees the laundry basket. It just doesn’t make sense to wash something that’s essentially clean.

This tee is perfect for those situations. It’s the simple, cheeky humor that Snorg Tees is known for. It’s printed single color on a grey shirt. If you look closely, you’ll see the recycle symbol is actually 3 t-shirts instead of arrow. Pretty clever!

Pick up “I Support Recycling” from Snorg Tees, $14.95 this week only

I hate captchas. Half the time you can’t read what they say; then the other half of the time you’re trying to figure out if what you’re typing is really a word. I understand the point, proving you’re a human and not a bot, but come on. With all the smart people out there working on software, on security, this is the best we can come up with? Seriously guys, this is the best way to tell a person from 472 lines of code? I’m not saying I have the answer, but I do miss the time when things like captchas weren’t necessary.

Anyways, the above rant should serve to illustrate how funny I found this shirt from Rizzo Tees. “WTF does that say?” echoes the thought process exactly! Ever notice how captchas have gotten harder and harder over the past few years? I understand they need to make captchas harder to outsmart the latest um, captcha-reading software, but dammit, they’re starting to outsmart me. This just reinforces that we are (or at least I certainly am) dumber than a computer, and that the machine/robot apocalypse is coming to assure the destruction of humankind as we know it. Or something like that, anyways.

I honestly don’t know what that says on the shirt. Windolph Gossh? Windolph, Gossln? Stupid Human? Eh, I don’t know. the “Gotcha, this is not legible” bit in the corner is brilliant too, it looks so natural I’m willing to bet some people will miss it when they see you wearing this shirt. You know, probably the same people that can’t solve captchas.

While there’s not an image of a person wearing it posted on the site yet (maybe uploading photos to Rizzo Tees requires a captcha?), Chris from Rizzo Tees tells me it’s 10″ wide and chest-centered. Perfect! This shirt is awesome and has universal appeal, since we all have to deal with this crap online everyday.

Zip over to Rizzo Tees and grab Captcha for $14. You can’t go wrong at that price.

See the rest of the Rizzo Tees collection, complete with a chick not wearing pants and a shirt making fun of Detroit

People love to Google for “funny t-shirts” it seems. When asked personally for a suggestion on where to find said “funny t-shirts” Busted Tees is usually one of the first places I cite. Busted Tees isn’t going to win any cerebral design awards, but then again, that’s not what they’re aiming for. Busted Tees makes funny shirts, period.

The designs are usually fairly simple, and the ideas behind them range from puns to pop culture references. The artwork is almost always under 4 colors, and does not center on a specific theme. New shirts are added every week. Busted Tees is one of the few t-shirt shops to promise that and continually deliver.

Busted Tees has weekly sales, which are awesome. Every week, 12 different tees are on sale for $12 each. New shirts are 15% off in their first week as well. Other tees are regularly seen on sale for as low as 8 bucks. That’s less than half of what most shirts run these days.

Detail pages for shirts have a sweet inventory graph showing you how much is in stock of each size, so you know how much time you have to procrastinate before biting the bullet on a tee that you find. The site is laid out and categorized well, which is always a plus and the importance of which cannot be underestimated.

As if you didn’t have enough reasons to check out Busted Tees already, they also sell hoodies, kids apparel, posters and other stuff. They’ve even got a sub-brand, Defunker, which is slightly less funny and more cerebral.

Busted Tees is certainly worth your perusal if you like funny t-shirts. Whether it’s something to wear to the bar, something as a gift for a friend or just expanding your collection with something you found hilarious, Busted Tees should be able to help.

Check out Busted Tees for funny t-shirts

DeezTeez is having a sale through tomorrow. Enter TAXESSUCK into the coupon code box at checkout to get 25% off.

I’ve always loved Happy Gilmore, so here’s a shirt I found through TShirtReview.com (not to be confused with this site). Chris has featured some pretty sweet tees in the past there, check him out.

The Chubbs Peterson Golf Lessons shirt is $14.99 ($11.24 if you get it today or tomorrow) and is available from DeezTeez.