Help in the Relief Effort for Hurricane Sandy Victims

Want to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy? The best things you can do are (1) donate to the Red Cross, and (2) give blood.

To donate to the Red Cross, visit www.redcross.org, call 1-800-RED-CROSS, or text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Contributions may also be sent to your local Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013. To schedule a blood donation or get more information about giving blood, people can visit redcrossblood.org or call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767). To give blood, someone must be at least 17 years of age, meet weight and height requirements and be in general good health. Donors should bring their Red Cross blood donor card or other form of positive ID with them. Some states allow 16-year-olds to give with parental consent. You can also help victims of Hurricane Sandy while you shop at Zazzle, the online t-shirt store. Here are some t-shirt designs that were created specifically to raise funds, and according to Zazzle, "All of the gross profits (including commissions that would ordinarily be paid to sellers) from sales of products that are tagged “hurricanesupport” will be donated directly to nonprofit organizations who are funding the relief and recovery efforts."

Frankenstorm Tshirts

UPDATE OCT 30: Adding a few more, as they became available overnight. Scroll all the way down to see new ones.

Wow, as I write this, Hurricane Sandy hasn't even come ashore yet, but Frankenstorm tshirts, "I survived Frankenstorm" tees and "I Survived Hurricane Sandy" t-shirts are already available online.

We hope the storm isn't deadly, and everyone is safe, so they can buy a t-shirt and happily let the world know they survived this "Perfect Storm".

Click on any image to learn more or to purchase.

HORSES and BAYONETS Tshirts

Horses and bayonets have gone viral! (Click any tshirt image to purchase or learn more) "Horses and bayonets" became an instant internet meme following the debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney last night, as the Democratic president reached far back into the past to paint the Republican's foreign policy ideas as outdated. The former Massachusetts governor attempted to criticize Obama's military policy by noting that the U.S. Navy now has fewer ships than it did in 1917. Obama pounced. "You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916," Obama said. "Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines," he said. KA-POW!

ROMNESIA! Obamacare Covers Romnesia Tshirts

Romnesia Tees by bguertner
Design your own custom shirt no minimum online at Zazzle.

Romnesia T-shirt by bguertner
More Romnesia T-Shirts

Romnesia T-shirt by effusioncreative
Make your own custom shirt design at Zazzle

Binders Full of Women T-shirts and Binders

During the second Presidential debate, Mitt Romney claimed that when he was Governor of Massachusetts, he wondered if he couldn't find more qualified women for his staff.

BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN T-SHIRT Quote: "And I – and I went to my staff, and I said, 'How come all the people for these jobs are – are all men?' They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.' "

Romney said he requested "a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet."

"I went to a number of women's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women," Romney said.

According to CNN, "Before the debate was over, there was a Twitter hashtag, a blog, a series of memes, and a Facebook page with over 100,000 fans. The phrase was the third-fastest rising search on Google during the debate." (source: CNN)

And t-shirts. And binders. I'll add more as they become available.

MALARKEY! Tshirts

Did you see the Vice Presidential debate last night? Word of the night: MALARKEY!

Joe Biden, in the first ten minutes --- maybe 5 --- labelled Paul Ryan's gibberish as malarkey! We looked up the word to see where it came from, just for the heck of it.

Dictionary.com says: "ma·lar·key    [muh-lahr-kee] noun Informal . speech or writing designed to obscure, mislead, or impress; bunkum: The claims were just a lot of malarkey."

But unfortunately, it says the origin of the word is unknown!

Wikipedia lists several historic people named Malarkey, including baseball player John S. Malarkey , and American military officer and Technical Sergeant Donald G. Malarkey. But neither of them has a history that seems to lend itself to the nonsense of this word.

World Wide Words says: "...where this odd-looking word comes from is decidedly uncertain. What we do know is that it began to appear in the US in the early 1920s in various spellings, such as malaky, malachy, and mullarkey. Its first known user was the cartoonist T A Dorgan, in 1922, but it only began to appear widely at the end of the decade. By 1930, Variety could pun on it: “The song is ended but the Malarkey lingers on.”

Various theories have been advanced. Eric Partridge pointed to the modern Greek word malakia but he formed a group of one. His later editor, Paul Beale, noted the London expression Madame Misharty, the personification of sales talk, exaggerated claims, and wild predictions, a name that was supposedly that of a fortune teller. But this is stretching a possible linguistic link to breaking point and, in any case, we know it started life in North America. Others point to the family name Malarkey, though who the eponymous member of the tribe might have been whose Irish-derived gift of the gab could have given rise to the name remains unknown. Jonathon Green likewise suggests a Irish origin in mullachan, a strongly-built boy or ruffian, though this, too, seems a stretch of meaning.

We’ll just have to settle for the unsatisfactory “origin unknown”."

I'll add more Malarkey tshirts as they become available. For now, click on the images to learn more or to buy the featured Malarkey tshirts.

GREAT GROUPON Deal on Holiday Greeting Cards

OK I don't normally do this, but this is a really remarkable Groupon deal. BUT it only goes on through tomorrow (Friday, Oct 12) so really, you should act now. But what better time to get your holiday cards, and get them at a really awesome price.

Click the image to go to the deal:

The Deal:

$19 for 40 5”x7” custom holiday photo cards from Zazzle ($60 list price or $1.50 per card) with shipping included ($7.89 value; $67.89 total value) $29 for 75 5”x7” custom holiday photo cards ($112.50 list price or $1.50 per card) with shipping included ($11.39 value; $123.89 total value) $39 for 110 5”x7” custom holiday photo cards ($165 list price or $1.50 per card) with shipping included ($14.89 value; $179.89 total value)

There are more than 250 personalized card templates; full-color, double-sided printing cards up for grabs in this deal. Be sure to read the fine print, and then get started!

SAVE BIG BIRD! Tshirts

Uho, Mitt Romney admitted last night that he'd happily fire Big Bird if he became president. Remember, this is the guy who "likes to fire people" and also, apparently, birds. And cookie monsters. And puppets. We say - SAVE Big Bird, and vote for Obama!