The Binary Circumstance

Yesterday was the first day that I wore my new Binary Circumstance T-shirt.

I was standing in the return line at Home Depot which always seems to be several customers long. The guy in front of me turned around and said something like, “At least it’s moving quickly.”

I said, “Yes. Usually they only have one clerk and it takes forever.” I love Home Depot’s return policy and take full advantage of it when I’m not satisfied with a product or bought too much of something.

But today was different. The line really was moving quickly. Just like my T-shirt advertising campaign.

The guy looked at my shirt and said, “What’s ‘the binary circumstance?’”

I was momentarily dumbfounded. I really hadn’t expected many people to notice my shirt, much less say something about it. There are hundreds of people walking around with T-shirts with one design or logo after another. I’m not sure what made mine stand out to him.

I told him it was my web site. Then he proceded to ask me about the site, what its purpose was etc.

When I said it was where I wrote about philosophy and particularly about libertarian politics, he said, “Great!”

We chatted some more until it was his turn at the cashier. His questions and comments set me thinking about new designs that might be even more effective and attractive than my current designs.

But I must admit, I was surprised to get that kind of reaction so quickly.

You can buy your very own conversation starter at The Binary Circumstance Online Store.

More than a year ago I saw Bremerton, WA for the first time. The downtown was deserted, with one closed-up shop after another. I was surprised that a city that is directly connected to Seattle, WA by ferry could be so down in the dumps, but I could see huge possibilities for revitalization.

According to the Seattle Times, it’s starting to happen.

“Location, location, location,” Bremerton Mayor Cary Bozeman said as he gazed at the new conference center, with its signature fountain that shoots water to simulate a salmon swimming upstream.

“There’s been an economic malaise in the past 25 years. You could shoot a cannon down main street and not hit anyone. The city’s gotten old, and there’s been a brain drain.”

In the 2000 census, Bremerton was the only city in the state with a population above 20,000 to lose residents.

But thanks to federal funds and creative public-private financing, the city is experiencing a renaissance — all without asking its voters for a cent.

[…]

If the new downtown buildings weren’t enough, there’s another project on the books: a $28 million tunnel from the ferry terminal through downtown Bremerton. It’s backed by U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, a Bremerton native son.

“I’ve always said that Bremerton could be like Sausalito,” Dicks said. “I always believed that this was a gem that was waiting to be finished.”

Sausalito? I don’t think so. Vallejo, yes.

I don’t mean that as an insult, it’s just a more direct comparision. Vallejo, CA was a navy town with its economic climate dictated by military spending. The same is true of Bremerton. Both are a one hour trip by boat from their closest major cities, San Francisco and Seattle, respectively. Vallejo was a ghost town after the navy pulled out, but it has also been undergoing a revitalization.

Bainbridge is more like Sausalito.

I don’t buy that the taxpayers aren’t financing this redevelopment in some way.

When I first saw the deserted downtown storefronts, I thought that all they’d have to do is make a tax-free zone and it would quickly become a bustling town again. But nooobody listens to me.

Check out The Binary Circumstance Online Store.

I ordered three Cafe Press T-shirts about eight days ago. One from Jay McCarthy’s makeoutcity store and two from my own.

In general, I would say that I’m impressed with the quality of the product. The shirts are nice quality, the colors are true to my design and the ink looks good on the cloth. I washed one last night and it held up well.

The baseball jersey I got from Jay’s store looked great. It has text on both front and back and it was sharp, centered and straight.

On both of my shirts, the backs had graphic images. The images were centered and the color was very good. The front text was slanted and off center on both of them. One of them was very slight, the other more noticable.

The strange thing is that when I put it on, you can’t really see it. I apologize for my look in this picture but it was early, I’m still not completely awake and I’m holding the camera myself. I just wanted you to see what the shirts look like. This shirt was the worst of the lot.

When I called Cafe Press this morning, they suggested that the bigger the print, the easier it is to get it centered exactly because the process is done manually. That was a shocker to me, I thought it was all somehow computerized.

I’m also getting a little frustrated with their computer problems. This past weekend they had a bug in uploading images and it took them a couple of days to fix that. Now the pictures of products in the store are showing up as blanks with X’s in them.

But this whole idea has a real future I think.

I’ve created a Value T-Shirt that only has text on the front. I’ve priced it at $9.99 which leaves very little profit in it for me. I’m not doing this for altruistic reasons. I’d like more people to buy the shirts so I can get more feedback on the product. Also the more people who buy and wear the shirt, the more advertising my site gets.

UPDATE 9/15/04: After washing my two Cafe Press shirts only three or four times I have noticed a marked fading in the images and text. Given the price that they charge for their shirts I would have expected them to hold up better.

You can buy yours at The Binary Circumstance Online Store.

Rather than torturing myself by watching the Democratic Convention, I watched the original Manchurian Candidate (1962) with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury.

I’d seen it before but didn’t remember a lot about it, probably because the plot is quite complex, or I had not matured enough to understand its implications. It was ironic to watch it again tonight given that teh story climaxes at a political convention. It made me realize that it is no coincidence that the remake of The Manchurian Candidate is being released just now.

Move over Fahrenheit 9/11.

Meryl Streep and Denzel Washington are taking a big risk trying to top the original. I’ll be really interested to see if they can pull it off. Given the subtext of the original, I doubt that they can. They might make an interesting political thriller but the original Manchurian Candidate goes much deeper and more Freudian than that.

I had difficulty listening to Streep discuss her role on the Today Show with Katie Couric this morning because much of the interview was devoted to why powerful women are seen as something evil but powerful men aren’t. How can Streep still portray herself as some kind of victim? Streep also remarked that women, including Tina Sinatra, daughter of Frank, were behind the new production of The Manchurian Candidate and that was one of the reasons why a movie with such a meaty female role (originally played by Lansbury) was being remade.

Streep’s job at this point is to sell the movie, but having powerful, rich women who still see themselves as victims rewriting The Manchurian Candidate is a virtual guarantee that many of the most important themes of the original will be discarded as politically incorrect.

Many of the scenes in the original are just brilliant. The brainwashing scene where U.S. soldiers are hypnotized by communists into thinking they’re at an old-lady’s garden club. The communists (who look to the soldiers like gentle, caring, harmless little old ladies and are therefore addresses as "Ma’am") are being brainwashed into being killers who will have no memories or remorse for their deeds.

The trigger that sets the brainwashing and the resulting murders into motion is the sight of the Queen in a deck of cards–a deck of cards that has nothing but Queens.

This all ties together very neatly at the end of the movie. The new version has dropped the Queen and so I don’t know how they will keep the central theme of the story intact: the domineering, power-hungry mommy who must control every single aspect of her son’s life to the extent that she uses him to kill the things he loves most in life: love, pleasure, freedom and ultimately his own life.

But I’m sure this is one of the reasons why we’re supposed to go see the new version.

I’m also wondering what the original book was like.

You can also buy the DVD or book at Amazon.com: