In a recent and somewhat distressing study, 3 out of 4 Americans expressed frustration with the daily challenge of telling the world who they are and how they roll.

Because let’s face it: with 24-hour-news stations blathering on around the clock, it can be so time-consuming to try to keep up with what’s actually newsworthy.  Encyclopedias are no help – they’re boring and almost immediately out of date, and they don’t cover important topics like Sarah Palin’s VPILF status.

And then there’s all those junk mail catalogues.  How many of them are truly useful?  How many of them help you accessorize your entire world?  How many of them transform you into a relevant watercooler conversationalist with classic wardrobe choices that make ironical statements about political and social events and phenomena?

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North Korea garnered some recent attention with satellite photography that reveals a soon-to-be-launched rocket.  The North Korean government says that the rocket will serve the purpose of transporting a commercial satellite sometime between April 4th-8th, but U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday that “this technology is intended as a mask for the development of an intercontinental ballistic missile.”  The suspicion is that this launch is in fact a test that will help Pyongang move toward a capability to launch a nuclear warhead.

While the U.S. government isn’t buying the satellite story, at present there are no plans to block the missile launch.  Japan, however, isn’t taking any chances and has deployed three destroyers to intercept any missiles that fly into Japanese airspace.  The United States also sent some destroyers into the Sea of Japan, but unless the missile appears to be headed toward Hawaii, Gates has noted that the United States is “not prepared to do anything about it.”  On the plus side, North Korea’s missiles just don’t fly that far.  (Yet.)

Gates noted that North Korea’s launch would indicate that Kim Jong-il’s regime is unmoved by the six-party talks meant to deter his nuclear ambitions.  He also noted that the timing – just two months into Obama’s office – essentially turns that missile into a symbolic thumb-at-the-nose (or other gesticulating finger) toward the Non-Proliferation Treaty member overtures (most notably the U.S., Japan and Russia) to curb North Korea’s nuclear development.  North Korea pulled out of that treaty in 2003.

Said Gates, “If this is Kim Jong-il’s welcoming present to a new president, launching a missile like this and threatening to have a nuclear test, I think it says a lot about the imperviousness of this regime in North Korea to any kind of diplomatic overtures.”

While Obama has focused on diplomacy as a means to curb international nuclear proliferation, Gates noted that talks aren’t getting us anywhere with nations like Iran and North Korea – neither of whom are lining up to sing the Star Spangled Banner.  Gates feels that punitive action in the form of economic sanctions is more likely to be effective than trying to talk it out.  South Korea, however, disagrees with strong-arming the Pyongyang government, and China has in the past intervened on North Korea’s behalf to prevent these kinds of sanctions.

North Korea did a similar missile test in 2006.  Because the North Korean media is strictly controlled by the government, it’s very difficult for journalists to get candid interviews of North Korean citizens to determine what the cultural barometer is around this kind of missile test.  However, given the propaganda art and the few documentaries that have been done, the general consensus of the North Korean citizenry seems to be that they have every right to defend themselves along the lines of other nuclear-empowered nations, and that the United States (and others) should butt out and let them run their country as they see fit.

From our end, the T-shirts tend to take a much more tongue-in-cheek approach to Kim Jong-il’s desire to put North Korea on the map as a nuclear powerhouse.  And so we award a Fantasy T-Wearer award to Robert Gates this week, with the Atomic Superman T-shirt above.

Those of us who live in urban areas are accustomed to the homeless population, some of whom use freeway offramps as a place to get creative with cardboard signs asking for money or other help.  Because this isn’t anything out of the ordinary, regrettably the homeless population does often tend to become invisible.

One Houston college student, however, noticed the guy under the freeway offramp.  And it just so happened that he was starting a fledgling Internet Marketing firm with his Dad.  So Sean Dolan decided to use the power of the Internet to make positive strides towards homeless activism, and he’s doing it one bum (and T-shirt) at a time.

PimpThisBum.com chronicles the life-changing partnership among Sean, his father, and his homeless friend John (as well as John’s friends Tim and Bobby).  Initially, Sean paid John $100 a day to hold a new sign with the PimpThisBum.com website address on it.  The hope was to encourage folks to visit the site and recognize that The Homeless Sign Holder Guy is a real person with a real name and a real desire to turn his life around for good.

The site launched in late February, and in less than two months the website has received $50,000 in donations and national media attention.  The Sunray Treatment Center in Seattle, WA has also offered John and Tim free treatment to help them get their lives back on track.  You can stay up-to-date with John’s progress via the site, as well as the constantly updated PimpThisBum YouTube channel.

In a similar vein, Do1Thing is using photography and multimedia as a means to put a face (well, technically thousands of faces) on the issue of teen homelessness.  They too have a shop as additional support for their cause, and are using their site as a platform to encourage participation in their project.

Both projects illustrate that seemingly insurmountable issues like homelessness can be addressed by an individual’s focus on an individual cause, and both projects show us that the power of Web 2.0 isn’t limited to democratizing restaurant reviews (though those of us who travel often do find that to be quite useful – so thanks, Yelpers).  You don’t need a robust website to start this kind of effort, either: the T-shirt featured above, at right, is part of a personal project that a single person took on to help a homeless friend get back on his feet when he’s ready.

In a time when the economic forecast is grim and even the news anchors seem depressed, it’s just nice to know that there are some everyday folks out there using the tools they have toward a greater social good.  Rock on, activists.

Florida is well-known for its alligator and crocodile population- in fact, in recent months wildlife managers have been experimenting with magnets to repel the reptiles from taking up residence on people’s front lawns.  But just when you thought that the biggest reptilian risk to your golf game was the gator hanging out on the 9th hole, a new bad boy’s in town.  And this one will occasionally try to eat an alligator, just to show off.

We speak of the rapidly expanding Burmese python infestation.  Unlike the gator and croc population, Burmese pythons are willing and able to cross state lines and make themselves at home throughout the Southwest.  Science Daily also notes that global warming could increase the hospitable areas for the pythons, so if the glaciers keep melting and the snakes get the travel bug, we may be welcoming the snakes as far West as California and as far North as San Francisco, Virginia and Kansas.  (Watch out, Toto: they eat deer, so you’re a mere snack for these guys.)

These snakes can grow up to 20 feet and weigh 250 pounds, so we’re not talking about your ordinary Garter snake nuisance that sends Mrs. Brown screaming into the house while the neighborhood boys laugh.  The pythons are an introduced species, most likely the result of pet store and owner releases, and at the moment they’re exploding in numbers and taking over the Everglades to the point that Florida lawmakers have introduced legislation to institute importation bans and other regulations.

The pet industry opposes these laws as well as the possibility that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will declare the snakes to be an “injurious species,” which leads us to assume that the angry pet store owners have not, in point of fact, been on a plane with Samuel L. Jackson lately.

And so we award a Fantasy T-Wearer award to all Florida residents today.  May the “Endangered Native” organic T-shirt convince any and all literate pythons that you’re an inappropriate and environmentally irresponsible meal.

Bumper sticker activism is a great American pastime, and for 8 years we’ve watched as anti-Bush sentiment adorned the often coastal-cruising bumpers ’round the nation.  From “Somewhere in Texas” to various plays on the W, the anti-Bush bumper sticker movement was a phenomenon that decorated the worldly possessions of outraged anti-war, anti-SUV and generally anti-W liberals throughout the Bush administration.

We wondered what would happen when the W era ended, and the answer is here: move over, hybrids.  There’s a new bumper in town, and it’s focused on a different letter of the alphabet.

Anti-Obama stickers have exploded in the weeks since the stimulus package passed, with numbers that have them about even with the anti-Bush legacy.  While Obama does yield considerably more positive results than a Bush search, the overall anti-Obama sentiment is still impressive in its newfound volume.

Most the anti-Obama stickers center around the stimulus package issues, with the more strident accusing the President of socialism or communism.  This is in-line with the anti-Bush sticker consciousness, which started with policy-driven insults and progressed to summary digs about the President’s intelligence.  Whether the anti-Obama sentiments will move beyond socialism and focus on a more singular, generalized perceived personal flaw has yet to be determined.

What we know for now is that the conservative SUV-drivers of the nation seem to be taking advantage of having a good amount of prime real estate to showcase their outrage.  And with gas prices down, we can only assume that you’ll be seeing a lot of these micro-billboards cruising around on a highway near you.

We all know that Rolling Stone is one of the most iconic names in American journalism, and no wonder: the first magazine to engage cultural trendsetters with its blend of music, politics and pop culture, Rolling Stone came of age alongside the new Rock ‘n Roll movement that shaped a generation throughout the late 1960′s and early ’70′s.

In 2007, Rolling Stone celebrated the 40th anniversary of its landmark inaugural issue, which featured a controversial cover of the famously anti-war John Lennon in a pith helmet.

Rolling Stone Founder and Editor Jann Wenner – still with the magazine – has always held true to the vision that “Rolling Stone is not just about music, but also about the things and attitudes that music embraces.”  Wenner focuses on blending work from best-in-breed artists around the globe – musicians, writer and photographers alike – to create a magazine that stands the test of time as both cultural barometer and icon.

Rolling Stone is, at its heart, a lifestyle magazine.  Through a look back at its covers we see a colorful reflection of the American consciousness and public discourse over the past four decades.  The archive of photography is a story of both Rock and Roll and American history, and now it’s available on high-quality prints and posters in the Rolling Stone shop.

The collection is diverse, colorful and has something for just about everyone.  From Charles Manson to a young Oscar-winning Tatum O’Neal to the Beatles (at different stages of hair length, clothing choices and cooperation), the collection is an interesting and colorful way to look back at American history and remember what got us to today.

In checking out this snapshot of American history I found the cover at right, and figured I’d share a little-known factoid that it jogged in my memory: the song “Martha, My Dear” (of The White Album) was written about Paul McCartney’s sheepdog, Martha.

So there you have it.  Rolling Stone album covers: not just cool wall art, but better than an encyclopedia.

Yesterday we talked about the AIG bonus controversy that’s causing a furor with the American people.  Despite the fervent wishes of several men in expensive suits (notably Obama, Timothy Geithner, Edward Liddy and most especially Christopher Dodd), the American people are not willing to drop this topic quite yet.

Obama publicly took the blame for the fiasco with a “the buck stops with me” statement, while also pointing out that his administration was responsible neither for the lack of oversight that caused AIG to fail, nor for these bonuses being granted.

On Capitol Hill, AIG CEO Edward Liddy sat uncomfortably in a witness chair and lamely asked that any employees who received a bonus in excess of $100K please return it.  Pretty please, with sugar on top?  I’ll give you a gold star…

Dodd’s camp continued to deny that it was his amendment, right up until Christopher Dodd went on Wolf Blitzer to try to talk himself out of being held responsible for what CNN was already calling “The Dodd Amendment.”  This made for very entertaining televsion viewing, as Chris Dodd gave an interview trying to distance himself from the amendment while CNN scrolled news of “The Dodd Amendment” below him.

Dodd then copped to maybe possibly adding some language that could have maybe caused these loopholes… but only because Geithner made him do it.  To be fair, some reports are now saying that the actual loophole that permits the AIG bonuses was in fact tacked onto the Dodd Amendment at the request of the Treasury Department.  The game of Whodunit isn’t over, and it isn’t pretty.

Chris Dodd tried to defend the amendment with this statement:

“We wrote the language in the bill, the deal with bonuses, golden parachutes, excessive executive compensation that was adopted unanimously by the United States Senate in the stimulus bill.  But for that language, there would have been no language to deal with this at all.”

The baffling weakness of that statement coupled with the elaborate tap dance he’s done to try to deny ownership of “The Dodd Amendment” has earned Chris Dodd a second Fantasy T-Wearer Award today, with the They Made Me Do It T-shirt above.

UPDATE: The House passed a bill to recoup bonuses at 90% paid to any employee, making in excess of $250,000, who was bonused by any company getting $5 billion or more from the government bailout program (the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP).  The matter now falls to the Senate.

As for the matter of Whodunit, Timothy Geithner is now stepping up to the plate to assume responsibility for the loophole addendum.

Oh, AIG.  Go sit in the corner.  Again.  Preferably without a masseuse and a glass of taxpayer-afforded lemon-infused mineral water.

AIG first upset American taxpayers and Barack Obama when the failing company decided to treat its employees to a posh spa weekend the day after it received $85 billion of taxpayer-funded federal bailout money.  At the time the campaigning Obama brought up this misuse of taxpayer money in the debates, noting that these executives should be fired and that the cost of the trip should be reimbursed to the Treasury.

Despite assurances by now-President Obama that the $787 billion stimulus package would be free of pork barrel spending and special-interest earmarks, and despite his assurances that executives in bailed-out companies wouldn’t be rewarded for failure, the stimulus package was signed into law with an executive compensation amendment tacked on by (the newly-outraged) Chris Dodd.  Dodd had clashed with the President on the issue of executive compensation after Obama announced his executive salary cap; but news of Dodd’s amendment and AIG’s embodiment of it has caused a massive public outcry, and Dodd is now looking at ways to tax the bonuses.

Dodd’s stimulus package amendment allows for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009.  This means AIG was able to spend $165M in bonuses for top executives – including 11 top execs who took their $1 million+ “retention bonuses” and walked out the door with them.

How this amendment escaped the notice of the President, the Treasury Secretary and members of Congress who are outraged by this news is a good question.  The simple answer is most likely that giving people less than 24 hours to read a complicated 1100 page spending bill is just not enough time for anyone to read and understand it, even the guy sitting in the Oval Office.  Perhaps a Cliff’s Notes version would have been of value…

Obama and other members of Congress are predictably outraged, and the President has instructed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to “pursue every single legal avenue” to undo the bonuses.  Geithner is now saying that the $165 million will be deducted from the $30 billion that the company is due to receive as part of their bailout package.  But this solution doesn’t work for people who want those that recieved the bonuses to have some sort of personal accountability in the matter, hence certain members of Congress looking for ways to tax the bonuses up to 98%.

And so we award Christopher Dodd a Fantasy T-Wearer award this week, with the “Ctrl Z (undo)” T-shirt at left.

If only it were that easy…

St. Patrick’s Day is a day to celebrate Irish heritage – and celebrating is enough to make you Irish for a day.  While St. Pat’s seems to center primarily around drinking, drinking and being merry in the name of green beer, some still harbor the vague hope that a real-live leprechaun might make himself known and lead you to a pot of gold.

And so we take a moment this St. Pat’s to revisit the classic news story that spawned a flurry of leprechaun T-shirts and distinguished Mobile, Alabama as a noteworthy St. Patrick’s Day celebration destination.  So keep your green river, Chicago: Alabama has a real-life leprechaun, and they’re not afraid to show him off via amateur sketch.

While some cities celebrated an early St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday March 14th, those finding the answers to life at the bottom of their pint glass may not have realized the significance of its shape on that glorious day.  For Saturday was International Pi Day, a day where mathletes and those who love them celebrate the mysterious, transcendental, infinite, constant and highly irrational Pi.

While official Pi Day T-shirts (and less occasion-oriented Pi T-shirts) are one way to celebrate everyone’s favorite infinite number, we might recommend that someone designate pie as the official food of Pi Day.  It’s not only delicious, it’s round.

And so we wish a belated Happy Pi Day to all the Pi fans out there.  Now get on out there and formulate with irrationality.