In a decision that surprised many (including Obama himself), the President received this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.  The Nobel committee noted that their decision to award the prize to a President just 10 months into office was based on his efforts to boost diplomacy and co-operation.

Said the Norwegian committee, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.  His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

Obama, for his part, seemed humbled by the award and expressed that this prize is a call-to-action, saying “I know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievements.  It’s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st Century.”

Of course, the decision is not without its critics.  The Taliban, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Republic National Committee Chairman Michael Steele have all made statements criticizing the committee’s decision.  Other world leaders (and John McCain, departing from other GOP members) were more supportive of the decision.

The merchandise being designed thus far is more celebratory than derogatory, which isn’t a surprise; Obama was from the beginning a candidate that inspired a lot of peace-themed T-shirts.

And so we congratulate the President today on bringing American leadership to recognition on the world stage, and award him a Fantasy T-Wearer Award with the Obama Peace Sign T-shirt, seen above at right.

Joe Wilson might breathe a sigh of relief today, with Kanye West capturing the headlines in this week’s Inappropriate Outburst/Public Apology.

Kanye disrupted the VMA’s – and more specifically, Taylor Swift – by interrupting her acceptance speech for Best Female Video with the sole purpose of telling the world that Beyonce deserved to win.  *Wince*

Beyonce, for her part, looked openly shocked (indeed, her expression brought back memories of Mike Meyers’ reaction when Kanye went on a rant about George Bush and black people during a live Katrina fundraiser).  Beyonce later invited Taylor Swift onstage during her own award for Video of the Year.

With celebrites all a-twitter about the incident, it would seem that those publicly denouncing Kanye in 140 characters or less are almost as big a story as the outburst itself.  And yet, we wonder if the even more pithy canvas of a T-shirt would be somehow more effective in staunching the twitics than Kanye’s ongoing blog apologies.  (He DOES NOT HAVE A F#$%ING TWITTER, after all.)

And so we award a Fantasy T-Wearer Award to Kanye West today.  May he wear the “Apology Loading” T-shirt with introspection.

In a move that’s been widely approved across party lines, President Obama took a vacay break to announce that Ben Bernanke would be reinstated for a second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Bernanke has been cited as being instrumental in the economic recovery efforts, by both the President and financial analysts, and his reinstatement is viewed as a safe and wise move for both political and economic stability reasons.  For the T-shirt designers ’round these parts, though, Bernanke is synonymous with “bailout” – a trend that started with the $700 billion Paulson/Bush/Bernanke Wall Street bailout of 2008, continued through the auto bailouts, and is still relevant given the Obama stimulus package – which of course included bailouts for Main Street residents in danger of, you know, having to leave Main Street due to impending foreclosures.

Indeed, a look back at the catalogue reminds us that Bernanke was the subject of the “S” word long before Obama showed up to earn like-minded design work.

Given the flavor of the designs about Ben Bernanke, we award a Fantasy T-Wearer Award to him today on behalf of our design community with the “Get out of Debt” card mousepad, at right.

It was the Russian tourist, in the Salle des Etats, with the mug…

Perhaps it’s all the reality talent shows that has led the everymen to embrace their inner critics.  Fans of “American Idol” know this phenomenon well – the sage nodding during/after a performance, where you look at your TV-watching partner to say things like “she’s pretty pitchy” or “this seems like something I’d see on a cruise ship” or “wow, this should be on his first album.”

Indeed, being an armchair critic (or quarterback) is a great American pasttime, and it would seem that the Russians are moving into the art world with the technique.  Though here we have more a case of an art critic quarterback…

A Russian tourist made headlines when she assaulted the Mona Lisa by throwing a mug at the 500-year-old painting.  The Mona Lisa however is protected in a similar manner as the Popemobile, and the mug – not being a suitable weapon to pierce bulletproof glass – left the enigmatic smile of Italy’s most famous pinup girl unscathed.

Despite our fears that this mug may have been the “Throwing Things at Lisa” mug and what might have followed in the progression (a stein?), the mug has been reported as being terracotta.  Phew.

And so, on behalf of the Mona Lisa and her many fans, we switch our Fantasy T-Wearer Award to a Fantasy Mug Award today, and award it to the nameless Russian art critic with a good arm and a fondness for drinkware.  May the “Everyone loves an Italian Girl” Mona Lisa mug, at left, be used as a gentle and functional reminder of a priceless piece of art, rather than a projectile op ed piece.

Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, told the TED conference in Oxford that a functional artificial human brain may only be 10 years away.  Markram has already built components of a rat brain.

The technology hinges upon “recording the electrophysiology of neurons,” which sounds quite impressive and probably is.

The details of this technology are best left for those left-brainers who understand such matters; the crux of it, though, is the goal: to give researchers transparency as to how a brain perceives the world.  Animal rights activists will be pleased as well, since Markram notes that building animal models to minimize animal experimentation is a practical application for the technology.

And so we award a Fantasy T-Wearer Award today to Henry Markram.  May he enjoy the cheeky “Never Underestimate” T-shirt, at right.

…the truth is I never left you…

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford can’t sing the same song to his South Carolina citizenry, as the Governor recently went missing for about 7 days.

Sanford most recently made headlines for refusing to accept stimulus package money, due to butting heads with President Obama on its intended use.

Sanford’s office originally stated that the governor was hiking the Appalachian trail (thus introducing a new and colorful euphemism to the public discourse), then revised to list his travel itinerary as Argentina.

Whether or not Sanford took a hike during his time in Argentina hasn’t been confirmed.  What has been confirmed is his affair with an Argentinian woman, thus engendering the requisite press conference and public apology becoming somewhat commonplace for straying politicians these days.

Sanford, who had been on a short list of potential GOP Presidential candidates for 2012, has not stepped down from office.  He did however make a public apology to his wife and four sons with the assertion that he’d ended the affair and promised to step down as the head of the Republican Governor’s Association.

What the future holds for the South Carolina Governor is unclear, though most agree that his chances for a 2012 Presidential bid are now over.  For our part, we’ll award Mark Sanford a Fantasy T-Wearer Award today, with the “hiking the Appalachian Trail” T-shirt, above.

The drug trade is a well-known problem across our Mexican border, and we’ve all heard stories of smugglers swallowing balloons, using religious statues (it’s not just a “Lost” plot point), giving coyotes a second job, and otherwise using creative ideas in order to get their wares across the border.

With human body cavities being so small (and so unpleasant as a storage and inspection vessel), it seems that the Mexican drug smugglers have turned to a new, larger and legally-frozen body cavity: the shark.

Yep, the Mexican Navy found an entire ton of cocaine hidden inside frozen shark carcasses.  The sharks were loaded onto a U.S.-bound container ship on the Yucatan Peninsula.  Apparently, the crackdown on the drug trade by the DEA and the Mexican government is leading smugglers to think outside the box (or, in this case, inside the carcass) with their storage vessels.

And so we award Mexico’s Naval Commander Eduardo Villa a congratulatory Fantasy T-Wearer Award today, in honor of this huge bust.  May he enjoy the “Wipe Out Substance Abuse” Shark T-shirt, above.

If you were taking advantage of Chinese characters to write long, expressive Tweets and you happen to be a Chinese citizen, the jig’s up.  The Chinese government has blocked access to Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and multiple other Web 2.0 sites – including all WordPress and Blogger blogs.  (So if you live in China, you’re most likely not reading this.)

The general guess is that these sites are blocked in order to minimize online chatter in Mainland China about the Tianemens Square Massacre (or “June Fourth Incident,” as you will), which occurred 20 years ago on June 4th.

Interestingly, for the past couple weeks there have consistently been multiple hits on this blog’s old Beijing Olympics post, for no apparent reason.  Coincidence?  Hmm.

As far as we know, CafePress is not blocked in China. According to someone we know who is currently traveling in Mainland China, we are blocked in China.  That being said, you still probably definitely don’t want to wear your “Free Tibet” T-shirt if you’re planning a trip to China – even if you wear it with the same apathy or sheer cluelessness with which so many hipsters sport a Che T-shirt.

Because while unfettered self-expression and the “get it off your mind and onto your chest” philosophy is at the heart of CafePress, the best rule of international travel is to remember where you’re going.  And act accordingly.  (One caveat: if you ever travel to Quito, you’ll notice that locals jump off moving buses.  Having lived there and having drastically underestimated the velocity of a slowing bus during a hackneyed attempt to blend in, I advise all readers to simply ask the driver to stop rather than risking a dramatic – and very public – wipeout in the streets of Ecuador.)

And so we will award a Fantasy T-wearer Award (not to be worn in international travel) to Biz Stone and Evan Williams, co-founders of Twitter today.  May they enjoy the “Banned in China” T-shirt, above.

…[insert new slogan text here]

General Motors’ iconic if inadvertent “What’s Good for GM is Good for the Country” slogan was recently called into question by Ted Koppel during an interview with a GM exec in his “People’s Republic of Capitalism” series.  Koppel was specifically discussing GM’s rampant investment in China, but with the news of GM’s bankruptcy filing the question mark at the end of the classic GM soundbyte is looming ever-larger.

The Chapter 11 filing constitutes the largest industrial bankruptcy filing in American history, and the fourth largest overall.

GM already has $20B in taxpayer money; it wants $30B more.  President Obama says that the government has no interest in running what’s to be a leaner, scaled-down GM, calling their bankrolling participation one of “reluctant shareholders.“  He also noted that “GM and its stakeholders have achieved a viable, achievable plan that will give this iconic American company a chance to rise again.”

Part of the viable, achievable plan: ditch Hummer, focus on building hybrids and other more practical cars.  Of course, it didn’t take a fortune teller to predict the demise of consumer demand for oversized, gas-guzzling SUV’s.  If pushing the celebration of fuel consumption during a Middle East war effort seemed like a good idea at the time, perhaps a simple look at the T-shirts 4+ years ago might have been a better cultural barometer to foresee consumer trends.  A simple search for “SUV” vs. “hybrid” show very clearly that, from this end, the voices have always been loudest against the “bigger is better” trend when it comes to the automobile.

And so we award a Fantasy T-Wearer Award today.  May all senior GM executives (with the notable exception of ex-CEO Richard Wagoner, who was recently dismissed but enjoyed aggressive pay increases over the years even as GM lost money) enjoy the “Powered by Ramen” T-shirt, as seen above.  Certainly, wearing that T-shirt will probably go over a lot better than, say, showing up to meetings in a $36M private jet.

Miss California was allowed to keep her crown today by virtue of the ever-benevolent Donald Trump, who has a history of treating his Miss USA pageant winners with a lot more leniency than his Apprentices.

Carrie Prejean first made headlines when Perez Hilton, celebrity blogger and Miss USA judge, asked her about her stance on gay marriage.  Her response:

“I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other … same sex marriage or opposite marriage,” then noted, “I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman … that’s how I was raised.”

Her comments infuriated the openly gay Hilton, which led to heated online critique of Prejean, which led to the anti-gay-marriage camp (or pro-opposite marriage, as the case may be) getting vocal and using Prejean’s remarks in advertising, which led to a C&D letter from the Miss Universe Organization, which led to an additional media flurry for both sides of the gay marriage/equal rights/opposite marriage/traditional marriage argument(s).

While Prejean felt that Hilton’s question unfairly cost her the Miss USA title, it was actually semi-nude photos of her that put her Miss California title in jeopardy.  That set of photos was followed by a topless set being discovered, at which point Trump and the Miss USA pageant posse noted that they’d make a final determination as to whether these photos constituted tiara removal.

The answer: nope.  Prejean will retain her tiara for the time being and, one might hope, her clothes.

Given that Miss California Co-Executive Director Shanna Moakler is a former Playboy playmate, perhaps it’s not so surprising that Donald Trump isn’t shocked or offended by the discovery of racy photos having been taken by an aspiring model.  Moakler’s stance on gay marriage, however, is at diametric odds with Prejean’s; Moakler recently appeared in a “NOH8″ PSA to support the overturn of California’s Proposition 8, which passed in November.

With her tiara intact and an Urban Dictionary entry honoring her unexpected contribution to the American dialect, the future looks somewhat bedazzled for Prejean.  And if she tires of the beauty queen circuit, at least one of our Shopkeepers has an idea for a future career (seen here at left).

Controversy aside, we too bestow an award to Carrie Prejean.  She is the winner of a Fantasy T-Wearer award today, with the “sanctity of opposite marriage” T-shirt above.  May she wear it with pride.  And in lieu of documented toplessness.

UPDATE: Prejean has blamed the topless photos on Mother Nature, noting that the photographs were taken on a windy day which led to a wardrobe malfunction, and that she was “unaware” that the photos were taken.  (You may judge for yourself how unaware she might have been and the wind’s alleged culpability from the photos themselves.)

And so we will award Prejean a second Fantasy T-Wearer Award.  This time we regale her with a button, which can work wonders in keeping clothing from blowing open.  (Caveat: said buttons only serve this purpose on clothing that would close in the first place.)

UPDATE, part deux: Shanna Moakler has resigned her post as the co-executive director of the Miss California pageant.