I'm not quite sure what to make of this

So, I was on campus the other day and stopped in the student-run snack bar/coffee shop for a bite to eat. The counter attendant/barista was wearing a pretty cool T-shirt and she let me take a picture:

At first I thought it was band merch, given the design; I saw a list of cities in the word balloon that could have represented the tour. But then I found out that La Notte is just a service mark of Aritzia Apparel and the design was probably random; they seem to do a lot of hip, Urban Outfitters type of design, with lots of BROOKLYN and such.

This looks to me like old Kirby artwork. In particular, the woman reminds me a lot of his Sif. The man seems a little more generic, but I do recall that style of helmet on The Guardian.

Let's look a little closer.

A quick Googling tells me that whoever these folks are, the man is reciting the chorus to rap/hip-hop artist Frank Ocean's Lost, a song about a drug mule.

Well, that doesn't help clear it up at all.

Any guesses? Or just total randomness?

Alfred, let's go shopping.

So, I am here in the Capital of the Inland Empire, The Lilac City, Spokane, Washington. Although I am attending an academic conference, I carved out a little time to re-visit some geeky haunts I discovered when I lived here for grad school:

First, we have Merlyn's:

Their cool A-frame elaborates on their trade.



They have a huge new comics wall as well as tons of back issues,



and a big gaming area, eerily quiet on a weekday.

The shelves are just one big D6 short of a full set of oversized Platonic solids.

And it has perhaps the coolest restroom in Washington:

I also managed to squeeze in a trip to Boo Radley's, an awesome gift and curiosity shop downtown:

It also sells graphic novels

as well as vintage genre paperbacks

and Steampunk gear.

Here was a great find: the D&D version of Clue. I kid you not, the back of the box asks "Was it Tordock in the Dragon's Lair with the Flaming Battle Axe? Or Mialee in the Dungeon with the Staff of Power?"

And here's a ST:OS action figure set - from the "Dilithium Collection."

If you are ever in Spoke-a-loo, check out these shops - they are worth a visit!

3D Dioramae

I haven't posted a $3 Diorama in a while and I haven't had time to create one so I was going to try to get by using this one:

I was going to call it fierce alien barbarians do battle in a sparse futuristic landscape or something along those lines, but it's fairly obvious that these are just some figures on the shelf in my office, and that's pretty lame.

Then I decided to go full disclosure and just display all the geekery in my office. I recently changed offices as part of my transition out of administration and back to faculty, but the shelves are deliberately empty and I hope to keep them that way. Anyway, here's the stuff:

Double-take

While I am in the mood to compare two images:

This image was floating around the interwebs some time ago, apparently taken at a store in India:

It's a pretty standard oops-the-unlicensed-merchandise-got-it-wrong deal, but I think it was the slogan that really sold it: man behind brief and mask.

But it got me to thinking: maybe this wasn't the standard oops-the-unlicensed-merchandise-got-it-wrong deal, bur rather a special oops-the-unlicensed-merchandise-got-it-wrong deal. Maybe that Indian silkscreening had a dim memory of the classic villain Composite Superman, and got that wrong:

Wouldn't that be something?