Literary fail shirt!

Apelad's "Literary Fail" shirt.woot is guaranteed to assplode the pedants' heads in your life (as is this sentence).

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

knobtheunicorn

“I have nothing, I owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor.” -Ayn Rand
Rindan

“Blood for the blood god!”
-Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”
  - Karl Marx
Anonymous

“I remain convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides.”

- George W. Bush
jfrancis

I get emails like this all the time except usually it’s someone putting political words they never said into the mouth of a founding father.
Tichrimo

“Of all the souls I’ve encountered in my travels, his was the most … human.”
- Lyndon B. Johnson (in his eulogy to JFK)
Jesse M.

Ah yes, the subtle art of troll quotes
gwailo_joe

When I saw the one with Gandalf quoting Yoda I actually got mad. So. . .it worked!

This one is pretty good too…and I like some of the suggestions above.

How about “I Have a Dream” attributed to Marcus Garvey with a picture of Biggie/Tupac?
gwailo_joe

‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country’-John D. Rockefeller.

With a picture of Taft. Or Hoover. . .no. . .I got it: Nixon. Perfect.
Jake0748

Wait… what? Mark Twain is Edgar Allan Poe? I’m all confused. Then who is this Hamlet Shakespeare guy?
- tw15
  
  It’s Hamnet Shakespeare, not Hamlet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamnet_Shakespeare
  
  “The rebels are coming” Paul Revere
- noah django
  
  beat me to it. beyond the quote/source fail, the illustration makes this shirt a three-way-fail.
gwailo_joe

This is a fun mental exercise. . .I can think of plenty of silly ones: “George Bush was born with a silver foot in his mouth!”-Sarah Palin (picture of Mother Theresa)

“It was our planet!”-Capt. Jean Luc Picard (picture of ALF)

But the goal is to infuriate as many people as possible, yes?

This bears more thought. . .
Anonymous

â€œIf we are attacked we can only defend ourselves with guns not with butter.â€ –jesus christ
gwailo_joe

“I want to be left alone”-Joan of Arc

Picture of Lady Di

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal”-Herman Goering

Picture of Robert Mugabe

oh dear. . .I could go on and on.

‘look to the skies!’-Hellen Keller

Pic of Einstein. or Lincoln. or. . .Hitler! ok, I yield. Enough.

That was fun tho’…
RadioSilence

Aoelad’s stuff is very funny, h’s the cartoonist behind the excellent Laugh-Out-Loud Cats.

http://HOBOTOPIA.com
Anonymous

“It was the best of times it was the worst of times”
Leo Tolstoy
(via Michael Steele)
wildbell

Needs a tpyo.
knobtheunicorn

“Move like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”-Steven Hawkings
Maybe a picture of Superman?
Brainspore

“You can take my gun from my cold, dead hands” â€”Paul Revere

â€”Sarah Palin
idontwant2liveinoprahsworld

I have yet to begun to freight!

Jimmy Page
quitterjunior

The F do I buy this thing? Take my money fail.
Anonymous

“I shall avenge you” – Chaka Khan with picture of Elmer Fudd
Anonymous

I recently snagged his Ring Bearer shirt too: http://shirt.woot.com/friends.aspx?k=19814
knobtheunicorn

“This not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”-Virginia Woolf
picture of Sylvia Plath
Anonymous

Looks like someone’s been checking out http://www.trollquotes.com/
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Ouch
Marktech

I’d still rather have a Helvetica shirt.
- coaxial
  
  It’s funnier when it’s Arial.
quitterjunior

I want to buy this shirt. I can’t buy it from the site yet. Probably can’t buy it from Apelad directly after he signed his soul away to this contest. So ima print it myself. Thoughts, Cory?
- travtastic
  
  I wholeheartedly support this, but I have to say that that image quality probably won’t be good enough to DIY it, unless you want it as pixel art.
CognitiveDissident

I hope that they offer this shirt for sale, but if they don’t:
Convert a low-rez image to Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVG), and enlarge.
A program like Potrace will do the trick.
http://potrace.sourceforge.net/

I want one with white lettering on a black shirt, so I need to pick up a white cartridge for my inkjet printer…
- Gulliver
  
  I want one with white lettering on a black shirt, so I need to pick up a white cartridge for my inkjet printer…
  
  Ah, that’ll flake out either over time or the first time you wash it. I think there are sites where you can make you’re own T-shirt iron-on patch.
coaxial

“Live Long and Prosper” — Han Solo
Ape Lad

Thanks for posting this, Cory!
@quitterjunior It’s part of the current derby, which means it’s up for voting. If it doesn’t get enough votes, it doesn’t get printed by them. They don’t own it, and I haven’t signed away anything. Woot’s pretty great that way, unlike, say, the Olympic mascot contests that pop up every few years.
- quitterjunior
  
  Brilliant. Not what I was expecting at all. btw you’re a genius.
  - Ape Lad
    
    “I’m just this guy, you know?” – Tron
- Gulliver
  
  I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me earlier, but there is a glaring oversight in your “Literary Fail” shirt. The attribution should be to Francis Bacon. That way not only do you troll the literati; you also set them at each others throats when some invariably say, “Well, if you just follow this acrostic cipher…”
  
  “Don’t just piss off fellow nerds. Divide and conquer.”
  ~ Jesus, accurately depicted:
  http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/forensics/1282186
chaopoiesis

What is Herman Melville doing on this shirt?
jja

I think that for the win, the quote should be a misquote as well. That would truly gild the lily.
endymion

This is the first shirt I’ve seen on the internet that I wanted to buy.

And I can’t.
Gulliver

â€œWhen diplomacy fails, thereâ€™s only one alternative: violence. Force must be applied without apology. Itâ€™s the Starfleet way.â€ ~ Katheryn Janeway [Star Trek Voyager; â€œLiving Witnessâ€ (season 4)]
Gulliver

“It has begun.”
~ Master Chief
- JustOk
  
  It has basil.
  
  –Master Chef
Gulliver

“And the whole world whispering
Born at the right time”
~ Bob Dylan
travtastic

I would pay a good amount of money to get this shirt. And I’d probably buy a few, being that I’d donate every other shirt I own.

http://www.trollquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/trollquotes/2562/trollquote_kane-540×687.jpg
Gulliver

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”
~ Buddha

Note, this one should picture Mohammad (Peace Be Upon Him, yada yada), but be very careful where you wear it.
Gulliver

“Oh, snap!”
~ Plato

Picture is Karl Popper, obviously.
gwailo_joe

‘Wat’s Up Doc?’-Donald Duck (picture of Yogi Bear)

‘We have met the enemy and he is us’-Opus (picture of Calvin laughing)

‘I can see Russia from my house’-Snookie (picture of Oprah)

of course any of these can be vise-versa’d. . . .the possibilities are endless!
- Gulliver
  
  There was a real person named Snookie? Or is it a comic strip character?
  - gwailo_joe
    
    Consider yourself lucky that you don’t know: Snooki (no e) is a ‘character’ on a reality show about spoiled kids from New Jersey. . .
    
    She got her 15 minutes of fame. . .it seems to be ending thank goodness…
Gulliver

Damn, I’m pissing myself off.
Gulliver

“I came, I saw, I conquered.”
~ Kublai Khan

Any of the South Park lads will do for the picture.
gwailo_joe

‘I could have been a contendah’-Clark Gable (pic of Bogart)

‘Fuck tha Police’-50 Cent (picture of Jay-Z)

‘All Is Vanity’-Martin Luther (pic of Pope John Paul II)

Farewell thread, you were indeed worthy…
Gulliver

“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
~ Ray Kurzweil

I’d go with Harlan Ellison for sheer piss-off factor.
Anonymous

it’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum and I’m all out of bubble gum – Barack Obama
Gulliver

“All that glitters is not gold.”
~ Cecil Rhodes

Winston Churchill for the picture.
Anonymous

“I’ll return shortly”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger, Commando
knobtheunicorn

“Some where over the rainbow
Way up high,
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.”

-Peter Pan

pic of Tevye
millie fink

When you come to a fork in the road, take it. –Vince Lombardi

Pic: Robert Frost
Anonymous

“Shake it fast” – Bob Dylan
ThinkCritically

This is perfectly acceptably! Good ol’ Billy Shakespeare failed to tack on CC-Attribution or CC-ND. Fiesty ol’ Samuel Clemens would have made mad money on these t-shirts. If only he had the favour of the cotton barons at the time, he wouldn’t have had to turn to writing shallow original stories to support his mustache wax habit.

If only!
Shmuel

Cute.

I voted for this one, though.
Anonymous

Is it a fail that some of these are not literary allusions?
Baron Karza

Back in 2009, I was planning a trip to Arizona, and I so much wanted to make a T-shirt that said:
“John McCain â€” Best governor the Silver State ever had!” with his picture, just to see how many reflexive “Hell Yeah”s I could get during my stay.
- T Nielsen Hayden
  
  Baron Karza, could you work a roadrunner into the design? State bird and all.
victorvodka

“You can always tell what ear someone lost his or her virginity in: he or she keeps that hairstyle, though thinning and greying, ’til the day he or she dies.”

–Ronald “Saint” Wilson Reagan
victorvodka

“Hot blooded, check it and see. I got a fever of 103. Cool baby, do you do more than dance? I’m hot blooded, hot blooded!”

–Leonard Cohen
Anonymous

Funny and its Americans stealing English culture again and calling it theirs…Fantastic four way suceed!!
Bucket

“The great thing about the internet is that you can make up any sort of quote you want and then attribute it to a famous person people respect, and three weeks later it’ll pop up as a distant relative’s Facebook status.”

General George Washington, upon his victory over Confederate General Robert E McNamara at Appomattox courthouse, Inchon, Korea, 1918.
Felton / Moderator

“Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.”

–Groucho Marx
- travtastic
  
  If that comes with this picture, I’ll take a case of shirts please.
  - Felton / Moderator
    
    Perfect! Also…
    
    “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
    –Oscar the Grouch
- Baron Karza
  
  Everyone knows it was Harpo who said that!
  - Felton / Moderator
    
    Everyone knows it was Harpo who said that!
    
    Well, he may have come up with the idea, but he wasn’t one to blow his own horn.