The first one is a list of excuses as to why a man might have hit his wife or girlfriend, and the other implies that another mans wife or girlfriend is in fact an animal... both are available in sizes small to extra large and in several different colours. check www.topshop.com for more details.
Of course they are not available anymore, that thing I did just then was a little mock advertisment. Wasn't even that funny. Don't know why I did it. Actually I do know why I did it, I wanted to give the impression that I thought these T-shirts were acceptable when in fact I find them in bad taste.
Perhaps what I should have done was slowly uncover my true feelings about these T-shirts, slowly and deliberately over the course of the blog, but as I don't have the skill or confidence in myself as a writer to do that I'll do this awkward things where I point out the joke and over analyse to the point of exhaustion, and even then carry on writing about it until most people have switched off, some people might have switched off at the initial point having been offended, so what is the answer for them? the people I've bored have short attention spans and can be snapped back into place with a simple picture...
An explosion will suffice, but nudity, corpses or the mugshot of Mel Gibson all work for the attention span people, but for the people I have offended, I would have to make a gesture to win them back, and here it is... here it comes... wait for it... and...
Simple and effective.
Recently FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, came under heavy criticism for advocating the handshake as a method for negating racism on the football pitch, he has faced calls to resign and taken a lot of flak, but is it all necessary, perhaps the people who he offended should just shake his hand and see if he's right.
Blatter and Chelsea Midfielder taking it in turns to hurl racist abuse at Brazilian Midfielder Ronaldinho. (handshake not pictured)
By this logic, if racism on the football field can be negated with a handshake, then so can racism off the field too. Slavery for example, wealthy white Europeans dragged black East African men across the atlantic to be worked to death in plantations in the America's might seem a little bit harsh, and in deed it was. Estimated figures vary from 6-15 million killed through disease, starvation and execution over 4 centuries.
When the slave trade was over was their any problems? did it lead to things like the Ku Klux Klan, widespread segregation in America, lynchings and assassinations of prominant black leaders?
NO! They all shook hands and everything was sorted.
The same thing happened with South African Apartheid, there was a few years of segregation, people feeling like second class citizens in their own land and then white people realized they were wrong and took down all the 'whites only' sign and gave the black people a massive handshake, Apartheid? Sorted!
Blatter with Mandela (again, handshake not pictureed)
A high profile case about racism giong on at the moment is the recently reopened Stephen Lawrence murder trial. Lawrence's death was apparently the result of a racially motivated attack for which no one was brought to justice, the murder uncovered institutional racism in the police force and led to a change in the double jeopardy law, a law which was very good in terms of using for the premise of mediocre films, but in reality was a very strange quirk in the justice system.
Stephen Lawrence would be 35 now.
The ultimate test to the Blatter theory will be at the end of this trial, if Gary Dobson and David Norris are found guilty and they are forced to shake the hands of the parents of the child they murdered, if Stephen Lawrence's is miraculously raised from the dead like Lazarus in that book, which name I have conveniantly forgotten just as I am about to make my final point... what was it again?
No not that one. you always do that when you mention the bible. stupid.
Anyways, pretty sure that a handshake is a nice gesture to put an end to conflict, but we are not quite at the point where we can all shake hands just yet Mr Blatter.
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