More good news: CP just folded.
Or, in fact, they folded on Wednesday; but the EMail they sent me was so completely buried in an uninteresting subjectline that I didn’t notice it until now.
Here’s the really funny story. The first hint that they’d folded was that I was talking to a trademark lawyer three hours ago [yes, I'm cool enough that trademark lawyers talk to me at eleven at night on Saturday] and tried WiFiing to ZOMBIE: eat flesh in the store to show him what Subway were pretending was trademark infringement. For all it matters, he agreed, based on the jpeg at http://wastedinc.com/2007/01/17/swyndlechicks, that anyone claiming that, under penalty of perjury, was risking prisontime through desperate amounts of bravery, stupidity, or both.
That I’ve since got home and found an EMail reporting that an agent of Subway alleged under penalty of perjury precisely that prevarication is at minimum amusing, to me.
So. Since I live in the US, I’m now given the choice of spending oodles of money attempting to prove my innocence in this misreported crime, or inferring with ironic humour that Subway are terrified of losing their trademark relative to selling human flesh to stupid people while otherwise letting it go and moving on to something else. And of course that’s all I can infer, since they went after my zombie parody and those of various copycats, while ignoring everything from uninspired petarded vegan shirts to Quizno’s using what appear to be ACTUAL SUBWAY WRAPPERS in adverts alerting zombies to the availability of more meat over at their place; to my thinking, that suggests a problem specifically with the element of human flesh, not the trademark itself.
That said, I’m not terribly concerned about it. As far as I care, I just do this sort of thing to get myself a shirt without having to dump large sacks of cash into buying the requisite gear and devoting thousands of square feet in the basement to the operation; those who wanted one of these shirts but never got one might learn to act a little more quickly next time something cool temporarily happens in the world.
Mostly I’m thrilled by the implication, under penalty of perjury, that I stole Subway’s trademark on ‘eat flesh’; time’ll tell if Soylent Green, Inc. accuse Subway of something out of pure karma.
More later….
–Gremlin

I know: I disappeared again for a couple weeks; it’s just something I do.
In fact, there wasn’t a lot of news until today. And the major news of the day is that Swyndle [the guy behind Predacious Moments who has to date evaded capture and statesanctioned therapy] has returned; and he’s brought along the SwyndleChicks.
For the moment, at launch, the ninja is already online; though, by the time You the Visitor read this–presuming I haven’t updated the site with more news by then–there might well be more SwyndleChicks to collect. At present, I think we’ve got about thirty basic vocations [I'm allowing herein that being a ninja is a sort of career] planned for the whole line; to date, the first five or six are pencilled out, awaiting only the timedraining task of inking them in vector and colouring in the various fleshtones…and clothes, as they might apply, however rarely.
As I write this, the SwyndleChicks are a bit exclusive to CP, largely because their backend currently makes more sense; once I get done writing this [and don't worry: that should be sometime today], I’ll jump over to PF and see what sort of damage I can do on that storefront.
That, of course, is being called into question at the moment. And I’m not entirely certain why. Here’s the story on that….
Several months ago, I got ZOMBIE: eat flesh added to CP; and that was fine. More than fine: it was successful. At this point, it’s beginning to match damnit.wheelchair in overall popularity. And that’s good news.
So, when I got PF added to Wasted, I added ZOMBIE: eat flesh to PF. And that was really good, to my thinking; here, in fact, was the result of that effort:

Click for Biggerness

The two on the right [meaning the one on the right and the one in the centre] were made by PF; the one on the left [meaning the one on the left] was made by CP; the mess on the floor was made by me, but that’s less important. And PF’s products were frankly better than CP’s, as far as I’m concerned. So adding the shirts over at PF was a good idea.
So, here’s the interesting part: my lawyers were okay with this; CP’s lawyers seem to remain okay with it; PF’s lawyers, best I can figure, were okay with it when I added it, remained okay with it when I ordered a couple of testrun shirts to make sure I was okay with it, and then, as of yesterday, stopped being okay with it. To this extent:

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To hazard a guess, ZOMBIE: eat flesh violates Clause#7, regarding trademarks. At least in the minds of PF’s lawyers, beginning this year. Why it was okay last year, when I ordered a couple testruns to ensure that PF were good enough to use, is anyone’s guess. But, in this business, them’s the breaks. They’re still okay over at CP, so there’s still time as of this instant to run off and buy them up before they’re outlawed globally.
That said, to my knowledge, the SwyndleChicks, while on the border of Clause#2, remain as of now less pornographic than a lot of things available at PF; hopefully, once I add them over there, they’ll remain available eternally.
And that, I think, is the extent of the news for now. Once we’ve got more SwyndleChicks to talk about, and/or whatever else I manage to get added in the near future, I’ll try to remember to get back here and update the site with whatever information is newer by then.
More later….
–Gremlin

Okay, so it’s not really all that happy; and, in fact, it’s not terribly new; but it is a site. One outta three ain’t…well, you know….
So, here’s the situation: Wasted, Inc. have been around for a bit [twelve years now, scary as that happens to sound], and wastedinc.com have been around nearly as long; this all dates back to the twentieth century, with its analogue mobilephones and wired videogame controllers: early Mesozoic, really.
So, the site’s not new. But this iteration is all shiny. Version…I dunno…ninish, maybe.
So, what’s changed this time? Mostly just that we’re back on the server again. For the last five years, with a couple of exceptions, wastedinc.com has just redirected to CafePress.com/wastedinc. And that worked pretty well for us, until now.
Now, we’re expanding a bit: outsourcing also to a couple of newer places, like PrintFection.com and lulu.com. In fact, WastedDiscourse.com has been hitting lulu.com for some time now; but, by rewriting the site, it’s simpler to admit that.
Each PoD company we use has its own benefits and downsides. For my money [and it's literally my money, since I tend to order merch from these places to test it out and, more importantly, end up with cool swag], CafePress.com being the oldest, best known, and best stocked of the PoDs, they’re pretty much the industry standard at the moment; and, since we’ve been outsourcing to them since 2001, the majority of our stuff is available there, on the widest range of products.
PrintFection.com are newer–currently less than a year old–and yet, they’re already somewhat better, based on my own testing, at printing on shirts; your results, of course, might vary…especially as time goes by.
As for lulu.com: they mostly do books. And they do them well. I’m not sure whether they really belong in the list with the shirt people; but, since I’ve got a couple of titles listed with them, it doesn’t hurt to consolidate everything into one site.
Finally, if you’re looking up to the right under links, you might notice mall.wastedinc.com; that’s also CafePress.com at the moment, but additionally includes a few thousand things we’ve found at competitors’ stores. Of course, they’re not really competitors, since they’ve all got different sorts of stuff than we have. So, if you can’t track something down within a few thousand of our things, you’ll probably find something you like in the mall.
And…that’s about all the news I’ve got at the moment. Oh, except: over there in the menu under categories [and also at the bottom of this page], you’ll find the RSS link. Feel free to subscribe to be alerted to periodic updates around here. Probably, there’ll be some eventually.
Have a good new year; and remember to buy lots and lots of stuff: otherwise, the terrorists win.
….
That line doesn’t really work anymore, does it. I’d like to think that it never really did. Sadly, I know better. Pity.
More later….
–Gremlin