♬ “I’m on my way….I’m on my way….HOME SWEET HOME!” ♬
That’s right ladies and gentle-ladies, this morning I picked up my airline ticket, and in approximately a month’s time I will be arriving in New York for some rowdiness and tourism.
Actually picking up the tickets was fairly uneventful, but on the way to the travel agent I saw a pair of outstanding t-shirts that made no sense for the people wearing them to be sporting.
The first shirt was being worn by your typical Korean college student. You know the type: skirt, high heels, t-shirt, carrying a book. Anyhow these girls consistantly wear shirts with fairly random English slogans, but this shirt was something special.
The front of the shirt had a picture of Donald Duck, but on the back were a series of pictures of Donald’s face with various drug names written above the face.
The shirt looked something like that, only with way more drugs illustrated. Did you know that cocaine makes you look like a cowboy? I would have thought it would make you look like an extra from Miami Vice.
Mere seconds after seeing this typical Korean college student with her pro-drug t-shirt, I came across the most ironic shirt ever, except the irony was more likely than not lost on all who witnessed it.
I noticed a gentleman in a pink shirt, a fairly common shirt color for the gents here in Korea. As he came closer I noticed the slogan scrawled across his chest: “DON’T SEND MY JOB TO MEXICO!”
Now this shirt is very bizarre for a number of reasons. First off I’m no expert on Korean economics, but I pretty sure Korean companies aren’t sending jobs to Mexico (South East Asia maybe, but not Mexico), so this guy is walking around with a shirt proclaiming his hatred for people sending his job to a country that does not recieve jobs from his country, but that is not even the most ironic part of it.
The real irony comes from the shirt itself. I learned awhile back that a lot of the seemingly random shirts here are surplus shirts ordered from overseas. So maybe your school is having a cross country run and wants to make up some shirts. They send them to a printing company in Korea. The company runs off some extra shirts and sells them in the country…hence kids is Korea walk around with “TOWN OF COLONIE SUMMER YOUTH LEAGUE BASKETBALL” t-shirts.
So what this dude’s t-shirt was really saying was “Don’t send my job to Mexico, but it’s perfectly fine to have t-shirts made in Korea.” Oh I also find it hard to believe some Detroit assembly line worker would be sporting a bright pink t-shirt as means of supporting America.
