The following is the text that appears in an eBay auction for my latest duct tape creation, the Anti-Terrorism Duct Tape Bag. Yes, I am fully aware that spending this much time writing an eBay auction means I am a loser, but it’s not like that’s something we didn’t know already.

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Let’s face it: you’re a busy person with things to do. Or, at least, you’re surrounded by busy people with things to do, while you just kick back and drink a can of PBR. And can I, for a moment, assume that, were there a hazardous chemical attack, you would prefer not to die a slow, asphyxiated death peppered with auditory and tactile hallucinations? Well, maybe that hallucination part would be cool, but the rest sounds kind of lame.

Where was I? Ah, yes. You’re a busy person, or a lazy hipster. You anxiously check the White House Homeland Security homepage every morning along with the weather forecast, just in case (”It’s going to be partly cloudy today with an elevated chance of terrorist attacks!”). But — until now — there was nothing you could do to help. (Note that I said “until now,” which implies that NOW, there IS something you can do to help! That’s a clever literary device that we writers call “foreshadowing.”)
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In Ithaca, the most ubiquitous article of clothing is the “Ithaca is Gorges” shirt (Ithaca has a lot of gorges, for those of you who are a little slow on the uptake). On any given day you can be pretty sure of the fact that at least 10% of the Cornell population is wearing one. It’s become such a popular shirt that half the people who wear it are wearing it to be ironic and campy. I own one, but tend to wear it only when I’m not in Ithaca.

There have been many take-offs on the shirt, either replacing “Ithaca” with the wearer’s proper noun of choice (”Last Call is Gorges”, Last Call being one of the a capella groups) or replacing “Gorges” with another appropriate adjective (my personal favorite, “Ithaca is Cold”). Basically, as long as it’s a solid-colored t-shirt with the a bubbly seriffed font, it’s identifiable as a take-off on an Ithaca is Gorges shirt.
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