When something like this happens, trying to put what you’re feeling in to words seems pretty useless. Reading a harrowing personal account (like this) from a survivor this morning, you get a glimpse of what these people are actually going through – but it doesn’t make it any easier – if anything, it just made me feel like we, as a company, still aren’t doing enough.

Doing the normal things like listing a new t-shirt on special, bringing out a St. Patrick’s Day t-shirt range, making reports – all seem wrong. Sure, we made some t-shirts for the volunteers yesterday, and it was really cool to hear them personally saying how much it meant to them, but there must be more that we can do. And we want to.

The obvious solution would be to make a Christchurch t-shirt and donate profits to Christchurch through an organisation. The other, perhaps more obvious attachment with that, is what happened last timeand the opinions people formed of our motives and intentions. I’m not going to re-hash over what’s been and gone on – because it quite frankly doesn’t seem all that important at this juncture. We realise that if we were to release a t-shirt this time round there will always be people that would deem it purely a PR exercise or an act of money hungry ‘vultures’ (as one NZ t-shirt company so nicely put it). I guess the underlying question is; do the opinions of these few prevent us from raising potentially thousands of dollars in assisting with aid and relief in Christchurch? Remember, we wouldn't be making anything off these tees, ALL pprofits would go be offered.

Seeing how much people want to help, through twitter, facebook, and conversations with family and friends – we’re convinced we can raise in excess of $150,000 for Christchurch. That’s what we’ve got in mind, and that’s what we’re aiming for, at least.

But nothing’s that simple, and before making any rash decisions, we figured we’d ask you all.  We’ve had a lot of requests – ever since the last earthquake on Sept 4, 2010 really – and even more so since Tuesdays’ tragedy, to make a t-shirt and donate proceeds to Christchurch. These people, like us, don’t wish to capitalise on another’s misfortune – they simply want to help. We’d be donating ALL of the profits of these t-shirts to an as yet undecided Christchurch organisation; we wouldn’t make a single cent off these t-shirts, we wouldn’t release any other t-shirts during this time – in essence all operations would stop so we could fully focus on raising as much as we possibly could for Christchurch. This isn’t about publicity, it isn’t about controversy – it’s about helping, and it’s about pitching in the best way we can. All we know is the t-shirt.

We’re ridiculously proud to see the way this country has responded; it really makes you proud to be a New Zealander – we just want to help a little bit more. Having said that, the last thing we want to do is so ruthlessly aim to raise money that we, in the process, offend those that are most directly involved – those in Christchurch. This has to be our main concern; it is after all those in Christchurch that we’re trying to help. I suppose it wouldn’t really matter if we raised $200,000 but offended even one Christchurch resident that suffered through this traumatic event.

So we want to know what you think, do we do a t-shirt? We’re thinking about selling the tees for $50 – at the end of the day, it’s all going to Christchurch, so we didn’t think anyone would complain. We also want to know which charity/organisation you think we should be donating to (if we do the t-shirt of course).

If not, what else can we do? we’re more than open to any and all ideas – after all, this isn’t about a t-shirt, it’s about helping.

Like the rest of you, we’ve been absolutely devastated watching events unfold over recent days. It’s a truly horrible thing, but we’ve been amazed at how much support everyone in NZ is showing – it’s really heartening to see.

Again - probably like most of you - we’ve been feeling pretty helpless about it all up here in Auckland, so we got in touch with the UC Student Volunteer Army and asked them if they were keen on getting some tees for the team. They were really stoked, and although something as trivial as t-shirts may not seem like it makes a difference, speaking to Sam from the UC Army Volunteers, it really became clear that it was a real lift to the whole team. He said they all felt blown away by the support, and it just really lifted moral – and with all of them sporting UC Volunteer t-shirts, just made them feel that little more united in their mammoth task of helping clean up Christchurch.

Talking to our mates over at t-shirt manufacturers AS Colour, they were really keen to help out. “With a showroom in Christchurch and staff, friends, and customers in the city – AS Colour feels very much personally affected by the quake. Helping out the UC Army with the tees is the least we can do for the cause – do some great work guys”! We’re totally stoked that they’ve come to the party – and with 750 tees in this first run, and another1200 odd coming for the second run – AS Colour have been incredible in making sure these volunteers are well looked after.

Now we just had to get them down there – Deadline Express got the job done. We got on the blower to Johnny at Deadline and he was only too happy to get on board. He got in touch with some of his mates, and the deal was sealed. He jumped in the van himself, picked up the tees from AS Colour, and they were with us within 15 minutes. If you need to get shit done, Deadline Express don’t muck around that’s for sure.

So we came in early this morning, printed the 750 tees in some kind of record time, and before I could email Johnny, he was at our doorstep loading the boxes. Amazing team effort; and I can’t thank enough the teams at AS Colour for their generosity and Deadline Express for their efficiency and generosity again.

Even though it’s only in a small way, we’re just stoked we could help out. Our continued thoughts and prayers go out to all of those in and around Christchurch, and we’re behind each 2,000 of you awesome UC Student Volunteers – you’ll deserve a beer after this for sure.

I feel sorry for her, but it's pretty gosh darn entertaining how she keeps trucking along.

We like whales, which is why we supported Project Jonah with our ‘Save the Whales’ t-shirt.

Explore NZ have been nice enough to give us ONE 4 ½ hour Whale & Dolphin Safari trip TO GIVE AWAY! Neato funtime. One of these bad boys would ordinarily set you back $155.00000000 big one dollars, but today it could be yours for free.

Simply tell us how much you love Whales - in a non Inter-species erotica kind of way - by emailing Mel.

Check out the Explore NZ safari here. and become facebook fans here too - it's worth it.

We'll be keeping this open for one week, and you have to be from Auckland.

Whales are not as cool as this in real life, but almost as cool i promise.

There are some pretty amazing aspects to this video. Clearly, Khoren Mouradian is a frontman of Freddie Mercury proportions. He dominates the screen, capturing his audience when he purrs in that soothing tone. He looks cool too; he could teach Scribe a thing or two about what polishing up your appearance can do for your career. I believe he’s Armenian. Thank you Armenia.

Besides his vocal prowess and stage presence, it’s also a great example of how to do a cover well. He’s mixed it up; added his own cultural flavour. I see plenty of people doing covers of Michael Jackson these days, and it just makes me sick – strangely, I feel like Khoren could do a pretty good job. He’s that good.

I’m not sure if it’s for a kids show or what, but if it is, it makes it even more amazing given the joobs shot around 1.44. They even have a ‘keytarist’ in there; great addition.

What a dream. Enjoy.

So its 2011 now, February already in fact, and this is the first blog post of the year. Sorry about that – we’ve been out and about enjoying the sun and other things of that nature.  Actually, most of us were back at work on the 5^th of Jan, so we have been working away and planning this year’s bidness.

We also had our ‘annual general meeting’ a few weeks back. I hesitate to use the term ‘annual general meeting’ (or AGM for those in to the whole brevity thing) – it sounds awfully proper and serious, and it is to an extent I guess, but for the most part we try to keep it light and easy. We always steer clear of the deep shit; keep it shallow otherwise you run the risk of drowning in the deep emotions. So we went to Butterfly Creek this year and holed ourselves up in the conference room for the better part of 6 or 7 hours talking about the t-shirt. We basically just go over what we did last year; what was good, what we did badly, what we want to do in the coming year, and set a few goals and targets. It’s a productive day, and hopefully you’ll be happy with the changes we’re making.

A few people have been asking about why they're not getting the daily emails any longer, in stark contrast to the days of the daily emails when we’d receive numerous replies asking how to unsubscribe from the emails. Bizarrely – it’s the ‘unsubscribe’ button at the bottom of the emails – I always took great joy in pointing out that little humdinger. Basically though, the daily emails have in fact stopped, and they’ve stopped for what we deem to be pretty good reasons. The main one being GrabOneTee.co.nz.

As many of you will be aware, we began working with GrabOneTee late last year on this project, and we’re pretty happy with how it’s going. At this stage, the Mr Vintage t-shirt of the day is essentially being run through GrabOneTee. There will be developments on this site with regards to using other designers and promoting their works, but at this stage it’s largely our own designs. So if you’re really missing the emails, sign up to the GrabOneTee emails, they’re much more prompt than ours ever were.

Another reason is that we really wanted more time to work on our designs, poor little Joe (who rather ironically stand at over 6”2) has been complaining that his index finger is getting sore from drawing too fast – so we thought we’d be good about it and let him work on designs over a larger period of time. It means we get more time to work on designs, and it means you get better t-shirts at the end of the day. It’s a win-win.

Don’t get worried but, you’ll still get emails – just not everyday. Every month we’ll release a new ‘series’ – this month’s was the ‘NZ Summer Series’ – as well as a ‘Charitee’ and we’ll still be running a ‘Deal of the Day’ which is an existing item that is back in stock and at a reduced $19.95.

So yeah, word. Check out the Summer Series, it won’t be round for too much longer.