Oh that Steven, how did he know it was my birthday? Little morse god t-shirts to follow up on the newsletter, that shiner of apples. If you were wondering what else you could get me: an apartment, a cure to this sore throat, Fendi sunglasses…or, I mean, honestly, just make out a cheque to Doctors without Borders.

Thematic leap: there a few more photos from my last days in Sicilia.

Am now back in the Fatherland, back in Leipzig at Spreadshirt HQ, which moved out and up since I was last here. Photos imminent. Including an answer to the always-present question: do I have what it takes to get into one of those Kolja with the ladies photos?:

Answers, as I say, imminent.

Finally the July newsletter hit email inboxes yesterday, many thanks to the glamourous Julia. See it for yourself here.

Keep checking here for the best apple-shining for the newsletter writer example to come along yet…

*it keeps getting worse. do you have better ones?

News from the top: Lukasz says:

1. we acquired la fraise. (more on this here and from the now-former French CEO (in French) here)
2. mark seremet, our us ceo, will leave us soon. in fact, he already stepped down as a ceo and is doing some consulting for us (dealmaking, helping with teambuilding, interimsmanagement).

3. so, we (=spreadshirt) took some capital from accel partners (london office). that’s a big step for a bootstrapped company… the deal was closed last week and will be announced today or tomorrow officially. Accel invested a few millions and Harry Nelis from the London office will join our board.

“We plan to spend the funds on things that are funny while increasing the valueation of the company at the same time - like our flagship offline store in berlin or throwing some more money at google.” (laughs) “We also hope to prevent wasting money for getting overpaid senior management that will leave us after six months with no effect but hefty severence payments. Please wish us luck.”

Oh, and watch the vids. My personal favourite is below the business cards. Lukasz giggling while trying to be an unreasonable boss. Takes jabs at American work ethics…

As part of the amplifico webathon. A brilliant scheme by the band to raise money, get media attention. And it works.

And, scroll down and click to see a short vid of yours truly (yup) with a little intro bit. lordy. or here.

I think I pronounced the band name wrong, but we can chalk that up to my American accent.

The fine arbiter of the website 32ways.co.uk Josh says of his shop: “I think the designs could sell thousands!” I happen to agree. Here is a little sampling of some of the gems:

The glamourous life of a spreadblogger. 30 hours of travel (door to door) + 2 days to catch up on work + 6 days Sicily tour + 1.5 days to pack and move back to Leipzig/not enough sleep =

Let this be a warning.

PS: In researching whether it was more socially responsible to drink Pepsi v. Coke I came across this highly useless website. Tidbit: “The most basic rule on selecting the drinking container (I’ll just use the word glass from now on to mean drinking container) is that its aspect ratio (height divided by width) should be 2:1 - that is, it should be twice as wide as it is tall”.

I tried to read the news today, but oh boy, everything made me feel snarky. I am probably just tired, just got back from the good old US of YAY this morning. But got to see Crash on the plane (not as bad a combination as it sounds) as well as the end of The Island three times. That’s right, while you guys were sleeping, I was getting stuff done. Unfortunately, I think I maxed out at about 2. Whatever it is, nearly every headline I read (including this one) inspired this:

The website Republic: The Campaign for an Elected Head of State wants to get rid of the monarchy. Their website lists the philosophical reasons, action that must be taken, and why it must be done now. The idea: replace the monarchy with a presidency. I won’t take sides on this (we US citizens have enough on our plates at the moment), but it does make for some great t-shirts.

Check out the Republic.
Check out the shop.

So, is this good news or bad news?

And what do you think of this? Zidane wins Golden Ball

Finally, a break from football (UK) with football (US). From the fine people at London Blitz. They are serious about the sport, with training to get rookie players into the sport. Training sessions: “start at 10:30, and will finish at 14:00″. Yeek. But, they promise “the coaching staff will make the sessions enjoyable, we like a joke as well as anybody, but you will be there to work hard”. I imagine. I feel like I’m in high school cross-country training again just reading this. As a comfort for the hard work, though, there are some really great shirts. And really, is there anything better than lounging in comfy clothing after exhausting yourself for three and a half hours?

To the website: londonblitz.com
To the shop: www.spreadshirt.net/shop.php?sid=116796