They screwed it up!

I was quite excited to hear my patches were made, and were on their way.  The few customers I have right now were also looking forward to getting them, so I was waiting a week with anticipation of seeing them and sending them out.

When I opened the package when it did arrive, my heart sank.

Does this look like Coyote Tan to you?  Check out the previous post and compare the colors.  I understand there are some discrepancies between colors on a screen and how they appear "in real life" (remembering all the days I had to wrangle a little with RGB vs. CMYK when I was editor of a company newsletter).  I even went to great lengths to explain how much I was looking for the color I was looking for.

Three samples later, it looked like they were listening.  But then, I get this, and I wonder what the hell happened.

I contacted the manufacturer, and let them know my displeasure, through every venue I could contact them.  They responded, saying that there does seem to be a difference, and they are looking into redoing the batch.

I hope they do.

My First Design Made Reality: Coyote "Lan Astaslem" 2x3 Patch

2x3 patch, velcro-backed, with Arabic script reading "Lan Astaslem" on a Coyote (ish) background.  $7 per patch (includes shipping).

I am not a fan of Islam.  I make no bones about it.  I held it in suspicion early on as a kid, thanks to incidents like the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the following hostage crisis (I remember staying up late the night they finally came home to watch them get off the plane on TV), the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983, the Achille Lauro incident in 1985, and various other acts of terrorism perpetrated throughout the Cold War as it was reported to us in magazines, newspapers, and TV news.

Seems now, in retrospect, I didn't know even a hundredth of what was going on during this time.  But I heard enough to know that they were a minor threat as we wrangled with the USSR in the last years of the Cold War.

When the Soviet Union finally fell in 1991, I remember sitting in my dorm room at WCU one afternoon, pondering what the West's next big struggle would be, now that Communism seemed to be defeated.

The thought came clearly enough:  it would be between Islam and the West.  I hadn't given it too much thought for most of the decade of relative peace and prosperity that followed, but then arose a certain person who in a Reader's Digest article was described as someone who wanted me dead.

His role in 9/11 confirmed that thought I heard nearly ten years earlier, and the wars that followed ten years after would confirm it further still.

But not all battles in this war have been fought with armies as we knew them in wars before.  In the West, a cultural and intellectual--and I believe with a spiritual aspect to it as well--struggle has been fought also, against a new kind of invader.  This one has taken advantage of the West's ideals of tolerance and charity, establishing instead enclaves of intolerance across the face of Europe (known as "no-go zones" in some places), and starting to get footholds in the United States as well.

They want to supplant our values of liberty with theirs of submission.  And so, in response, I created this patch, saying clearly, "I will not submit."

I have researched the arabic phrase, and as best as I can tell, it is correct.  It was first made popular by outspoken Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci not long after 9/11.  However, her relative disdain for Islamic religious dictatorships (she was an outspoken critic of any sort of heavy-handed authoritarianism, all the way back from her partisan days against Il Duce in her native Italy) was demonstrated way back in 1979 with Khomeini.

About the same time I was just learning about the realities of this "religion of peace," which seems to prove itself less and less peaceful the more and more I hear about it.

VOL 907 Designs says "Hello, Interwebz!"

I FIRST NOTICED VELCRO PATCHES on U.S. Army Uniforms when I worked on jobs as a General Contractor on an Army Base.  At first, it seemed a sort of chintzy way to attach rank, unit badges, name and service nametapes on a uniform (having grown up during the Cold War, I had previously only seen sewn-on patches on military uniforms).  So, I didn't give it much thought.

Several years later, during the rise of the Tea Party movement, I was looking for a place to buy some "Don't Tread on Me" gear and found a treasure trove over at Gadsden and Culpeper.  Some of their offerings involved a wide array of velcro patches and a few articles of clothing to put them on.

I immediately thought it was a cool idea.  Previously, I had bought hats and shirts with logos embroidered or printed on them showing my personal association with certain things (Christianity, Firearms, Beer, Languages).  But this allowed for some "modular customization" that didn't require getting a brand new article of clothing.

And so, for the next two years, I'd stop by G&C and other shops (like Mil-Spec Monkey) to see what they had to offer that day that might tickle my fancy.  "2nd Amendment?  All right!"  "Infidel?  Yep, sounds like me!" "Pork-Eating Crusader?  *snert*"

Now, finding anything related to my Alma Mater, The University of Tennessee, was (and still is) hard to come by.  To date, there is only one patch that I have found, and a small one at that, which is a little frustrating.  I know there are Warrior Vols out there who would not mind showing a little pride in that "Hallowed Hill" while deployed abroad, or tacticool types closer to home who wouldn't mind festooning their gear with a little Vol Pride.

And this brings up other times I thought something would make a good idea for a patch, and have found no one who offers it.

So, a light went off in my head:  "If they don't offer it, Jeremy, why don't you?  You have graphic design experience.  You've marketed and sold hand-designed shirts for one cause or another before computers became as powerful and accessible as they are today.  Why not see if others like your ideas, too?"

And so, Vol 907 Designs was born.

What makes me different from G&C?  Or Mil-Spec Monkey?  Well, first of all, it's me who's doing this.  These are designs that reflect my answer to some issues going on in the world.  To a certain degree, G&C does this, and MSM as well, but whereas the former emphasizes patriotism and the latter just plain warrior attitude, I emphasize resistance to those things that I think need to be resisted, which often involve things that encroach on our God-given rights.

Hence the company motto:  "No Surrender."

As I release designs, you'll see what I mean.