"Harry Potter Forehead Scar Tattoos"
--from a <a href="http://www.sptimes.com/News/092401/TampaBay/Colors_of_patriotism.shtml">St. Petersburg Times article</a> on patriotic tattoos. Two telling quotes: "It's painful" (Jack Hansen, shown above) and "Tattoo shops haven't seen a boom like this since Dale Earnhardt died, and people wanted the number 3 and 'Intimidator' scrawled on their bodies."
Eighteen-year-old kid, head shaved, both ears pierced, both nostrils pierced, both eyebrows pierced, tattoos coming out of the arms. He's got baggy pants that start at the knees, and twenty-seven inches of underwear. What's that about? That's one of the basic rules we know about--the underwear goes inside the pants! That's why it's called <nobr><i>Under</i>-fucking-wear</nobr>.
In a recent <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/protogeek/">livejournal entry</a>, Mo says "Have sworn to finally get a tattoo this summer. No more pussyfooting! Prolly something smallish on my back." (She actually mentioned to me that she almost hesitated putting it in, because she knew it would provoke comment from me...well here it is...) I just find it very odd that she doesn't know what she wants, just <i>something</i>, probably abstract. I mean, I guess it's not that weird a viewpoint, either she sees a line between people-with-tattoos and people-without-tattoos as a kind of social grouping, and she wants to be on the other side of that line, or maybe she just thinks it looks better and more interesting than nothing (or if it's usually hidden, some kind of peekaboo surprise), or maybe she just finds it a cool concept. But overall, just wanting "a" tattoo seems a little teenie-bopperish to me. (It's mostly a fear of needles that's kept her from one thus far.)<br><br>
I suspect she finds some solace in the way
tattoos don't seem as permanent now as they use to seem. <a href="http://thoughtviper.com">Bill the Splut</a> was right: <a href="http://people.howstuffworks.com/tattoo-removal.htm">dermabrasion</a> is the industry of the future--maybe event the present.
<IMG SRC="/journal.aux/2003.03.09.tattoos.jpg" width="40" height="98" align="right">
You know, I know it's mostly just me turning into a reactionary old fart, but for some reason it seems very odd to think about some infant today who in 20 years will be very nostalgic for mommy's tattoos, like who would assoiciate those twisty tribal armband patterns with motherhood on some deep level. "Just like mommy's tattoos" doesn't ring right with me. (Actually, I know of one woman who had one removed not too long before she had her first kid, I don't know if she felt the same thing or if she was just sick of the tattoo.)
The quote is a little bit reactionary, and poorly spelled, but funny. (Reminds me of the guy saying "I like gals with tattoos...women not afraid to make a decision they'll regret later.")
In a dream last night I was in the Navy, I think just for a year long stint or so. But I was encouraged to get twin arm anchor tattoos, ala Popeye. (Who was also there, albeit in human (though not quite Robin Williams) form.)
Tangent, in writing about this I wanted to find out if the traditional Jewish dislike of
tattoos has any roots in an idea about resuurection and I found <a href="http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/777_tattoo_jews.htm">this page</a>. Ideas like not wanting to echo the tattoos Holocaust as well as "this body is like a loaner car, you want to keep it in good condition" get more play than any talk of resurrection. But I <i>did</i> learn that there's Jewsploitation band, probably a parody of the White Supremicist group <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skrewdriver">Skrewdriver</a>, called "Jewdriver".
<a href="http://www.capohedz.com/typebrighter/2005/10/really-bad-
tattoos.html"> Gallery of Bad Tattoos</a>. (WARNING: horribly adorned penis at the bottom of Page 2) One of the most amazing sets belongs to a certain German "Mr. Cool Ice". You can see some stills from <a href="http://www.capohedz.com/typebrighter/2006/05/who-is-mr-cool-ice.html">a talkshow he visited</a>.
But still, the last time I remember being happy with a Cracker Jack prize must've been around 1996 or so... they had some very decent Looney Tune stickers, reflective silver, I got two Marvin the Martians to put on a portable CD player. And even then I recognized that Cracker Jack prizes had been "flat" for some time, but at least stickers and temporary tattoos actually have a chance of being "fun", unlike sad little "put this on top of your pencil" scraps of paper. I'm not sure, but my personal conspiracy theory is that the prizes might have gotten further downgraded when Frito Lay bought the brand.
"scary skeleton riding a motorcycle" "I thought you were scared of motorcycles" "Eh, I'm scared of tattoos too, that's why I drew it on..."
Less virginal than I might have thought. Actually, a heapload of tattoos, more per capita than I think I see in Boston.
I guess everyone gets tattoos for their own reasons, but it's interesting that there are a lot of other tattoos I look at online that I don't "get".
future decades big trend: audio
tattoos, subdermal chips that play your theme song when touched. I'd get <a href="/2003/04/27/">/2003/04/27/</a> done.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by brevity, over-connectedness, emotionally starving for attention, dragging themselves through virtual communities at 3 am, surrounded by stale pizza and neglected dreams, looking for angry meaning, any meaning, same hat wearing hipsters burning for shared and skeptical approval from the holographic projected dynamo in the technology of the era, who weak connections and recession wounded and directionless, sat up, micro-conversing in the supernatural darkness of Wi-Fi-enabled cafes, floating across the tops of cities, contemplating techno, who bared their brains to the black void of new media and the thought leaders and so called experts who passed through community colleges with radiant, prank playing eyes, hallucinating Seattle- and Tarantino-like settings among pop scholars of war and change, who dropped out in favor of following a creative muse, publishing zines and obscene artworks on the windows of the internet, who cowered in unshaven rooms, in ironic superman underwear burning their money in wastebaskets from the 1980s and listening to Nirvana through paper thin walls, who got busted in their grungy beards riding the Metro through Shinjuku station, who ate digital in painted hotels or drank Elmer's glue in secret alleyways, death or purgatoried their torsos with tattoos taking the place of dreams, that turned into nightmares, because there are no dreams in the New Immediacy, incomparably blind to reality, inventing the new reality, through hollow creations fed through illuminated screens. Screens of shuttering tag clouds and image thumbnails lightning in the mind surfing towards Boards of Canada and Guevara, illuminating all the frozen matrices of time between, megabyted solidities of borders and yesterday's backyard wiffleball dawns, downloaded drunkenness over rooftops, digital storefronts of flickering flash, a sun and moon of programming joyrides sending vibrations to mobile devices set on manner mode during twittering wintering dusks of Peduca, ashtray rantings and coffee stains that hid the mind, who bound themselves to wireless devices for an endless ride of opiated information from CNN.com and Google on sugary highs until the noise of modems and fax machines brought them down shuddering, with limited and vulgar verbiage to comment threads, battered bleak of shared brain devoid of brilliance in the drear light of a monitor, who sank all night in interface's light of Pabst floated out and sat through the stale sake afternoon in desolate pizza parlors, listening to the crack of doom on separate nuclear iPods, who texted continuously 140 characters at a time from park to pond to bar to MOMA to Brooklyn Bridge lost battalion of platonic laconic self proclaimed journalists committed to a revolution of information, jumping down the stoops off of R&B album covers out of the late 1980s, tweeting their screaming vomiting whispering facts and advices and anecdotes of lunchtime sandwiches and cat antics on couches with eyeballs following and shockwaves of analytics and of authority and finding your passion and other jargon, whole intellects underscored and wiped clean in the total recall 24/7 365 assault all under the gaze of once brilliant eyes.
<a href="http://mightygodking.com/2013/04/25/the-family-tattoo-problem/">http://mightygodking.com/2013/04/25/the-family-tattoo-problem/</a> -- the problem with Obama's clever idea for pre-empting daughter's tattoos parallels his problem with the GOP: things break down if your opponent doesn't give a damn about the common good.
Who the hell decided to call them 'facial tattoos' and not 'everlasting jobstoppers'?
Besides the poor rendition, it's maybe a little too fatalistic and dour. Also, I'm a little biased against tattoos in languages the wearer doesn't speak. (And google has a few too many "Amor Fati"s in simple cursive script.)
<br>Fake knuckle tattoos.
Tattoos and babies aren't permanent like people say, both can be destroyed with lasers
The tattoos, from a woman who was possibly a high ranking person of the Pazyryk nomadic people, were quite striking and surprisingly similar to some modern stuff.
<a href="/m/2018/07/27/Princess Ukok,
tattoos on her shoulder.jpg"><img src="/m/2018/07/27/Princess Ukok, tattoos on her shoulder_560.jpg" border="0" width="560" height="991"></a>
<a href="https://siberiantimes.com/culture/others/features/siberian-princess-reveals-her-2500-year-old-tattoos/">More in the Siberian Times</a>.
'But back to your question: why do people [get tattoos]. I've always thought of it as a way to get a little more in touch with your body.' <br>
Speaking of commonplacing, did I really forget to send out a link to the <a href="http://www.knuckletattoos.co.uk/tattoo/kirkjerk-2/#kirkjerk">Knuckle Tattoo Generator</a>?<br>
I think too of my weird empathy for terrible "Only God Can Judge Me" tattoos. It's trite, and if you get such a tattoo many, many people will be eager and able to contradict that tattoo...but I find it to be a more important and true sentiment than, say, "Man is the Measure of All Things". Humanity is a bendy, irregular yardstick for all things. The "Measure" is the map, not the territory. If everyone was racist, that wouldn't make racism right.
I was molded with a sense of "judge not lest ye be judged" - or maybe more accurately, I have a kind of deep empathy for those terrible "Only God Can Judge Me" tattoos. I have a deep sense of an objectively True, God's Eye View of things, even as I live with intense skepticism about the form of God that resides there. So I don't point out the specks in my brother's eye even as I am happy to gloss over any lumber in my own. <br>
For me, coming to terms with this kind of scale of personal insignificance and vast scale impermanence is an important part of self-care. I know for some, the wiser tactic is to steer clear of thinking about it, but I find if I really embrace the "This Fate" tattoo I added a few years ago (we get tattoos of things we love or aspire to love, so my tattoo is a loose translation of "Amor Fati") I am better positioned to cope with what my more immediate world confronts me with. For me, hiding from something - catching myself realize I'm distracting myself - gives that thing I'm hiding from a more power than it would otherwise have, confirms it as a potentially unmanageable threat.
I really like the line work on my new tattoos...<br>
<blockquote class='quote'>Wow! I like your temporary tattoos! Temporary in that one day you'll die.
At the risk of playing the role of dangerously out of touch old man.... listening to 1991's "Into the Great Wide Open" and how it used "He went to Hollywood, got a tattoo" as a kind of character marker. Like, it's weird how tattoos went from daring to ubiquitous in like 30 years.