It’s a matter of carefully choosing tribal tattoos that will add art to the body and provide self-expression as well.
The big shame :)
Ever notice how at this time of year, advertisers are all about “the big game”? Seems the phrase “Super Bowl” is copyrighted and nobody can use it without paying for it. Good thing the Super Ball was invented before the Super Bowl, hmm?
In honor of this weekend’s major wingding, here’s another bad-tattoo site: Sports Worst Tattoos. Don’t be eating those corn chips or drinking that beer while you look.
More bad language.
Once you go looking for whoopsiedoodles by non-native speakers of various languages, the fun never ends.
I have a link to Hanzi Smatter (for Asian character stupidity) in my Blogroll, and it’s well worth a look if you think you really really want something in an Asian alphabet.
Today’s discovery is Bad Hebrew Tattoos. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of trouble one can get into, not actually being able to write a language.
Bad language
I”ve already talked about people who get Asian characters they don’t understand inked on themselves. It appears that Asian languages are not alone.
Thanks to Tales of a Wayward Classicist for this lovely discussion of bad Latin tattoos.
It seems there’s no end to the stuff people don’t know they’re putting on their skin.
The new visibility
When I got my tattoos, I was employed. Where I worked when I got my first tattoo, the dress code said that tattoos were not to be visible (although I never knew of anyone getting disciplined for breaking that rule). The second place I worked had no specific rule about tattoos, but the general feeling among our managers was that “professional attire” did not include visible ink. So I chose to have all my ink placed where I could easily cover it up with clothing.
Now, however, being retired, and being the age that I am, I am thinking seriously about getting another tattoo that will be visible. I’m leaning toward an elaborate bracelet, or maybe a half sleeve that ties in with my first tattoo, my seven stars. I’m not sure exactly how I’d go about that, but I have been mulling over asking my favorite artist, Kythera of Anevern, to draw me a mythical being of some kind that would work well with stars. I’d get the colors touched up on the stars at the same time, since over the last 12 years they have faded quite a bit.
The stars are visible already if I wear the right neckline, and when they are visible I get asked about them a lot. I like that. I’d like to have something else that’s easy to display, which is one reason I’m thinking bracelet. The first time I really notice how great a tattoo could look was when I saw a picture of the bracelet Janis Joplin had done. Up to that time I was still just drawing a little green flower doodle on my ankle.
If you have visible ink, where do you have it, and why did you choose to have it visible rather than hidden? I’d like to hear what other people think about this particular issue. And I’m still mulling over my designs.
New year, new you?
OK, a post that’s not directly tattoo related–but it’s relevant.
People get asked if their tats are going to sag or stretch, or get told they shouldn’t get inked precisely because the skin is inevitably going to sag or stretch. I would venture to guess that most of us don’t give a hoot about that, at least when it comes to deciding to get tattooed. But in general… well, we should be concerned.
Like most people my size, I’ve gained and lost weight many times over the years. I was thinking of it as more or less inevitable. But during the last six months I became aware of something. Both my husband and son lost a noticeable amount of weight. They didn’t change what they ate. What they did change was how much they walked around. (Or, rather, their jobs changed that for them.)
Could it really be just as simple as that? A lot of the supermarket magazines have certainly said so for a long time. There’s never a cover that doesn’t say “walk off the weight” on it somewhere. I know when I was working at the big box store and on my feet all day, I lost 50 pounds without doing anything different at all. So it wasn’t as though I didn’t know what was good for me.
This year, I have done two things. I got a copy of The Step Diet, and I got a FitBit. The Step Diet comes with its own basic pedometer, and I used that while I was waiting for my FitBit to arrive (more about the FitBit in a moment). The book lays out a simple plan for getting more exercise in a day, and gives you goals to consider. It also has a very simple plan for cutting down the amount that you eat, painlessly. It’s not, in the usual sense of the word, a “diet” at all. Head on over to your local public library and see if they’ve got a copy (it likely won’t have the pedometer attached) and see what you think.
The FitBit is a brand new gadget, that uses some of the same technology as a Wii controller. It can tell you how many steps and how far you’ve gone in a day. It can also tell you how long you’ve sat on your ass doing nothing. I needed that.
It can tell you how long and how restfully you’ve slept, if you want. It can tell you how active you’ve been. It’s also noticeably pricier than a plain old pedometer. However, for me, that’s more motivation. I sure wouldn’t want to let $100 go to waste, and I bet that’s true for a lot of people.
So, while my tats are not on skin that’s likely to stretch or sag much before I kick off, I’m doing my best to turn the body they’re on into something smaller and fitter. And honestly, it’s been painless so far.
Have you done anything to lose weight or get in shape that you’d like to share with the rest of us? I for one can always use more suggestions on how to get a move on and display my ink on a better body.
Onward and upward!
The upgrade to the blog is done. You may see some odd characters in the posts. I am not sure what caused that, some artifact of the database restoration process, most likely. But everything’s present and accounted for, and with any luck I won’t have to go through that process again for a while.
New posts as soon as I have time to breathe!
This is just plain wrong.
The Catster web site just posted an article entitled “Tatts on Cats?” Some nut case had a Sphynx cat anaesthetized so the
cat could be tattooed with a picture of King Tut.
As a tattooed person and a cat lover, words simply cannot express my disgust.
What do you think? You can read the article here.
photo credit: Vironevaeh
Fair warning.
I need to do some major work on my blogs this week, so if you try to get here and the link doesn’t work or the place looks like it got hit by a truckload of white bread and mayonnaise…  hang in there. I have worked out the details and will be able to put everything back the way it should be… eventually.Â
Happy New Year!
To all my readers, may 2010 bring you everything you ask for!
photo credit: Trisha Descallar







![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b93f8f7a-af43-4c90-bf14-9e06e0aad49e)