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By infmom, June 26, 2010 9:05 pm

Today at the post office, I was in line behind a very large man whose upper arms were covered with black line tattoos.  I didn’t think of them as sleeves, because they were kind of like Paul Teutul Sr’s conglomeration of assorted images.  At least I thought that was what they were, because the ink had faded so much that it was barely darker than his skin.

He noticed me looking at his arms and we struck up a conversation, as multicolored people often do.  It turns out he’d gotten most of the tats when he was in the Marines, years ago.  I made some comment about how he must have been out in the sun a lot because his ink had faded, and he laughed.

“No,” he said.  “Think about writing on a balloon with a marker and then blowing up the balloon.  That’s what happened to that ink.”

Now, that’s something I had never considered.  People talk often about tattoos sagging when we get old, but I don’t think I’ve ever had another conversation about ink getting faint when it’s stretched over time.  But that makes perfect sense when you think of the balloon analogy.

I know most of us don’t get, or not get, inked based on the possibility of stretching, sagging, or fading.  Have you had any of your ink get “modified” by your body with the passage of time?  What did you do about it?

photo credit: Felipe Katsumata

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By infmom, June 24, 2010 12:30 pm

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been really behind on my posts here, lately, but for once I actually have a good reason for that.

More than 20 years ago, I started writing a novel.  I got the basic structure of it worked out, and wrote a few chapters, and then set it aside for a while.  I came back to it now and again over the years, and at some point decided it needed at least one more character and a different plot, so I started adding all that in, and then I got busy, or lazy, or something, and set it aside again.  And there it sat, complete with its own floppy disk.  That’ll give you an idea of how long ago it was that I set it aside.

Last year, I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo for the first time.  Lacking an original idea for a novel, I decided to write a sequel to that first, long-unfinished book.  And I managed to complete over 50,000 words in the allotted 30 days.  I was very proud of myself.  But then I realized I was really being an idiot, because if I could finish a complete story in what turned out to be less than a month, then I had no excuse for not finishing that book that had been gathering cobwebs for decades.

So I set my mind to it, and I finished it.  The story was so old that it contained lots of references to ancient electronic gadgets like VCRs and portable cassette players, all of which were hot stuff when I first started writing.  And I could see right away where I’d quit adding in the new character and plot line, because the quality of the novel went back to beginner level from one page to the next.  So I fixed all that and had what I considered the full first draft.

Now, that book is in the process of being revised and edited.  And the second one needed to be expanded to a better book length.  That’s what’s been occupying my writing time the past few months, so I’ve let my blog postings slide.  It’s not that I’m not still vitally interested in Multi.Colored or multicolored people!  It’s just that I can only do so much writing in a day before I start sounding like a gibbering idiot. 

The first book goes to the printers and e-publishers in August.  I’ll post a note here and on my other blogs when I have more news.  Bear with me, I will have an actual tattoo related post by the end of the week.

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By infmom, June 8, 2010 12:14 pm

How many of you are old enough to remember what vintage TV show that title comes from? 

I was reminded of it today when I went to see my doctor for one of my regular checkups.  Along with the usual discussions about my health, she asked me about my tattoos, which she’s seen many times before.  This time, however, she did something different.  She pulled up a screen on the computer, and typed in a description of each tattoo.

Why?  Because, she explained, someday that description might help someone to identify me.

I’d never considered that before.  And I think it’s a great idea.  If your doctor hasn’t included a description of your body art in your medical file, ask her or him to do it.  The one certain thing in life is uncertainty, and the more information we make available to others who might find us and not know who we are, the better.

Oh, and for you youngsters out there, that was the opening from “Ben Casey.”  I liked Dr. Kildare better, myself. 

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