But if any real person’s wondering how to do it, just look up above the banner and click on the RSS link. 

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If you don’t want to place a public post, you can email me or catch me on Twitter.   Don’t let this one get away!

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I’ve got a special offer for my readers. Bizcard.com, which has a great selection of designs, will give 500 free cards to three lucky people. And this is really free, if you live in the USA or Canada–alas, they can’t ship free outside those areas. If you live somewhere else, the cards themselves will still be 100% free, you’ll just have to cover the shipping cost.

Want to take advantage of this? Just post a reply telling us why you think having your own business cards would be a good idea. On Saturday I will pick three posts at random and those three people will get free cards of their choice. And thanks to Bizcard.com for their generous offer!

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That often leads to conversations about tattoos, or getting tattoos, or the other person’s ink, which is all to the good.     One of the receptionists at our veterinerians’ office has a star tattoo that looks a lot like mine, so we were instant friends.  

The other day, as we were checking out at the grocery store, the cashier noticed my stars and we got to talking about a tattoo she’s planning to get soon, that has a lot of personal meaning for her.   She’s really looking forward to the experience.   After we finished the conversation and walked on, my husband made the suggestion that it would be a good idea for me to have business cards with the URL of this place, so I could invite people to come have a look.   He was right!   That definitely falls into the category of “Why didn’t I think of that?”

I started designing cards, using a business-card-design app I’ve had for years, but after I’d messed around with it a while I realized that to do justice to a multicolored design I really should get the cards professionally printed on paper that’s better than you can buy at the office supply store.

Which leads me to tell you about a company called MOO. Ayear or so ago, they opened up a LiveJournal, and offered a free package of MiniCards to other LiveJournal writers.   I took them up on that, getting a nifty design with my cat Caliban’s eyes on them.   I still have a few of those left, because I like them so much I have been hoarding them.   I thought the MiniCard size would be perfect to carry around in a pocket and hand out to fellow ink admirers, and when I discovered they had a beautiful multicolored design with a triskele in the center, I was sold.   I also ordered a plastic keychain case to carry the cards in so they won’t get crunched up in my pocket or purse.

MOO is located in the UK, but they can now ship from within the USA as well (and if they’d for pity’s sake open up an office in Los Angeles I’d be first in line to apply for a job) so I should have the cards in hand next week.   Can’t wait!

I wish this had dawned on me earlier, because my stars are a good conversation-starter and it’d be even better if someone with whom I’d been talking could come here and say hello.     Onward and upward!

If you’d like to check out MOO for yourself, they offer a free sample pack of business cards.   Go here and scroll down the page, you’ll see where to click. If you get some, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

photo credit: FiveAcres

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According to Pew Research, 36% of people in the 18-26 age bracket have tattoos, and   so do 40% of the people aged 26-40.   We over-40 oldsters have been slow to get with the program–only 10% of us are tattooed.   (Clearly, I need to start evangelizing my peer group.)  

The numbers are not as large for people who have dyed their hair an unconventional color or who have a piercing somewhere other than their ear lobes.   I’m not sure why that is.   Hair dye grows out, and body-jewelry holes close up (unless you’ve gone for the stretched-out style).   So that kind of alteration is undo-able, where tattoos generally are not (well, yeah, we all see the ads for the tat-removal places, but getting a tattoo removed is more painful and more expensive than getting it applied in the first place).

I must admit to being surprised that the numbers for tattoos and piercings weren’t closer; I thought they tended to go together.     Maybe I’m just thinking of the tatto-expo crowd?

Here is a link to the Pew web site with the data. Do you think this survey was accurate? Or do you think they should have asked a different sample?

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Here are a few:

Tattoo History (The Vanishing Tattoo)
A pictorial history of tattoos (tattoos.com)
Pigments of Imagination (National Geographic)
History of Tattoo (tattoo.co.uk)
Tattoos: The Ancient and Mysterious History (Smithsonian Magazine)

Check Google… there are a lot of great references out there.

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