The Return of Saturday Links

It has been a while since we posted about the tattoo-related items we browsed on the web over the last week, so here's a few to whet your weekend appetite.<br /><br />One of those not-so-often-discussed benefits for getting tattooed?<br /><br />It's easier for the authorities to identify your body, like this John Doe whose ink helped the powers-that-be identify him. Full story <a href="http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/20130503_Medical_Examiner_tentatively_identifies_man_found_in_Keehi_Lagoon.html?id=206001591">here</a>.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.staradvertiser.com/images/300*297/20130502_eagle_tattoo_23230.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://media.staradvertiser.com/images/300*297/20130502_eagle_tattoo_23230.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left;">The Department of the Medical Examiner (Hawaii) released a photo of an eagle or phoenix tattoo found on the body of a man recovered from the ocean off Sand Island Thursday morning. (Courtesy Department of the Medical Examiner)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;">~ ~ ~</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On the flip side, if you get a unicorn tattooed on your butt, you might still be regretting it thirty+ years later, as this writer recounts in the <i>New York Times </i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/booming/forever-the-girl-with-the-unicorn-tattoo.html?_r=0">here</a>. Thanks to Marisa at <a href="http://needlesandsins.com/">Needles and Sins</a> for pointing that gem out to me. There's no photo, but if you're jonesing for one, it might look like this:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://inkedinspiration.com/wp-content/gallery/tattoo-ideas-photos/unicorn-fantasy-tattoo-design.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://inkedinspiration.com/wp-content/gallery/tattoo-ideas-photos/unicorn-fantasy-tattoo-design.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Or perhaps not, but you can see more like that one on Holy Taco's gallery of <a href="http://www.holytaco.com/30-awesomely-bad-unicorn-tattoos-gallery/">30 Awesomely Bad Unicorn Tattoos</a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Then again, Buzzfeed always rocks out with their awesome lists, like this one I saw late Friday: "47 Cringeworthy Tattoos Being Regretted As We Speak" <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/47-tattoos-being-regretted-as-we-speak?sub=2182890_1123318">here</a>.<br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">~ ~ ~</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The big news this week in New York was <a href="http://www.rapidnyc.com/">Rapid Realty's</a> promise to give significant raises to any employee who got their logo tattooed on them. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1333116.1367511946!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/tattoos3n-4-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1333116.1367511946!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/tattoos3n-4-web.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">via CBS</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">Read about the deal <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-agents-15-raises-tattoos-firm-logo-article-1.1333124">here</a> (among others).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">~ ~ ~</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And my favorite link of the week came from those mammoth sources of all thing tattoo, Inked Magazine.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Among other goodies, they feature <a href="http://www.inkedmag.com/features/article/best-tattoos-movies-ever-pt1">"The Best Tattoos in Movies <i>Ever"</i></a> in three parts. One of my favorites:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.inkedmag.com/static/images/articles/pages/bestmovie-bluesbros.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.inkedmag.com/static/images/articles/pages/bestmovie-bluesbros.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Gotta love those <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/">Blues Brothers</a>!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">That should whet your appetites for the weekend!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-37263786-6c01-7044-f878-aa9daae3ec40" style="font-weight: normal;"></b></div><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-37263786-6c01-7044-f878-aa9daae3ec40" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.</span></span></b></div><b id="docs-internal-guid-37263786-6c01-7044-f878-aa9daae3ec40" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></b> <br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-37263786-6c01-7044-f878-aa9daae3ec40" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://tattoosday.blogspot.com</span><span style="font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.</span></span></b></div><b id="docs-internal-guid-37263786-6c01-7044-f878-aa9daae3ec40" style="font-weight: normal;"> </b><br /><div><b id="docs-internal-guid-37263786-6c01-7044-f878-aa9daae3ec40" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b></div>

The Return of Saturday Links

It has been a while since we posted about the tattoo-related items we browsed on the web over the last week, so here's a few to whet you...

Read more »

Angela's Ambivalence About a Rose

Angela, a video editor, wanted a rose tattoo that would match her eyes and serve as a "permanent necklace". This was the result:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5bhbVLfCxdfr0cYfE4ZNhcqzMGRj5L98VrkGQT0p9FFjHAptdSRQtzRCIXkCFx4JMBnBmrdJ1metIogCrfQE9oai8VaUwchuDZ-TJ-wSjY2gqhUB82zLqj2ERtXzcTqDn8deO1Tsd/s1600-h/Rose+2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449752779390502866" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5bhbVLfCxdfr0cYfE4ZNhcqzMGRj5L98VrkGQT0p9FFjHAptdSRQtzRCIXkCFx4JMBnBmrdJ1metIogCrfQE9oai8VaUwchuDZ-TJ-wSjY2gqhUB82zLqj2ERtXzcTqDn8deO1Tsd/s400/Rose+2.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 388px;" /></a><br />Looks pretty good, right? Not so fast. It is not often that I get someone sharing a tattoo with which they're not completely happy. This is one of those cases.<br /><br />Angela had an issue with the artist, <a href="http://www.myspace.com/tat2jon">Jon Comstock</a> at <a href="http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_75skfs">Skin City Tattoos</a>, in New Windsor, New York, and felt that his vision, ultimately, differed from hers. Too much neon-like color, less realism in matching her eyes, Angela said. The end result, a fairly visible tattoo that has an ambivalent host. "I wouldn't go back to him," Angela said.<br /><br />I have decided to include his credit, however, as I don't think it's so bad. Of course, I don't have to live with the end result, Angela does. In a slight reversal, however, when I showed her one of the pictures I took,<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCE7Z5jZwbI4seIWGBe_-T6ZRQwdY-V1cAgH1Jh-BhUFuOiFVKz7HIo_wM0zHRU3zf8Bv2pus23fCO2Di6HoA5nvOIttt3gxNvsvBGabVW65-s-UCElo0R02w8gJkDaGIJSHS9NPqk/s1600-h/Rose+3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449754830662091906" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCE7Z5jZwbI4seIWGBe_-T6ZRQwdY-V1cAgH1Jh-BhUFuOiFVKz7HIo_wM0zHRU3zf8Bv2pus23fCO2Di6HoA5nvOIttt3gxNvsvBGabVW65-s-UCElo0R02w8gJkDaGIJSHS9NPqk/s320/Rose+3.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" /></a><br />she admitted it looked better than she remembered.<br /><br />Despite the mixed feelings about the piece, I would like to thank Angela for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Angela's Ambivalence About a Rose

Angela, a video editor, wanted a rose tattoo that would match her eyes and serve as a "permanent necklace". This was the result: ...

Read more »

Tattoorism 101: Another Form of Tattoo Regret

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigg0ZfbXLfVZFPvZ7Ew8E9uZzQmmjBg4CuPw3uVenpcgYR59sHoBNyxfnzjD2JayUnPm8FHuomOUZ4tI0IsdtY9zZSKm3_OQKVJnCWQsLVuAofA98t8D9YdB3OJU47XTkPcPyfsR92TEeB/s1600-h/IMG_2828.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255464918898271970" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigg0ZfbXLfVZFPvZ7Ew8E9uZzQmmjBg4CuPw3uVenpcgYR59sHoBNyxfnzjD2JayUnPm8FHuomOUZ4tI0IsdtY9zZSKm3_OQKVJnCWQsLVuAofA98t8D9YdB3OJU47XTkPcPyfsR92TEeB/s400/IMG_2828.JPG" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br />The other day while walking near <a href="http://www.thegarden.com/">Madison Square Garden</a>, I stopped to talk to a woman about the tattoo on her foot. The conversation went something like this:<br /><br />Me: Hey, can I ask you about your tattoo?<br /><br />She: Ugh, that thing? I hate it. I got it when I was younger and wish I hadn't.<br /><br />Me: Well, I write a tattoo appreciation blog, and would love to tell the story behind it anyway. Would you be interested?<br /><br />She: Nah. I have three tattoos and I am so <span style="font-style: italic;">over</span> them.<br /><br />Me: [Thinking I spot an interesting tattoo on her ear] Well, would you talk to me about any of them?<br /><br />She: Nah. Not interested.<br /><br />Me: Well, thank you anyway. Have a nice day.<br /><br />So, did she really hate her tattoos, or was she just saying it to make me go away? I'd like to think the former.<br /><br />Anyway, this is a segue to the Mickey Mouse Fantasia tattoo above.<br /><br />This was e-mailed to me back in July under the subject heading "Horrible Tattoo".<br /><br />Here's what the sender said:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Hi Bill,</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Stumbled upon your site and thought I'd share the dark side of tattoos. I was young, roughly seventeen or eighteen. Not sure which, as its been almost fifteen years now. I had been plied with beer from my high school girlfriend's brother, and the next thing I knew I was in a tattoo artist's chair. Now, I know that most tattoo artists are of the highest degree of honor, and that I have had the worst luck. Apparently a drunken teenagers wasn't much of an alarm for this fellow. The next thing I knew... I was heading home with the attached image on my arm.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I'm currently searching for a good cover-up. Contrary to <a href="http://tattoosday.blogspot.com/2007/10/buddhist-regret.html">a post on your blog</a>, I was raised Christian and now try to follow more Buddhist philosophies. I debated an </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum"><span style="font-style: italic;">Aum </span></a><span style="font-style: italic;">symbol, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life">tree of life</a>, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koi">koi</a> fish... none have really struck me as something possible for a coverup. Its quite a depressing thing to hate wearing short-sleeves or taking off one's shirt in the summer. Please pass my warning to the young readers, REALLY THINK about what you want, and never make any decisions while under the influence (which you shouldn't be anyway)! Make sure that it will have a meaning which will stick with you for years, for it shall.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">By the by, if you or anyone has any ideas of coverups, please feel free to pass them my way!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">-Keith<br /><br /></span>Thanks to Keith for sharing this tattoo and his story. If anyone has ideas for a cover-up, feel free to post them below in comments.<br /><br />And please, folks, don't be sending me pictures of horrible tattoos, there's already <a href="http://horribletattoos.blogspot.com/">a website for them.</a>

Tattoorism 101: Another Form of Tattoo Regret

The other day while walking near Madison Square Garden , I stopped to talk to a woman about the tattoo on her foot. The conversation went so...

Read more »

Tattoo Regret

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI4eh-b5geq62tiUuLGZSK6J263XFH0x43LEDqb8ANVdxerElM4HIh29_qdxpWeK65MWdU1-NVl6veM1V2avXnQmpAIrW0EIthBurXFdsbgBNvJdxdDJJ2fKE6qkiwCumuF5pO-tyvG3yD/s1600-h/23safire600.1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5114076941523817746" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI4eh-b5geq62tiUuLGZSK6J263XFH0x43LEDqb8ANVdxerElM4HIh29_qdxpWeK65MWdU1-NVl6veM1V2avXnQmpAIrW0EIthBurXFdsbgBNvJdxdDJJ2fKE6qkiwCumuF5pO-tyvG3yD/s400/23safire600.1.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a>The following excerpt comes from this past Sunday's (9/23/07) popular "On Language" column by William Safire in <span style="font-style: italic;">the New York Times Magazine</span>.<blockquote><nyt_text></nyt_text>“<b>As tattoos become</b> more popular,” reads a headline in The International Herald Tribune over an article by Natasha Singer of The New York Times, “so does ‘<i>tattoo regret</i>.’ ”<p>On the other side of the world, in Brisbane, Australia, The Sunday Mail warned last year: “Think before you ink. That’s the message skin experts are preaching as ‘tattoo regret’ booms.” It reported that a Queensland athlete — embarrassed about a smiling devil’s face etched on his back — complained in rhyme of suffering “severe <i>tattoo-rue</i>.”</p><p>“The <i>regret</i> combining form is found in a lot of current writing,” notes Ann Rubin Wort, a former Times colleague. “Nowadays people are acting more impulsively; thus, regrets aplenty and the resulting need to nullify capricious choices.”</p><p>Regret about the permanence of skin illustration is rising. The Washington Post reported that a Harris Poll a few years ago indicated that nearly half the young women between 18 and 29 surveyed had at least one tattoo, and that 17 percent of all tattooed Americans who had tattoos regretted getting them. It seems that many of the aging former teenagers have had a skinful.</p><p>Etymology of the dermatology: Earliest use I can find of nostalgia for an unmarked epidermis is a headline above a 1989 Times column by Lawrence K. Altman, M.D.: “For Those With Tattoo Regret, Here’s Hope.” Back in that day, laser treatment was the great hope; now it seems that a new tattooing ink has been developed that, it is claimed, may make removal of tattoos by laser more practical.</p><p>This column’s interest, as Wort notes, is in the collocation combining form — the way a new phrase is made by substituting one element of a familiar phrase. (A generation ago, the lexical response to <i>backlash</i> was <i>frontlash</i>; applying that replacement technique to a phrase, a moderate critic of our present war policy suggested that the answer to the charge of “cut and run” should be a centrist approach of “cut and walk.”)</p><p><i>Tattoo regret</i> is formed on the analogy of <i>buyer’s regret</i>, more vividly and widely expressed as <i>buyer’s remorse</i>. Until this collocation was formed, the idea took longer to express, as in this 1891 citation from a San Antonio paper: “They who bought winter hats . . . early in the fall are now <i>repenting their rashness at leisure</i>.” The same anguished repentance happened this year to early buyers of Apple’s hotly touted <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/iphone/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival news about the iPhone.">iPhone</a>, who plunked down $600 only to find the item reduced to $400 a couple of months later, lowering the puissance of the status symbol.</p><p><i>Buyer’s remorse</i> is a phrase probably coined in the auto industry a half-century ago. Grant Barrett, editor of the online Double-Tongued Dictionary, has a citation from The Los Angeles Times in 1946 reporting a customer’s complaint that her auto dealer “told her she had ‘buyer’s remorse’ and since she had signed the contract she had to stick to it.”</p><p>In 1957, Leon Festinger came up with a theory of “cognitive dissonance,” in which he posited the opposite of buyer’s remorse: Most of us tend to embrace the choice we make, so as to reduce the self-critical dissonance in our minds. When we buy a Ford, we read Ford ads and shy away from reading the ads of Toyota.</p><p>The <i>regret</i> or <i>remorse</i> combining form has an immediate future in politics. As the states play backward leapfrog with their primaries, we face a stretch of nine months of campaigning leading up to the national parties’ conventions next summer. As the political winds blow hot and cold, as candidates’ poll ratings rise and fall after each statewide election, primary voters and contributors will experience a kicking-oneself feeling when their candidate fades and they wish they had chosen the victor to oppose the other party’s choice.</p><p>And what will we call that sinking sensation felt by all the primary voters who failed to back the winning candidate of their party? Those afflicted with <i>tattoo regret</i> will have company: as we plod through the primaries, watch for <i>voter’s remorse</i>.</p></blockquote><p></p>

Tattoo Regret

The following excerpt comes from this past Sunday's (9/23/07) popular "On Language" column by William Safire in the New York T...

Read more »