I SEE YOU WERE AN IDIOT IN THE 90S TO

THIS PRETTY MUCH SUMS IT UP

I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker years ago where these two old mean were facing each other sitting in an old folks home. Both men are covered in tattoos and one says to the other one: "I see you were an idiot in the 90s to".

I love that cartoon

If you're out there with blank skin and you're considering getting a tattoo don't. I know that's a haughty statement from somebody covered in them like me but trust me, I look at them mostly with disdain these days. Not all of them, some I can still smile about but most of the time it just reminds me that nobody was driving the car when I decided to get these. As with pretty much every stupid decision I've ever made it seemed like a really good idea at the time.

I can go around to most of the colorful trespassers on my skin and pick apart why they make me sigh and hold my head in my hands. First you have to remove the flash, the shit I got just because somebody offered me a free tattoo. Don't get anything like that for free especially with no clue what you want. That's how you end up a giant Celtic Cross nobody can see because it's covered in this stupid Demon landscape. Demons aren't scary, especially these. My right leg looks like a rejected Dio album cover. Even if it wasn't flash from a wall I have tattoos where flash translates to stupid idea.

The tattoos on my hands, yeah well, at that point I was young and riding high on the idea that I would be involved in the arts as my way of putting groceries on the table forever. Then the hungry wolf of reality ate me all up and shit me out into the working world. No matter how liberal we seem to get boss-man don't want nobody with tattoos in his office. It's ok though, I have that on-hand rebellion to get me through.

I have a half sleeve filled with Star Wars characters that feel like a dirty little secret since Lucas decided to mouth rap my childhood with his Roger Rabbit vision of the first part of the saga. It's hard to hold up your head with pride about a Yoda tattoo when all you can think of is "I will miss you Chewbacca". Same with Vader, "NOOOOOOO", yeah that makes it awesome to have these.

I have a huge Sailor Jerry style piece on my right calf that features six names of people I thought would be in my life forever. Of those people I currently really only speak to one of them and even him not as often as I once did. Two of the six turned out to be bottom-feeding vermin of the lowest order, I mean real scum. The other two just kind of drifted out of my life. Every now and then we meet up and pretend to give a shit about each others lives. Then the pleasant meal is over and we go back to ignoring each other.

The final of the six was the crazy bitch who was married to a friend of mine. Usually with break ups you don't choose sides. She could be caught with a cock in every orifice and he could be found out holding naked LSD sex parties with teenage girls, you still don't chooses sides. Every now and then, rarely, one of the two goes so far off the deep end there's no need to play Switzerland. That happened here, she was an evil bitch and now we all hate her. Still though, her name is tattooed on my leg forever. Good for me huh?

The piesta resistance would have to be my back where I sport a gigantic Motorhead Skull. Nope I have idea why, I have no reasonable explanation for doing it. I like Motorhead but not enough to have a tattoo of them. It's like temporary insanity, I seriously can't remember what drove me to get it. My only saving grace is I can't see it or else I'd be discovered dead on the bathroom floor with potato peeler and layers of skin everywhere. Yeah, it's that kind of hatred towards it.

I also never thought that ink would suddenly initiate me into a club I never asked to be in. This idea that if I pass somebody on the street who was also stupid enough to cover themselves means we pow wow for half an hour is insanity at it's most insane. We both have eyes, skin, hearts, fingers, why the fuck don't we have a jam session about that? Oh wait, is it because we're kindred spirits in some army of anti-this-or-that? Apparently that knowing look that says we secretly share a singular purpose because we have tattoos means I have to suffer fools all the time? Well then dishonorably discharge me from this army because I have no interest in it at all.

Tattoos as rebellion makes as much sense as hot noodles for child abuse. You don't have to look any farther than Kat Von D to understand how sickeningly status quo tattoos have become. Your rebellion is false, your community built on aesthetics and doomed to fail. Hell Christ teenagers now see tattoos as some kind of right-of-passage, a document to how mature they are now that they're 18. When mom is bringing her boy to get his first tattoo the revolution is over, it's time to shut the fuck up and go home.

I don't hate all of them, just most of them. The ones that remind me of mistakes, the ones that indicate I was too uninspired to figure out better uses of my time than to be cut open and drawn on. I don't see them as a badge of honor or some kind of map of my existence. That's the problem today anyway, nobody has to talk to anybody because everything they're about is stamped all over them. From tattoos to t-shirts to handbags, it's a walking resume.

So if you're gonna get a tattoo just remember the words of old Uncle Iann and toss the idea around.

You don't want to be one of those idiots at the old folks home do you?