The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: Bozack on August 21, 2004, 05:31:56 am
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Sigh....I've been wanting to post this on up here to get thoughts, and this seems like a perfect time. I've been working on tattoo designs for a while, and here's my favorite so far:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v51/Bozack/od.jpg)
The line comes from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, and is quoted in T.S. Eliot's Wasteland; I've been in love with the line for a really long time.
So here's the plan: that, on my left upper-arm. I'm probably going to hold onto the design for a year and see how I like it then; at that point, I'll take the plunge.
Does anyone else here have tats? Did you get them in prison?
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Oh, lovely. I was contemplating starting a tattoo thread, m'self. Thanks!
I think yours is really beautiful. Definitely doesn't seem like "future regret" material...
I've wanted a tat for a little while now. My first idea was to get a frog on my leg, the same green frog that I meet sometimes when I'm tripping on shrooms. Sometimes there's thousands of him coating every bit of the floor, in interlocking rotating pinwheels, alternately opening and closing their mouths, dancing in a rhythmic dance that if I lock my mind into it I'm rewarded every so often with these jolts of trippy pleasure straight into my brain, but if I ignore them they're just a really fun hallucination that I notice every once in a while and think of as a friend, of sorts. At least, the frog is always welcome when I see him (or thousands oh him). And the pattern is in three d, so there's a slightly less wide pinwheel on top of each last, so that at the very top there is a wheel of only three of him, then on top of them, one. At the bottom is about 18 frogs or so. The frog is very Inca or Aztec looking. The interlocking alternately rotating pinwheels of the frog also move in a pattern that very strongly evokes Incan or Aztec art in motion. It's kind of strange, I guess.
I'm going on and on about the frog, this is probably boring. Everyone has their own sentient beings and inanimate symbols that they meet when they trip and that teach them certain things. One of the most astonishing things that ever happened to me was to be describing the frogs, sober, to a friend, and as it turns out, she saw the frogs too. That was such a trip, exactly the way I described them, she was even telling me stuff I'd forgotten to mention. We've been a lot closer since discovering we share a beloved hallucination. Even more important to me than the frog is the goddess, but she's indescribable when I'm not tripping, and to meet her is always this weird feeling of not exactly dying, but of having been switched off like a tv and sort of dissolving and then there's a "birth" of sorts and I can never remember much of the specifics afterwards, only a feeling of muteness, awe and wonder. I can't speak for hours afterwards and I always feel like I've been cruelly dropped back off into the world before I was ready. I can't even imagine how I would start to describe the goddess-or if she's even a goddess. That's just my name for her. The interactions I have with her are at a level where language goes away and everything is pure meaning, but in object form. I'm going on again and drifting off point. The point is that I could never draw the frog adequately, and I'm terrible at drawing what I see in general, let alone when I'm tripping. So I need to take a class or get a book about learning how to tell your hand to draw what you see, if I ever want to get that one done.
Just to clarify, I don't really believe in anything supernatural when I'm sober. I'm not like a Wiccan or anything-nothing against Wiccans, Christians or whatever you are. I only believe I'm talking to a goddess when I'm tripping. As far as I'm concerned it's all created by my own mind, because I'm not really convinced that it comes from outside me. The mind is a powerful thing. I'm pretty much a nondogmatic atheist-I don't really give a shit if others are atheists and I won't try to talk religious people out of their religion (did try that a lot when I was a know it all teenager tho) but I also can't really convince myself to believe in much that science can't explain, or at least measure reliably.
A more pedestrian tattoo that I've always wanted to get is one of the phrase, "This too shall pass". It would probably be in all caps, in a really unique typeface (I'm kind of a dork about fonts and will probably spend a week or two just picking the right one, I want it to have exactly the right look) and I want it to go all the way around the middle of my upper left arm (sorta like yours, Bozack) in a band, evenly spaced, with a solid black line around the top and bottom.
On either my chest or back I'd like to get a nice sketch or small portion of a painting by Alex Grey (http://www.alexgrey.com/). I already wrote him to ask permission; he wrote back and said he'd be honored, and that I should send him a good quality picture for inclusion in an art book of tattoos of his work. So I guess it isn't a completely new idea since enough people have asked him that he wants to do a book of it. His art is very spiritual and it's about opening your third eye and being one with the universe. Not in a cheesy new age way, more like his own personal lifelong project to meld yogic consciousness with a very modern sensibility. His art is really sexy and inspiring. If you're a Tool fan, he did the cd art for Lateralus and of the last minute+ of the video for Parabol/Parabola.
His sketches seem like the most likely candidates for a tattoo. Eye of the Heart (http://www.alexgrey.net/drwngs/eyeofheart.html) almost looks like he meant it to be a tattoo, but it isn't completely my style. I really love The Seer (http://alexgrey.net/drwngs/seer.html) and Vision Taking Form (http://alexgrey.net/drwngs/form.html).
I'm a lot more attached to his paintings, but much less optimistic about finding an artist who will be able to faithfully reproduce a portion. Some of my favorites are Kissing (http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/kssng.html), Copulating (http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/cpltng.html), Pregnancy (http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/prgncy.html), Birth (http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/birth.html), Newborn (http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/nwbrn.html), Nursing (http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/nrsng.html), New Family (http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/nw-fam.html), Wonder (http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/wndr.html), Painting (http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/pntng.html), and Cosmic Christ (http://alexgrey.net/a-gallery/c-christ-2.html). Just click around his site and maybe buy his art books, Amazon and Borders carry them. I'm just showing you the paintings I'm most into, I haven't really got a lot of idea yet which part of which one I really want to use for a tattoo, if at all.
So how does Bozack end up being called Bozack? Is there some story involved? Spill it!
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Oh wow. Well, I typed your unique combo of letters and numbers and I guess the board translated that into Bozack automatically.
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It's even prettier how it rhymes in...uh...that language (German? What is that dash above one of the letters?).
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I have a yin-yang the size of a dime on my left shoulder. I got in Amsterdam when I was 19.
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On either my chest or back I'd like to get a nice sketch or small portion of a painting by Alex Grey (http://www.alexgrey.com/).
Wow, Grey's work is amazing. It seems to be popular with people who like hallucinogens (the friend of mine who first showed me his work did a shit-ton of drugs). It is a little frustrating to see his work in such tiny form, because I pored over his book for an hour, just marvelling at his detail and the beauty of each painting. The scale factor would be difficult in a tattoo. His work is highly detailed and the medium of tattooing would not really do his work justice, imho.
I've never really thought about getting any of it inked, since it would seem kind of redundant. To me, his work shows a visual link between the physical and spiritual. While I love looking at his artwork, actually having it physically applied to the human body seems like it's just replicating what is already there. Yes, tattoos are very symbolic but the physical and spiritual matter that is explored in Grey's work seem to indicate that the Divine is already present in the human form. We all embody the light of God because we were made in God's image. I don't know why I disagree with the thought of getting Grey's work tattooed--other than the scale factor, which would kind of blunt the effect of his work imho; and the redundancy factor, which is hard for me to articulate but I'm sure you've heard the term "gilding the lily"*.
*Gilding the lily: Mat 6:28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?
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I used to want a tattoo of the Euler formula (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/EulerFormula.html) with x=pi. But I don't think I want a tattoo anymore.
Like this, but without the comma at the end.
(http://posdef.net/eimg31.gif)
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I have been wanting to get something for ages.
I am not sure whether I want something darker or not, or whether to go ahead and get this:
(http://www.canadian-studies.net/slink/sufiboat.jpg)
It's a 13th Century calligraphy of the boat from the Sufi fable of the Islanders.
But I have no idea where I'd get that on my body. It wouldn't fit anywhere but between my shoulders really, and I don't want it there.
I'll probably never get round to it...
And Talky, that's really weird. I had a friend who was always visited by a little green frog when he tripped. I've never had anything like that.
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Sigh....I've been wanting to post this on up here to get thoughts, and this seems like a perfect time. I've been working on tattoo designs for a while, and here's my favorite so far:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v51/Bozack/od.jpg)
The line comes from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, and is quoted in T.S. Eliot's Wasteland; I've been in love with the line for a really long time.
So here's the plan: that, on my left upper-arm. I'm probably going to hold onto the design for a year and see how I like it then; at that point, I'll take the plunge.
Does anyone else here have tats? Did you get them in prison?[/img]
Sweet! That's the kind of tatt Lyle would have. I mean that in a good way of course.
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Linnea, that's a really good point about Alex's work and the redundancy fo tattooing it. In any case if I get a tattoo of his stuff it won't be for a long time. So I have a lot of time to think about it.
His art does have a pretty meaningful role in my life, so I'm hoping I can figure out something that'll make a lot of sense to put on my body.
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I have been wanting to get something for ages.
I am not sure whether I want something darker or not, or whether to go ahead and get this:
It's a 13th Century calligraphy of the boat from the Sufi fable of the Islanders.
But I have no idea where I'd get that on my body. It wouldn't fit anywhere but between my shoulders really, and I don't want it there.
I'll probably never get round to it...
And Talky, that's really weird. I had a friend who was always visited by a little green frog when he tripped. I've never had anything like that.
Wow, that's really cool, slink. It says "I invoke Allah's shielding from the malicious Shaitan. In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most forgiving, O Allah, Opener of Doors, unlock for us the bounty (could also mean charity, depending on context) of the sea." They can fit a lot of text in there, heh. Here's the non-calligraphic version of the Arabic words:
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم اللهم يا مفتح الأبواب إفتح لنا خير البحر
See if you can spot them all, heh heh. Some of them are extremely mutilated in order to get the thing to look like a boat, but they're all there, and in that same order.
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I have wanted for a long time to get a very small tattoo of a capybara. But I can't get a straight answer from anyone about a very important question. How much does it HURT?
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Wombat, how much tattoos hurt depends very much on their placement- if it's on your arm or leg or something, not that much, but there are some extremely painful areas, like the collarbone.
My older sister has a lot of interesting and well-thought-out tattoos, and I've always presumed it's just a matter of (not very much) time before I get one:
The two I've got in mind right now are the Trylon and Perisphere (http://www.howardfrank.com/NYWF_04.html)below my left shoulder on the front, and/or this illustration from Finnegans Wake
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v408/baking/tattoo.jpg)
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I have been wanting to get something for ages.
I am not sure whether I want something darker or not, or whether to go ahead and get this:
It's a 13th Century calligraphy of the boat from the Sufi fable of the Islanders.
But I have no idea where I'd get that on my body. It wouldn't fit anywhere but between my shoulders really, and I don't want it there.
I'll probably never get round to it...
And Talky, that's really weird. I had a friend who was always visited by a little green frog when he tripped. I've never had anything like that.
Wow, that's really cool, slink. It says "I invoke Allah's shielding from the malicious Shaitan. In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most forgiving, O Allah, Opener of Doors, unlock for us the bounty (could also mean charity, depending on context) of the sea." They can fit a lot of text in there, heh. Here's the non-calligraphic version of the Arabic words:
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم اللهم يا مفتح الأبواب إفتح لنا خير البحر
See if you can spot them all, heh heh. Some of them are extremely mutilated in order to get the thing to look like a boat, but they're all there, and in that same order.
Whoa, that's beautiful. That's just amazing. Talky, how on earth did you know that? Do you speak Arabic? One of my good friends was Jordanian/Saudi but I didn't manage to learn any Arabic from her. She did say that the various dialects in the Arab world can be a little difficult to follow. For example, one of her brothers married a Moroccan girl, and my friend had difficulty talking to her sister-in-law's family. They usually just spoke English or French, since it was often easier.
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OK, let's say my ankle... Is it like getting a flu shot? A splinter under a fingernail? A mosquito sting? A cat claw? A mole-rat bite? There must be something comparable.
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Whoa, that's beautiful. That's just amazing. Talky, how on earth did you know that? Do you speak Arabic? One of my good friends was Jordanian/Saudi but I didn't manage to learn any Arabic from her. She did say that the various dialects in the Arab world can be a little difficult to follow. For example, one of her brothers married a Moroccan girl, and my friend had difficulty talking to her sister-in-law's family. They usually just spoke English or French, since it was often easier.
I do. In fact I'm Palestinian-American. Not the "I hate Jews" kind though. In fact I like Jews a lot :-) But yeah, I'm bilingual, I grew up speaking both English and Arabic.
It can be hard to understand Arabs with dramatically different accents, but not insurmountably so. It's kind of like how some Southern accents are impenetrable until something clicks in your mind, some tumbler turns over in just the right way and suddenly you can understand every word.
Various Arabic accents are analogous to American ones. For instance, Iraqis and gulf Arabs speak the cajun/louisiana version of Arabic. Egyptians speak the New Yorker accent. Nomadic bedouin tribes in Jordan and the peninsula (including Saudi) can probably be said to speak sort of an Appalachian dialect. Lebanese and Syrians speak the Valley Girl of Arabic. Urban Palestinians and Jordanians, being mostly sober merchant types, speak a flat, uninflected midwesterner's Arabic (this is what I speak but I can imitate any other accent convincingly. Funny, my English is a flat midwestern accent too). Algerians and Libyans speak a sort of clipped, rapid Arabic, that could be analogous to a Texan accent. This is all entirely subjective and impressionistic, of course. Ask another Arab and you might get a completely different set of comparisons. But my point is that the different Arabics are only as different from each other as accents in the continental US, they're not drastically different. If you understand classical Arabic, what the language was before all these regional dialects arose, you can easily both understand and make yourself understood to any Arab, because the Koran and Hadith, which pretty much every Arab learns as a child, are in classical Arabic. And dialect-inflected Arabic is only different from classical Arabic in that it's lazy and ignores various grammatical rules. The different dialects share a large portion of their vocabularies, they just say everything with different emphases, and drop different letters or pronounce them uniquely. A look at the letter qaf is instructive. For instance, Lebanese and Syrians often won't say the letter at all. So in maqlubeh (upside down rice cake, an Arab dish), a Lebanese or Syrian would say ma'lubeh and would be very nasal about it. A Palestinian would say maklubeh, weakening the qaf to a kaf. A Bedouin from Jordan or the Hijaz would say maglubeh with a velvety, emphasized l. An Egyptian might say maglubeh but she would take it easy on the l. An Iraqi or gulf Arab would not only say the qaf in maqlubeh, but would also thicken the l, and make it very throaty too.
But aside from this sort of stylistic difference, and maybe 500 words of unique vocabulary for each dialect, there isn't really a lot of difference.
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أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم اللهم يا مفتح الأبواب إفتح لنا خير البحر
Wow. Dude. That is so cool! Thanks.
Yea, now I'm even more tempted to get that one. But like I say, god knows where I'd have it done. Might have to use calligraphic Arabic to get some of the really long sections of text I would want tattooed on...
I really like the idea of the illustration from Finnegan's Wake, Andalucia. If I could remember my favourite equation I'd get a tat of that but I'd have to think...
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I'm really not sure how much this thread has to do with tattoos anymore, but it remains very, very awesome nonetheless.
Personally, I've never been able to settle on a tattoo, and I doubt I ever will. I dislike pain a great deal, and I can't think of anything that I know I will want to be a permanent marking on my body for the rest of my life (or at least will not regret badly). That said, the "oed und leer das Meer" tattoo is very classy, and I rather like the Euler's formula one, too.
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TALKYdude, word. That is a very informative discussion about Arabic. I wish I knew more, but as of now I'm just content to nod my head and say, "wow".
OK, let's say my ankle... Is it like getting a flu shot? A splinter under a fingernail? A mosquito sting? A cat claw? A mole-rat bite? There must be something comparable.
Hmm... Pain is pretty subjective. I have a high pain tolerance (I've had about 10 body piercings, like a 10 gauge tongue piercing and 14 gauge nipple piercings) so the pain of the tattoo was very mild. You sound like you're kind of afraid of pain, though, so it might be worse for you.
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AIIIIIIIEEE!!!
No, no, what I meant to say is, fear of pain is very evolutionarily sound. We are all here today in large part because our distant ancestors were afraid of getting holes in their bodies, yes? The ones who did not fear holes in their bodies did not live long enough to reproduce and pass on their fearless genes.
I seem to recall, although it was a long time ago, that getting my ears pierced hurt like hell. I think you are right that I need tattoo advice from someone with a lot fewer body piercings.
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The phrase "14 gauge nipple piercings" strikes fear and wonderment into my callow, craven heart. I do not even know how big 14 gauge is, and still it seems to have unfortunate connotations.
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The phrase "14 gauge nipple piercings" strikes fear and wonderment into my callow, craven heart. I do not even know how big 14 gauge is, and still it seems to have unfortunate connotations.
Hee! Oh man. You poor kids, I did not mean to scare you. 14 gauge is pretty small for a piercing. I still have the crescent barbells somewhere, let me take a picture (obviously they are no longer in my nipples so it will be g-rated).
Okay, picture is here.
http://home.comcast.net/~linnea78/images/barbell.jpg
The two curved ones at the top of the photo are 14-gauge crescent barbells. Those were in my nipples. Yes, they were incredibly painful and I wouldn't recommend nipple piercing in general. Mine didn't heal (I suspect a nickel allergy) and kept getting caught on things. I kept both of them in for ten months or a year, and then took one out. The remaining one stayed for a few more months before I finally took it out.
The two larger barbells were in my tongue (not at once): I got it pierced with teh stainless steel one, which is a 10 gauge. I later put in the acrylic 8 gauge one, which is bigger.
The deal with wire gauges is that the higher the number, the skinnier the wire. An 8 gauge wire is pretty hefty. 14 gauge is pretty small. Yeah. There's a great link here at the BME Encyclopedia, aka Body Modification Ezine. This link is NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
http://encyc.bmezine.com/?cmd=main
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I once considered getting the cover artwork from King Crimson's Discipline ( see temp avatar ) on my left bicep. For about a minute. I remain unmarked.
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That's neat looking, Limmo. Presumably you would skip the whole pink thing.
Is there even a pink tattoo ink?
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Oh, body-modification! When I get back to New York, and I've got some cash, and my prospects look slim for the next 2 weeks, I'm totally taking the frenum plunge.
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I'm totally taking the frenum plunge.
Curse my memory, but that's the chin is it not?
If so I was so close to getting that done, but didn't. In the end I never got anythig pierced. Eyebrow was tempting too, but if it went nasty I'd hate it - so close to my eye and all.
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OK, let's say my ankle... Is it like getting a flu shot? A splinter under a fingernail? A mosquito sting? A cat claw? A mole-rat bite? There must be something comparable.
i've been told the closer to bone, the more it hurts.
i got mine on my left shoulder blade.
it's not an _intense_ shooting pain. it's a low grade pain that keeps going on. some places hurt more than others.
when the needle stops, the pain stops. there is a low "ache" afterwards, but it was not bothersome at all.
additional: i have a deep, irrational fear of needles. when i was around 8, i fainted down a flight of hospital stairs after getting blooddrawn. i awoke to a sea of lab coats surrounding me. some peppy young dr. said "you chose a good place to faint", it being a hospital. i think this is the cause of my fear.
i got my ear pierced in college. afterwards, as i was paying at the counter, i fainted, and fell into some shelving, hit my forehead ont he metal corner of a rack of hair-care products, it knocked me unconscious.
my fear stems from the thought of the needle going through the skin and into flesh. the idea that it might hit a vein/artery and bloos spew forth is what get's me. i flush as i type this, and am a bit light headed. stupid, yes, real, yes.
that being said, a tatoo is NOTHING like a "needle". it's not bloodwork, it's not an injection.
think of it as multiple layers of skin. the tat-needle does not go all the way through.
at first i was getting light headed, mainly thinking about the process, and assuming it was going deeper than it was. once my body explained to my "rational" brain that the needle wasn't going that deep, i stopped getting light headed.
at certain points in time, i would say "stop", and he would stop, and we would take a break. it was helpful that he is a friend of mine.
the main point of pain, came from HIM and not the needle. in order to do good work, the artist must SPREAD the skin, much like the cloth is spread and kept taut in the hoop during needle point. this can hurt, as in my case, a 6'4" ex-paratrooper used all his strength to stretch my skin as tautly as possible.
so, to answer your question, i would liken the needle feeling to be close to a cat's claw. not scratching you, but if you were laying on your back, and the cat was standing on your bare back, and it started to stretch, and it let its claws out just a little bit, it kind of feels like that.
(http://www.themisc.com/~kevbob/felix1.jpg)
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Ark, I love how your stories show how the thing we mainly have to fear is fear itself. Fainting and hitting your head is so much more dangerous than the actual needles.
That is a nice clear and not so frightening description. And the tattoo I have in mind is small and just an outline, so it wouldn't take nearly so long as yours must have.
Now I can move on to the task of deciding if the real problem is that it would be too undignified to do this at my age. After all, now that Paul doesn't come around anymore I am the oldest fart here.
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I'm totally taking the frenum plunge.
Curse my memory, but that's the chin is it not?
Heh! Try doing a Google image search for "frenum piercing" with safesearch OFF. *cackles*
The frenum is one of the many piercings available for men and their wangs.
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My wang and piercings: no way, no no no, I don't even have an ear pierced for crying out loud. I looked at your body modification link, Linnea. Terrifying, especially those split c*ckes (I forget the name). Those guys can't even pee standing up any more?! Urg. And words like "meatectomy". That just makes me want to hide. *pets c*ck through pantaloons, reassuringly* there, there, boy, don't be scared. If I ever shred you to ribbons it won't be on purpose.
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The different girl piercings were pretty hot, though. Am I a hypocrite? Yes. Am I bothered by it? No.
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I feel the same way, ironically, and I don't think it's hypocritical. I find it fascinating to look at *some* photos of male genitalia piercings. Some of them are extreme. The subincisions are fuck*ng scary as hell, in my humble opinion.
However, I hate seeing pictures of girls with piercings. It brings to mind female genital mutilation and it just kills me (even though I'm sure that most of the women pictured did it of their own free will). I can't handle seeing those pictures.
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Subincisions, that's what it was called, right.
FGM makes me really sick too, which is why I pretty much freaked and wanted to hurl a little when I saw the "female nullification" body mod. Is this for real?
The piercings on girls that didn't actually go through the clit I was fine with. I liked the triangle ones the best, that's probably not what they were called but you know what I'm talking about. I'll look it up if you don't.
I really disliked the "suitcase" one, too.
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Yeah, nullo is crazy, in my opinion. And I've heard some bad stuff about clit piercings, vis a vis sensitivity loss after a while.
The main reason why I'm going with a frenum as opposed to, say, a PA, is that I enjoy pissing. I do not think I would enjoy pissing in two opposite directions at the same time.
I'm pretty sure Jough threatened me with a ban if I ever mentioned it again, so I'ma drop it now. I can feel his watchful eye on me, even though he is in Europe-land.
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All I am gonna say, administratively, is that I don't have a problem with it since it's in a fairly obviously tattoo-and-body-mod topic, and thus those who don't like body-mod can presumably avoid it. However, might be good to be quiet about it when Jough returns to our midst.
What happens in Wild Card stays in Wild Card.
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That's neat looking, Limmo. Presumably you would skip the whole pink thing.
Is there even a pink tattoo ink?
Actually, the album cover is maroon. I would most likely have had the central image and a small red/maroon square around it. Had I, in fact, gotten the tat.
I feel like getting a tattoo is a statement of permanence - this image represents something that I will feel the same way about forever - and I can't see feeling the same way about anything forever. Except for the tattoos you get when you're too drunk to know what you're doing. And I just don't drink that much.
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my fear stems from the thought of the needle going through the skin and into flesh. the idea that it might hit a vein/artery and bloos spew forth is what get's me. i flush as i type this, and am a bit light headed. stupid, yes, real, yes.
Please don't clunk your head on the key board arkabee, but your story reminded me of the story of the largest needle I ever got, so don't read this, close your eyes, or have a pillow ready. For everyone else, here we go:
I have Bursitis in both my hips, have had the problem since my teens, and the pain is just something I've learned to live with, as no treatment has ever helped.
When I was 20 and working at a job that kept me on my feet for hours and hours it got really horribly painful, so I went to my doctor, who sent me to a specialist. Now my doctor didn't tell me what sort of specialist I was going to, but he also gave me no indication that I was about to be subjected to extremely traumatic treatment. So I go to the specialist, put on the paper gown, and he comes in, starts poking at me right where it hurts, and I'm in so much pain from this poking that the paper covering on the examination table is soggy from tears, and I'm like, totally out of it. As I'm lying there, he takes out a sharpey pen and draws a target on my left hip, exits the room. I was too out of it to figure out that this was a sign that something bad was about to happen, so I was just lying there in pain and confused. He comes back with an assistant. He has his back to me, but I glance for a moment a needle the size of a baby's arm, and I watch him fill it with what I later found out was cortizone. I'm still to dazed to really understand that this massive needle is somehow meant for me. The assistant holds me down very firmly, and the specialist turns to me and drives the needle with extreme force into my hip in one swift movement a-la Uma Thurman in the scene in Pulp Fiction. The shock of what happened has compleatly blocks out any memory of the pain that occured. I am injected, the needle is wrenched out of my hip in a way that makes clear to me just how deeply it is lodged in my hip. The specialist says "There we go. If you find this improves the problem, call in in a few weeks for an apointment to do the other hip. " And off he goes.
Now, from a life time of dealing with pain, I have very good coping skills, and would have rather been told what was about to happen, and gone to my happy place, rather than actually seeing and fully experiencing what happened, so I ended up being pretty pissed at my family doc. for sending me in unwarned. Also, it didn't improve anything. I never went back, but I do remember thinking that if I could handle this I could handle anything.
Needless to say, I'm not afraid of the pain of getting a tatoo, but of its permanace, which is why I've waited until now to get one. I've wanted the same tatoo since I was sixteen. For metaphorical reasons, I'm planning on getting a spider on my ankle, but I have to go outside my area as there are few fine-line tatoo artists here and their work isn't the greatest.
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HORROR! AND PAIN!
Jesus. I can't say as that didn't hit my squeamish button. And given that I was discussing the Pulp Fiction scene and how much it made me whince with someone the other day...
I had to have a lumber puncture when I was 6. It seems nowadays they give kids general anaesthetic before doing it. That's where my fear of needles comes from. Which also sucks when you then have to go on to have about a billion blood tests, although the dizziness is the sole fear left.
I don't really have any fear about getting a tattoo anymore, it's just about being sure about it. Like the name really.
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I had to have a lumber puncture when I was 6. It seems nowadays they give kids general anaesthetic before doing it.
Nope. I had to hold my 8 year old daughter's hand(s) while she had one done. It took three tries for the incompetent intern to get it in correctly. Fucker. I would have given anything to have traded places with her.
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I've had two lumbar punctures. They did not hurt as much as the bone marrow biopsy, though. Sweet Jesus did that hurt. I rarely ever cry but that had me seriously choking back sobs. There is nothing to describe it.
August, I'm with you. No kid should have to have that. I have a scoliosis, they stuck me a couple times and gave up because they lost there nerve in the twists and turns of my deformed spine. But they inflicted plenty of pain along the way.
And Bozack - the integrity of your frenulum should be sacred. For god's sake, WHY?? WHY???
Did Prince Albert have one of those? Why is it called that?
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I'm actually considering getting another. I don't know why, just seems like the thing to do. What I have in mind is pretty pedestrian compared to the lovely designs y'all have (or want).
This would be a series of footsteps spiralling up my upper arm, ending at my yin-yang. It would symbolize my attempt at making continual progress upward. Keep walking. Baby steps. Tortoise and the hare and all that.
I don't know how I'd explain it to my kids, though.
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I'm totally taking the frenum plunge.
Curse my memory, but that's the chin is it not?
If so I was so close to getting that done, but didn't. In the end I never got anythig pierced. Eyebrow was tempting too, but if it went nasty I'd hate it - so close to my eye and all.
It's a much smaller chin on a smaller head. Sort of.
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Getting back to tattoos, I got mine a couple of years ago. I had been planning on getting it for a while, but hadn't really set any plans in motion until a friend of mine made an appointment for me. it's 3 years later, and I haven't regretted it for a second.
Oh, what is it you ask? Well, between my shoulder blades, I got the Triforce, yes, THE Triforce from the Legend of Zelda, with the words "Wisdom Courage Power" around it. I think it looks kinda neat, and has gotten a pretty good reception, even from people not familiar with the video game series. I've got a couple pictures of it, once I get it scanned in or get ahold of a digital camera, I'll post it.
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I'm actually considering getting another. I don't know why, just seems like the thing to do. What I have in mind is pretty pedestrian compared to the lovely designs y'all have (or want).
This would be a series of footsteps spiralling up my upper arm, ending at my yin-yang. It would symbolize my attempt at making continual progress upward. Keep walking. Baby steps. Tortoise and the hare and all that.
I don't know how I'd explain it to my kids, though.
makes sense to me. why not tell your kids "it represents the eternal struggle of the human soul/spirit/psyche to ever struggle against the forces of entropy and apathy and to always do your best at Maths."?
i too, want to "get more ink done". right now it's financial, why i'm not currently "getting more ink done".
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It's a much smaller chin on a smaller head. Sort of.
Damned fool Bozack! Leave him be!
And yes, Prince Albert did have a PA. That's why the palace for a time had no doorhandles.
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I got the Triforce, yes, THE Triforce from the Legend of Zelda, with the words "Wisdom Courage Power" around it.
Oh dear god, I'm glad my SO doesn't read this forum anymore, cause you know he'd totally be in the tatoo parlour again, stealing your idea. Sometimes he just looks away from his gamecube at me and sighs - "who would of thought you could get laid and play Windwaker all in one day."
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Thanks Flenker.
Now I have the terrible feeling I'm going to end up finding an image from Grim Fandango to get tattooed on me. It is quite probably my favourite game , and I just love the art in it. Might be able to get a really cool design from it...
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Video game tattoos make perfect sense; for the wearer, they're probably a damn sight more significant than the dazzling array of cigar smoking-Tasmanian Devils splattered all over the parlour walls.
If I ever do get a tattoo - and this is something I've been chewing on for literally years - I'm getting a Vault 13 tattoo. Yellow 13 in a blue circle, like on the side of the water flasks / back of the jumpsuits.
On a truly sad note, I once saw some really vile, really low-quality amateur porn, and one of the partici##### had a great big Cobra sigil covering up one of his flabby pecs. The day I see a Wasteland / Fallout tattoo in porn, though, I think I'll just. give. up.
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The day I see a Wasteland / Fallout tattoo in porn, though, I think I'll just. give. up.
That is this weeks most profound statement regarding the state and future trends of society.
That is the problem. What game would I go for?
The Quake logo was always one of my favourite icons of gaming, but it seems too obvious. Something out of Grim Fandango could be prefect.
A tattoo of the titular Max would be cool, but not especially masculine. I thought of some of the classics like Head Over Heels on the speccy but again... Some of the old vector games you could pretty much take a screenshot of.
While I'm at it I might get the :) from H2G2 done. I have to get a good neuromancer reference tat though. Either that, Snow Crash or Diamond Age have to be made into a tattoo of some sort...
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Hey! I could get the UAC logo!
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And here I was chiding myself for thinking of getting something game-related and such. Sadly, my drug of choice right now (http://www.lensmen.net/wiki/exalted.pl) has no really distinctive iconic imagery. I suppose I could get a sunburst on my forehead, though...
Optionally, if I were a much bigger loser than I am, I would badly consider a LOOM tattoo. Or at least an "ASK ME ABOUT LOOM" tattoo.
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best tatoo I ever saw on a random stranger:
I'm in a little cubicle full of vending machines, standing behind a guy who is feeding a five dollar bill into a change machine, and I notice, on the back of his neck, had had a tatoo that looked just like a not-quite-fully-zipped-up zipper. Like he's wearing a human suit. I thought that was really cool.
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V, I would say that tattoo would definitely be The Raddest Thing. I never really got into Loom myself, though. Now a Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle tattoo, that I could consider.
Regarding side_show's story, I'm mostly just trying to stop myself from making the Donnie Darko reference it immediately evoked.
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Regarding side_show's story, I'm mostly just trying to stop myself from making the Donnie Darko reference it immediately evoked.
What a movie. Have you checked out the website (http://donniedarko.com/)? It's odd.
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Now a Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle tattoo, that I could consider.
Regarding side_show's story, I'm mostly just trying to stop myself from making the Donnie Darko reference it immediately evoked.
An MI tat would be harder to conjre up. But a tattoo of Purple Tentacle would be awesome. I'm going to end up coated in ink by the time this thread dies.
Also, a tattoo of Frank would be pretty cool.
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V, I would say that tattoo would definitely be The Raddest Thing. I never really got into Loom myself, though. Now a Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle tattoo, that I could consider.
Well, with Loom it was just the product of one day during Dead Week last semester. We intended to have a giant LucasArts adventure-game bender, but we started up Loom first, and it ended up becoming a confounding, walkthrough-powered odyssey, notable at times for occasionally stumping the five or six of us who were there. (Naturally, this was a case of hubris shattered; we were the Best and the Brightest, Goddammit, undergraduates at the FINEST LIBERAL-ARTS COLLEGE IN AMERICA, and we were totally unable to figure out how to leave the first island without a walkthrough.) So yeah, at this point it's half an inside joke.
The concept of a Day of the Tentacle tattoo fills me with schoolgirl-like glee, though.
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Man, now that I have gotten thinking about this, I have a terrible desire for a LucasArts tattoo of some sort. Because I am thinking about all the rad visuals from Sam & Max... oh boy.
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What is this, a nerd contest?
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What is this, a nerd contest?
*comment about you being new around here*
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I thought this was the sort of company in which the term "nerd" would be taken in the spirit it was meant. Note, for example, my own tattoo idea, near the start of this thread. Hint: it involves math.
Is a nerd (http://achewood.plagiarist.com/viewtopic.php?t=1258) not allowed to call another nerd "nerd" around here? Or do you prefer the term "geek"?
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I thought this was the sort of company in which the term "nerd" would be taken in the spirit it was meant.
I think it was. I think the point was, you are actually, like, surprised that this has turned into a nerd contest? Then you must be new around here.
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The entire board is a nerd contest. Duh.
By the way, Va, if I haven't told you yet... You..Are..Rad.
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Hey! I could get the UAC logo!
Been playing a little Doom 3, August?
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Ha, as I said before, a bunch of English majors in a Red Dwarf convention. Also, if anyone gets a Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, or Grim Fandago tattoo, they and myself will henceforth be married in the sight of God. Yes, Slink, even you.
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I thought this was the sort of company in which the term "nerd" would be taken in the spirit it was meant.
I think it was. I think the point was, you are actually, like, surprised that this has turned into a nerd contest? Then you must be new around here.
Man, and here I was all worried I might have hurt somebody's feelings. I should be banned just for that. I've obviously been spending too much time interacting with people who are not sarcastic bastards. It's not by choice, believe me.
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Va, although we seem very civilized (in a sarcastic way), if the pack was ganging up and trying to drive you away, it would be a lot less subtle. Don't worry.
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Hey! I could get the UAC logo!
Been playing a little Doom 3, August?
Naw, not yet. But I've spent countless (don't even try to count 'em) hours playing Doom II and all it's permutations, add-ons, levels, WADs, MegaWads, et al.
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Yes, Slink, even you.
Eeeek. Well maybe I can just not mention it...
And, I prefer to be referred to as a geek. I still think of nerds as mouth breathers. Hence I got round to getting the <GEEK> </GEEK> tee from thinkgeek.
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Hey! I could get the UAC logo!
Been playing a little Doom 3, August?
Naw, not yet. But I've spent countless (don't even try to count 'em) hours playing Doom II and all it's permutations, add-ons, levels, WADs, MegaWads, et al.
have you played the Marathon games? Besides M1, M2, and Minfinity, there are countless robust add-on scenarios.
plus, as opposed to DoomII, it has a delightful story. see http://marathon.bungie.org/story/ for backstory, faqs, spoilers, and reams and reams of speculation as to what is really going on in the game.
and, just so's ya know, the engine linked in the first link is OpenSourced and allowed by bungie, and the 1st game's scenario is fully avaliable and allowed by bungie. you can buy the 2nd & third, and use the opensource engine with their scenarios, if'n you liked the first enough.
just keep in mind it's from 94 or whatnot. you can't jump without using a grenade launcher, etc.
but, you CAN see all the way around an enemy, as opposed to them swivelling as you go around them, etc, etc.
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Eternal was my all-time favorite TC. It was impressive how they managed to do so much with so little.
I mainly used ZDoom.
I don't know why I like Doom II so much. Obviously it's a dinosaur of FPS's. But there's something about it that keeps bringing me back. I like the simplicity of the controls. I can kick ass with the keyboard controls when not distracted by that pesky third dimension.
Also, I have thousands of levels from the sublime to the absurd. I like the way level creating got the players involved in game design.
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have you played the Marathon games? Besides M1, M2, and Minfinity, there are countless robust add-on scenarios.
I just this past week discovered / downloaded / managed to fuck*ng configure just like I like it Aleph One (http://source.bungie.org/), and I'm presently punching my way through Marathon.
Let me second the recommendation for this series. I am a sucker for a good story: I would probably play Pong for hours if there was an engaging text crawl along the bottom of the screen. Marathon has the story and the gameplay is hella old school. It is hard and good. (Feel free to quote that last line right the fuck out of context.)
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Regarding side_show's story, I'm mostly just trying to stop myself from making the Donnie Darko reference it immediately evoked.
That was, indeed, what I thought of when I saw the zipper tatoo: "why are you wearing that stupid human suit?" I really want to steal this idea, but it just seems to be ultra-dumb to copy someone elses idea for a tatoo, when really originality is what one is supposedly aiming for when they get a tatoo in the first place. Then again, there is a hella' looney toons tat's out there that prove me wrong and make me wonder about people's intentions in general.
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Let me second the recommendation for this series. I am a sucker for a good story: I would probably play Pong for hours if there was an engaging text crawl along the bottom of the screen. Marathon has the story and the gameplay is hella old school. It is hard and good. (Feel free to quote that last line right the fuck out of context.)
apparently jason jone's (bungie's) first game was a pong clone.
also, if you dig into the other site i linked to, there's all kinds of super awesome geekiness in twixt the "linkings" of pathways into darkness, marathon trilogy, and the halo universe.
i've been telling my friend about marathon for ever now, and i always say something like "it was the first that let you jump. no, wait, no, you can't jump" etc.
i _finally_ remembered what it was, it was you could look/aim up down.
however, to alleviate penis-o-phobes, it's ENTIRELY keyboardable, in fact the dev team apparently made fun of people trying to use thepenis and set the cap lock to run etc.
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Speaking of tattoos and comics (this was at one point a thread about tattoos on a messageboard about a comic, wasn't it?):
http://www.dumbrella.com//ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=12;t=002568
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Man, J-Ro is awesome. (And also awesome to have it looking that good that quickly -- I was under the impression that fresh tats were basically just like a big swollen scabby bruise for the first few days.)
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I was under the impression that fresh tats were basically just like a big swollen scabby bruise for the first few days.)
not if they were done correctly, and are taken care of correctly.
if you are getting a tattoo, and the artist will not take your questions about care of the tattoo seriously, then leave.