Okay folks, I apologise for the brevity of today’s post, but I figured that this video really says more than I ever could.  However, before I leave things at that, I have a couple of things to say about the video that you are about to see.  Number one is this: yes, the woman is obviously an idiot and she really must be the worst tattoo costumer ever, but is it just me or does she seem a little drunk?  I don’t know, maybe it’s her sheer stupidity that’s making her behave so sluggishly, but she just seems a little boozed up, if you ask me.

Second – and this is not intended as a dig at the tattoo artist who is responsible for the video and who had the awful duty of tattooing this woman – but, dude, why did you even tattoo her in the first place?  How could you possibly hope to get a good piece of work down on someone who was behaving like that?

Well apparently, according to the tattoo artist, there are three more videos of this woman which tell the remainder of the story.  I know that I’m not alone in wanting to find out what happened next.  For the time being, check out this video of The Worst Tattoo Customer Ever and if you tattoo, pray that you never have to see the likes of her in your shop…

I would have to say that the biggest reason why anyone should never commit to a tattoo without thinking it over first is that there’s always the chance you could regret it in the end.  Spur of the moment tattoos are for the most part, a bad idea.  You might think they’re cool for the first little while, but most likely at some point in the future, you’re going to regret it altogether.  But what if you decide to get a tattoo based on a dare or better yet, on the promise of money?  Hey, we all need and want money, right?  Well, could you be convinced to get a tattoo after being told you’d receive a lot of money for your troubles?  What if the tattoo had to be on your forehead and what if it had to be the logo of a local hard rock radio station?

I don’t doubt it that at this point, the majority of you reading this would say no way.  However, I also don’t doubt that there’s a small percentage of you out there who are reading this and thinking: well just how much money are we talking here?  And hey, who am I to judge you if you are?  At the very least, you’re questioning this in a logical manner.  You didn’t just read this and call up your local tattoo studio, completely prepared to have the inking done.  Unfortunately, that’s exactly what 48-year-old Jonathan David Winkelman and his stepson Richard Goddard did back in 2000.

After having heard a local radio DJ offer a six-figure cash prize for anyone who had the radio station’s name permanently tattooed on to their foreheads, Winkelman and Goddard headed down to a tattoo shop in their Iowa town and had the station’s logo as well as the words “93 Rock” and “Quad City Rocker” tattooed to their foreheads.  The best part is that once they headed over to the radio station’s headquarters, they were told that the entire thing had been a joke and that there would be no cash prize.  Surprise!

Winkelman and Goddard both intended to sue over the matter, but Winkelman later dropped his lawsuit, while Goddard’s was thrown out of court when he failed to show for the trial.  Hey, if you don’t have the wherewithal to show up for a court case that you wanted in the first place, I guess you deserve what you get.  It’s just too bad that what they got were shitty tattoos on their foreheads…

At some point in life we all need to make a decision as to what career path we’re going to follow.  For some, the decision is easy, for others it’s a little more difficult and for others still, it’s all a very unexpected and pleasant challenge.  Tattooist Aaron Bell falls into the latter category.  After following his passion for punk rock for years and playing around in various hardcore punk bands, Bell began to discover tattoo.  As he worked on both his music and his tattooing, the time came to make a decision as to which career path he’d take.  Fortunately for the tattoo world, he chose tattoo, though he had never expected to become a tattooist.

Regardless, as a tattooist, Bell found that he was still able to get all the benefits that he had found in punk rock: the ability to travel from place to place and meet different people who all shared in his passion for this method of self-expression.  Not only that, but with a background as steeped in punk rock as Bell’s was, the raw attitude of the music managed to find its way into his art.

Taught to tattoo by a former San Quentin inmate who himself had learned to tattoo in prison, Bell began tattooing out of his Anaheim, California home in 1984.  After making his decision to take on the tattooing world full time, Bell moved north to Seattle.  Through a series of fortunate incidents, Bell found himself the new owner of a tattoo shop for next to nothing, which he renamed Slave to the Needle.  At the time, Slave to the Needle was in a pretty dodgy area of Seattle, at 508 West 65th street.  Today the area has undergone the same type of gentrification that is currently found aplenty in my own city north of Seattle and across the border – Vancouver.  But I digress.

Now the owner of two different Slave to the Needle locations in Seattle, Bell continues to tattoo with a great old school flourish.  He may not play punk rock anymore and the Seattle neighbourhood he once knew might now be filled with yuppie cafes and gastropubs, but thankfully, that old school edge and flavour can still regularly be found in Aaron Bell’s quality work.

Ouch.  Talk about being totally shut down.  All that 23-year-old Hayley O’Neil of Blackburn, Lancashire, England wanted when she went into the city’s job centre was a lead on where she could find some work.  Instead she left insulted and in tears after a job centre official suggested that she “stand behind a wall” and put a paper bag over her face in order to cover up the numerous piercings that she has on her face.

O’Neil, who also has several tattoos and who received her first tattoo on her 18th birthday, was shocked when she went into the Blackburn JobCentre Plus and was told that she was basically unemployable looking the way that she does.  According to O’Neil:

‘”The guy said: ‘on first impressions do you think anyone would hire you?’ He said: ‘ look at it this way if you were to stand behind a wall – or put a paper bag over your face do you think you would have a better chance?’

“He then backtracked and tried to say that he was sorry and hoped I wasn’t offended but I was.

“He talked to me as though I was just going through a phase in my life, but this is my lifestyle choice, and this is who I am.”‘

Look, I understand that some people still might believe that piercings and tattoos prevent a person from adequately doing their job.  I don’t agree with it, but I can understand that an appearance such as Hayley O’Neil’s could invoke the scorn of someone who didn’t like or agree with it.  Regardless of that however, even if the person at the job centre felt that Hayley O’Neil was unemployable, it really isn’t his place to tell her as much.  She came in to find a lead on possible jobs and that’s all that she asked for.  Anything beyond that is out of the hands of the Job centre people.  She certainly didn’t come in asking for a critique of her appearance.  It’s quite ironic that the JobCentre Plus worker most likely told Hayley that she was unemployable because her appearance wasn’t deemed acceptable or professional, when he himself behaved completely unprofessional by saying such rude and demeaning things to a 23-year-old woman.

I should add that a spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions denied that any such remarks had been made to O’Neil.

Something that I think often is forgotten or basically not acknowledged as tattoo powers its way into the mainstream is that it’s nothing new.  To the artists, the collectors, the tattoo historians and fans alike, this isn’t news.  But to those people out there who criticise tattoo and the tattooed, I think it’s rather comical that their misconceptions are not based on any sort of logic, but rather puritanical ignorance that dates back centuries.

After all, western civilisation’s introduction to the tattoo came quite some time ago, back in 1769 when a British explorer reported his impressions of seeing a young Polynesian girl tattooed by her elders.  And although 1769 is not exactly recent history, the act of tattooing certainly didn’t somehow just begin around then.  Tattooing is as old as some entire civilisations themselves, though such a fascinating link with history is seldom – if ever – acknowledged by those few today who claim that tattoos are little more than a passing trend, a mere act of rebellion or a frivolous fashion statement.  Tattoos are here to stay and more importantly, tattoos have been here to stay for a long, long time.  Sorry haters.

Documenting the extent of these tattoos and the tattoo lineage, so to speak, is photographer Chris Rainier who has spent the past 20 years of his life travelling around the world, taking photos of various cultures and their tattoo traditions.

‘“Blank skin,” the photographer says, “is merely a canvas for a story.”

Rainier has documented these stories in dozens of cultures across the globe. In New Guinea, a swirl of tattoos on a Tofi woman’s face indicates her family lineage. The dark scrawls on a Cambodian monk’s chest reflect his religious beliefs. A Los Angeles gang member’s sprawling tattoos describe his street affiliation, and may even reveal if he’s committed murder. Whether the bearer is a Maori chief in New Zealand or a Japanese mafia lord, tattoos express an indelible identity.

“They say, ‘this is who I am, and what I have done,’” Rainier says.’

As fascinated by tattoo culture as Rainier is, it isn’t just the far flung places around the globe that attract his curiosity.  He’s also completely intrigued by the current level of fascination that tattoos have found in places like the United States.

For all his searching though, it seems that Chris Rainier understands exactly what is at the heart of the desire and appeal to be tattooed.  Perhaps that’s why he’s so accomplished at seeking out tattoos and capturing their essence in his photographs.  Rainier’s photographs from Indonesia will be used in the upcoming film Tattoo Odyssey, which highlights the history and use of tattoos from the Indonesian island of Siberut.  It premieres September 26th on the Smithsonian Channel.  I’m sure it’s a film that’ll be well worth your time.

When it comes to getting tattooed, everyone knows that needles are just part of the game.  Some people aren’t bothered in the least about being jabbed in the skin repeatedly, and some don’t like it but just suck it up because the end results are totally worthwhile.  However you deal with the idea of needles, the bottom line is that if you’re tattooed, you’ve dealt with them and it wasn’t that much of a problem.

That being said, often without knowing it, tattooed people make up a great portion of the potential population for donating blood.  After all, if you can sit for hours at a time getting tattooed, then one quick needle to donate blood isn’t really much when you consider the good that you could be doing.  The Red Cross in Illinois announced this past April that tattooed donors no longer had to wait one year to donate blood after being tattooed.  This certainly helps out in the rather desperate need for blood that the Red Cross faces.  Still, the need for blood changes from place to place, country to country.

Every year in Australia, one in three people need blood transfusions, yet the Red Cross is having a difficult time finding even one donor out of every 30 people.  This could be a problem of the past now that the Australian Red Cross has changed their 12-month waiting period for people with tattoos to a 6-month waiting period.  The biggest issue with this change is that many tattooed people in Australia have no idea that the law has in fact been changed.

‘”The Red Cross recently cut that waiting period to six months, but they have not contacted the deferred candidates to inform them of the change.

“No one contacted me about the changed waiting period,” says regular blood donor, Kate Fox, a sub-editor at Pacific Magazines.

“I was told I would have to wait until next September before I could donate again,” she says.

Fox has only been able to donate blood twice in the last two years since getting her tattoos.

“I always thought that after having a tattoo you had to wait 12 months before giving blood.”’

Perhaps it would be an even better idea if the Australian Red Cross completely eliminated any sort of wait for potential tattooed donors given the current necessity for blood, but as it stands right now the waiting period is six-months, which in retrospect is better than the previous 12-month wait.  So if there’s any tattooed Aussies out there reading this and you didn’t know that the rules have changed with regards to giving blood, now you know.  Spread the word!

I think that when talking about the hardships that tattooed people have to deal with when it comes to society’s perceptions of them, it’s easy to lump everyone together and assume that all tattooed people get the same amount of crap.  After all, unless you work in the tattoo industry in some capacity, you’ve most likely been asked to or outright had to cover up your tattoos at some job at one point or another.  I know that I certainly have.

Although I remain firmly dedicated to doing whatever I can in even the most miniscule ways possible of dispelling or challenging the ignorance that is often put forth against those with tattoos, I have to admit that until today I really hadn’t considered another point of view in all this.  The truth is, as tattooed folks we don’t all get the same level of grief from people who don’t understand what motivates us or captivates us about tattoos.  No sir, we certainly don’t.  And do you want to know why?  It’s because tattooed women have to deal with a lot of stuff that tattooed men don’t have to worry about.

Maybe you think that’s an exaggeration or melodramatic.  But after reading Emily McCombs recent blog post over at The Frisky, I started to think about what it would be like if men had to put up with all that crap that women do when it comes to having a lot of tattoos.  There’s no denying that women have an expectation on them to appear and behave like ladies.  What “a lady” appears and behaves like seems to be dictated by fashion magazines, television, films and popular culture in general.  I’m not really sure about all the details, but I think it’s also got a lot to do with pressure to starve one’s self and wear tons of makeup and dresses.  There’s definitely a prescribed image waiting for women from very early on in their lives and getting tattooed is absolutely not a part of the grand plan.

Which is of course, why women with lots of tattoos can and do face a lot of crap from people who think women should be one way and one way only.  And that’s just a bunch of bullshit.  So I just wanted to write this post and tell Emily McCombs that not only do I think it’s awesome that she has a lot of tattoos and that she’s proud of them, but I’m also super jealous that you got all your ink done by Virginia Elwood because she’s such a rad tattooist.

That’s about it.  Keep on getting tattooed, ladies, and don’t let anyone tell you who or what you should be.

If you read Inked Magazine, then you might recognise Eva Huber from the May, 2010 issue in which she was featured as that month’s “Inked Girl”.  As you can see, it mostly involved Eva posing and showcasing her tattoos.  My own favourite part about this rather unconventional spread on a tattoo artist was what Eva had to say about the whole idea of being a woman who is tattooed and who plans on being even more tattooed in the near future.

‘“My tattoos represent that I am a confident person who is completely comfortable with wearing tattoos, doing tattoos, and not trying to look like this perfect Barbie of a woman,” she says. “I am me, and being me includes not giving a fuck about how people think a woman should look.”’

That sort of unapologetic confidence can go a long way for a tattoo artist in a competitive field of work.  Huber has only been tattooing for 7 years, but both her generous and restrained methods of using brilliant amounts of colour takes her work to levels that few other tattoo artist achieve after only 7 years of work.

Huber tattoos out of Horseshoes and Hand Grenades in Chicopee, Massachusetts, where’s she’s been settled since 2008.  Beyond her love of tattoos and of tattooing people, Huber also works more traditional artistic mediums by painting and drawing and in 2007 she had her first solo art exhibition in Buffalo, New York called “Kinetic”.  Looking at her pencil drawings and paintings further illustrates Huber’s ability to mix hard and soft aesthetics, colours and atmospheres to create work that catches the eye and looks just as accomplished off the skin as on.

One of my own personal favourite tattoos of Eva Huber’s is this one, which again mixes the hard and the soft in both colours and image.  If you’re interested in being tattooed by Eva, then now is the time to make a move as she’s currently accepting bookings for the end of September and October.

It seems like the world often doesn’t make much sense when it comes to tattoos.  I mean, it’s quite common place if you have tattoos to be told to cover them up at your place of work (provided your place of work isn’t a tattoo studio, of course), and it’s especially common place to have to cover up any visible tattoos if you’re going to a job interview.  As ridiculous as this practice is, it ensures that customers or our potential employers don’t somehow acquire a negative image of the tattooed person or of the business that the tattooed person is working for.  Without ever even knowing the people who are tattooed, strangers can and will make up their minds about them based on the tattoos that these employees may have.

In an upcoming court case in New Port Richey, Florida, however, a self-professed neo-Nazi with a tattoo of a swastika and another tattoo of what has been described as an “expletive” on his neck will be permitted to have his tattoos covered with makeup before each court appearance.  The makeup procedure will cost Florida taxpayers $125 dollars a day, because of concerns that jurors will be swayed in their verdict if they were to see John Ditullio Jr’s tattoos.  Ditullio is charged with the first-degree murder of 17-year-old Kristofer King and the attempted murder of 44-year-old Patricia Wells.

So I ask you – here we have a man who is a self-professed Nazi and who has made the commitment to such beliefs by having a swastika tattooed on his body.  Isn’t it completely bizarre that tattoos – albeit sick and horrible ones – such as a swastika have to be covered up in order not to sway the opinions of the jury against John Ditullio Jr, despite the jury already knowing that Ditullio is a self-professed neo-Nazi?  Does that information not already tell them everything that they need to know about the man, more so than a tattoo could?  And yet in order to protect someone who clearly hates people based on their skin colour, religion or sexual orientation, the people of Florida are asked to pay for his makeup job.

Strange stuff indeed.  It would also seem to me that if you have such an allegiance to a particular political group or movement that you needed to have their emblem tattooed on your flesh, and if you had the guts to really follow your beliefs, then you would stick to those beliefs to the bitter end, no matter the outcome.  Whining about the image that your tattoos might portray you as at a murder trial seems a bit amiss to me and more than a little cowardly.

Okay, maybe this isn’t exactly 100% tattoo related, although I can argue that it’s pretty damn close, despite not actually being a tattoo.  The latest in outer wear combines the trendiness of tattoos and the cultural obsessiveness with social media!  Excited?  I knew you would be.

The Twitter Tattoo stockings are a new product made and sold by a crafty individual from Israel.  Basically these are ordinary women’s stockings with the black tattoo font message “Follow Me” and a white rabbit on a black oval background or the Twitter bird – head mascot from the annoyingly popular Twitter social networking site.  The message only appears on one leg of the stockings and when worn, they actually give off the look of a leg tattoo (provided you don’t look too close.)  The stockings run between $18-$20 and can be purchased by heading over to the Etsy website.

I guess these could make a good gift and I guess some women will enjoy walking around with what basically amounts to a Twitter advertisement tattooed to their leg, but I wonder how many women out there actually want to be riding the subway or the bus at night with the message to follow them seemingly tattooed to their body.  Do psychopaths need another reason to follow women home without outright encouraging them to?  I didn’t think they did.

Of course, Twitter advertisements may not be the most popular text to be tattoo fonted on to a woman’s stocking, but when I look at these things I get a funny feeling that we will be seeing more of them in the future and that more likely than not the next batch of these sorts of stockings will look more and more like straight up tattoos.  Hey, why not?  If one is so inclined, one can currently head out and buy fake tattoo sleeves, so how much more difficult will it be to make fake tattoo stockings?  Not much.