House of Eratosthenes

I generally agree, although I must allow for exceptions. I actually married a tattoo. Two of ’em, really, both drawn and located very tastefully. But Mrs. Freeberg is stopping there. Taylor, our favorite waitress over at Toby Keith’s, has gone all-out on her torso with flowers & cursive & such. Which makes it more important to properly treat the stretch marks during her pregnancy. The conversation last night went off in that direction, and I sort of tuned out because it was starting to orbit Girl Planet, and my yummy beef steak was calling me.

So I can’t be too hard on the inked folk, I happen to like some of them. But on the other hand, the comments section under Neo’s post is lit up with all sorts of gems:

I find it interesting that tatoos have gone, over the last thirty or forty years, from being a rare and daring defiance of societal norms to a commonplace. Once a tatoo told the world that you were someone out of the ordinary: a United States Marine, a Hell’s Angel or someone with sexual tastes that could get you arrested in most states. Nowadays, a tatoo most often indicates that you were able to nag your mom into driving you down to the mall, taking you to Tats R Us and putting the charge on her Visa.

++gigglesnort++ C’mon tattooed people, admit it. That’s funny. And it’s true.

One of the ways we might assess that a society has become soft and spoiled, is the observation that its demands have begun to take on the profile of the supplies. In other words, lots of people “need” something simply because it’s there to be had. What’s been going on with tattoos would be an apt illustration of this. The tattoo ink artist paying the rent by swiping the credit cards held by guilted and bullied small-em moms, ultimately, is a solution in search of a problem. Kids want the tattoos because the tattoos are there. And all the other kids have them. Because they’re there.

I wonder how the early-adventurers in this tattoo-fad wave feel about it, having endured not only real physical pain before it was cool to go in and feel it, but the exclusivity of having been inked which has, since then, deteriorated into something that no longer involves exclusivity. No point asking Mrs. Freeberg. If she excels at anything, it’s at figuring out what she wants put where, and why, all by herself, without regard to what others will think about it. Makes things very easy on the husband, especially during our upcoming move, I think. We don’t have some henpecked boob spending all afternoon sliding a couch around with a bubbly airhead chirping away about “No, maybe over here, no maybe over there…”

I digress. I thought this was good too:

Generally, the bigger the tats the less interesting the person.

Generally yes. Works in my wife’s case. Not in Taylor’s.

This one is the clear winner:

A tattoo is a permanent response to a temporary situation.

I’m not a particular fan of tattoos, though, like you, I don’t mind a few, especially if tasteful. Ones on the neck, lower back, highly visible, not so much. The thing is, so many young people do not realize that these, along with piercings, are going to be a detriment to getting a job. Not that many hiring bosses want someone who is all tatted up dealing with their client base.

A friend of my dad’s was a big big time lawyer, founding partner for a big shot firm in NYC that was instrumental in representing companies from Japan and South Korea as they entered the US market. Several of them are some of the biggest names in entertainment products, including Sony. He kept his hand on the pulse after retirement, and told a story from about 5 years ago where the managing partner was interviewing a young lady who was one of the top grads from her Ivy League law school. Interviewed great. But, she had a tattoo on the back of her neck and wrist. When they took their jackets off, he could see one on her shoulder blade (it didn’t help that her shirt was almost see through). He couldn’t hire her, because clients would not want to work with this vision. This was a position that would see her making hundreds of thousands a year within short order.
- William Teach | 06/22/2014 @ 08:54
I dream of a world in which kids don’t need to be reminded of things like that; they’re already thinking about it.
- mkfreeberg | 06/22/2014 @ 09:14
Scared Straight
As a prerequisite to getting a tattoo, any person under the age of 35 shall engage in volunteer service at “retirement” communities. bathing folks from the sixties who were tattooed around The Summer of Love era. MOST of them will be female, and the males will NOT have military logo “ink”, and most will NOT have prison, gang, or other high visibility tats, but the results MAY be inspirational.
Maybe a coffee table book on “Tattoo styles of the violently deceased, and the wounds they died from” from a few big city police coroner labs may be helpful?
- CaptDMO | 06/23/2014 @ 17:55
I do not like tattoos, and would never get one, but I like many of the folks who wear them. My biggest problem with them is the attitude that the tattoo will be what you want forever. Like an opinion, I don’t want anyone to think I will hold it dear forever. All of my tattoos are on the inside, and they’re not for public consumption.
- wch | 06/24/2014 @ 05:39
U.S.M.C. on my back, Baltimore, MD, 1982.

Would to it all over again…only larger…

I think tats are like a lot of things in life, some a nice, some not so much. But at the end of the day it’s the person’s personal choice.

We still believe in personal choice right?

Too many of my fellow conservatives go all judgmental with the folks and their tattoos. And also the piercings, cloths etc. I usually am pretty casual with all that. My motto is “They can look like whatever they want to as long as they’re not lying, cheating, stealing or killing”.
- tim | 06/24/2014 @ 09:06
Might do it again Tim?
1. TY. For lack of just the right word, “Bragging Rights” tattoo, acknowledged.
2.Well OK, but Armed Forces (I ASSUME including USMC) may no longer find certain recruits acceptable, based simply on inappropriate (face, neck, forearms, hands, below the knee) ink.
I suspect (ie)gang, or other “bad boy ink”, and attitude, is the target, collateral damage gets swallowed up by PC policy.
- CaptDMO | 06/24/2014 @ 15:43

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TattoosSunday, June 22nd, 2014

Tattoos
Sunday, June 22nd, 2014