I'll bail too

I could really give a shit whether or not my stocks did well, or not. I consider that play money. The bad news is that I just heard that Shiti-Group is acquiring Wachovia. Say what you will about Walk-all-over-ya, they've been really good to me and I've been banking with them for almost 15 years. Citi are a bunch of criminals in my book, and there is no way in hell! My paychecks are deposited directly into my Wachovia account; I have a line of credit that neatly covers overdrafts, and a small savings account that transfers a $1/U.S. from checking with every bar tab. I guess I should go down and talk to a local representative to get a feel for what they plan on doing for me before I pull out all my money, and I mean both dollars!

Because I'm dumb, let me get this whole bail-out thing down, nice and simple. . . Because a very few very wealthy individuals made very poor choices in the name of self-interest and self-aggrandizement they can hold the U.S. economy hostage and extort $700,000,000,000.00 from its taxpayers? Where the fuck is the accountability? Or better said, who do we lynch first?

Joining a tattoo community on LJ

I was shopping around for a tattoo community to join on LJ since I can't seem to log:into my job, I've got some time to kill. The artwork featured in some of these is amazing! Bold! Inspiring! I wish I were twig to LJ back in '96 when I was working for a tattoo artist. Kinda makes me wish I'd stuck with tattooing rather than making a career out of all the fall back stuff I've done to pay the bills, seeing that the whole country's going straight to the shitter, regardless. Fuck! I could'ave been a contender! But LJ and frivolous hobbies; two great flavah's that leave a taste in your mouth that're strangely familiar and absolutely nauseating.

Of course with all-things-tattoos comes all the snobbery, too. A lot of the communities that claimed to have "only one ru1e": (any variation of) Be nice, be considerate, be respectful, don't be a douche to your fellow ink-junkies, etc. - all had these banable offenses, too, including stealing designs.

Now, when I worked for a tattoo artist I always suggested to people who wanted to be tattooed, wanted original art, but didn't know exactly what they wanted tattooed on them that they take their time and do their research: Look at everything! Go on the internet and get a bunch of the tat-rags and look! Look! Look! "You'll get ideas of what's already out there, of what's possible, what's good, what's bad. Eventually you'll notice everything repeating, you'll come full circle and in the end still will have not found that perfect design for you. . . because it's simply not out there. It's in you!" Of course, this was (aside from being the truth) an absolute load bullshit that kept me from drawing endless iterations of Elvis riding a dolphin away from planet earth to a UFO full of unicorns on a dot no bigger than a U.S. nickel. Yes, it kept them occupied and me from illustrating the contents of their diseased little minds, but it was also when I realized that tattoos are a kind of iconographic language all their own. They say as much about the the culture of the individual sporting the ink as they do about the individual, themselves. There are endless roses, and daggers, and skulls, and hearts, and banners proclaiming love of country, mom, and "Die you Bastard!" Not because of who I believe I am or who of you are but because of who we are. And this is how it's supposed to be. Many times a design comes straight off a wall. Because it's perfect. It's flash. There is nothing new under the sun.

Being an excellent thief and pretty goddamn good designer I stole a lot of designs, altered all of them to either fit the limb or the personality of the intended wearer. I also did quite a few designs that were "totally original™" and those designs have been called everything from "genius" to "ridiculous" and to be honest, some of the more ridiculous ones are walking around living in the flesh as I type this, free as. . . well, whatever the hell they are. But I put them out there, nonetheless without a single bullshit "©", knowing full well that if they're really as good as the people who love them believe then they're gonna be stolen.

Or rather, as I'd like to think, they'd be incorporated into the tattoo lexicon and tradition that spans the entire breadth of human history. It'd be like coming up with a new letter for the alphabet, and not just because X and Q aren't redundant enough.

Wow, that would be an honor. Not a slight. . .

But this post isn't about co-opting personal or public imagery. I didn't find anything I'd designed in any of these communities, not that I was looking, nor did I even see anyone I knew. Even when the photography was less than excellent the art was both marvelous and goofy. For me it was the litany of wanking on and on over matters of taste and personal choice that made me realize that I'm better off to stick to my gardening community where I can get sound advice, both factual, subjective, and sometimes even relevant to a tattoo design - Plucked straight from your gardenz, bishes!

I don't have that much time to kill.