tattoo thread

  1. tell me about your tattoos
  2. tell me about tattoos you’re thinking about getting
  3. give haley advice on babby’s first tattoo

i’m thinking of starting with my ankle, upper thigh, or back shoulder, all of which are supposed to be lower-pain areas that are easy to cover. gonna go for something small and black, either a geometric design or some mercilessly appropriated and altered pagan symbol or both (at least i know for sure that i’m not doing anything with gendered associations, lol). my ground rule is that i have to be committed to a design for at least a month before i put it on my body forever, and i haven’t been able to do that in the last year of wanting to, so. hrmm.

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I’ll never have the guts to get a tat but if I do, it’ll be a joestar birthmark.

Today I saw someone on instagram had a tattoo of a full manga panel. That seems like a really cool idea.

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Only when I’m over 60

It’ll take me that long to make up my mind

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a few designs that are along the lines of what i’m thinking about (though obviously size/placement are different)


The only morsel of guidance I ever recall re: skinartz is go for thick bold lines since they’re more resistant to the blurs of decay


One day I’ll stop being lazy about getting a tattoo and get blasted like I know I will. Cover myself in abstract monsters and anime references and band logos and cyberpunk kittens. The fact that there are people with sleeves in my office make me less apprehensive to commit

i want bart simpson killing a cop on my ass


Yes, this is good. Those thin lines look neat in pics, but in about a year will look Not Good.

As for tats, I have two right now, and am probably getting more soon. One is the word ‘burning’ in TS Elliot’s handwriting on my chest, from one of the drafts of the Waste Land. I thought about getting this one a lot from when I was in college and took a course where all we did was read that and Ulysses and argue about them, so I did that one day like 2 or 3 years ago. My other tat is on my left inner wrist, and it is the paw print from my cat Ruggles, who I got when I went into grad school and who lived with me for almost 10 years before I had to put him down when he couldn’t eat without puking most of it back up every single day and weighted like 7 pounds. Below that is the word Mrkgnao!, which is how “meow” is written in Ulysses, which I was reading when I got him.

I’m debating my next one, but it might be some lyrics to a song? Not sure yet. I like getting words.


Left side of my chest. For my best bud and the only dog, Morrison. Not the best picture but hey.

That’s my only tattoo, and I’m not sure if/when I’ll get more. But! It is a pretty zen experience, getting a tattoo. I’m pretty (okay, very) sensitive to pain, but it was a meditative experience to get it. Didn’t hurt as bad as I thought it would, even.

My wife describes it as “getting scratched by a cat for two hours” and that’s about accurate, but you get used to it for sure.

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My rule is 5 years.

I’ve wanted a wasp tattoo for, uh, like 10. Maybe someday someone will push me into it lol

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do itttt

i have a circle on my inner knee

got it in Wellington w my two lovers, got on a plane like the next day wearing skinny jeans and i’ll never know how much of the prodigious bleedout was due to that and how much due to the tattooist being an amateur who hadn’t done stuff on other ppl before

kinda wanna get an isocoles right-angle tri a way up on the thigh, and maybe three straight lines running between the two shapes, but i haven’t been able to settle on the orientation of the triangle

something vaguely like ⊿ ≡≡ ○, not to scale


First line of the Iliad, in Greek, between my shoulder blades.

My rule for foreign-language tattoos is you have to be able to read and translate them yourself.

i have 4 tattoos.

about 5 years ago someone i hate gave me a stick n poke twin peaks tattoo. after ~4 years it was really stressing me out that the only tattoo i had was this one done by someone i hate and also like twin peaks is cool but not my fav so i decided to tattoo ‘oc’ (as in The OC aka my actual favourite tv show) on my leg also. since then i’ve also given myself some dumb foreign language ones: バカ (baka/idiot, evangelion reference) and 悶 (bored, faye wong reference). i like these two best.

that was my idea of I want if anything, just going through the gamut of shapes

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My sister is insane and was considering learning to do professional tattooing, so she just bought a tattoo gun, and now her and our roommate just casually tattoo themselves whenever they feel like it.


I have the dumb arm


Just the word instead of the whole line

Some weak ass shit

I haven’t seen my tattoo in years

your shit is some weak shit-ass imo

(I am talking here about your poop and your butt)

Yeah it ain’t great, honestly.