In other news. . .

Cara finished up a pretty damn big piece on a co-workers back yesterday. Its a solid black piece and it was her first time using as big of a needle group as that. In what it rapidly becoming standard she rocked it and I really only stood over her shoulder a few times as she tattooed and chatted away. Im very proud of her.

Any small doubt I had is now gone, she is gonna be good. She will certainly be good enough to rock the shit out of some flash and I have every confidence that with continued diligence and practice she will be customizing the hell out of some tattoos in short order.

I’m going to take a minute now to say NEENER NEENER to the haters who didn’t believe she could do it. IN yo face!

No one starts off awesome in tattooing (at least not as awesome as they will be after a few years), but with a good apprenticeship you move up the ladder of difficulty in lock-step with your skill level. I made the mistake early on of trying to do work that was way above my head, Cara wont be making that same error. For this, and many other reasons, I’m glad I never even thought about apprenticing anyone til i had a decade of tattooing under my belt.

Its such a dance of the technical, the artistic, and some undefinable magic that its almost impossible to articulate into words, it scares me to think that there are books purporting to be able to tell you how to tattoo. There is no way that could work without the personal attention of someone who knows whats up. I guess you could trial and error that shit, but my god is that rough on your customers and they end up with some shitty tattoos till you clunk along enough times to get OK. Ive seen one or two exceptions to this, but Ive also seen hundreds of self-taught tattooers who have 5 or 10 years in tattooing and they STILL cant do anything right, clean, or artistic. At this point i remain convinced that without an apprenticeship of SOME kind you are just trying to take one step forward while also taking two back.

Its neat to see how Caras painting is progressing with her tattooing, art feeds off of art. Even LOOKING at great art helps to carve those pathways in your brain i think. Its not like her painting helps her with the physical act of tattooing, rather it seems like the process of painting helps the process of tattooing. The way of looking at a blank page and thinking what will go there, and how it will interact with this other stuff is the same thought process with all art, tattooing or otherwise, so its gotta be a benefit.

Next up, im gonna throw some fine-line lettering action her way, on me!

Know what annoys me? lists.

not really, Actually lists are fun. But lest you think Im always sunshine and rainbows here’s a list of stuff that annoys me. So in honor of thanksgiving, here’s some shit I’m NOT thankful for. . .

• Quentin tarantinos foot fetish. Every goddamn movie of his has more and more close ups of feet. Touching feet, rubbing feet, uma thurmans feet. . . frankly its a little creepy that this barely talented dilettante hack gets to make the rest of us watch him wanking off to some poor actresses footsies.

• telling me about your pussy gettin exploits while im tattooing you. I really don’t care how many people you fucked, how hot they were, or how many you did at the same time. Really, I’m not impressed. Its kinda like telling me how long your last turd was. Save it for your other repressed Bro’s. The same goes for fighting stories.

• Alcohol. Unless its being used to disinfect something then Booze is the worst plague to hit mankind, ever. Its disgusting, horribly destructive, and the gateway to being a full time fucking asshole. Millions of self-righteous pricks wouldn’t dream of stepping into a ‘corporate’ Starbucks but gladly shell out billions of dollars a year to some fucked corporation like Coors or Busch who give money to anti-choice conservative political candidates. How a poisonous chemical that does nothing but quadruple the murder, rape, assault, and suicide rate became and remains ‘cool’ with otherwise intelligent people is a mystery to me. Ive got a LOT more to say about this fucking swill but there’s more to get through. . .

• Bitching. Yes I know I’m doing it now, but I’m talking about people whose only form of communication is one long bitchfest. Who done ‘em wrong, how unfair the world is, how they got it worse than everyone else. This is coming from people with money, a roof over their heads, people who love them and all they have room for in their tiny selfish minds is how it isn’t perfect enough!? You know the way you think every day carves neural pathways in your brain, you spend all day thinking your life sucks and sooner than later that will be the way your brain thinks its supposed to think.Sometimes it helps to share your personal problems, i do it too, but if it becomes your whole life you need to fix that crap.

• The ‘zinger’ news story. Real News is when a tsunami hits Thailand or when a bank gets robbed or a person shot in a gang fight. The story about the pastor who hates white folks isn’t news, the story about lady who abandoned her kids to get high isn’t news, the story of silly political correctness in some situation 12 states away isn’t news, the story about the bride who ran away isn’t news, the story about the Muslim suing a restaurant because he touched pork isn’t news. Those are ‘zinger‘ stories, the kind of bullshit you find on Bill O’reilley, FOX, or the shitty Drudge report and they are usually picked up and used by those with an axe to grind. For these retreads, its as if one dramatic, but rare, event is somehow proof of their juvenile political worldview. If these clowns hate Muslims, then that one story about the Muslim guy getting all stupidly politically correct is the only ‘evidence’ they need to continue to be irrationally bigoted. If they think the world is doomed then the story about the teacher humping a student is all the ‘proof’ they need that everything is terrible and they can continue to be cynical and bitter. It isn’t news, its fuel for continued stupidity.

• Graffiti that isn’t art on peoples personal shit.I really do LIKE graf,  I’m impressed by a well done piece or a tag that has flow and skill. What annoys the shit out of me are people with garbage for writing style putting their crap up on some old ladies building or etching some small mom and pop businesses bathroom mirrors with some sketchy garbage. There are a shit ton of places to work out whatever ‘mommy didn’t hug me’ trip you have that forces you to write your own name everywhere that don’t involve fucking some innocent persons personal shit up.

• Waking up in winter with my mouth so dry it feels like I was eating cotton balls and dryer lint all night.

• Ginkgo trees shit berries! Ginkgo trees are beautiful and they are narrow so they work well in small parks, but they also drop truckloads of these orange berries in fall that smell like if vomit could take a shit. If you get one drop of this shitberry juice on your shoe you might as well burn the goddamn things because you will smell like you crapped your pants all day. On top of that, every pinhead who hasn’t ever seemed to notice how bad these goddamn berries smell will say something like “hey check your shoe, i think you stepped in dog poop” and when you tell ‘em its the hellshitberry they look at you like your making it up. Like you really like dogshit on your shoe and youre trying to hide it! Look re-re, if I had shit on me id say “oh i got shit on me” , I would NOT come up with some sci-fi magic stink-berry story just for kicks. I want to get a bag of those berries to rub on the face of the next person who doesn’t believe its the ginkgo curse that stinks so bad.

• Being fat. Goddamn am I sick of thinking about being fat. Its so fucking annoying to be self-conscious, I’m WAY less so than i was but even the fact that i have to spend 2 seconds of my day feeling bad because I don’t have “abs” (if those things even really exist) is such a waste of good time and energy.

• 90% of movies. What the fuck, even just going by the law of averages then at least 50% of movies should be watchable, right? The fact that movies are horrible garbage the VAST majority of the time means that I don’t even bother to watch the silly things anymore. Every time I try I feel more and more like some evil motherfucker took that two hours of my life that ill never get back and that my $10 will go to fund more a)not funny comedies featuring the kind of stupidity and jock-cock humor that makes me want to punch adam sandler b) depressing shit that will bum you out for a month featuring some abused lady, tortured kid, or slow death by disease or drugs. . . look if Trainspotting can be all about heroin addicts and STILL be such a good movie then the rest of you fuckers have no excuse to just bum a guy out like that and c) the goddamn heist movie where the scumbag shitheel criminals who do horrible shit and fuck people over are the ‘heros’. That can eat a trainload of dicks. Yea, Fuck movies.

• the craaaaazy junkie/drunk who rings my buzzer at 11 at night looking for some person who used to live here to buy drugs off of. Motherfucker will ring it 40 times til I come down and tell him to fuck off!  I can understand it once, maybe even twice if the meth has cooked your brain that much, but 3 and 4 and 5 times would earn you a basebal bat to the nog if i wasnt such a peaceful nice buddha guy these days, motherfucker.

• My dog jumping on my head every-time try to hug or kiss Cara. Look you little shit, I know your jealous but I CAN COOK AND EAT your little ass. Give a bro some space or its bar b que chihuahua time.

*Whew* all done for now, but it is Thanksgiving so I might be adding more after some quality family time today. . . .