...and other sunday morning jackassery
the bastard was on his way home on sunday morning (yeah, home, sunday morning) when it had occured to me that i didn't feel like going home.so i decided to go hunting. now while i do work for a hunting magazine and hunting is alive and well and living today in america's heartland, i don't hunt. at least not in the traditional sense. you see, i like to hunt oddities, idiots, hipsters. anything that strikes my fancy that particular day. also, the bastard is going to be out of town for the hunter safety course my job is offering so, it's not like i could go hunting for small creatures anyway. so i go to my usual hunting ground...the mall.
i actually park in the back of the mall because it's less frustrating and because you never know what's to buy. but my actual prize at the time was coffee which was at the front of the mall which gives me a chance to get the lay of the land. and it hit me at the coffee line.
neck tattoos.
now this fine fella has himself a collared shirt for his mall job and right above the collar is this prison neck tattoo of what i can only assume is his girlfriend/baby mommy's name. unless of course his name is tina or whatever "t" name was written on his neck. it wouldn't make sense for him to have his own name on there, that would be idiotic. then again, that would imply that having a neck tattoo of anyone else's name
wasn't idiotic. actually it was earlier in the morning i was having a discussion with my ladyfriend about how i don't want the company to move to florida or how i wouldn't want to go there mostly because while there is alot of fine fine work outside of the new york publishing arena in america, working outside of new york hobbles your career a little bit. this isn't the case internationally because new york publishers will hire a designer from australia or great britain sight unseen because the new york publishing industry is full of anglophiles (that and the fact of the matter is both great britain and australia bring a fresher perspective in a sea of esquire magazine imitators).
anyway, this took on a new meaning looking at this character, and the woman who was taking my coffee order with big ole script on her neck, and the other two people i saw with neck tattoos. why would you hobble your chances in life. if you go to college for 4 years (not that i'm saying any of these chuckleheads went to college but maybe they do) what makes you think that some stodgy middle manager of human resources is going to give you the time of day. i'm not saying it's right, i'm just saying.
also, while i think tattoos are kind of cool and all, they've become really pedestrian. everyone has one and that makes them less unique. celebrities have them. bikers have them. apparently coffee barristas have them. it almost seems like nothing is taboo anymore. nothing is cutting edge. nothing is risky anymore. and that makes the world seem that much less interesting. on the same token, it makes the bastard think about this movie i was watching last week called
once were warriors in which two sons in a maori family are sitting down to dinner. one son who is in a traditional maori school learning the old ways says to his older brother how he likes his face tattoo. the older brother joined this street gang and wears a traditional face tattoo and black leather (i don't know how we got to this point, i missed the first 30 minutes of the film) and the tattooed brother asks if he wants one as well and the younger brother replies, "no thanks. i wear mine on the inside".
—the bastard
