Atomic Nerds

I’m busy nipping my fingernails and overanalyzing about what I’m going to post at Marko’s on Thursday- I mean, I’m pretty sure I know what I want to do, but now I’m worrying because it’s really not quite in the same spirit as what’s been done so far, petty bullshit anxieties like that- so you get what my dog board got today, which is a silly collection of things we have learned while undergoing the process of becoming heavily tattooed.

- Your threshold of pain, like your strength or your reflexes, can be modified.

- Tattoo artists have some awesome stories. They are also one of the few professions left that has absolutely no problem with a jerk fee or a cool-customer discount, so behave.

- You know how you hate seeing the nth spiky tribal design, HotStuff devil, or barbed-wire armband? Chances are the artist hated drawing it, too.

- If your work is good, more people who see it will ask for the artist’s card than avoid you. Keep a supply of cards.

- On the other hand, if you want to be totally left alone in a store by salesmen until you’re ready to buy something, letting the tattoo show is a good way to do it.

- You know how there are lots of punk and metal covers to old vocal standards and classic rock, like “I’m Walking In Sunshine” or “My Boyfriend’s Back”? Turns out there are also lounge covers to punk and metal songs. “Trust in my self-righteous suicide” sounds VERY STRANGE coming from someone that sounds like Tom Jones. It will take your mind off the tattoo right quick, too.

- Pain is a very relative experience. I’ve had headaches that objectively hurt much much less than some portions of tattoo work, but were far more miserable experiences that I felt much sorrier for myself during because the pain wasn’t my idea, served no purpose, and I didn’t know when it would end.

- Conformation people will be mildly freaked out when you tell them you’re leaving early for a tattoo. Except the judge that was a Marine, who will want to see.

- Pain does funny things to your sense of humor, and your sense of humor does funny things to pain. Four hours of “Crikey” jokes after Steve Irwin’s death might be in unbelievably bad taste and you may feel guilty later, but you’ll still be glad you were laughing too hard to notice how much the tattoo hurt.

- It’s cheaper and more effective than therapy, because for one, the tattoo artist has much more screwed up stories than you do- trust us- and for another, analyzing your problems under physical duress helps put them in perspective.

- “A healthy beard is key.” (Its name is Clarence. All you need to know about Clarence is that you should fear Clarence.)

- The dogs can learn your tattoo-day behavior patterns with amazing speed. Grandma’s house! Oh boy!

For those that care, the latter process goes like this: our tattoo artist is in Albuquerque, which is an hour, hour and a half drive from here depending on traffic, and we also eat lunch there, so between the drive time, food time, and tattoo time we drop the dogs off at my in-laws’ for the day. Since we don’t have to rush home anyway, we also stop off at the homebrew store in Santa Fe on the way home. The homebrew store offers a discount if you use one of their cloth bags. So now, when the dogs see the brew bag come out, they start racing around in excitement because they’re staying with the in-laws’ for the day, which they love. It took us quite awhile to figure out how the hell they knew.

I’m sure you all feel more enlightened now.

Posted The Illustrated |