Hey, long time no post, huh? This is your good friend Pokee here again. I know it’s been a while since I chirped in and gave my ‘two cents’ worth, but I’ve been pretty busy lately trying to make the money to support my facial hair-style. Let’s skip forward now and get past all the niceties you are probably thinking with these brief answers; I’m fine, yes I’m still single, no I wasn’t fired from the bodypiercingnews.com, and the big one, again – I’ve been BUSY – ok?
I might have stayed busy and off the radar detector completely but lately I’ve had a little time to surf the web and what I’ve seen is a bit upsetting. For instance, this guy in Australia (of course it’s always Australia, right?) talked a tattoo artist into inking a giant penis on his buddy’s back (see link and pic above) as a joke or something. Well, I bet he stopped laughing real quick when the cops arrested him and put his wise-cracking ass in jail for a year. That’s right, you heard me right: A YEAR! Now, while I think it was very marjorly fu*ked up to do this to a buddy, but I think a year is a little harsh. I personally know someone who ended up with a penis (shaded and everything, much more complex than the outline here) from a SHOP artist who charged him over $300 for it to boot – and there was no one bribing him or anything – the artist did it because he could. And know what happened to him? NOTHING! Not only that, but the customer I know never even got his money back. Now THAT is not right and if I owned a shop and one of my artists did something like that I would have to take appropriate measures. Without giving up game here let’s just say that it wouldn’t surprise me if the next day such an ‘artist’ was found kneeling on the floor, naked and drowned with his head in a toilet bowl full of ink. (Not sure where that image came from but it just seemed appropriate in an Italian type of way!)
So what do you do to prevent yourself from getting ‘dicked’ over like this? Well, I have a couple suggestions for you on this. First, DON’T BRING A FRIEND with you – period. There’s no reason to make getting your tattoo a spectator sport, and more bodies actually get in the way besides contaminating the sterile field your tat guy or gal is supposed to be trying to create. Secondly, USE A MIRROR to check your work as it’s being done and after to make sure it’s right. If you ordered a cobra tattooed on your back and it ends up with a big bulbous head (with a ridge around it), has only one eye, and you see two large round things at the base of it – don’t pay for it and GET THE HELL OUT OF THAT SHOP! The truth is that such a place that is even capable of producing something like that is somewhere you and your money should not be at. Remember, bad artists are found in bad shops and they are probably cutting corners in other ways as well and probably not using sterile body piercing supplies or tattoo equipment either. My advice to you is to only go to a shop or artist that has good word of mouth (around it) and never ever take your eyes off what someone is doing with, to or on your body.
Now that I’ve knocked the dust off my keyboard I feel better. And I’ll try to contribute more often if my customers will leave me alone for a bit to do it.
That’s all I got for now,
Pokee
