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You will be emancipated. Resistance is futile. Chris Krahn of Boise Tattoo made this tattoo for Michael Vellotti. Krahn’s website is worth a look. He has some really interesting pieces of work there, including one of Benjamin Franklin as an Old West robber. Link | Artist’s Website
Ten high school friends, upon graduation, decided to get tattoos of puzzle pieces that fit into each other:
After graduating high school, myself and 9 of my best friends got puzzle pieces on the side of our ribcages to represent our commitment throughout middle school and high school. Most of us had been friends since 6th grade, some before. We all got something inside our puzzle piece to make ours unique. All the pieces fit together, and we had a blast getting them.
Zane Whitmore of Seattle was pierced through the flesh on his shoulder blades four times, and then hung from these piercings onto a hot air balloon. He floated around California’s Long Valley Caldera for seventy-five minutes, suspended ten thousand feet over the ground:
The stunt was part of a Portland film production company’s filming of a feature-length documentary called Feet Off the Ground. Planning for the hot air balloon ride took about two years.
“This balloon suspension is really the culmination of several years of immersing ourselves in the body modification and suspension communities,” Matt Morgan, co-founder of film production company Precarious Egg and one of the producers of the film, said in a press release describing the project.
Link -via Boing Boing
We’ve posted clever Hello Kitty tattoos before, such as Hello Kitty Jesus, Hello Kitty Hannibal Lecter, and Hello Kitty Darth Vader. Here’s a unique take on the motif: the outline of famous cat as the canvas for a nautical scene. Link
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Martin Mireles has been paralyzed from the neck down for nearly twenty years. He can maneuver a mobility chair by steering it with his mouth, but a new magnetic tongue stud developed by researchers at the Northwestern University School of Medicine makes it a lot easier:
Mr. Mireles, 37, tested the equipment one recent afternoon by guiding a wheelchair through an obstacle course lined with trash cans. Mouth closed, he shifted the magnet to travel forward and backward, left and right.[...]
To operate the system, the user wears a headset with sensors that pick up magnetic signals from the tongue ring. Moving the tongue to the mouth’s upper left corner, for instance, moves the wheelchair forward. (The researchers hope that in the future, touching each tooth could signal a different command, from turning on the television to answering the phone to opening a door.)
Researchers decided to use the tongue because they wanted to take advantage of some of the functions a severely disabled person still had. The tongue does not tire easily, they said, and it is not usually affected by a spinal cord injury because it is directly connected to the brain through a cranial nerve.
Link -via Gizmodo | Photo: Steve Kagan/NYT
Sigh. Why are people so weird? This woman got a massive tattoo of 152 of her nearest and dearest Facebook BFFs’ faces tattooed on her arm. As in, permanently etched onto her body. I hope none of these people are fair-weather friends; how does one unfollow a face inked into their skin?
This clever tattoo by Valio Ska makes good use of amputation scarring, don’t you think? Kudos to the owner for his sense of humor.
Certainly a good premise for a tattoo is an inspirational, heroic figure. Super Grover from Sesame Street will do the trick. This particular tattoo was made by Cecil Porter of Murrieta, California.
Link (main site is NSFW at times) | Cecil Porter’s Website
As a testament for his love of Chicago, this man had a map of the city’s train system tattooed on his arm:
I absolutely LOVE Chicago. It makes me so extremely happy and proud to call myself a citizen of this amazing city.
I got this because, not only is it such a staple of Chicago, but also because fellow Chicagoans can recognize it immediately.
Sheng Xianhui of Kunming, China went into a hospital to have gall stones removed. A week after surgery, his wife noticed a tattoo on his rear end. Sheng claims that the staff at Yunnan Stone Disease Hospital tattooed his backside with characters meaning “stone disease” while he was in surgery.
The hospital has now called police to try to evict Sheng – but he has welcomed the police involvement and asked them to investigate.
“I’m not leaving,” he said. “I’m worried that if I go out for even half an hour, the hospital will claim I had the tattoo done outside.
“But even if I wanted a tattoo, I wouldn’t want those characters and I wouldn’t want it on that part of my body.”
The hospital staff blames the marks on a possible allergic reaction. Link -via Dave Barry
Jully Nascimento from Brazil got this QR code inked on her arm. When scanned, it reads “hold on”. That’s the name of a song by Good Charlotte that was meaningful to her in her youth.
via Geeky Tattoos
Yes, really! The post isn’t mislabeled. This is tattoo of a protein named after the Sega video game character. The man with this image writes:
I got the tattoo because I am a cell biology student and love the ridiculous naming of proteins done by the geneticists which discover it. I figured, for my first tattoo, it might as well be something completely unique. I love it though, great conversation starter and very few people have any idea of what the hell it is at first glance.
Someday, we will tell our grandchildren of the chainsaw-augmented dinosaur menace of our youth. We will speak of the danger that was a part of our everyday lives — a danger that they will are free of because of our labors. And they will believe us, because we will create the Wikipedia entries necessary to back up the claim.
Link via F-Yeah Tattoos | Image: Joshua Ross
The whole Snow White story — well, the Disney version, anyway — is told in this lovely back tattoo. I’m not completely sure who’s responsible, but it’s been attributed to an artist named Ping who lives in Taiwan.
via Caramel, Carmel
We can assume that Jar Jar is so despised that trophy such hunting is legal even on Naboo. This tattoo has been attributed to Wes at Darkside Tattoo in White House, Tennessee.
via Look at This Frakking Geekster
In retrospect, it may have been a bad idea for Anthony Garcia to commemorate his first killing by having it inscribed on his chest. When a LA County homicide investigator was later looking through pictures of gang members, he noticed something important:
Each key detail was right there: the Christmas lights that lined the roof of the liquor store where 23-year-old John Juarez was gunned down, the direction his body fell, the bowed street lamp across the way and the street sign — all under the chilling banner of RIVERA KILLS, a reference to the gang Rivera-13.
As if to seal the deal, below the collarbone of the gang member known by the alias “Chopper” was a miniature helicopter raining down bullets on the scene.
Lloyd’s discovery of the tattoo in 2008 launched a bizarre investigation that soon led to Anthony Garcia’s arrest for the shooting. Then sheriff’s detectives, posing as gang members, began talking to Garcia, 25, in his holding cell. They got a confession that this week led to a first-degree murder conviction in a killing investigators had once all but given up hope of solving.
Link via SayUncle | Photo: LA County Sheriffs
+1 for originality. This tattoo mashes up Cthulhu and Rich Uncle Pennybags, the mascot from the board game Monopoly.
Would you like to have pointed ears like a Vulcan or an elf? There are doctors and body modification artists who will do it for you. Doctors warn that it’s essentially permanent, so be sure of your decision before going under the knife. There’s a video at the link from ABC’s morning show, which is labeled “Spock Ears for Kids”, though they’re no indication that children are getting the procedure.
Link via io9 | Image: ABC News | Previously: Pointy Ears
When we first posted about Rick Genest AKA Zombie Boy back in 2006 (before he completed his tattoos) , some of you wondered who’d hire him for a job. Well, how about walking the catwalk? That’s right – he’s now a fashion model for men’s fashion line MUGLER:
Yatzer has more: Link (warning: self-starting video clip with music)
Previously on Neatorama: Skull Face Tattoo | Skull Facial Tattoo Update | Zombie Boy Update
A wedding ring is symbol of commitment and permanence. A tattoo is commitment and permanence in itself. Some couples are skipping the jewelry in favor of matching or complementary tattoos on the couple’s ring fingers. And why not? You don’t have to remove it to shower, work with machinery, or have an MRI. It can’t be lost or stolen. It will never have to be resized or replaced. And you can design your own unique symbols! See a variety of wedding band tattoos in this list by Shaun Usher. Link
The Spoctocus can neck pinch eight people simultaneously and squeeze itself through the narrowest of Jeffries tubes with ease. This tattoo has been attributed to artist Daniel Limon of Tuscon.
UPDATE 3/31/11: In the comments, truth points out that deviantART user stablercake may be the original designer of the Spoctocus. Thanks, truth!
The Enigma machine was a series of encoding devices used by Nazi Germany and broken by Polish and British military intelligence before and during World War II. Ross submitted this photo to Geeky Tattoos of his tattoo, taking the form a wiring diagram for one of the Enigma machines.
Shelley Jackson is publishing her short story “Skin” in a unique format — tattooed on human skin. For several years, she’s been recruiting volunteers to get one word each of the 2,095-word short story tattooed on their bodies. Each word is written in a classic book font in black text.
It’s a transcendent activity for the author and the participants, as Jackson expresses in an interesting stipulation presented at the end of the volunteer agreement:
From this time on, participants will be known as “words”. They are not understood as carriers or agents of the words they bear, but as their embodiments. As a result, injuries to the printed text, such as dermabrasion, laser surgery, tattoo cover work or the loss of body parts, will not be considered to alter the work. Only the death of words effaces them from the text. As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words.
Link via Geekosystem | Image: YouTube user zzpiercedgirlxx
Photo: robstephaustralia [Flickr]
Remember the to-do list tattoo (that’s actually more like a notepad tattoo) we featured before on the blog? Well, Neatoramanaut Stephanie shared her own version here. She said:
I’ve got a to do list tattoo and I love it. It’s actually really useful. I figure that as long as I’m getting tattoos, I might as well have one that’s functional!
Reading Neatorama is curiously absent, but perhaps its so obvious that it doesn’t need jottin’ down Thanks Stephanie!
Update 3/22/11: Ah, that’s better now. Thanks Stephanie!
Photo: robstephaustralia [Flickr]
BTW, Stephanie said: "Tattoo by the wonderful Lelia at The Needle’s Kiss in Townsville, QLD"
Photo: overdue underdone [Flickr]
Flickr user overdue underdone has his own "Palm Pilot" (shouldn’t that be wrist pilot?) – a practical tattoo of a notebook/to-do list on his left wrist that lets him jot down notes and things to do.
Link – via Oddee, who has a list of other unusually practical tattoos
Miljenko Parserisas Bukovic, a newspaper seller in Mexico, is a big fan of actress Julia Roberts. So much, in fact, that he’s had her face tattooed all over his body 82 times:
He splashed out HUNDREDS of pounds on the tattoos after seeing Roberts in her film Erin Brockovich.
In the film Roberts plays a legal assistant who nearly single-handedly brings down a power company.
Miljenko, 56, said he wanted to get the tattoos after being inspired by various scenes in the Oscar-winning movie.
You can see several pictures of Miljenko’s tattoos at the link. I’ve left a puppy as the picture for this post because (1) The Sun doesn’t like other sites using their photos and (2) you might not want to see the pictures if you’re eating.
You’re welcome.
Link via MArooned | Photo by Flickr user tintedglass used under Creative Commons license
The real stories behind popular body-art symbols.
The Jerusalem Cross and the Dragon: A Royal Fad
England’s King E
dward VII started the royal tattoo craze in 1862. During a trip to the Holy Land, the then-Prince of Wales had a Jerusalem Cross inked on his arm. His son, the future King George V, followed in his father’s footsteps and got a dragon tattoo while visiting Japan. Then, on his way back to England, the prince stopped by the same Holy Land tattoo parlor his father had visited and got a Jerusalem Cross of his own. Other royal families soon followed the trend. During the Victorian era, the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, Prince and Princess Waldemar of Denmark, King Oscar II of Sweden, and Queen Olga of Greece all went under the needle.
The Anchor: A Sailor’s ID Card
Nothing says “ahoy!” quite like an anchor tattoo. Popeye has one on each arm, and Sir Winston Churchill sported one on his right bicep. The tried-and-true symbol conveys the bearer’s love for the sea. But in the late 18th century, the tattoo also served a practical purpose. During that time, almost all sailors received a “sailor protection certificate,” which carefully documented the tattoos on their bodies. If a sailor went overboard, the tattoos were a lingering proof of his identity, should the body be recovered. Today, most military navies still catalog their sailor’s body art for the same reason. (Image credit: Flickr user K Sandberg)
The Teardrop: A Prisoner’s Tale
An entire gen
re of tattoos can be found behind penitentiary walls, and one of the most famous is the teardrop. Until the 1990s, the tattoo typically meant that the inmate had killed someone. But in recent years, the significance of the teardrop has softened. Prisoners get the tattoo to commemorate someone who had died while they were locked away, or simply to represent the time they’ve served behind bars. The design has also ventured outside the prison population in the past few years, although not all that far; you can see teardrops on the faces of rapper Lil’ Wayne and singer Amy Winehouse. (Image credit: Flickr user Photog*Phillip)
Asian Characters: Lost in Translation
If you’re going to get Chinese or Japanese characters permanently inked into your skin, consult someone who reads the language. Basketball player Marquis Daniels of the Boston Celtics thought he’d gotten his initials on his arm, but instead he got a tattoo that reads “healthy woman roof.” And when singer Britney Spears got a tattoo of the Chinese word for “mysterious,” it turned out to mean “strange.”
So why is it so many tattoos get lost in translation? Flash sheets -the patterns used by most tattoo artists- are rarely fact-checked. Instead, they’re passed around informally from one professional to the next. Legendary tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, who started inking people in 1949, was known for a more cautious approach: He refused to tattoo foreign characters at all. If he didn’t understand it, he wouldn’t tattoo it. (Image credit: Flickr user Bobby Edwards)
Lambda: Gamer Pride
Recently, fans of Half-Life, a computer game series, have begun showing off new tattoos based on the series’ logo -a stylized, lower-case lambda. In the game, the Greek letter symbolizes resistance, but in the wider tattoo community, it signifies something quite different: “I’m gay and proud.” Back in the early 1970s, when the gay liberation movement was still growing in force, the homosexual community adopted the lambda as a symbol of pride.
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The article by Clay Wirestone is reprinted from Scatterbrained section of the January-February 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Subscribe today to get it delivered to you!
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!
Well, at least this tattoo serves a practical purpose. English Russia brings us several pictures of one man who decided to get an eye chart tattooed on his back.
Link via Copyranter
About 1 in 2.5 adults under the age of 40 has been inked. The Washington Post presents an interactive infographic illustrating the major styles of tattooing that can be found in the United States today. At the link, hovering over any area on the statue’s body shows a closer view of each style.
Link via Nerdcore | Image: Wilson Andrews, Bonnie Berkowitz and Alberto Cuadra/The Washington Post
This image has been going around the Internet for a few days, but thanks to Anime News Network, we now know who acquired these Pokémon balls subdermal implants. His name is Alex Finch, and he is a hardcore fan:
Finch spoke with ANN and stated that he has been a fan of the Pokémon videogame and anime franchise since he was in third or fourth grade, and that he chose to get six Poké Ball tattoos in reference to the number of Poké Balls which can be carried in the original videogames. He also noted that the tattoos shown are “just the beginning” as he plans to get additional tattoos of videogame, cartoon, and anime icons on the rest of the arm, including more Poké Balls.
Link via Geekosystem
