I have a date for some ink in about 2 weeks, but nothing yet! I like your new one. Very cool.

Oh, cool! What is that, Radio Moscow? Prague? Radio Free Europe? ;)
Me, no new ink... Slowly working on a new design, but nothing concrete as yet.

Ohhh, I like it! Nicely done.

I've been wanting another tattoo for a while. I want a text/word and hadn't been able to come up with one. I think I'm going to go with "diabetic" since I am. I'm thinking of having it done in brown ink on the inside of my left wrist. I just need to make sure that's what I really want to do and to find a nice font.

Any yeas or nays or advice about this idea?

deborah, I like the idea - I'd be more inclined to find some clever symbol or image to represent it rather than the word, but I could see the impact of having it spelled out, too.

FYI, check your handy AskMe for some opinions on brown tattoos.

The last time I had a tattoo session, my artist ranted for quite some time about no-outline tattoos, the difference between inks and pigments, and the long-term prospects of anything that doesn't have a black outline.

He might be being alarmist, and he's certainly a bit of a stickler when it comes to doing tattoos that will age well (he refuses, for example, to do pixel stuff), but these seem to be reasonable concerns.

Here's a question I've always had about tattoos. Why get one on your back, where you can't see it? I know it's common, but I've never understood it.

Also, I'm not judging. I'm honestly curious.

(And yours is really cool, myke.)

Well, strategic placement of tattoos is a long and deeply personal conversation, and I suspect we'd all answer a little differently, but that's what MeCha is for, I guess. :-) So here's mine.

Personally, I already have one shoulder tattoo, but something told me that I should save the other arm/shoulder for something bigger, so I had to find a different spot.

I chose the shoulder blade because (pardon the overshare) it's an erogenous zone of mine, and I like showing off my back. Plus, it's on the opposite side from my shoulder tattoo, so there's some balance going on there.

I can see my shoulder blade well enough in the mirror - it's not set so far back that I can't admire it at the gym, for example, since it isn't completely covered by my tank top. And it intrigues other people who only kinda half-see it. I love talking ink with other people, so I expect it will be a conversation-starter at clubs and such.

And I think hidden tattoos are nice - a little extra bit of intimacy for the people you choose to share them with...

Ooh, personal answer, good idea. I don't have any back tattoos. But after I finish with my arms and chest, my back will probably be next.

Other people's reasons might include the facts that the back is one of the larger uninterrupted 'canvases' on the body, and one of the areas which changes least with age. Also, it can be easily covered by regular clothing. All of these things appeal to some folks.

That all makes sense. Thanks.

There's such a generational split with Tatoos. I don't think that I currently know a single person my age (44) or older with one. The only people that I've met with them who were older than me were either in the military or bikers. Nothing against them, my wife has one, I just think that it's interesting that there seems to be a such a split between us boomers and GenX.

octo, a good friend of mine (who is 50) made the same remark to me last week when we were discussing my then-imminent new ink. Of course, he has a small one on his arm, but it's a fairly simple, low-key outline job.

I'm not so deeply versed in ink culture, so I can't wax eloquently on the nature of its emergence in the last few decades, but that's more good fuel for the MeCha fire. Anyone? :-)

(If for no other reason, I also love the sensation of tattooing itself - I started to laugh almost immediately from the endorphin rush as she started in on me.)

Thanks for the AskMe link, myke. I had no idea that brown would be such a controversial colour. I want it because it would go best with my skin tone. It doesn't matter if it has to be a really dark brown; I just don't want it to be black.

I've been thinking about adding the Rod of Asclepius to the tattoo. The thing is that I want to keep it fairly small and unobtrusive. Decisions, decisions...

Octo - I have a sis-in-law who is 46 and her husband who is 54. They both have tattoos and neither one were in the military nor are they bikers. SIL got her first one at 40.

The woman who did my tattoo (and elizard's as well), she has an upper-arm piece that's really amazing - beautiful detail and shading and no black outlines. She's had it for a few years (not sure how many), but the colours are as good as they ever were, she said. My tat is green and red, and just has to be retouched to fill in some blank areas and have some white ink put on it. I was told that as long as it's kept out of the sun, it'll last the same as black ink.

Can I please show you mine? They aren't super-new, but I enjoy any opportunity to show them off.

I need to get some more stuff on there, but I have sadly run out of imagination. Your thoughts would be welcome.

There's such a generational split with Tatoos. I don't think that I currently know a single person my age (44) or older with one. The only people that I've met with them who were older than me were either in the military or bikers. Nothing against them, my wife has one, I just think that it's interesting that there seems to be a such a split between us boomers and GenX.

Does 1968 / 40 years old classify me as a boomer? No WAI, I always thought that was the older people, post-WWII.

I also held off a long time on getting a tattoo, octothorpe, for most of my earlier life they were for bikers and prisoners. Once all the cool young kids started, though, I just had to jump on the bandwagon. I did my palms because it seemed fairly unique. At the time I thought I'd be able to keep it hidden, but I get a lot of "hey, are those tattoos?" from relative strangers, so I guess that didn't work out quite as I expected.

Octo, I'm 45 and I have always considered myself Gen X, not a boomer at all - my older brother is a boomer; he got to be a hippie but for me, it's like that old Soul Asylum song
And we were too young to be hippies
Missed out on the love
Turned to a teen in the late 70s
In the summer of the drugs
I mean, hey, I'm the same age as Michelle Obama and she got interviewed by Time as a representative Gen Xer back in the 80s! Also, I have five tattoos, have never been in the military or barely even ever on a motorcycle.

I thought boomers were, like, my parents age (48 and up, in other words).

Oh, here's mine, more or less, plus a dahlia.

I just got one a week ago Tuesday, with plans for next Tuesday to have a very old one touched up. I don't have pics of the new one yet - I'm not sure but I may have reacted badly to the red in that tattoo. It just seems to have shed more color than any others. It still looks good, don't get me wrong, but it's been over a week and it's still sensitive. It's a Snoopy, to go with two other Snoopy tattoos on my right ankle.

Octo, when I got my first tattoo at 21, only bikers, strippers, and bad-asses had tattoos. I'm 41 now, and this newest tattoo was number 7. My husband is 43, and has 10 (although we disagree and he says 15 because he counts each Chinese word as one and a tattoo do-over twice). I remember walking through the mall after my first tattoo (on my back shoulder blade, a Pegasus of my own design) and hearing the whispers of the teenage girls. Shocking! It "just wasn't done" by "nice people", and was pretty much as rebellious as I ever got.

Now, my mom has two (the first in her late 50's, the other at 60), one of her sisters has several, and I find it becoming more and more common. Though my mom got grief recently at her new job when they saw her ankle tattoos for the first time. (a fairy and a boat with a dolphin, nothing terrible). Most people reacted like "Wow, she's more of a free spirit than I thought!" But one woman told my mother she should be ashamed of herself. Can you imagine?

I was born in 1964 which is either the very last year of the baby boom or the first year of GenX but since I'm the baby of the family and my sisters were born in '53 and '56 respectively, I've always identified more with the boomers. Again, I hope that I didn't insult anyone who's older than me with a tattoo, I was just observing that the cultural norm changed pretty quickly. I remember in the early nineties when you started seeing them everywhere and it made me feel like an old fogey in my late-twenties. Every once in a while, I'll think about getting one but I'm terrified of needles which is why I've never gotten a piercing either.

I was 30 when I got my first tattoo. I worked in the same office as my mum. Quite a few of our older cow-orkers wanted to know why mum gave me permission to get the tattoo. WTF?!

Great tats all. MyGothL, love that 'surf' on your backside, that's where I'd get a Moko, I think they're frickin' beautiful. [Start with Gallery 2...] I'd love to go to NZ and discuss the design with the artist in person. Meatbomb, your hand... yoiks, that's a statement indeed — v. cool, Chef Lynn Crawford [Food Network] has one on her palm, I think it's a bar code.

I had an ear pierced when I was 15 and no one had them then [I'm 53 now — but not of mind], seems so passé — I'm looking for an amber ear plug instead, but wear powder blue painted toe nails with flip flops ['cause they're manly] :) yeah, still a rebel./

This weekend,
I attended my niece's graduation. A very small private girls school. As her first nanny pointed out to me [she owned a Harley — First Nations heritage — tats¿ I don't know, 2 toe rings though], not one had a tat showing [all wore bared shoulders]. 80% of them were going on scholarship's somewhere, but all were going to University.
Don't judge the youths, ok¿
nor the old folks.
Just don't judge, period.

This is my latest one, for my birthday last September.

aliceshoe, you want a moko? Chisels and all?

I'm in my late thirties. (X-er) My younger friends with tattoos have a very good point when they say, "by the time I want to get rid of them, technoloy will be better and it'll be no problem."

I have no tattoos, partly because of theater gigs - gotta cover that stuff up, somehow.

The one I wanted, if I would have done it, would have been a dagger through the heart.

Oh, and forbid I ever have a mastectomy, but if I did (and I have no reason to think I will, given family histoy), I would not reconstruct, but tattoo over the scars. The stuff I've seen of that is the coolest.

gaspode, great new ink./ [don't tell me you're the 29th of September]
I'd be up for the for the rush. Chisels and all.
After all, it's about the artist you choose to do the work for you. Any tat hangs on that, the execution. It wouldn't be just another 'tribal' tat for me, you see.
I like the idea of the process and it's meaning for me.
Just love their design sense, absolutely brill.

alicesshoe, I can think of a few people who sell amber body jewelry. These folks, or perhaps these folks, are probably my favorite.

My boomer (and older- what came before boomers?) parents both have tattoos. They may have qualified as bikers or bad asses in their day, though.

I have had no interest in getting piercings that would use plugs, but those amber pieces are gorgeous.

Thanks for that, box. They look great.
I'll need to throw in a LED light inside to make 'em look so cool.
[I jest]

I can certainly understand why people might not like the appearance of large-gauge piercings (though I think that many people can be pretty jerky when expressing this particular aesthetic preference), but, these days especially, there are some really beautiful pieces of jewelry being made for them.