CSotD: Untattoo You
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Day by Dave (AMS) reminds us that today is National Tattoo Removal Day, and I suppose the way you react to that information could be an indication of your age.
Whamond’s gag assumes a relationship between alcohol consumption, getting a tattoo and regret. The question isn’t whether that pattern exists. Of course it does.
The question is how common it is, which in turn prompts the question of who thought it was a good idea to have National Tattoo Removal Day?
My suspicion is that it is the result of intense lobbying by the National Association of People Who Make Their Living By Removing Tattoos, but that’s just a guess.
There are such people, and this article suggests that they’re staying employed, thanks to young women who regret showing ink in a bridal gown. But the piece doesn’t provide statistics to confirm that it’s really a trend.
And here’s an article that shows what you get if you ask about the possible carcinogenic effect of getting a tattoo, which is an incredibly lukewarm confirmation. It’s possible, yes, but unless you got your tat in a jail cell from someone using a Bic pen and a sewing needle, you shouldn’t lose sleep over it.
I suspect both articles were assigned by editors of advanced years for young reporters — possibly tattooed — to research and write.
Non Sequitur (AMS) takes a grumpy old person’s attitude towards tats, and I can relate.
Like Flo, I remember when tattoos were an act of rebellion, and, like Cap’n Eddie, I remember when Jay Leno was funny. For that matter, I remember when Flo and Eddie were Turtles, and if you got that reference, you, too, are very old.
I wrote a column about tattoos back in 1996, in which I said that the difference between tattoos and platform shoes was that it doesn’t cost $3,000 to get rid of a pair of platform shoes, and that I was glad my Nehru jacket and muttonchop sideburns had not been permanently attached.
However, I wasn’t snide throughout the entire piece and, while I assumed it was a passing fad, which it apparently wasn’t, I said that even if it were, a lot of people probably wouldn’t mind exhibiting a best-by date well after their youth had expired.
I even considered getting a tattoo, back when I was about 20 and the only people with ink, aside from Polynesians for whom it was traditional, were sailors, ex-cons and bikers. I had several friends with tats and they were neither Tahitian nor in the navy.
However, I was put off by the permanence because I expected to continue to change and didn’t want to wear a milestone of some person I no longer was.
For the record, I did have a Nehru jacket and sideburns, but only briefly, and I never owned a pair of platform shoes.
And I now have several tattooed granddaughters, which, if it’s cool with them, is okay by me.
In (Th)ink, Keith Knight turns the day into a political statement, and I would point out that even if you know what you’re doing, it’s hard to completely remove a tattoo without leaving a tattoo-shaped scar of some sort.
Dear Leader has indeed been trying to forget that he was ever associated with Project 2025, but Knight is correct in suggesting that the mark is permanent evidence of Trump’s poor judgment.
Though I’d be a little surprised at this point if Dear Leader still thinks substituting a picture of JD Vance would improve things.
The bridal-regret thing, BTW, is trending in the media, whether or not it’s actually trending among brides themselves. But if fad-happy editors assign enough articles on the topic, they’ll create some demand.
We’ll wrap up the topic with a quote from Kelly Ripa’s husband, because if not him, then who?
The first one I had, I don’t regret that I did it because it was meaningful to me because we went right to Chapel of the Bells, got married in Vegas, and we said ‘What should we do next?’ and I said, ‘Let’s go get tattoos.’
Having spent time picking on youth, let’s turn our attention to the other end of the timeline with this The Buckets (AMS) gag.
This would have been a much bigger problem back in the days of the local pharmacist. Our little town had the only pharmacy for 30 or 40 miles, and one of the pharmacist’s daughters was a classmate of mine. And then, when my kids were little, the drugstore was on the next block, so they could go have Lillian make them a milkshake while her husband, Jerry, filled prescriptions.
But that was before Rite Aid and Walgreens and CVS and the rest of the faceless chains bought out those locally owned pharmacies. I feel sorry for the pharmacists who work there, because you still need all the training but now you’re treated — and compensated — like The Help, which you are.
I certainly felt bad when Jerry and Lillian shuttered their store, because they were nice folks and good neighbors and kind to my kids.
But the upside of all that, relative to this cartoon, is that there’s no particular reason not to let Jeff Bezos fill your ‘scripts online at Amazon, because the people who own CVS and Rite Aid aren’t local, either, and at least, unlike Walgreens, Amazon will fill your prescriptions without judging your morality.
Besides, as Mia says in Pardon My Planet (KFS), this business of doing things in person is passé anyway. If you can meet and date online, you can certainly order your medications online, plus, if you never meet in person, it will reduce your number of potentially embarrassing prescriptions.
I’m not the only one taking a break from politics, though, like me, Tom the Dancing Bug can’t quite manage to escape making some sort of point even when he’s going for laughs. Like Lester the Jester, we’re just clowns, after all.
And you know what they say, “Many a truth is spoken in jest. Though not by Les.”
Finally, a heads up that Crabgrass (AMS) has just ended one of its extended story arcs, so this is a good time to jump aboard and see what happens next.
And how else could I finish today?
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