Posted on 06/02/2014 7:50:49 AM PDT by Phillyred
DALLAS-Thirteen needles are simultaneously zinging in and out of Adam Metzger’s shoulder.
The 27-year-old is unruffled. He stares unblinkingly out the storefront window of Taboo Tattoo, a studio in the Bishop Arts District. To his right, Cody Biggs shades blue into a square of the Texas state flag. His movements are sure, even.
The buzzing suddenly falls silent. Biggs pauses to dunk the handpiece into a thimble-sized plastic cup of ink, then turns back to his canvas. Metzger’s shoulder is pink and puffy, weeping streams of ink and blood.
“How are you doing, buddy?” Biggs asks, rubbing on ointment in counterclockwise circles.
“It doesn’t feel good, man,” Metzger responds. “But I’ve definitely felt worse pain.”
Plenty of people know what he’s been through. As of 2012, 1 in 5 adults had a tattoo, up from 14 percent in 2008, a Harris Interactive Poll found. And when safety standards are followed, tattoos are usually trouble-free.
But tattoos can pose health risks that many people might not consider:
Unsterilized tools or contaminated ink can lead to infection, scarring, blood-borne diseases and other, less-obvious issues.
“It’s becoming much more common, but you still have to be careful,” says Dr. Bryan Wasson, an internal medicine physician at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center at Irving, Texas. “A tattoo is like a minor surgery.
You clean and shave the skin like you’re going to operate. You use surgical tools. There are dangers. So be careful in your selection.”
During the procedure, a gun with needles punctures the top layer of the skin, depositing pigment in a deeper layer called the dermis. As the skin heals, the ink remains trapped below the surface.
“When you get a tattoo, you bleed,” said Dr. Donna Casey, an internal medical specialist at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital...
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Theodore Dalrymple (a doctor) had a piece recently that there is a type of TB that can be contracted through tattoo ink and is undetectable until the victim is infected.
California passed a law regulating tattoo parlors that went into effect last July. Odd you can’t get your hair cut unless the person has 2000 hours of education leading to a license.
I grew up in a neighborhood where a few of my neighbors had numbers tattooed on their forearms. Any interest in a tattoo went right out the window then and there.
Odd, as we alledgedly become more civilized, (people want to engage in sexual perversion, tattoo and scarify their bodies, pierce their bodies, stretch their earlobes out of shape, and paint the cave walls (grafitti),) the more primitive they become.
They may have got them when younger too.
When I was a teen lots of bad things going on with high school kids and young adults, smoking, keg parties (drinking age was 18), drugs , but I rarely saw tattoos. Especially the big ugly ones,
It reminds me of that trash family show Rosanne.
I am always intrigued by the people who spend whatever it takes to put tattoos on their backs where they can’t even see them. Then too, there’s the women who ink intimate places where no one would normally see them. I wonder if there’s some sort of temporary sexual thrill with having that done.
Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor imprint any marks on you: I am the LORD.
I do not think anyone is saying there should be a law. Tattoo yourself all you want, but do not expect to be treated as though you do not have one.
Someone will say you cannot judge a book by its cover. You certainly can and often you should. Chuckie’s swastika in the center of his forehead is fair warning not to invite him to Thanksgiving dinner.
Some people are clearly labeled poison.
Enjoy.
Exactly. You want to be a nonconformist these days: Don’t get a tattoo. Don’t get piercings. Don’t destroy your ear lobes. Don’t wear your trousers half way down your ass.
Focus on getting grades, doing your homework, being polite and respectful. Go to church and get something out of it.
You will be the real non-conformist among your peers. And probably among the most successful.
add primitive “music” like rap to your list...
In the words of Jimmy Buffet:
She was no marine back from the Philippines
She was their pride and joy, their incarnation
Her parents viewed the chief with shock and disbelief
Looking for some other explanation
The Indian on her back was poised for an attack
She said a tattoo is a badge of validation
But the truth of the matter is far more revealing
It’s a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling
Permanent reminder of a temporary feeling
Amnesiac episodes that never go away
It’s no complex momemto it’s not set of revealing
Just a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling
Firebird Scrambler 650 Twin Carb, upswept exhaust pipes, only 500 imported that year, pretty Rare. From Shusters Cycle in Southington Ct. Sold my Royal Star 500 to get it. Still runs Great!
Hideous!! He should have sued the “artist”.
Some enterprising individual is going to develop a way to remove tattoos cheaply and easily.
And they will make a fortune.
My wife sees this in the ER all the time. Tattoos and infected piercings long after they've been done. Mess with your body and it messes with you.
I think Tattoos were may more popular just a few years ago.
There is a tattoo parlor not far from here, sometimes I really wonder how they stay in business, it’s a bunch of them too. They took over a small wooded office building so the building itself is actually nice.
Maybe it’s a good business to get into but I don’t see it.
I agree.
Going to have a lot of older women cursing the day they got them.
My wife sees this in the ER all the time. Tattoos and infected piercings long after they've been done. Mess with your body and it messes with you.
Actually, I also could not care less, but as these folks age, their skin will become a sorrowful, ineradicable, washed out mess.
“It’s a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling”
So very true. I never thought getting a tatto was a good idea. It binds you emotionally to the past or makes you captive to an idea/thought/emotion and prevents you from moving forward. I know others have different views on tattos. I just never wanted to be bound by one.
How did I manage to cross the world in submarines, planes and tanks and never get a damned tattoo?
__________
Intelligence?
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