Death is the debt that all men must pay

Well I didn't lose my job, or I wouldn't have gotten a $320 (good tattoos ain't cheap and cheap tattoos ain't good) tattoo, although I learned that isn't necessarily true.

I went to American Inkwell a little before noon on Saturday, and Kalib was finishing up the sketch. He tweaked a few things and by the time he got his station set up and the stencil on me it was about 12:30. We started on the coffin. I had all this nervous energy since it was right on my sternum. I was expecting the blinding pain of my elbow, or spine, but it wasn't as bad as I thought.

We chatted about this and that as he worked. Being a Saturday, all kinds of people were coming in for consultations and to set up appointments. Luckily Kalib stayed pretty focused on my tattoo since it was so large.

We talked about how apparently tattooing is recession proof. They were booking people for the third week in May. Every day until then they were full up with appointments. I'd heard before that tattooing was recession proof, but this kind of proves it. Kalib brought up a good point that people don't just get tattooed when they are happy. When shitty things happen people get tattooed to mark the ocassion.

Here's the part of the story that all you Republican's will love. Two annecdotal examples of people "wasting" their money. One woman who came in said she could come in any time during a certain week because she was going to be on rolling layoffs that week. Not brining in any money, but she was going to get tattooed. I mentioned that to Kalib, and then a second woman came in and said she had been permanently laid off so she could come in anytime to get inked. We just looked at each other and laughed. Tell all your Republican friends about the lazy assholes who are gaming unemployement so they can go get peace and love in Japanese tattooed on them.

When we got to the black shadding it was the pain I had been anticipating. Grinding that big cluster of needles of the shader into my sternum was exrutiating. We wrapped things up around 4:45. Three or so hours under the needle was enough for me. Once this is healed we'll finish the black shading and add some color. I think it's pretty bad ass. Chest pieces are just hard, carved out of wood.