#1051 Tattle Tale

One of the more interesting social trends to emerge in the last decade has been body art. No longer the sole province of sailors and bikers, tattoos¾or tats as they are now affectionately called¾are adorning the arms, necks, and gluteal cleavages of all and sundry.
So it’s no wonder we are now hearing the horror stories of Generation Tat. Tattoos misplaced, misspelled, and just plain botched. Permanently. Because the more frequently you do something, the more chance there is for screw-ups. And the more lucrative an endeavor becomes, the more amateurs enter the market looking for a quick killing.
Which can literally happen in odd ways. There’s a piece of equipment used in the medical industry to sterilize instruments. It’s called an autoclave. In the “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” department we have the story of the clueless amateur tattooist who tried to use his microwave as an autoclave.
Sparks flew. Microwave exploded. Tattooist was blown from here to Tattooine. Yes, I said Tattooine. That Star Wars guy George Lucas was pretty psychic. Way back in the eighties he envisioned an entire planet name after tattoo folks.
The other thing Generation Tat appears to be good at is using their thumbs. I was watching one of them the other day. First, he had a thumb ring on. Then he was using his right thumb to slide it across his touch screen back and forth and up and down to find the “app” he needed to find out where he was with his GPS or something.
I could have told him. He was standing under a street sign.
Then he took out his thumb and wagged it at a passing car, which picked him up. As he was getting settled in the car he turned his phone device sideways and immediately started using both his thumbs to text something. Possibly a tweet.
And I thought, man, isn’t it lucky we evolved opposable thumbs in time to take advantage of iPhones and Blackberries? I guess its one of those inevitable things.
As Bobby Hart, morning DJ on 94.5 Roxy said, “If you give a bunch of monkeys iPhones, eventually they’ll call Shakespeare.”
America, ya gotta love it.