Friday Bonus Cephalopod:I want one!


Last weekend, I met a young woman who asked me to sign a picture of a friend’s tattoo (not the real tattoo, unfortunately!), and it’s so pretty I said I’d have to include it on the Friday Cephalopod. Here it is:

i-6662de1e452bdfec24439528d794c8bf-octo_tattoo.jpg

(Eat your heart out, Carl!)

Comments

  1. Fred says

    That is certainly an attractive tattoo! The octopus looks quite content but then it does have a nice location.

  2. Genuinely Doug says

    Hmm. You forgot to include your signature in the picture. Or, uh, is that NSFW?

  3. Tony says

    Always good to see more people with octopus tattoos. My brother, another friend and I all have (non-matching) octopus tattoos we got around the same time.

  4. Hank Fox says

    Eh.

    I still say:

    Tattoos are for people who want to be noticed — but without going to the trouble of actually becoming interesting.

  5. dimestore says

    Eh.

    I still say:

    Generalizations are for people who want to sound knowledgeable — but without going to the trouble of actually learning anything.

  6. tsig says

    A TW and now nakkid groupies. And you never had to learn to play the guitar.

    It’s no wonder you got thrown out from where righteous Christians were gathered for their 60 minutes of hate.

  7. Bill Dauphin says

    nakkid groupies

    That’s nekkid!

    The classic line (from Roy Blount, Jr., IIRC) about the difference between naked and nekkid:

    Naked means you ain’t got no clothes on; nekkid means you ain’t got no clothes on and you’re up to somethin’!”

  8. Gurgel says

    #10

    Just pointing out what a frustrating experience it must have been for PZ. He didn’t get to fondle a real octopus. Not even a pretty girl with an octopus tatoo … just a picture of a pretty girl with an octopus tatoo. Well, a picture of part of one. And it’s too cropped to tell if she’s pretty.

  9. tlb says

    As the friend who asked him to sign the picture I can tell you that the tattoo bearer is both interesting and cute, despite what she says.

  10. DrFrank says

    Eh.

    I still say:

    Overreactions to jokes are for people who like to be noticed — but without going to the trouble of obtaining a sense of humour.

  11. JJ says

    As another friend of the tattoo owner, I will just send out an fyi to the haterz out there: she *will* cut you. That being said, she is indeed interesting and pretty and awesome. It’s rare that I get to see the whole tattoo. I usually only get a peek at a tentacle or two.

  12. Gurgel says

    I didn’t mean it like that, Claire. Your tattoo is gorgeous. As for “interesting”, that’s a dubious thing to be, anyway. Hell, Ken Ham is “interesting”.

  13. Pierce R. Butler says

    If that’s claire meanie in the picture, she’s lying: how could healthy, young and female (and illustrated!) not be interesting?

    (except possibly to gay males and hetero females, but those are both incomprehensible to the rest of us…)

  14. Crudely Wrott says

    I’m with you on this one, Hank.

    Remember those little transfers you could get years ago? Like model kit decals. You’d soak ’em in water for a bit, press them against your skin, gently peel of the backing and presto! you are now marked. For some damn reason they always looked better on the backing than on my arm. All I could think of was how silly I would look with a cartoon permanently displayed on my body. Couldn’t shake the notion that I’d stop liking it pretty soon.

    One thing puzzles me about tattoos. Is there no white ink? You know, for people with dark skin. If visibility is the object, how come Dennis Rodman’s tats don’t stand out? The entire notion of body art goes right over my head. I always considered the body to be art enough. Well, there’s no accounting for taste.

  15. tsig says

    #11 Bill

    You seem to be implying that PZ was up to something. You should give up these low blows and character assassinations.

    (notice I never had to admit I was wrong)lol

  16. says

    Someday, someone is going to find a cephalopod with a PZ Myers tattoo, and then things are really going to get weird.

  17. casaubon says

    A tattoo of an octopus? That is mad-craziness! *Everyone* knows that tattoos can only be of one of the following:

    1) any/all members of KISS
    2) half-naked, Boris-Vallejo-inspired Valkyries
    3) mothers, and exhortations to love same
    4) instructions not to resuscitate the bearer

  18. Russell says

    The placement isn’t right. That tat should have been down on her belly, so that the hectocotylus could have been drawn going down to…

    ;-)

  19. says

    @#11

    The first place I heard that line was on a Lewis Grizzard stand-up album back in the ’80s. It’s easy to see how he could be mixed up with Blount, though.

  20. says

    Very pretty, and it looks like an octopus to me – just because you can’t see all eight legs doesn’t mean the represented organism lacks them.

    And yes, there is white tattoo ink.

  21. MH says

    Nice tattoo, Claire!

    Dan wrote: “Someday, someone is going to find a cephalopod with a PZ Myers tattoo, and then things are really going to get weird.”

    Dan, with that joke, you win the internet. :D

  22. anonymous says

    Sad. Ooohing and aaahing over a tightly cropped photo of an octopus on a woman’s shoulder?

    That fact that any of you has ever kissed a girl should be plenty evidence of God!

  23. Dahan says

    Better than ooohing and aaahing over lies in a book made up by control freeks. At least the girl and tat exist in real life and no ome is deciding how to live their life by them.

  24. says

    White ink does not work well on very dark skin. However, it can be used to make “stealth” tattoos on light-skinned people.

    From special tattoo inks:

    CAN I GET A WHITE INK TATTOO?

    Most artists use white ink to highlight certain parts of your tattoo design. However, white ink is a special color that requires your artist to work closely with you. The effect of white ink differs greatly among clients, and its visibility and retention on the skin has much to do with the natural coloration of your skin.

    White ink seems to work best on very light-skinned people. Unfortunately, this means people with dark skin would not able to get a white ink tattoo on their skin to have a “photo negative effect” that looks like a negative of a dark colored tattoo on light skin. This is because the ink sits under your skin, and the layer of skin over the ink is tinted with your natural skin color. So if you have very dark skin, the white will be overwhelmed with your natural melanin.

    Those who have very light skin however, may use white ink exclusively to get tattoo designs that are very difficult to discern at first glance. This might be an interesting option for ankle or wrist tattoos, or other areas where a regular non-white tattoo would show up too easily and possibly cause problems for the wearer.

  25. Dahan says

    You must be in 4th grade, anonymous. I think that’s the last time I heard that question asked. That explains why you still believe in god.

    Yes, I’ve been married for 12 years and my wife let me kiss her on our wedding night…

    Criminy your an idiot.

  26. MikeM says

    Does anyone else out there remember the movie “Irezumi”?

    Just asking. Never mind.

  27. Azkyroth says

    Sad. Ooohing and aaahing over a tightly cropped photo of an octopus on a woman’s shoulder?

    That fact that any of you has ever kissed a girl should be plenty evidence of God!

    I haven’t. My daughter was born by parthenogenesis.

    (You’re not fooling anyone, Mr. Jealous…)

  28. says

    Heh, You know I had to check, I thought it was this chick’s tattoo but it isn’t. You may want to scan her photos for the tattoo though it looks very nice among other things :)

  29. MikeM says

    Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle provides a link to an extremely disturbing photo of GW posing with a badly burned soldier. It’s not for the faint of heart, but I think this picture is worth a thousand words.

  30. Physicalist says

    Kseniya: Before clicking on your links, I thought you were referring to a stargazer, which struck me as a bit odd for a tatoo . . . but perhaps not inappropriate for this forum . . .

  31. dNorrisM says

    My girlfriend got a tatoo of a chambered nautilius shell on her inner thigh.
    The thing is if you put your ear up to it you can smell the ocean.

  32. David Marjanović, OM says

    The thing is if you put your ear up to it you can smell the ocean.

    LOL!

  33. David Marjanović, OM says

    The thing is if you put your ear up to it you can smell the ocean.

    LOL!

  34. Dave says

    @#42. It’s the guy on the right who’s disturbing, of course; the guy on the left is just unlucky.

  35. Bill Dauphin says

    The first place I heard that line was on a Lewis Grizzard stand-up album back in the ’80s. It’s easy to see how he could be mixed up with Blount, though.

    Now that you mention it, I think you’re right. I’ve been familiar with that line for a long time, but I believe the most recent time I actually heard someone say it, it was Blount… quoting Grizzard.

    To be fair, I did qualify my attribution with an IIRC. ;^)

  36. Bill Dauphin says

    Dan:

    Someday, someone is going to find a cephalopod with a PZ Myers tattoo, and then things are really going to get weird.

    You realize, don’t you, that Pharyngulites all over the world are now trying to figure out how to get the tattoo gun to work inside their aquaria. On your head be it!

  37. says

    Very nice. By the way, I’ve moved all the science tattoos over here. Plenty of cephalopods to be viewed. Along with circuits, nitrogen cycles, solar systems, and every other geek expression you can imagine.

  38. Chris Booth says

    Dan:

    Someday, someone is going to find a cephalopod with a PZ Myers tattoo, and then things are really going to get weird.

    You realize, don’t you, that Pharyngulites all over the world are now trying to figure out how to get the tattoo gun to work inside their aquaria. On your head be it!

    Actually, there is no need to tattoo an octopus–all a Pharyngulite has to do is line the aquarium with photos of PZ, and when the octopus camouflages to match the environment….