Snoqualmie

why are you only havning blackberries and tomatoes? are they your two favoritest fruits?

It's my garden. I have a Thing about tomato plants, even more so than the tomatoes themselves... there's something about their smell and the shape of the leaves that I just love. Would you still have taken my extra tomato plants last year if you knew I had a fetish for them? See, so that's why I didn't mention it.

The blackberries grow into our yard through the neighbor's fence, making them technically a pest, but I adore them anyway. The stems and leaves get fantastic purpley colors, they grow fucking blackberries for god's sake, and of course the thorns are Oh So Very Symbolic if you're feeling heavy-handed like that.

I forgot to mention that the two loops at the bottom of the vines are holders for one or two other vines that are going there. It'll be sweet peas and/or morning glories and/or passionflowers hanging off of the other two vines and wrapping around my waist. I didn't draw them in because I'm not getting those yet (and, obviously, I can't yet make up my damn mind which ones I'm using).

I love the plan & the sketch. Blackberry-tomato is a very nouvelle combination, though, and it seems like it must be right around the bend. You just have to ask yourself if, in a few years when you can't even order a pizza without it being topped with blackberry-tomato coulis, you'll feel smugly cutting-edge, or angrily indistinguishable from all the latecomers to the trend. It might be like getting a pesto tattoo in, say, the early '90s, or a chipotle tattoo five years ago. I vote for adding little meringues or something, just to guard yourself against accusations of trend-hopping. Because meringues are kind of uncool.

oh, and props for the entry title. I hope your donuts soon come out of the delivery van endlessly rocking.

Thank you, dude! In fact, my donuts just came twenty minutes ago while I was sitting here glowering and watching the clock (having checked the UPS website and determined that their home delivery hours go until 7 p.m. and it was, indeed, 6:30 with no donuts). The first thing I did was rip open the package and stuff a Chocolate Marble Swirl into my mouth... of course.

And now that you mention it, I could swear I saw a recipe for a tomato-blackberry sauce in my big pain in the ass cookbook. Damn! Beaten to the punch, or at least to the sauce!

I forgot to bring any donuts in my lunch. Apparently I am a great fool after all.

I love the blackberry concept! I hope you would be flattered if I swiped it, actually - I've been looking for elements to incorporate into a tattoo to symbolize my origins in the Pacific Northwest.

BTW, why "snoqualmie"?
-jillian

It's possible that the words "can I use that concept?" are the most useful thing anyone can say to someone planning a tattoo. If the person thinks, "No! I don't want someone else to have a tattoo like mine!" they're heading for disaster later on when they discover that human beings will always think alike and good ideas are open for anyone to come up with. If their idea's only worth having forever if it's novel, their motives for getting it are kind of suspect.

In short, swipe away. I probably swiped it from somewhere else anyway.

Snoqualmie was my spelling test to see if I was allowed in the Northwest. Rather, it was the qualifying question. On my first trip to Washington Jacob asked me to spell and pronounce a bunch of funky Northwestern place names, and when I got Snoqualmie right he declared that I'd passed.

Unfortunately, given the numbers of ankle-dolphins and drunken Taz's, it seems like bad ideas are even more open for anyone to come up with. All the more reason to share the good ones, says I.

...says the girl with two Kanji to the one with a butterfly?

Indeed. Let he who is without sin blah blah blah. Better, anyway, to look at someone else's idea and say, "holy shit, that could mean something to me!" than to wander into a shop and pick a piece of flash off the wall because you don't know where else to start. That last sentence wasn't directed at Jillian, incidentally, whom I don't suspect of such things.

Harumph, I will have you know that I really like my kanji and they actually mean something. Well, not in Japanese. In Japan, they really confused the shit out of people. But in Chinese they mean something. And I think I like them even better framing my cunty tattoo.

...I'm not defensive at all... splutters the girl who also has a dragon (sheesh), a devil girl with flaming dice, an arm full of stars, a flaming heart, an old-school heart with her family's names... do I have to go on? Christ, I'm like a museum of Tattoo Flash Of The Last 60 Years. Which is ridiculous considering that they've all been meticulously custom designed.

Hey, so was my butterfly. I spent an entire summer and about a hundred pieces of paper drawing that thing. Still, it's just as much of a cliche as the dolphins and Tazzes.

Wait, hang on. "Endure Cunt and Conquer"? What are you trying to imply here?

I'm totally going to get a tattoo of Calvin peeing on something.

Get a tattoo of Calvin peeing on a Calvin-peeing-on-something sticker, in which the thing that he's peeing on is a picture of himself peeing on something which turns out to be a picture of him peeing on himself peeing on....

You'll need a REALLY good tattoo artist.

"She's a man, baby!"

The next wave of body art will incorporate pre-inking wrinkling and droopage computer models to maximize the aesthetic value of a tattoo over its potential duration.

That, or they'll figure out a way to artificially induce textured tattoos, the dream of blind gropers everywhere.

Myself, I've never really understood body art on some level. Of course, I'm very consistent in my distaste for tattoos, piercings, makeup, and jewelry, so maybe the question is, what the hell is my problem?

Perhaps for the sake of response brevity I should stick with my original question: what is it about body art that makes you wanna get needles stuck in ya over and over?

Well, I used to just sit at home and poke myself with a fork for several hours at a time, but it got kind of old.

Thanks for the permission :-) I knew you'd understand, because I think your interpretation and application of the blackberry as a metaphor/concept is also complete different than mine, which would make the products very dissimilar when applied to the individual people. Whereas picking something off a wall, like a Tasmanian devil or even a cliched celestial symbol would be a much less malleable concept, and would be more absolute in meaning from person to person.

That said, my first tattoo was a moderately bad lapse in judgement (chinese characters picked off a wall after my 21st birthday celebration), and my second tattoo is a Canadian maple leaf, so I'm not exactly in a position to throw a single stone. So long as the tattoo has meaning to the person - real meaning and not borrowed association - it's OK by me. So long as it isn't like that Onion article: "Woman's Tattoos Confusing Mishmash of Cultural Symbols" (with photo of tribal armband, hieroglyphs and kanji on what was probably a real person)

Oh, and for northwest spelling...how'd you do on Mukilteo and Sequim? ;-)

Oh, he didn't ask those two. I did get Skookumchuck and Puyallup, though, and there was a heated discussion about the pronunciation of Willamette. I was only getting about 50% right up until Snoqualmie, actually.

Heheh... I don't think I've seen that Onion article. I should. That, and all of their other articles that they've ever published.

Having never set foot in a tattoo parlour, I am completely ignorant about the protocols of the business. I'm imagining that a lot of needle-wielders follow a pretty solid ethic of "give the paying customer what they want, no matter how silly/lame/weird/whatever". But there have to be some limits. Do people ever get thrown out of tattoo parlours?

"And don't come back until you get some taste, you weirdo!"

A friend of mine works in a tattoo parlour in Victoria, and wishes she could throw people out for stupidity ALL THE TIME.

What I'd think you'd want to do is make people sign nondisclosure agreements if you give them crappy tattoos. "Just tell everyone the shop down the street did it; we don't want a reputation for this kind of thing."

i watched a guy at everlasting tattoo "freedom" down the spine of a 20 year old, sorority-esque white girl, in what appeared to be 'papyrus' font. the way he rolled his eyes at jolie's tattoo guy as she and her friend left made the whole business aspect of tattooing pretty clear to me. which one is mike, by the way? is that jason and jolie's guy, or someone else?

jolie has a tattoo?!?

p.s. jillian, i see you like nine inch nails. are you going to coachella? they're playing on sunday, april 1st.

coachella.com

Yeah, did I know that Jolie had a tattoo? Divulge, missy.

I don't know who did Jolie's, obviously, but Mike isn't the one who did Jason's. I can't remember who Jason said did his, but I do remember noting that it wasn't Mike.

dammit! erica prob won't be back again for another 3 weeks! we'll never know at this rate.

p.s. To continue my pro-bono devil's advocacy work, I wonder how much "Freedom" down your spine in a computer font is different from "Choose" across your shoulders in a computer font. Shockingly, despite the fact that I'm a 23-year-old white girl who is indubitably guilty of something at least as damning as being sorority-ish, my version does mean quite a bit to me. I can't quite bring myself to assume that someone else's doesn't. It's bad karma or something; I just know it's going to bite me in the ass.

Shit, am I contradicting myself again? I probably am.

Michele - I'm skipping Coachella because I'm seeing NIN next week at a 2100 person theater in Fresno - and because I hate festivals ;-)

But when I heard they were playing, I still seriously considered it...especially since New Order are on that night too...

Jillian, you've just cleared up something that I was wondering about. I never knew who that song was by, and could never seem to remember to look it up. Cool.

Sorry, sorry, that was in reference to your website URL.

I tend to just punch a lyric line into Google when I'm trying to figure out who did what song - but I'm glad my Siouxsie Sioux idolatry could come in handy somewhere.

look, i'm back in less than three weeks! i'm even multiple posting! dianna, i see your convoluted point, i guess the girl could have gotten "emancipation from slavery" tattooed down her back, and it really wouldn't have been any of my business. still, choose lands higher on my appropriateness scale of words white girls get tattooed on themselves. whatever, the point is that mike (i'm pretty sure he's the same guy) was obviously not pleased with the whole process, but just did it for the money, which is also fine by me.

anyway, not like anyone cares about that: yes, jolie got a tattoo! it's fucking HUGE! it's this swirly/lightening bolt design, all black, on her right upper arm (tricep? bicep? somewhere in there). it is pretty cool. you will see it in may, when she moves back here. how's that for tons of info!

Dianna, is this the viney thing from Mike Davis's portfolio that had you hopping around the shop? Because it's rad.

That wasn't actually the one I was hopping about in the shop, because his shop portfolio beats the everloving pants off of the online one and so I had other things demanding my hopping attention. But that one did at least warrant an excited bounce and convince me to go in and see the rest of his work, because yes, it's rad as hell.

Okay, if the tattoo said "emancipation from slavery" I'd find it a lot more amusing. I wasn't trying to lecture you, Erica, or at least I don't think I was. I was more trying to give her the benefit of the doubt just to even out the conversation.

Lightning! Swirly! Neither of you could find it in your hearts to update your poor sickly blog about this?! Or about her impending move back here? Sheeeesh.

So yeah... I'm chiming in WAY late here... but just to clarify - George did my tattoo. He's the same guy who did Jason's. I sincerely apologize for the lack of tattoo related posting. I'm a slacker. A slacker in grad school with too many jobs. Erica's description sums it up fairly well. It's huge and kind of jagged and swirly. I will try hard to get someone to take a digital photo of me and my tattoo sometime soon and will post it to our poor, sickly blog.

Also - I am most definitely moving back to the Bay Area in 2 months. Sometime end of May/beginning of June. No word yet on whether I'll end up in the city or the east bay. Will post with an announcement once I know.

so you don't like the "emancipation from slavery" tattoo idea? man, back to the drawing board for me!

you could get 'mel gibson' tattooed down your back instead. or maybe just some of the blue whorlish pictish designs.

not whore whorlish...whirly whorlish...

whorl totally isn't a word is it?