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Since I will lose anyways...lemme post up my snake/skull/dagger just for shits and giggles to see how it fares.. Regino Gonzalez - - - Updated - - - I love the black flames!

It's not that we make mistakes but how we deal with them, that is important. It's not easy to be classy.

(It's been a while since I've posted, so let me quickly reintroduce myself: I'm @hogg 's significant other. A tattoo collector, not an artist. Also, I'm an American historian -- a.k.a. an academic.) Perhaps we're all being a little hard on @SailorClaire because she is a self-identified academic. But those of us in that world are not all the same; we've all had different training, and we approach our research, our subjects, our writing, and our instruction from various perspectives and with various levels of discipline and care. With that said, @SailorClaire, you may have exposed yourself as the academic equivalent of a scratcher. Your heart seems to be in the right place, and you offered some evidence of background research (albiet too little, too late). But I'd agree with others who have questioned the time constraints on the project and asked whether it isn't ultimately "lazy" to mine internet forums for a sociological study like this. It's an amateur approach rather than a forward-thinking one. As you continue with your graduate work, read more, practice more, you'll certainly be able to better recognize the difference. Interviewing people as research subjects is a delicate undertaking, which should be obvious considering all the legalese in the paperwork you'll need to submit with your thesis. But paperwork aside, engaging in this kind of first-person research requires better training, a greater sensitivity to your subject matter, an awareness of how you will be perceived by your interviewees, far more reading, and a great deal of practice honing your methodology -- especially your skills as an interviewer, a writer, and a student of your "topic of choice." If you really do want to make an impact in your field, the research process (and ultimately your writing) can't be rushed. Cutting corners may get you your master's degree, but it won't make you a respected scholar in the field and certainly not within the tattoo world. I'm sure the tattoo artists on the board can appreciate the value of these kinds of missteps along the way. Best lessons.

Thank you for your apology though I must question, "limited time scale"....going into grad school you know you need a thesis so by a good advisors advising you should be encouraged to begin developing your thesis at the beginning. Of course it is going to take different shapes and forms while being modified as you go through your lit review and intro classes though people tend to stay close to their original thoughts and reason for seeking a higher education...ie you think your work contributes to a specific missing element, a unique pov, etc so you seek to add to the subject. I do not know the specifics to your program/department so don't know how long your program is but I do know your university and some of their work so believe you have longer than a "limited time scale" unless procrastination got the best of you? Or other variables which I am not privy to..... Once again welcome to the site and hope you find it useful if you decide to stick around and you can contribute as other LSTers have. You can always PM me or respond here or elsewhere. LSTer are truly a unique, devoted, and caring bunch in the world of tattoo forums and in person (at least those I have meet) and we are blessed to have them here! Online research is a new thing where very few researchers have seen desired results and those who have, have had to put large amounts of money into it. The ethics and ways of doing it are still developing, it's in its trial and error phase if you will. I have found your joining the site useful for me professionally (not LST) as I am currently out of the country for a few months working on furthering a research infrastructure we have used successfully with large research funds to become available at an affordable price for the everyday person including grad students. So thank you for teaching me and helping me further my desire to be a better researcher that I am grateful for.

I need to stop getting tattooed in Brooklyn where you have no idea what vegan/gluten-free/paleo/whatever dietary preferences are in the shop.

@SailorClaire welcome and think you just got your Community Research 101 course on going into a community todo research without doing research ahead of time and how that can backfire therefore excluding you from being able todo actual research. Consider it a gift very few grad schools could teach their students. A researcher needs to be more humble. The only thing we know is nothing and we are always students. There is no master! Unfortunately this hierarchical thought process that grad schools give their students who are accepted and/or graduate is historically how many researchers have tried todo research and it is almost like colonialism thus leaving a bad after taste on the community long after the researcher has left the community...i.e. what did the community actually gain from partaking? Or, how factual is this researchers work if they didn't actually enter the community? Amongst many other things, any good person questioning your thesis would ask then leaving your research irrelevant. Or even worse drawing a BS (yes that is a clinical term, haha) research study that influences others who care not to actually learn about a topic or community, i.e. mainstream news or books. These are thoughts to help you better defend your thesis when the time comes. As a professional who does lots of work in communities and research internationally your pitch to do the research is what I fight not to do. May I suggest a book for you? Research Methods for Community Change; A Project-Based Approach by Randy Stoecker. I am just one of many people who work with many exploited populations so I write this as a polite offering. Lastly, as was suggested by many LSTers take a look around the site and I think you will find lots of good pre-research to your research....consider it a Lit Review. I had one of my old staff actually join the site for her thesis on Tattooed Professional Women in Social Work and she got some impressive results from LSTers. So check out that search feature and put it to use and maybe reintroduce yourself and maybe the community will re-welcome you. LSTers, thank you for voicing your concerns politely and offering constructive criticism so this site is not exploited!!! As well as an opportunity to teach the ones who unfortunately get into positions to teach about others when they are not a part of the other and/or truly know about the other(s) EDIT: oh yeah as one of the site owners you may want to contact us first or if you're trying this on other forums as well the mods.....

As an academic who does interview-based research, and who spends a lot of time teaching people how to do qualitative research, I have to agree with many of the concerns raised in the last thread, and question the logic of trying to do this online in this rushed way. I did my own masters in the UK and I know masters courses are short there and make it difficult to engage in sustained, profound research.As this seems to be the case for you, that doesn't mean you can just do the same research project, but accelerated. It means you need to think about what you can accomplish with the time/restrictions you have, and what knowledge you can genuinely generate from that. Thinking you can ask fairly complex questions and answer them through message board focus groups is like the opposite of rigour. You need to find a research question that can be answered in the time and with the resources you have.. At my university, we strongly encourage our students to do literature based masters projects as it is unfair to both researcher and potential subjects to take on something so ambitious is so little time. Message board research feels lazy. The only time I have seen it done effectively has been when that's the subject of the actual research- I.e. how social media is used in x community. IT CANNOT BE A REPLACEMENT FOR DEEP QUALITATIVE RESEARCH just because you don't have time. Focus groups are great for gathering easier-to-access info--you want to talk about identity? Meaning? Gender? You need to sit down with people. If you have read all of this research literature, then you know that qualitative research is about building trust, relationships, etc. And that there is no research without it. I am a total self-hating academic so I get why so many folks in the tattoo world are so skeptical of researchers. We can be a really tonedeaf bunch. Many researchers take without giving back. But I just want to be clear that as someone who is very much embedded into this world, the above would not be ok with me, either. In fact, much of my career has been spent trying to push people to rethink what it means to work with people, similar to the stuff @Lochlan has been talking about. And to the OP: I get that as an MA student this may be some of your first attempts at doing original research, and so this strong reaction may be really painful. I encourage you to listen to it carefully; I have learned some of my own important lessons about how I present myself, why I do what I do, what I hope to gain from my work, and what I'm asking of other people, in these kinds of tense encounters. I encourage you to think about what the goal of this project is beyond it being interesting to you (you want others to share personal moments of their lives with you? That's not enough.) and think especially about what useful, respectful, rigorous research can actually be done with the time and resources you have. If a message board conversation is all that you are able to do right now, it's not enough to credibly try to answer the questions you are asking with the depth that they, and we, deserve. Research with people takes time. I empathized with how painful such a strong reaction like this must be for you, especially as your supervisors clearly signed off on this plan and no one appeared to realize the problems with it, but I have to say that this: Pretty much removed any good will I felt for you. The above is basically a threat. If you do, indeed, believe in "ethics", then such a nasty statement would never have appeared in your message. Whether or not our posts are publicly available, threatening us that you could use them if you wanted to, but you're just too nice not to, is a dirty, dirty thing to say. Think about what ethical means.

@SailorClaire Margo DeMello was my first wife ,I helped her write that shit. 20 yr old boring crap.If you don't believe me research who I am. - - - Updated - - - f#ckin vampires....this is about research for the sake of research. So you can finish a useless degree....and then you become an authority on something you truly know nothing about. life experience has lead me to hate this academic BS. - - - Updated - - - If I package a bunch of shit someone told me as facts,how does that make me an authority? - - - Updated - - - Oh yeah Margo Demello claimed she spent alot of time in a tattoo shop with GTC and I, Bullshit ,your following bullshit. Sorry for the truth. Hope this helps with your research...remember publishing bullshit doesnt make it true. You don't look like a Sailor. A trade many are proud of ,monikers are supposed to mean something. When did everyone start giving themselves nicknames?

So, this was an apology, or...

Well, what the hell...this month is in the bag already, but might as well toss one in just to keep in practice. Tattooed by Nick Colella @ CTC this past summer, a little family action.

Tats or GTFO! (I just wanted to be that guy).

+1 I hate excuses ... and shortcuts. Do it right or don't do it. What kind of academic contribution is someone going to make with last-minute "research" hastily gathered from an online forum? You don't have any idea who you are gathering information from, no controls, no basis for judging their opinions, etc, etc, etc. Learn a few rules about academic research. Getting your Master's degree is an achievement because when it's done right, it's hard work and time consuming. When you take short cuts you cheapen the value of a degree for everyone.

If it stinks and you're worried, carry your ass in to the sawbones! Even a free clinic will give you some antibiotics in pill or salve form to clear it up.

Don't want to offer too many insights into my thrilling domestic life here but when Nick posted that me and @Pugilist were trying to figure out if that was on you. She thought you'd posted that you were getting it done a couple of weeks from now. Looks really great! With the tattoos people here get pretty much every month is a write off! We're not even a week into the new monthand look at what's been posted in the tattoo of the month competition so far. Utterly ridiculous.

@SailorClaire Matt Lodder beat you to it by a few years. My opinion of this subject aside, I presume you've read The Post Modified Body? I skimmed your proposal and read the first questions. I must say, I'm not impressed. You won't get any further insight or information than a Daily Mail article or any of the tattoo books you can buy in HMV. Here's my opinion: When it comes to tattoos (and probably other areas of life), anything online is very far from the reality of the situation. Speak to real people in the real world and get a more honest view of what you're writing about. I don't know why I keep saying this to academics, they rarely listen...

Horitada Shige

This is the dog faced St Christopher. I'm actually tattooing a client with his likeness right now. His family patron. He was apparently a cannibal, and that is why he is shown with the head of a dog..... kind of rad.

"...and will leave as a member shortly. thanks, SailorClaire." Adios. Don't let the door hit you in the ass.

Yeah. Having browsed a few other tattoo forums I think that this one is by far the best. The smartest, most thoughtful, and most generous people are here... a lot of those other ones are pretty awful by comparison. And I think @Lochlan alluded to this on your first thread, but I would question the veracity/validity of any information you got from people who were willing to share with you without having some kind of relationship first. Is "the full GFE" really the same as having a girlfriend?

Will do! He's gonna do a tiger head with a dagger going through it on my right calf. I'm sure it'll turn out great.

That would be me. Was gonna go for something completely different, but got to looking at la Senorita y el Tigre, and decided it had to match...kinda. Found the skeleton, sans clothes, on the net, and Nick sized the cat from the tiger to the panther. Pretty much hit what I wanted on the head.

Just booked an appointment with Jeff Rassier for next week... I'm beyond excited.

I was a teenager when I heard " Nation of Millions " drop for the first time , I thought the World was ending , there was sirens , news -flashes , a DJ named Terminator X , a private army called S.1.W' s and a crazy eclectic layered sound that even made politics sound cool . It was so revolutionary and dangerous I don't think anybody had ever heard anything like it . This , "Straight Outta Compton" and The Geto Boys "Grip it! On that other Level " was my Punk-Rock , it was for a white kid growing up in New Zealand , rebel music . At the time this stuff was very rare and quite expensive as it was only available on vinyl or tape as a U.S. import , shit I even managed a prized OG Sports Specialities Kings cap like Eazy wore , no big deal you say but this stuff was rarer than Hens teeth , wearing one made you prime candidate to collect a slap and or be robbed, people were losing their Jordan's as quick as they could buy em . I still think the albums above are the best Rap albums produced , they affected me so much ,I couldn't really totally dig Biggie or Tupac. I don't know anything else just didn't have the rawness and seemed to me posturing and self-indulgent So hard did I rinse these three albums that to this day I can still recite every lyric word for word .

Go there. Get tattooed by Lucky Bastard. Trust his opinion over everyone else's, especially your own. That man is one of the best tattooers working today. His Japanese stuff is just unbelievable, and it doesn't get much more traditional than his Americana.

If you have the ability to choose I'd go to Fade Fast...

very nearly bought a giant bottle (over a quart) of double bastard earlier today. Had to pass though, $85 was a bit much. I did pick up an '09 Stone Imperial Stout. I'm waiting for a good occasion to try it, perhaps after the fist session on my chest...

I can tell

Irish micro take on American pale ale. I think it would pass muster. You can't tell but the bottle cap was a ring-pull... Great idea.

One more thing, and then I'll shut up about this, but this: Is a genuinely very good explanation of what you would contribute to academic knowledge about tattoo culture. Great. It is of course important to be able to explain a research topic's place within the wider literature. What it is NOT, however, is an explanation of what you would contribute to tattoo culture itself. Many academic confuse these two--they think that by contributing academic knowledge they are "giving back" to the people they research inherently. That's bullshit. When in the other thread, people posted about academics taking and not giving back, this is what they meant. When you embark on this kind of research where you hope to have people share pretty intimate parts of their lives, you have to think about what you will be able to give them, and not accept this fallacy that the world somehow gives two shits about the academic "contribution" your making. It is MUCH HARDER WORK to make sure you're making both an academic and a social contribution, but it's also, the only truly ethical way to proceed.

Pictures always help as we do have some people on the board who work in the medical field....their opinions are just that as this is the internet though they have more insight than I do. Oh yeah can you describe the smell? (I'm just messing around)

Make sure and post a photo. When I get down to San Francisco Rassier is my top pick. I just booked an appointment with Steve Byrne for the first week of February.

...And another one the following day with Jason Mcafee (there was no way I was going to head to the Bay Area and not stop by Temple again). I love SF trips so hard!

Viagra? :p

Thanks man! Yeah, it was just under 3.5 hours-my boy can put down some ink! I am seriously in awe whenever I get work from him...never feels hurried, never hustles, just lays it in straight and steady. Broke once for about 10 betwixt lining and shading, and once for 5 at the very tail end when I was getting a bit raggedy, he laid some lidocaine on it to finish the last ten minutes or so. I'll post it, but y'know, fucking January is a write off! So damn many seriously kool tattoos this month I just gotta wiat till February!!!

@SailorClaire has figured out the fastest way to get the mods' attention! Even faster than spam. This should go in the study.

Well @SailorClaire, you could have asked us before you just threw down what you'd be doing. Im sure if you participated in this forum beyond what you can gain from it (your thesis paper), many of the women on here wouldn't mind participating. If you love tattoos, then participate in the threads on the forum... Im sure that we'd love the input. its always better to give as much as you take away

Sorry to be so rude as to not read all of that but basically you signed up to take take take and not give back to the forum? Do you even have tattoos? This seems pretty one sided from where I'm standing...

Banned in CA.

I hate the word "abdominal". Even at work it's always: Belly, tummy, tum-tum, spagetti house...

Yea for sure. thanks for the advice. I'm really enjoying this site because of the great community, i've been on a few other sites and none of them have the helpfulness and kindess that lastsparrow does.

Ya don't say.

Megan Wilson posted this on Instagram recently with the caption "San Quentin/Folsom Prison Body Suit":

this is funny @dcostello

Tattoonow. Don't read it! The grammar is horrible.

Ketchup on tacos is not OK........

@CABS Henry put a tiny Wu-Tang logo on the jewel of a dagger he did on my pal Nate. You can be sneaky and he'll be into it! @YOMONEY it's so good. And I'll say it now, and again, and again. UGK for life.

Get what you get dude, probably coulda gotten the rose and then taken an actual picture of it by now.

not to belittle your experiences, but could it also be that you draw attention because you are attractive? do you think ugly girls get approached about their tattoos or ignored in general... i know the above sounds shallow but i notice men will come up with ANY reason to talk to pretty girls.