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Alix Ge finished my pharaoh's horses yesterday https://www.instagram.com/p/BBnT4LcQCmd/?taken-by=alixge

Hey everyone, it's been a while. It's been 2+ years since I've gotten tattooed, but I'm happy to report that I have an appointment with David Parker at Black Heart Tattoo in San Francisco at the end of the month. The current plan is a (white) tiger head with some fire around it. I love everything he does and am super excited.

I got this incredible panther and snake by Valerie Vargas earlier this week https://www.instagram.com/p/BBn6dIQkHUa/?taken-by=valeriemodernclassic

broke in my new dragon fist and finished backpiece for the Year of the Monkey lunar new year celebration with my Shaolin crew at good ol West Edmonton Mall. Also performed my broadsword form in public for the first time which I was jacked on. Some old chinese lady was loving all my tattoos, gave me her number and said to call her if i want her to sing for me LOL aw shucks shout out to all my 1980s Iron Monkeys SOOOOOOOO W

The Paris tattoo convention is coming up. MONDIAL DU TATOUAGE 2016 | Paris Talked to my artist yesterday and got a session on friday. Are some of you going and would like to meet up? Heres a vid of the convention last year.

Bear head done by Jack Allender out of Worcester a few days ago, photo stolen from his Instagram as I didn't grab one before it scabbed up. My first piece of trad, super happy with it. Bear head done today @fourleaf_tattoo thanks for coming down Tsam

I've had one knee done and healing was surprisingly ok. Bruised like hell, but walking around wasn't anywhere near as bad as I'd imagined. I've been doing martial arts for years and years so have similarly banged up/calloused knees, I need a bit of a skim over to on the lower part of my knee but generally I'm really pleased with how well it all held up. Best of luck with yours! I'm currently a couple of days into healing a trad bear head on the side of my lower leg. I thought it was going to be a breeze as I've had stuff in the vicinity before but this one has blown up! Major fat leg issues going on and unusually for me I've already got big thick scabs, so that's not feeling great right now. I'm hoping the fast reaction will mean fast healing, but we'll see...

Sorry, man. Looks like our company will make good on their threat to lay off about 57 next month that would not take the offer to move from our location in mid-South with low cost of living, low crime, beautiful mountains to Chicago West side. Other jobs (programming) being sent to Bangalore (half are ex-pat Indian now). Hoping my job holds out 1.5 more years until Medicare kicks in, and I retire! Hang in, Tig! Talent and work ethic combined are always in demand.

New tattoo, new post. After much research I chose Chris to do my new piece, which he was happy to do for me. I waited a few months of course then finally the time came. Got it done yesterday, 5 1/2 hours straight. Fucking legit piece of art.

Frankly, @Thenegativeone, it's really naive to think that cultural destruction is only ever "entirely perpetrated by the state". Cultural appropriation happens any time you disassociate the images and symbols of a culture from their original meaning and start valuing them purely aesthetically or stereotypically. So the filmmaker @Graeme mentioned is not being childish. Her people, their language and their practices had been systematically brought to the brink of extinction. And now she and others are working to revive those traditions and reinvigorate those cultural practices. Can you imagine if blonde college girls started getting twee "native tattoos" based on those designs that you've fought so hard to bring back to your community? Wouldn't you be pissed? We should listen to people when they say they have a problem with these things. (This also happens often in a myriad of ways that are not tattoo related.) It's ok to appreciate things from afar. Be interested and active in learning about different tattoo practices and their cultural meanings, be supportive of it, but don't just blindly co-opt things because it looks cool. The Vikings thing is interesting. To me it's not culturally appropriative in the sense I described above, and I think a big part of that is that there was never really an attempt to wipe out Viking history/culture (not in the way that happened to Native Americans). With that said, I wouldn't go about getting runes or tattoos found in old mummies, for example.

Ta Moko designs are based around genealogy, social rank and status, accomplishments, and so on, so I could see a hypothetical situation where you got a Maori tattoo because "they have the most badass warrior culture on earth" and ended up getting a tattoo that describes somebody else's life and family. Would Maoris be offended by this? I don't know, but they'd probably think you're a dumbass for getting a tattoo of something that you're engaging with so superficially. I do think the same goes for Viking stuff. If you're going to get magical staves tattooed on you, it's probably best to understand what you're getting and what it means. The trend a few years ago of people getting Masonic imagery is another example of this: you might think it looks cool and mysterious and occult, but people who know how to read the imagery know you have gibberish on you and you come across as a moron as a result. I don't see how getting a tattoo just because it looks cool and having no understanding beyond that is any different than somebody getting kanji while not understanding the language.

No sleeve is complete without one!

Finally got an appointment with Sneaky Mitch. He's been my great white buffalo (hot tub time machine anyone?) for a while now, especially since he literally works 5 mins from me! Haha. So worth the wait though and he's a top guy.

Just got my first proper custom tattoo finished, my first one with colour too.

Got to be a reckless kid one more time and got tattooed by Valerie again, this time in London. They're peeling and unsightly now, but here they are in their fresh glory: The warrior: https://www.instagram.com/p/BAvLzMPDKFR/ The priestess: https://www.instagram.com/p/BAvLqtnDKFD/ Bonus video: https://www.instagram.com/p/BAvLTr3EHRy/

i got my elbow tattooed yesterday by ivan soyars @ old soul tattoo; canonsburg, pa.

Kneecap fully healed by Danny Rossiter at Rain City Manchester - Bonus healed monmon cat!

Fish Rose morph Becca Genne Bacon End is Near Brooklyn, NY awesome time with Becca - super cool got in early to Brooklyn so I went to Black Gold Records grabbed a coffee and tshirt chatted with Dan Santoro's wife Summer super nice lady - gotta get myself to Smith St. this fall

Prettyyyyyyyyy pumped about this one, not gonna lie. Yesterday: There's a vid too: https://instagram.com/p/5075TDTBNR/?taken-by=greggletron By Greg Whitehead at Scapegoat in Portland, as usual. My thigh feels like a wobbly hot water bottle today, and I don't even care. :o