AverageJer

Have fun! The wife and I each have small tattoos planned for Saturday and I'm pretty damned excited about it.

If you want a certain tattoo but are worried about the design being too trendy one solution is to get the best goddamned version of that design ever. Awesome will never go out of style!* *except maybe the word "awesome" which is probably out of style.

My name is Jeremy and I am average.

Noooo!! - - - Updated - - - Yikes, this would make me angry at everyone involved- daughter included. I'm sure you as a tattooed parent had spoken to her about getting responsible tattoos as she ages into adulthood. Best of luck with the blood work. The tattoo itself looks to me like it can be turned into a decent tattoo without much trouble- but what do I know. I'll let your artist deal with that. Fingers crossed all around.

There are a lot of good shops in Minneapolis. Most people here will recommend Aloha Monkey which is a great and reputable shop but not located very well for a visitor as it is out of the way and sort of isolated in suburbia. My favorite shop is Leviticus which is in a great neighborhood in south Minneapolis near Minnehaha Falls and lots of great restaurants. Many people also like Uptown Tattoo which is also in a nice visitor friendly location. Have fun. I think you will find that this is a pretty great city with wonderful food and a lot to do. Also, you have picked the perfect time to visit. Hopefully some others will chime in on shops they like as there are quite a few around these days.

I always hit the gym before getting a tattoo if I have time- although I don't work out hard enough to worry much about muscle fatigue. Just be sure to hit the shower in between.

So he did. Fair enough.

Agreed with your post. I would only add that, from the consumer point of view, some may be "price shopping" not in order to get the best deal but to determine if we are in a position currently to afford the tattoo we want.

I agree with many of the comments so far. Get a cool tattoo that you like and then feel free to assign whatever meaning you want to it- or not. Whatever. However, if you still want to find one symbol that can signify all of the ideals you have outlined it seems to me that your only real option is a dragon. Good luck and no matter what you did you didn't deserve to be punched in the face (unless perhaps you were assaultive or actively kidnapping someone's child).

I'm bothered by it sometimes. We all have our own boundaries. An Indian Headdress, for example, is a tattoo I would not wear. I have no intention of calling out someone who would as I don't know their relationship with that imagery. I really like Ganesha as a tattoo image but will probably not have it done because I don't know enough about the meaning. I might get Isis someday as she has mostly fallen off as a current god. Perhaps she will come back someday. My daughter could use a god created in her image to look up to. Like many people I struggle with consistency. The only caution I would have for all of us, myself included, is to not give tattoos a free pass on some of these kinds of issues just because we like tattoos. It's an easy trap to fall into.

I do get this kind of thing sometime. I think it goes to the idea that in order to take the step of getting a tattoo it would need to be an image with deep and lasting personal meaning. I admit that I felt that way prior to getting any tattoos myself. Now I would happily pick a cool image off the wall from an artist I trust. Things change.

I'm a social worker too. Crazy job that requires lots of tattoos to cope. I'm relatively new to getting tattoos so I can still kind of relate to not really getting the full scope of skill and talent it takes to be good at. This is probably true with most (or at least many) professions and most of us humans are more than willing to take others for granted without giving it much thought. Good luck to the OP. For what it's worth, I like new threads and tend not to notice the blogs as readily.

Excellent advice regarding this tattoo and so much more.

I wonder if this site would benefit from daily or weekly (depending on need) open conversation threads. It seems like there are people here who want to communicate more generally with likeminded others but it's not always clear how to do this. 20 page threads are hard to enter and starting a new thread for a fleeting thought can be awkward and presumptuous. I'm not sure if this is a good idea or who would/should take it on but it's a thought I have had before and I figured this might be as good of a place as any to bring it up.

I'm not interested in making a political statement about this. It's not my place. I didn't appreciate the tone of this bloggers article but I can appreciate her frustration. We all hate to be told no. In the end I support an artists right to refuse to do art they wouldn't feel good about doing. This to me is different than a mechanic or an doctor refusing service on religious grounds or because they don't like the looks of a given individual. Art is unique in this way. I suppose a good conversation could be had about how to determine the difference between art, skill and craft but not being proficient in any of these I am reluctant.

Thanks, these could both be good ideas. Lacrosse might be a way to save a little money on travel expenses but still get out of town. It would be hard not to just go to Chicago once we got to Madison but I have been meaning to do more than drive through one of these years.

I'd like to someday get some kind of image of the Goddess Isis and someday I hope to get a japanese style half sleeve on my still untattooed left arm. Otherwise, I think I already have the two specific things I wanted (guitar and dragon) but I'll probably think of something else I "need" eventually.

weird comments but in defense of the first example: my wife has tattoos and she did once become pregnant.

I agree with @DavidR this guy sounds like he was more interested in being demeaning towards woman in whatever way possible than he was in your tattoo. What a sad scary person.