Raging Pencils
The sole-source web comic, by Mike Stanfill
New comics every Monday, Wednesday & Friday.

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disease
war
plague pestilence death
Bobby's first no-bid contract.
Young Bobby Halliburton knew his parents
meant well but, all things considered, he still
would have preferred a Nintendo.


Tribute To A Smudge.

At the risk of sounding like an old fart I rather dislike tattoos. They're not the end of the world but it's fairly unpleasant to have  to endure a generation's bad taste in philosophy, sex and politics displayed in places no one should be looking anyway. "I'm with stupid"  or "Disco Sucks!" t-shirts were pretty popular for a while but at least you could take 'em off at night and eventually donate them to Goodwill.

The only tattoo I could abide would be an exact likeness of a person applied over their entire body. That way no one could tell the difference until you got really old, the double-benefit being that the resulting blurriness of the image would make you hard to spot by creditors.

Besides, tattoos are a rather wimpy way to define your individuality. If you really want to make a fashion statement cut off an arm or gouge out an eye out wear your epidermis inside-out. Quit polluting the environment with those fucking butterflies.

I have to say that on occasion I've encountered a particularly well-crafted tattoo. I always tell the person to have that bit of skin removed and converted into a billfold. That way they can always have it with them, can show it off to anyone interested, and can leave it for future generations as a valued heirloom instead of leaving it attached, affording the worms something to read as they begin to chow down.

Personally, I think the only people who should sport tattoos are the elderly, for many good reasons.

First, they won't live long enough for the image to dissolve into a smudgy mess. That way, the swastika planted on gramps forehead will avail visitors to the wake a nice clean target to stub out their cigars.

Second, senior citizens are either with the person they love forever or they're not likely to find another enamorata to replace the previous one. That neatly avoids the problem of what to do with the old tattoo once you've traded in Steve for Edgar, and just marking through previous names gives the impression you're counting the days to the grave with a succession of lovers. Come to think of it, not a bad idea.

Could be worse, I suppose. Somewhere there's a nerd/geek/dweeb displaying a list of the most trendy game systems (I.E. Atari, Commodore, Nintendo, Sony, Nintendo, Sony, Nintendo) plastered all over his ass, the old ones crossed out in respective order. Or, worse, the avatars of the current MMORPG they're in.

Ewww. Double-Ewww.

For the Social Security Set this pretty much leaves peace symbols or the names or portraits of their grandchildren as the only images left to apply to skin which now looks more like raw canvas than ever before. Just nothing near the genitalia, please.

Finally, and most importantly, if old people would start getting tattoos then the tattoo fad would end in about 12 microseconds.

Mission accomplished, I'd say.

=mike=




Raging Pencils is a massive conceit courtesy of:


Mike Stanfill, Private Hand
Illustration • Animation • Web Design

www.privatehand.com