Another day, another dose.

Tattoos are cool.
A right of passage for any self-respecting bogan.
I have tattoos.
I’m not sure about Eric Bana.
He did when he played Chopper Read though.
That’s cool.
They show you’ve made it to sixteen and are ready to leave home.
They show you can and do root anything and everything that moves.
Not so good if you’re a girl.
If you’re a girl it shows you’re sixteen and it’s acceptable for your uncles to crack onto you when they’re round watching the league with your old man while your Auntie’s getting drunk on Baileys in the kitchen with your mum.
And there’s a special kind of tattoo that your Uncle specially loves, that’ll get him asking you to find that video of the highlights of the Kiwis games from the eighties in the VHS under the Trinitron knowing full well your brother taped Predator over the top of it in 92.
The Tramp Stamp.
There’s all sorts of legends floating around on the internet about what the various ‘tribal’ shapes and pseudo-Deco curves of a tramp stamp or ‘butt antlers’ actually mean.
One word summary folks, Slut.
Maybe once they were hot.
Once.
That first week you had it done.
If you were the first in your fifth form class to have it done and no-one else’s parents would let them.
If.
I doubt.

And if you’re a guy and you were raised by inbred backwater hillbillies (feasible although unlikely in 2007, especially in NZ) you might be considering a tattoo on the small of your back.
No.
If, and only if, you’re being held down in prison and having BITCH engraved with a needle and ballpoint is it acceptable to have this part of your manhood tattooed.
Only until you find some Hydrochloric Acid to erase it.
Better scars than a tattoo there.
The only thing that should be gracing this part of a man’s back is back hair.
Like mine.
I haven’t checked Eric Bana.

Where should a man’s tattoos be?
For a man the shoulders, chest, ribcage, on your neck creeping up to under your rats-tail, arms, legs are valid locations.
In fact pretty much anywhere. Everywhere is encouraged.
But the bottom of the back?
No.
Not at all.

A stamped tramp, yesterday.