Thai Tattoos Too -2007

Pattaya must be the per capita capitol of farangs with tattoos. Shirtless westerners parade the streets to exhibit the beauty of their body art, despite the collateral damage to the colored flesh from the tropical sun. Most tattoos are eagles, dragons, and declarations of never-ending love to go-go girls festooned with vows of fidelity to previous girlfriends. Occasionally you come across tattoos of incredible stupidity.

Several years ago I spotted a twenty year-old Brit with the name DAVID tattooed down his spine.

"Why David?" I asked him.

“So people know who they just saw.”

"You're David?" Conventioneers wear a simple name tag to say hello.

"The one and only." A name tag through his pierced nipple would have been a more effective form of introduction.

"If you say so." David is the second most common name in America. The same has to be true for Britain.

Later I mentioned the stupidity of this particular David to my friend, Jamie Parker. We sat at the Buffalo Bar on Sai 3. More than a few of the girls had tattoos and a trio of British lager louts bore years of blue ink on their forearms, necks, and faces.

"Can't you imagine Michelangelo's Statue of David with a tattoo?"

"Good, unless it wasn't on that little acorn of a penis." Jamie hated male nude statues and their mini-cocks. "You know that I don't have any tattoos. "

I didn't say anything about the tracks on his arm. Jamie had been clean for ten years now.

"Me neither." The nuns at Our Lady of the Foothills warned their students that any skin art banned them from heaven. I had none, even though my faith was atheism. The sisters were excellent teachers.

"Last thing I needed as a kid was an identification scar or body marking." Jamie had been a criminal in his younger years. "In prison cons tattoo to their bodies out of boredom or rebellion. I was always thinking that one day I'd be on the outside and I intended to stay on the outside, but a couple of months ago I was taking a whitewater rafting trip at the Sabaii Massage."

"I know the place." Whitewater rafting was the local euphemism for a soapie with a naked girl or two.

"This one spinner had the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE to the American flag tattooed on her back. Being with her made me feel a little patriotic."

"I can imagine the feeling." Neither of us had been back in the USA for years. "I have a friend who had MADE IN THE UK tattooed on his forehead."

"Stupid place for a tattoo."

"Even worse his mother told him he had been born in Poland."

"Dumb Polack."

"What about Thai tattoos?"

"I don't talk about that. I'm a guest of this country and those tattoos are magic." Jamie had a healthy fear of red-lom.

"Traditional Thai tattoos or 'sakyant' are supposed to protect the wearers from misfortune and evil spirits and anyone getting men tattooed are asked to obey the five following rules; honor your parents, be faithful to your wife, no drugs, don't eat any fruit from off the ground, and no oral sex with women."

"I'm good with honoring my parents, faithful to my wife, and fruit off the trees, unless you're hungry."

"I'm good with most of them too." The oral sex was impossible." "My problem with tattoos has been finding one I could live with the rest of my life. 69, Born to be Wild, Mom, the name of my son or daughter might have fit the bill."

"But not the Pledge of Allegiance."

"Not a chance." I don't need to prove my allegiance to the USA."

"I doubt that poor girl knows what she’s wearing."

"Probably true, but America salutes her patriotism."

We lifted our beer glasses to toast her.

"USA USA USA."

The Brits at the bar glared at us. Jamie glared right back. We weren't going to heaven, but we were in Pattaya and as anyone knows who has lived in the Last Babylon for more than two weeks it's paradise on earth.

No Tattoos in Heaven by Peter Nolan Smith

After my best friend drowned in Sebago Lake in 1960, I became a non-believer. Chaney was a good boy and no God would have let him die. My atheism was a secret. I was an altar boy at Sunday Mass. My mother prayed that I might take the cloth as a priest or at the least a brother. The nuns mother at Our Lady Of The Foothills also had high hopes for my avocation, however the Baltimore Catechism failed teach me religion to resurrect my faith in the Holy Trinity and I bore my godlessness in silence.

My secret was sussed out by 6th grade teacher.

"I know faith when I see it. I know lack of faith too." Sister Mary Goretti was more tolerant of my puerile apostasy than her whip-bearing compatriots. "But you really shouldn't be an altar boy."

"My mother wants me to be one."

"And she wants more."

"I know."

"So if you can't quit, just lower your head during Mass and say whatever you want, but I don't want to see you taking the Holy Communion. That would be sacrilege."

'Yes, sister."

I might not have believed in God, but I did believe in Sister Mary Goretti.

She Mary Goretti was as ancient as dust. The old nun had taught school in Egypt. Her tales of children running over stalks of harvested crops without touching the jagged tips was a magic miracle. Her students loved her and she loved educating us.

No question was undeserving of an answer and one day my friend Chuckie asked, "Do atheists go to heaven?"

"I don't know, but I think they would be surprised to wake from death in the after-life." Sister Mary Goretti looked in my direction and I shrugged, since going to heaven meant worshiping the man in a dress and hell was a burning oven. I was more interested in purgatory. Nothing bad ever happened in Limbo.

"My mother said if you get a tattoo, then you don't do to heaven."

"Leviticus 19:28 says, "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you." She knew her Old Testament. "That's against the 5th Commandment."

"I thought that meant 'Thou shalt not kill." I got As in religion, despite my godlessness.

"St. Paul admonishes us: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” She was no slouch with the New Testament either. "But my father was a sailor and had tattoos. He was a good man and I can't see him going to hell for an anchor tattoo, but who am I to question the dictates of the Church?"

None of us dared answer this question and we returned to our Baltimore Catechism lesson.

At year's end my report card was straight As for the year and Sister Mary Goretti rewarded me with a mother of pearl rosary.

"I know you don't believe, but that doesn't make you a bad boy. God loves us all."

"Thank you, sister."

She was playing a game, but I was lucky to have her as my teacher and while I don't believe in either heaven or hell, I have refrained ever getting a tattoo.

Out of respect for an old nun.

And only a little bit the fear of hell.

Ashes To Ashes

"It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."

Samuel Adams

www.infowars.com reported that the Oklahoma Militia was willing to fight in support of Nevada rancher's grazing rights on federal land. Members of the right-wing militia says it has 50,000 volunteers ready to go, if the Bureau of Land Management once more attempted to confiscate Cliven Bundy's cattle. Their leader Scott Shaw said to the website, “Evidently in America we don’t actually own the property anymore if you ever did. A showdown is up to the feds. The ball’s in their court! You can do this legally or if you want to try to do a land grab violently, you can do that. We’re going to resist you! Just look around the country, they are doing it everywhere. If they can do it in Nevada, they can do it in Colorado, Texas. I mean, what’s to stop them from coming to Oklahoma? The only thing to stop them is ‘We the People’.”

Senator James Inhofe was quick to criticize the militia.

"You’ve got a bunch of people there trying to take the law into their own hands and they shouldn’t be doing that. And the Bureau of Land Management is not government-owned, it’s publicly owned. There’s a big difference there. I blame both sides.”

Me, I blame everyone involved, but armed insurrection against the USA is never a good idea.

Just ask the South.