hours before the first session and I'm feeling a little nervous, mostly because it's going to be a huge piece. This week, as people were becoming enlightened of my plans on getting a tattoo, I fielded a lot of inquires regarding what I was doing. Two of the most asked questions were "does it hurt?" and "what made you decide to get that?" The first question is typically from a person who doesn't have tattoos and probably doesn't plan on ever getting one. And, the second question is just people wanting to know why I would ever want to enduringly scar my back with a giant dragon. My answer to that, "why not!?!" I guess that doesn't answer the question about why one would choose to mutilate their body. Personally, I find tattoos (bust out your dictionaries) a pulchritudinous form of art. I'm not a rebellious adolescent nor am I into self-inflicted violence. So why the heck get a tattoo? I don't know, cause I want one. I hope that's a good enough reason. I guess it's about as relative as me trying to describe to someone how painful it is to get one. It depends on the individual.

Okay, Jim, here's my two cents on this entry. For you folks at home, let me say that I would have happily remained anonymous in the process, but I think the documentation of Jim's tattoo is interesting, and he invited me to post on his website. I'll try to keep my pontificating to a minimum, but you, Jim, brought up two things that are worth commenting upon, I think.

A) People seem pre-occupied with self-inflicted pain, and to that I say, "So what?" People put themselves through PLENTY of other painful things for the sake of beautification. Some of them are more acceptable- piercing one's ears- and some are less. It's the ugly head of our culture's hypocrisy to pronounce judgement upon some things and not others. Parents buying their teenage daughters boob-jobs for graduation? Let's rant about THAT.

B) Who cares why you're getting a dragon? "Why not?" is indeed the best answer. Why scrape the bottom the existential barrel for the justification of all our actions? Why not just do things for the sake of doing them? Why ? Why not? I say we should all get beautiful tattoos that have no meaning so that we can assign our own meanings to them.

Okay, I promise: I will never get on my soap box again. The rest of my entries will be my making fun of Jim.