"I'll be the tattooed man. You can be the acrobat. I'll try and catch you when you fall."
--Circus Lights, Black Lab

There is a small part of me that is always upset by the fact that I will never fight in a war. That the greatest trial I will ever face was watching a pair of buildings fall. That I will never know bravery or valor, or the camraderie of the trenches, or a higher purpose.

Thankfully, it's just a very small part that watches too many movies. It wants you to get a copy of The Messenger so you have some sympathy for it.

***
Lately, I've been trading up in my geekiness, ie, finding cooler ways to be a geek. I gave my brother all my M:tG cards to recieve his guitar in exchange. Why is that geeky? Mostly because I haven't actually learned how to play a single thing yet, and due to the fact that my primary motivaters are what we in the scientific community refer to as chicks. In other news, I sold most of my Warhammer 40k collection, and planned on using the money to get a tattoo. Why is that geeky?

This is why. It's a terrible picture, soon to be replaced. But it works for now.

I acquired it this past Sunday, which Sasha referred to as "Justin Beautification Day." Our mission was manifold. The thing that was actually most important was getting me new clothing. Lots of new clothing. Thanks to random chemicals in my brain, my weight over the past few years has been 180lbs=>120lbs=>160lbs=>145lbs. The end result is that Stephen Hawking and a team of scientists are still trying to figure out the percentage of my clothing that actually fits me, and how close that amount can get to zero without actually reaching it. So we wandered the Village and SoHo for far too long, and bought lots of clothing. Some of it in colors other than black. Even stuff at (I hate to admit it) 8th Street Lab, making me wonder whether I'm some sort of dirty raver. Ick. One of the employees was kind of cool, told us to stop in whenever we were in the area. Odd.

After the important stuff was finally done, and after we had a run in with Matt, Edd, and VJesse, we went to go do the really important stuff. We headed down to Andromeda, since we trust those guys despite the fact that they keep shoving metal bits through us. There we met Joe, the Squirrel Guy.

As his name might imply, Joe likes squirrels. Crazy Squirrel Lady from Rat Race has nothing on this guy. This became apparent while discussing pricing, size, and location on the "tribal squirrel" tattoo I was getting. He then revealed to us that he was the proud bearer of 68 and 1/2 squirrel tattoos. At first we thought he was joking about the squirrels. Then the 68. Then the half. But lo and behold, his body was covered with squirrels of all kinds, including one half squirrel squirting blood where the rest of its body should be. He also had large acorns, all labeled - the Acorn of Sin, the Acorn of Desire, etc. The most impressive, imho, was the image of a squirrel offering Adam and Eve an acorn from the Tree in the Garden of Eden. Damn. So this is the guy who's going to be jabbing a needle into my arm for the next few hours. Very reassuring, which I say with only a little sarcasm. He kept up a stream of abuse was more calming than constant reassurances would have been.

He transfers the design to my arm, and then gives me the first taste of what I'm going to go through for the next few hours. My arm twitched involuntarily, but it was more from surprise than anything else. Not so bad. I can deal. So off he goes, drawing lines, and off I go, hurting. Things are going fine until all of a sudden my stomach starts feeling a little funny. And like he's some kind of physic mime-reader, complete with ESPN, he asks me, "When was the last time you ate?" Hours ago. "You have anything with lots of sugar?" Nope. He informs Sasha that I'm gonna need soda and candy. This is extremely confusing to my suddenly fuzzy head. My thoughts get stranger and stranger, and the last thing I really think is that I'm glad that a)I'm handling the pain so well, and b)I haven't puked.

Then my eyes roll up, my head rolls back, and I stop moving. Sasha's first thought was that I was dead.

I didn't actually realize that anything was wrong until I woke up. Sasha was rather panicked. Joe assured us both that I would be fine, and that all my clothes had been replaced and we could have copies of the negatives. The other tattoo guy showed up with Skittles and Cherry Coke (hi Ali!), which made me feel much much better. Apparently what had happened was that my blood-sugar levels dropped due to massive trauma occurring to my body. No one bothered to inform me that I should stock up on sweets beforehand. Squirrel-Guy realized this was occurring due to the fact that the vaseline on my arm had started to slide down, which means all sorts of temperature changes and whatnot. After the sugar break, I was ready to go again.

The remaining point of interest revolves around jokes. Sasha had started telling them at some point, even when I told her not to since it made me shake. I didn't want to have to explain the bushy squirrel tail we had to add to the Tzim symbol to fix it. As it turned out, Joe was unimpressed with the straight humor of the Muffin Joke and the Dead Monkey Joke. So Joe tried his own hand at it.

"Hey, you know why your arm hurts so much? Because I'm stabbing it with a fucking needle. Ha ha ha, see, I can be funny too."

Hilarious.

And then there was a riot.

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