The Tattoosday Book Review: Skin Graf - Masters of Graffiti Tattoo

I guess it's no surprise to me that a quality book about the convergence of graffiti and tattoo art  has come to pass. Even less surprising is that Michael "Kaves" McLeer is involved.

Kaves is co-author, with Billy Burke, of  Skin Graf: Masters of Graffiti Tattoo, which is being released tomorrow, April 25, 2013, by Prestel Publishing.

In fact, before I even talk about the book, I should alert readers that tonight, April 24, 2013, Kaves and Burke, along with writer/producer Sacha Jenkins, will be speaking at the New York Public Library as part of the library's "Design and Style Series." The event runs from 6:00 to 8:00 PM and I plan on being in attendance. Directions and further details can be found here.

I am not a native New Yorker, but when I moved here in 1997, I settled in south Brooklyn, in the area known as Bay Ridge. My fellow city-dwellers who have lived here longer, recall the days when graffiti artists were household names, and have their share of memories of subway cars that were moving billboards for the daring and adventurous artists of this often-misunderstood art form.

When I started blogging about tattoos in 2007, it really was a learn-as-you-go experience for me. I first encountered the work of Kaves a year later, with this post. A year later, I met him, after he opened up shop on 93rd and 3rd near my home in Bay Ridge, and had the pleasure of watching him tattoo close-up (while I was being tattooed by another artist working in the space). His shop, Brooklyn Made Tattoo, is a fixture in the neighborhood and I run into Kaves from time to time, such as when he shared this tattoo, which was done by the legendary Mark Mahoney.

So you can imagine my excitement about the opportunity to read and review this new book, which chronicles   the history of some of the most well-known graffiti artists who have crossed over into the business of tattooing.

The list of artists ranges from Kaves to Seen ("the undisputed godfather of graffiti-inspired art on skin"), and includes Med, Baba, Mister Cartoon, Giant, Ces, Yes2, Pyro, Norm, Helz and Coast.

Each artist merits a chapter, cleverly color-tabbed, and chock-full of wonderful photos by Estevan Oriol and Angela Boatwright, and supplemented by many of the artists, as well.

The reader is introduced to each of these legendary figures with their tags, locations (Bronx, Brooklyn, San Francisco, L.A., Boston...), a small biographical blurb, and several pages of first-person narrative, accompanied by pictures of both art forms, graffiti and tattoo.

Seen

Photo by Estevan Oriol

The juxtaposition is brilliant, as the reader is treated to the sense of styles jumping from inanimate to animate, from brick to flesh. And just to prove to the naysayers who may question the "validity" of graffiti as an art form  we also see more traditional tattoos from these amazing artists, but with that extra something, a touch of the urban art that lies within the steady hand of the tattooers.

by Mister Cartoon

Photo by Estevan Oriol

I can't praise enough the ambitiousness and scope of this project, which succeeds to no end. It's amazing to see the versatility of these exceptional artists who can work as impressively on a canvas the size of a building facade or on something as small as the side of a hand.

Pyro Can

Photo by Estevan Oriol

by Kaves

Photo by Angela Boatwright

This book really is a visual treat.

by Mike Giant

Courtesy of Giant

by Mike Giant

Courtesy of Giant

The range of talent is breath-taking and I whole-heartedly recommend Skin Graf as a must-have for fans of graffiti art and tattooing.

My only criticism is that I want more. The book is bursting with color and styles, but it leaves me with questions, and wanting more. I would love to see a sequel. Are there any established female graffiti/tattoo artists? How about from other parts of the world? Hopefully we'll see a Skin Graf 2!

This book will hook you with its serious appreciation of the history and art of graffiti tattoo. It certainly expands one's appreciation of the art form, both on and off the human canvas. It's a must-have for your tattoo library!

Remember, if you're in New York City tonight, come to the New York Public Library to hear the authors discuss this incredible book.

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Bridget Lowe

Our next tattooed poet is Bridget Lowe, who sent us this photo:

Bridget explains:

"I got this tattoo rather impulsively in the fall of 2008 in Syracuse, New York, at the excellent Halo Tattoo. I had recently found out that my surname came with a motto, Spero meliora, which translates to 'I hope for better things.' I just thought it was hilarious and apt that the Lowe family motto pronounced to merely hope, while so many other family mottoes announce intentions to destroy, maim, annihilate, etc. The motto seemed like a weirdly accurate summation of my Irish Catholic ancestors, who were overall a suffering bunch, from coal miners to morphine addicts to alcoholics to religious fanatics to general melancholics. Better things--that’s not much to ask for, and they asked so nicely. It really killed me. "

Bridget was also kind enough to send us this poem:

Heaven

The villagers are reading hot guts
and drinking tonics. I’m relaxing
on a rock, sunning my midsection,
my delicate white legs.
The palm trees stand stiff
in the wind, archaic, shyly optimistic,
foreign. A Cuban boy
presents me with a muffin, his homeland
a mere neck’s-turn away.
My hair blows this way
and that, as if I’m the featured guest
in a music video from my childhood.
For every broken heart, one golf course.
Everything comes out even.
The birds call me by name
and while I’m distracted, fish heap themselves
into my basket. And the loaves,
the loaves! They multiply.

~ ~ ~

Bridget Lowe is the author of At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, The Best American Poetry (2011), and elsewhere. She has received a "Discovery"/Boston Review award and fellowships to attend The MacDowell Colony and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She lives in Kansas City.

Thanks to Bridget for sharing her poem and tattoo with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Kevin Patrick Lee

Our next tattooed poet is Kevin Patrick Lee, who had initially expressed an interest last year in our project, but we had to wait for 2013 to run his submission.

We're running this post on a Tat-Tuesday, because, as Kevin explains, he sent us "two poems ... regarding the subject matter of each [tattoo]." And because, "each poem gives insight into the respective tattoo," he adds, "...further explanation isn't needed."

First, the tattoos, side by side on Kevin's inner forearms:

We'll start with the tattoo on  the left (Kevin's right), which is a portrait of his father. Followers of the television series L.A. Ink might remember this piece, which was featured on the show and created by Corey Miller at High Voltage Tattoo in West Hollywood.

This is the accompanying poem:


The Reality

My father died in my arms
early on a Thursday morning.

I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t even sad.
there was no time or room for that;
that was my mother’s job.

At the time, my brother and I
worked in the same warehouse,
the same dirt, the same grime,
the same bullshit from corporate pricks.

The day after my dad died,
my brother was back at work,
and I made it in the day after that.
We probably worked harder those few days,
than we ever had before.

And we got a lot of awkward looks,
uncertain stares that said,
“Hey, what are you doing here?
You should be at home, wilting and weeping.”

But like our hard-working Irish father,
we are blue-collared through and through,
until one day we too kick the bucket
butt naked on the cold linoleum
of the bathroom floor
some unsuspecting morning.

And though we have a lifetime to mourn,
the truth is,
bills don’t stop for death
and rent is always due on the 1st.

===========================================================

The tattoo on the right (Kevin's left) is based on Frida Kahlo's painting "The Broken Column" and was tattooed by Brittan "London" Reese at Vatican Studios in Lake Forest, California. The poem accompanying this tattoo is "Hooked":

Hooked


When I walked out of our apartment for the last time,
I grabbed every roll of toilet paper.
I took the clips that tacked down the cable wire.
I picked up all the damn bobby pins that miraculously
flew out of my wife’s hair and onto the carpet.

I stripped everything, except 2 hooks on the wall.
The two hooks that held up a painting that brought my wife and I together;
It was Frida Kahlo’s Broken Column.
There is nothing romantic or sexy about the painting,
except perhaps Frida’s bare breasts,
which I’m sure weren’t as perfect as
Salma Hayek’s breasts which played the part of Frida’s breasts
in Julie Taymor’s 2002 amazingly colorful film.

I don’t know what my wife’s attraction to the painting was,
and I still don’t,
but I identified with the nails scattered all over her body
and the literal broken column of her spine.

There were times in my mid-twenties where I couldn’t
roll over in bed to turn off my alarm clock because the discs
in my back were angry over their current living situation.
My doctor asking me, “So when do you want to schedule surgery.”
I never took her up on her offer,
instead popping pain pills and muscle relaxants when needed.
Luckily I have never been the addict.

And I have nothing to complain about,
as so many people have it worse.
I know a woman who had something
implanted in her that would permanently
block the pain receptors going to her back,
because without it, she would have hung herself.

This was our favorite painting separately before we met,
and perhaps it just goes to show that sometimes
pain and suffering leads to extraordinary things.

I left the apartment and those two hooks,
and wanted to beg the landlord to keep them there,
so that perhaps it would bring inspiration to two more people
to hang something on the wall together,
the walls that hold them together,
the walls that keep them safe together,
so that they could fall in love here,
make a family here,
so that they could one day move on
and beg the landlord to leave the hooks in the wall.

===========================================================

Kevin Patrick Lee is the husband of a beautiful blue-eyed woman, and the father of a cool blue-eyed boy. He hosts a monthly poetry series called The Hump Readings, was a founder of Beside the City of Angels: a Long Beach Poetry Festival, and runs Aortic Books. His work has appeared in book collections and many great small press mags. A book is forthcoming in 2013 by World Parade Books.

Thanks to Kevin for sharing his poetry and tattoos with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poems and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Kazim Ali

Our next tattooed poet is Kazim Ali.

When I reached out to Kazim at the beginning of the year, he commended me on the "prescience" of my inquiry, stating "I am as yet unwritten upon but am planning said writing in the next week or two...".

So, when Kazim sent us this photo, the ink was still fresh:

It's a great shot and when I first saw it, I was interested to hear what these lines of text were all about. Kazim didn't disappoint with this history:

"I have practiced yoga since 1999, never feeling more than a strict beginning, knowing less and less about yoga with every passing year. With poetry it feels the same. Though raised with traditional Muslim values, I struck out on my own to try to figure out God after encountering the work of Fanny Howe. From 2009-2011 I worked on my own book about yoga and Islam, called Fasting for Ramadan. While working on that book I came across and began translating the work of 20th century Iranian poet Sohrab Sepehri. One of his lines that resonates for me the most talked about the qibla, the direction of Muslim prayer--the direction toward which one must turn to face Mecca.

Sepehri's line (in translation) is roughly: I am a Muslim. My qibla is toward one single bloom of a rose.

Needless to say, my yoga practice taught me to always strive, to always try to know, that living (with or without a spiritual practice) is that exactly, a 'practice,' meaning 'process.' To write on the body is not permanent at all because the body is not permanent. To inscribe is to strive. The Farsi script runs right to left and the Sanksrit runs left to right. Each attempt at knowing oneself starts in the world, with others, in community, something I learn from both Islam and from Yoga.

I wrote on my left forearm: Man musulmanam. Qiblam yek ghul-surg.

I wrote on my right forearm the first line of the Yoga Sutras: Atha Yoganusanam. [in translation: Now (here, at this very moment in this very place) begin the teaching of yoga.]"

Kazim described how he came to know his tattoo artist:

"I met Sam McWilliams through my friend, Genine, also a poet. I wanted someone to write these sacred scriptures onto my skin and I wanted someone who would understand, if not the power of the scripture itself, then for sure the sacred quality of writing and of bodies. Sam had lived with Genine for a long while at the San Francisco Zen Center.

I went to Mermaids Tattoo, a special place where all the tattoo artists are women. We talked about the scripts and Sam said that while she had written Sanskrit before she had never written Farsi. I liked the idea of being in the hands of someone who knew her scripts but would be writing one for the first time. It felt like an occasion in the universe."

Kazim sent us this poem, which is an excerpt from a longer poem, which appeared in his book SKY WARD (Wesleyan University Press, 2013)

from "Journey to Providence"

but will I broken will I undone
at the water ask to go deeper a boat
dusting lindern clears away envy

wandering like lilac snow in dunes
never the water enter the duskwarm room
will I let you wing me will I have leapt skyward

~ ~ ~

Kazim Ali is the author of four books, most recently SKY WARD. He has also published two novels Quinn’s Passage and The Disappearance of Seth, two collections of essays, Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice, and translations of Sohrab Sepehri, Marguerite Duras and Ananda Devi.

His poems and essays have appeared widely in such journals as American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He edited the essay collection Jean Valentine: This-World Company and serves as co-editor of the Poets on Poetry Series and the Under Dicussion Series, both from the University of Michigan Press, contributing editor of AWP Writers Chronicle, associate editor of Field, and founding editor of Nightboat Books.

He is an associate professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College and has served as visiting writer at many colleges and universities including Naropa University, St. Mary’s College of California, New England College, Texas State University, Western Illinois University, University of Michigan, University of Wyoming, the University of Southern Maine and Idyllwild Academy.

Thanks to Kazim Ali, not only for sharing his tattoos and poetry on the Tattooed Poets Project, but for taking the time to expound so thoughtfully on how he came to have this work done.

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Virginia Chase Sutton

Our next tattooed poet, Virginia Chase Sutton, is no stranger to tattooed poets projects - she appeared in Kim Addonizio's wonderful anthology Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos.

She sent us this photo of one of her tattoos:

Virginia offered up this story about the birth of this tattoo:

"It may sound silly, but the symbols came to me in a dream. I was lightly dozing one afternoon and the symbols were behind my eyelids. I opened my eyes and knew what I had to do---get the symbols for Suffering, Ecstasy, and Death tattooed on my back.

The shop is called Rising Phoenix Tattoo in Addison, IL and the artist is Dave. I have been to Dave several times, even though I live in Arizona. This particular time, I was at a writers’ retreat in Illinois and knew I had to get the tattoo. I went with my god-son, Josh, who is in his late twenties. It is a long wait there as only Dave was there to manage the shop (we arrived at opening, noon). He had to answer the phone in mid-tattoo, pull off a glove, say 'Tattoo' and answer some basic question about hours, etc. then re-glove. If someone came in and wanted a piercing, he stopped the tattoo and did the piercing. So it took many hours to each get a tattoo. But it is worth it because Dave is a true artist."

She also sent along a poem related to this particular tattoo:

TATTOO AFTER KAWABATA’S SNOW COUNTRY

Out of town, on a new medication, a spill

down a flight of stairs,  strange bird

not quite flying. Limitless space. Off

to the ER. Careful, I tell the doc listening

to my lungs, here is a fresh tattoo. He steps

to the counter, back to me, says Do you have

any medical conditions? He already knows

from my forms but I reply I am bipolar.

He asks Do those lines mean anything? Three

symbols in Japanese are stacked on my back

in black lines with pink and purple wisps.

Suffering. Ecstasy. Death, I tell him. He turns,

startled. Why, he asks. What else is there, I say.

Bored with this discussion, I am thinking of Kawabata’s

poetic fiction, emblems I now have engraved

on my back. Influence for decades. What

is your psychiatrist’s phone number back home?

I bet you know it by heart. And I do. He pulls out

a cell phone, moves to the hall where I listen to

his take on my new tattoo. It is not a rave review.

I am miserable, wondering why so many docs

reject beauty, reject art. I think of the novel’s

main female character---there are only three---

a geisha and prostitute, Komoko. Of her traditional

loveliness, her isolation, her pain in a land of dense

and white-out snow, a forever landscape.

The ER doc hands the phone to me---my shrink

has a few words. You are on a long road, with

nothing but trouble ahead, he warns me, and changes

my med. He does not require a response.

The ER doc takes back the phone and there is more

chit-chat between them. Shimamura, the male character,

a dilettante, wants pure beauty and finds it in Yukio’s

reflection. In his brain, she is perfection. My back

burns, blurry as gathering rain. I am dismissed.

Standing outside the hospital, waiting for a ride

this winter night, I look up at the cluttered sky. Stars flare,

popping their skins. In the book, the Milky Way is

a living thing. Shimamura becomes incandescent

as he observes Komoko rescuing Yukio from a fire.

Komoko staggers; Yukio’s leg is burned by flames.

In the last image, the Milky Way slides down

Shimamura’s throat. It is what I look for in tonight’s skies.

Constellations rise, gleam, illusion I am able to capture.

I know it is not the Milky Way, but it will do as part

of my own mythology, the puzzle of existence:

Suffering. Ecstasy. Death.

~ ~ ~

Virginia Chase Sutton tells us:

"My first book is Embellishments (Chatoyant) and my second is What Brings You to Del Amo (University of New England Press). I’ve been published in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, the Antioch Review, Quarterly West, among other magazines, journals and anthologies. I won the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, Writers at Work, and others. Six times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, I have also received three grants from Poets & Writers magazine."

Thanks to Virginia for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday! For more of her poetry, head over to her website.

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Michael Henry Lee

Our next tattooed poet is Michael Henry Lee.

We have been fortunate to be able to share Michael's work in two previous years, so this post makes him our first three-time contributor. This is the photo he sent:

Photo by Chris Bodor

Michael sent along this explanation of the tattoo:

"...[This] latest addition to a thirty plus year work in progress is in Hebrew and translates: Jehovah Jireh or the Lord sees, also translated, the Lord is my provider. Jehovah Jireh is the first personal name of God that appears in the Torah and the Old Testament. Flames representing God’s first appearance to Moses in a burning bush, and Romans 6:23 a key verse from the New Testament ties the whole piece together.

The most compelling element of the story is the artist who has done all Mr. Lee’s work since he moved to Florida nine years ago. Tattoo Mike; sole owner and operator of The Tattoo Garden in St. Augustine Beach Fl., was involved in a bad motorcycle accident in Sept. 2012 just a few months after completing Michael’s tattoo. As a result of the accident he lost his left leg from the knee down and required resuscitation three separate times that night. He miraculously survived, is back to work and will [have] most likely completed an awesome three piece koi design for Michael Henry Lee about the time this is posted on Tattoosday."

Personally, I always look forward to seeing what Michael will send, and this year, he did not disappoint, sending along the following haiku:

Leonid showers-
the sky continues to fall
on star at a time

night fall-
in my dreams
there’s still time

winter solstice
snowy egrets
knee deep in the moon

so so moon
the right moment
passes between two stones

climate change
another sweater
goes to good will

The preceding poems in order of appearance: 1st place in the 2012 Haiku Foundation’s Haiku Now Contest in the traditional category, and runner up in the modern category, first appeared in The Mainichi Daily News, Mu Haiku Journal IV, and Haiku News respectively.

Michael lives with his wife Sarah of over thirty years, two cats, and numerous bonsai trees in the nation's oldest city. His work has appeared in The Heron's Nest, Frogpond, Haiku News, Icebox, Berry Blue Haiku, One Hundred Gourds, Mainichi Daily News, Haiku Ramblings, and the anthology, Dreams Wander On: Contemporary Poems of Death Awareness [edited by Robert Epstein] (Modern English Tanka Press, 2011).

Thanks to Michael for his continuing contributions to and support of the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday. You can see his previous entries here: 2012 and 2011.

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poems and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Thomas Fucaloro

Today's tattooed poet is Thomas Fucaloro.

I met Thomas last summer after spotting him at the New York City Poetry Festival on Governor's Island.

This is the tattoo on his leg:

For those of you who don't know, this is an illustration from Harold and the Purple Crayon, a children's book by Crockett Johnson.

This was one of my favorite books as a kid, so really wanted to find out what this tattoo was all about.

Thomas told me "I don't remember who gave me the tattoo, but I know they were affiliated with Jonathan Shaw and tattoos and cappuccino in the city, but this was 15 years ago."

He sent along the following, which was "the poem that inspired the tattoo or vice versa":

Thomas and the Purple Crayon

So there was no moon in the sky
so he drew one and then a house
with some windows, a door, a kitchen, a table
and then a mother and a father.

The first time I told my parents I have a cocaine problem
they looked at me odd
like I just told them I want to run for the presidency
or
be an Olympic javelin thrower
or
become a poet.

Thomas draws disappointment on their faces.

Something is about to change in Thomas and I don’t even know it.

I hope the need for coke becomes the need for my parents.

The drawing of the house still, stands.
This time Thomas adds shutters to the windows
so nobody can see in or out.

Thomas erases forks, knives and other sharp objects for
protection. He draws a hot air balloon in case he needs to escape.

The 4th time I told my parents I have a cocaine problem
they looked at me sorrowingly, morningly set sunset vibrant
just for a second, gone. Ultimatums fly like high-heeled shoes thrown
at my head, rightfully so. Thomas draws band-aids. Don’t worry
he draws a hot air balloon in case he needs to escape.

I’ve started writing poems where my father is the course through my veins
my mother a circulatory system of never ending branches reaching,
pulsating through arteries bloody blossoming through those little veins
in your eyeballs holding a stare of hope. Thomas draws his eyelids shut.

The 7th time I told my parents I have a cocaine problem
they looked expected. Expected like the sun.
Expected like one day I would have to put my crayons away.
Expected like no hot water in my building.

Thomas draws mountains of regret,
throws them off the George Washington Bridge
if only to draw anew.

I’ve started drawing these poems
where Thomas is writing about telling my parents about the first few times
I had a cocaine problem but they keep coming out like this poem.

Some people call me a drug poet.

My parents are taking the place of drugs in all my poems.

I think

this is a good thing.

I

draw

a smile.

~ ~ ~

Thomas Fucaloro is a New York City poet who has a book out by Three Rooms Press called Inheriting Craziness and is founding editor of great weather for MEDIA. He likes rainbows.

Thanks to Thomas for his contribution to Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.