How does one sum up a week of body art news that includes an unintentional penis tattoo, a rickshaw driver with a Gandhi fetish, the unexplainable success of loan ads featuring a roving tattoo machine, and oh, the onslaught of Big Brother?

Indeed, no running thread weaves these stories together as fine as Beyonce's coif, but there are important lessons to be learned from each.

The first item teaches us that one should do some research before deciding on a tattoo artist. Not just on their experience and attention to hygiene, but also on their sport team faves. In Argentina, a young football fan went into a tattoo studio to get the logo of his beloved team, Boca Junior, needled on his back. When he went home to show it to his parents, he learned he got something quite different:

In general, I think that those with cheap sports logo tattoos are dicks anyway, but I doubt a judge would see it my way. The young penis-tattoo wearer and his parents are suing the studio.

Lesson No.1: Bring mirror or friend next time you decide to get work on your back.


From Argentina we now travel to India where newspapers this past week featured one man’s obsession on skin. Ashok Pandit, a rickshaw driver in Rajasthan, tattooed his chest at least 125 times with the name of Congress President Sonia Gandhi. While the Italian-born politician does look hot in a sari, Pandit reveres Gandhi “like a goddess” for her “spirit of sacrifice missing in other leaders.” Some may poo-poo Pandit’s body art choices and mock him for spending a considerable amount of money and undergoing a lot of pain in tribute to Gandhi; however, ask yourself how’d you react should you ever discover a charitable and selfless politician. For those of us in the US, our chests are devoid of political tributes ... but our butts belong to Angelina Jolie.

Lesson No. 2: The Ganhdi tattoo is the new black [tribal].


Ok, kids, pop quiz: What does a gyrating tattoo machine simulating a tramp stamp have to do with mortgage rates?

Absolutely nothing. But the peeps at Lowermybills.com laugh at your scorn of their nonsensical campaign, laugh all the way to the bank with $400 million dollars.



According to a VP at media communication firm Starcom MediaVest Group, the goal of online ads is to attract attention so that people click on them, and moving tattoo machines, dancing silhouettes, and dogs in goggles do just that. I thought the ads were trying to bank on Miami Ink cool. Instead, they bank on attention deficit disorder: “I was trying to read a news article and realized the dancing mortgage people were eliminating all rational thought from my brain,” said Rogers Cadenhead, an author and blogger, to the NY Times.

Besides the lesson in marketing, I learned that agencies bearing bad ads share a common trait with people bearing bad tattoos: “They are very comfortable flying in the face of scorn and ridicule." [James Gardner of Adverlicio.us]

Lesson No. 3: Money cannot buy good taste, but bad taste can make money.


Moving on to our final news item of the week, permanent scannable barcode tattoos are now a reality, at least, for cattle and rats. Somark Innovations, a St. Louis-based company, successfully tested an “RFID tattoo.” Needles inject the RFID ink, invisible or colored, which can be scanned, even in hairy beasts, from up to four feet away. The company says that the inks do not contain any metals and are biocompatible. Engadget.com says humans are next:

You don’t have to wait until the military gets its hands on the technology. You can act out your very own Orwelian drama by buying artist Scott Blake’s temporary and scannable barcode tattoos. [See the video of how they work here.]

Lesson No. 4: The apocalypse is near.



Marisa_DiMattia is a lawyer and editor of Needled.com, a blog on tattoo art and culture.