Tattoos, tattoos, tattoos.

Yesterday, I started a discussion about tattoos. Chip Ahoy said, for himself, he'd always wanted "a snake crawling out of my arse crack," that is a tattoo of same, not an actual snake. For me?

Something tattooed on a spot on the body that moves like an elbow or a knee so that a frog appears to croak or a woman's breasts bulge, or eyes widen.

A tattoo that appears to be a rip in the skin revealing underneath to be steam-punk mechanism of gears and levers rather than muscles...

Like a sly reference to the "In His Image" episode of "The Twilight Zone"? (Video.)

...or perhaps a sack of worms.

A tattoo to look like an alien being born by tearing its way out.

A realistic eyeball on the back of your neck. [When I was a youngster I asked my mum how she knew what I was up to and she answered, "Because I have eyes in the back of my head." Being a literalist, I took her on her word, and for years tried to examine her head more closely to confirm it. She was always such the bullshitter.]

Conversely, a realistic eyeball on your forehead that blinks when you furrow your brow.

Weighing scales that rise and fall depending on your arm movement would be too trite. Reject those.

Something in Latin that makes a person asking appear foolish for having asked isn't worth the joke. Reject that too.

Also reject some long passage or inspiring message that must be closely examined in order to be read. They're pretentious and the reader is ultimately let down for having troubled.

A dung beetle placed on your gluteus maximus appearing to be rolling a piece of dung away from your anus.

A radiation hazard symbol tattooed on your penis. Oh wait.

An archer fish depicted spitting placed near your urethra.

A Boxer dog tattooed on each breast so that when they sag they magically become Shar-peis.

For myself, I've always been partial to Egyptian designs, at least that's what I doodled all through college, and that's the art I sell, so the only tattoo acceptable for myself is a design of my own in the Egyptian style. It would be large, colorful, and dramatic. Probably a winged solar disc with something within the disc, possibly a uraeus.

There's an idea for you, a uraeus on your forehead.

Back to the snake!

Or a snake wrapped around your arm.

Or a gold bracelet with lapis lazuli. But then that begs the question, why not a real bracelet? I always thought if you were inclined to tattoo barbed wire around your arm, then real barbed wire would be much more dramatic.

A crown of thorns across your forehead.

Bugs crawling from out between your breasts.

An "R" and a "L" tattooed on the back of each hand appropriately. Or the word "Down" tattooed on top of each foot and possibly "Up" tattooed on your forehead.

"I'm with Stupid --->" tattooed immediately beneath your clavicle.

A diver hands clasped together aiming downward tattooed on you one side of your belly appearing to be preparing to dive into your pants.

An alligator snapping out of your crotch.

An elf, a fairy, a gnome, a leprechaun, or otherwise, some tiny being tattooed making it's way out of your pubic hair.

Ropes tattooed around your arms and legs so when you crossed your arms or legs it would appear as if you were suggesting bondage.

Robot parts tattooed on working segments of your body.

Open eyes tattooed on your eyelids.

A mustache tattooed with glow-in-dark ink, just for fun.

Jagged backhoe bucket teeth tattooed around your mouth.

Mucus tattooed draining from your nose.

Ants tattooed crawling in a line across your shoulder or torso carrying off some treasure like a leaf segment or other bug parts.

Bees laden with pollen tattooed to appear crawling out of your ears as if they [were] flowers.

A raptor on one knee and a bunny, chipmunk, fox, lamb or some other prey animal on the other knee, so that when your legs are crossed one appears to engulf the other.

Wow! Chip was a blog thread unto himself. Such overwhelming thread domination could have silenced everyone else. But we still had Christy:

A stylized slightly tilted fibonacci spiral that starts directly above the center of your left eyebrow, arches up and drops to end in a tight swirl beside your left eye. In blue, a strong blue. With wings coming off the outside edge of the curve that reach up and out to your hairline. A little black can be used to give definition to the wings.

Then, Dody Jane said:

I am going to answer seriously... I was in a writing seminar once called "Writing Family Stories". There was a man in the class of East Indian heritage - he was first generation American. 

He told a lovely story about being taken to India as a child. It was a pilgrimage of sorts. His mother had the back of his neck tatooed with a round black dot. She was not going on the trip. He was going with his father. She told him she had the tattoo placed at the nape of his neck so that God would be able to easily identify him when he looked down from heaven and protect him from harm while on his journey. The way he told the story was so incredibly moving. 

I think this is an ideal tattoo. I told my daughter it is the only tattoo I would sanction. Otherwise, I told her I am leaving everything to charity. She remains untattooed...

See, I hear that story, and I imagine God thinking: There's that kid with the dot again, whose mother thinks he's so special, like I'll be all screw the other kids, this one has a dot.

Freeman Hunt said:

I told my husband about this thread, and he had a recent tattoo anecdote I have to share:

Last week my husband was down in our basement with his friends for their weekly movie get together. One of the men took off a fleece pullover and inadvertently pulled up the t-shirt underneath, revealing what appeared to be a large flower on one pectoral muscle with his nipple forming the center.

"Wait a minute--what was that?! Is that a flower around your nipple? Lift up your shirt again."

"No. That's the only time you'll ever see it."

"Why do you have a giant flower around your nipple?"

"It's not a flower. I'm going to get it fixed. It was going to be something else, but it hurt too much, so they couldn't finish it."

"Well, right now it looks like a flower."

"I know."

Ha.

Ha, indeed.

Should/must/will the Democrats repeal DOMA?

In the wake of the "yes" vote on California's Proposition 8, Glenn Greenwald urges congressional Democrats to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. [Correction: I wrote "no" before. "No" lost. I meant "yes." Sorry for the confusion.]

Barack Obama has, on numerous occasions, emphatically expressed his support for repealing DOMA. When he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, he wrote a letter to Chicago's Windy City Times, calling DOMA "abhorrent" and its repeal "essential," and vowing: "I opposed DOMA in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor." But he went on to cite what he called the "the realities of modern politics" in order to proclaim (accurately) that DOMA's repeal at that time -- 2004 -- was "unlikely with Mr. Bush in the White House and Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress." After Tuesday, that excuse is no longer availing.

Democrats have a particular responsibility to erase the stain of DOMA. It was Bill Clinton who signed DOMA into law....

This would be a vital step that Democrats could take quickly and easily. But are they likely to do so?

No, because they're not stupid and they want to stay in power. That's my answer. Here's Greenwald's:

The conventional Beltway wisdom has already ossified, quite predictably, that Obama and the Democrats must scorn "the Left" and, despite polling data showing widespread support for equal rights for same-sex couples, such a move would be deemed by Beltway media mavens as coming from "the Left." Nancy Pelosi is running around decreeing that "the country must be governed from the middle," while Harry Reid emphasizes that Democrats have received no mandate from the election. And, most significantly of all, Democrats are being told they must avoid the "overreaching" of Clinton's first two years, defined by his attempt to eliminate the ban on gay people serving in the military -- something likely to scare Democrats from touching any gay issues.

Combine all that with the fact that only a small minority is actually affected by DOMA's injustices, that many Democrats will insist none of this is worth the "risk," and that many Obama supporters will refuse to criticize anything he does (marvel at the number of commenters here saying that Obama's choice of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff is right because . . . it is Obama's choice -- just look at this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this). Even as leading Democrats flamboyantly condemn Proposition 8, and even with Obama's long record of emphatically vowing that he will support DOMA's repeal, there will be very strong currents pushing Democrats to do nothing.

Greenwald, who surely must be paid by the word, never answers his own yes-or-no question. He goes on to express his desire for a repeal. But I think if he were honest and straightforward and remembered his own question, he'd say what I said: No, because they're not stupid and they want to stay in power.

IN THE COMMENTS: Dody Jane says:

They should repeal it. They should be who they whisper they are. They have the power now. They should do it. I am sick of tippy toeing. They way I look at it, my daughter's generation will eventually get aroud to it in 20 years anyway. It is inevitable. It is a liberal issue, liberals have the power now, liberals need to be big boys and as NIKE would say, just do it.

ADDED: Greenwald adds an update that links to this post:

Simply reciting trite conventional wisdom from the TV is easy, particularly for those capable of nothing else, but that practice is exactly what has produced the last eight years.

Glenn, my observation was that you failed to answer your own question. I didn't watch that on TV. I read your post. I'd like to see you face up to your own question. I think you don't because I'm right and you know that the Democrats -- out of perceived self-interest -- are unlikely to repeal DOMA. So I will renew my accusation that you are dishonest. You're also verbose as hell: reciting trite conventional wisdom ... easy. Bleh. I think you are taking the easy way out, beginning by not editing tiresome redundancies out of your posts. Instead of assuming that something you don't want to deal with came from television and that things from television can be ignored and that things that are well-known aren't worth thinking about, you should answer the question -- which was your own damned question. You asked whether the Democrats are likely to repeal DOMA. I don't like DOMA either, but I know and I think you know that the answer to your question is no. Be honest and say it clearly and move on.