FB: oh my stars...

10 June 2008 at 12:20


Apparently using the "Notes" application is a great way to broadcast yourself on Facebook. I'm kind of amazed at this, since I was fairly explicit in my attempts to stop ALL the mini-feed alerts. That said, I might as well use this opportunity to talk about myself.
Enjoy...

haha!!

So, as a few people know, I got a tattoo a few months ago (March 12, but who's keeping score). It's kind of huge. Takes up nearly a third of my arm. What can I say, I'm a fairly extreme person.

On a wild tangent - the extreme thing... In the weekend I was saying something to my mom about my dad, and she's like "yes. He's pretty extreme". This was within minutes of my announcement that I'm going to start training to ride my bike from Calgary, Alberta to Toronto, Ontario. It's about 3500km. Not extreme at all.I'm not trying to make myself sound tough. I'm not tough. I'm an idiot.

So I went to Auckland on March 12, wondered into Illicit HQ on Karangahape Road, and then the lovely Tom McMillan set upon my arm with a needle and some red dye."What's the story with the giant red star?" He asked, about halfway through."Um, it's going to sound really lame, but Rage Against the Machine is my favourite band.""Nah, that's not lame. It's cool."

Rage Against the Machine, by the way, is the best band in the history of the world. Contrary to what Robin Rai says, they do not indoctrinate the young. They encourage the young to form their own opinions of the world. They use their voice for good!

Back to Tom and I - it is lame. Totally lame, and totally everything that Rage Against the Machine as a collective would hate. BUT I don't care. I like my giant red star. It's my way of using my voice for good. I also like making up stories to explain it.

Cameron Leslie assumed it was because I think I'm a star. Close, but no banana.

Reuben, our idiot of a Telecom representative, became obsessed with the fact that because when he asked what the star represented, I pointed to a poster of Rage Against the Machine I have on the pinboard in my office. He decided that I'm a Communist.

Yeah, I kind of am. Like a lot of people I know, and like a lot of ideas, I think Communism works well in theory. My old history teacher has a little to do with this."The theory goes," she explained one day "that all jobs are required, and as such, everyone should be paid the same. Everyone needs doctors, and everyone needs someone to collect their garbage."

"I would dispose of my own trash if it meant I got paid more." was Nicola's response to this when I brought it up a few years later. Nicola is a pharmacist. She finished four years of uni last December, and has been a trainee pharmacist, getting paid pretty poorly, since then. She has good things to look forward to, in terms of salary. My theory made her unhappy.

Okay, so she'll take out her own trash. Will she drive it to the dump, separate it into whatever categories they use at the dump, and completely dispose of every last bit herself? Will she then empty the dump into landfill? I don't think so.

Reuben's dad is a lawyer. So of course, Reuben's argument was "what about the lawyer who works long hours?"
"Okay, Reuben, I understand that your dad is a lawyer, BUT, your dad still goes grocery shopping, right?"
Who packed the shelves of that supermarket? Who drove the groceries to the store? Who put the food in the packets we buy it in? Reuben's dad? Didn't think so. He's too busy working long hours as a lawyer.

And, no offense to lawyers, but like, it's hardly the most humble profession in the world. If you can tell outright lies without flinching, you're good at arguing, and you can spend six years in college reading boring crap, then chances are, you're going to be a good lawyer. (haha, yes - to those of you who know about my ability to compulsively lie, I have in fact considered law as a profession.)Not that this note was supposed to be a rant about Communism, but my point is (yes, I do have one!!), even if my tattoo was to display my Communist beliefs, I don't think that's such a bad thing.

It's better than say, a dragon with blue flames coming out of its mouth.

Now, I can see Silvie (if she's reading this) rolling her eyes out of desperation. Silvie heard more about dragon tattoos in one day than she probably cared to in her entire life.

In 2004 (February 17, but again, I'm not a stickler for dates), I found myself in a van with a bunch of strangers, on our way to Auckland to see A Perfect Circle play at the North Shore Events Centre. On that bus was the now famous "Donny", and his gorgeous little sister Shobna, but they're not (for once) the centre of this story. Instead, it's some guy named Dan. He rolled his sleeve up at some point in the journey to reveal a tattoo of a dragon. With blue flames coming out of its mouth. GAG.

Not only that, it was one of those dragons that's like, 50% oriental, 50% tribal, 100% crap. Yuk. I instantly hated it, and my opinion of Dan went lower than the earth's crust. Gah.

Imagine my alarm then when, nearly two years later, my friend Curtis informed me that he was getting a tattoo of a dragon. It was on this particular day that Silvie, over the course of a two-hour swim practice, heard - ad nauseum - about how much I hate dragon tattoos. Curtis didn't get the tattoo. He still doesn't have any (wimp). But mark my words. If he dares to get a dragon tattoo, he'll hear about it. I've used my voice for good before, and I'll do it again.

Curtis has, for those of you that are interested, just told me that he hates my tattoo.

Yeah, I know, I sound ridiculous, because my tattoo is about as mainstream and stupid as a dragon. In my defense, I've not seen anyone else with a giant red star yet. Whether this is because other fans of Rage Against the Machine aren't stupid like me, and they recognise that Rage Against the Machine would not be down with such a ridiculous and mainstream display of appreciation, I don't know. What I do know is that I've seen at least seventeen dragons that are, if not immediate family, then blood relatives of Dan's dragon.

This morning, a courier driver saw it. "That's different." What? No, it's not. It's not different. Sure, not many tiny 22-year-old girls like me have them. But I don't think it's different. Maybe he was taking the piss. But I don't think he was. It was a strange moment.

My boss saw it the day I had it done, and he too, thought it was different. Are these people stupid? Do they not go outdoors? And see that millions of people worldwide have tattoos of stars?

Maybe I am in fact unique.There's that stupid guy off Pimp My Ride that has star tattoos - you know, the one with the ridiculous hairstyle that wasn't cool in 1997, and isn't cool now? I'm about on par with that guy. Sweet.

I don't care. My tattoo is huge, and ugly, and obnoxious. But I love it. I used my tattoo ink for good!