Man Up Your Tattoos

THE REASON BEHIND YOUR TATTOO

"I just felt like getting some ink," doesn't cut it.  Neither does, "I had a baby daughter."  And if it's, "I wanted to commemorate the death of someone important to me," well, you do that by drinking yourself into a coma, not with some sentimental thorny heart picture between your nipples (by the way:  nipples are not manly.  Feel free to lose them).  And that's only if you're enough of a girl for someone else to actually be important to you.  Acceptable reasons for getting a tattoo include, but aren't necessarily limited to:

• The devil told you to do it.
• You need a face on the back of your head because your enemy trains tigers.
• You're training yourself to receive puncture wounds for your next knife fight.
• You want a target on your face for Lennox Lewis (see: Tyson, Mike)
• You're covering up that swastika shaped birthmark.
• Clothing is too expensive, so you're getting them inked on for permanent.
• You have a short-term memory problem and you hate paper. 

DESIGN

Most dudes get one of three kinds of tattoos: a tribal tat, some sort of asian characters or something "manly."  Well, let's strike tribal off the list straight away. The only people who need tribal tattoos are part of tribes and, let's face it, if you're part of tribe, everyone who needs to know already knows. Also, how'd you get a computer into the jungle? That's awesome. And if you're NOT part of a tribe and you're sporting a lovely tribal design, beware -- if someone in the tribe ever finds you, expect to have your nuts cut off with a wheat-crushing rock and your wound sutured with a maggot-ridden whale bone. And while violence tends to slant towards "manly," having your sack cut off is decidedly for the "birds."

Also, fuck getting Asian characters. They look like the tattoo artist was having a seizure while he was trying to write your initials. The only thing vaguely "manly" about them is the fact that half the time, the words/expressions etc. are either translated wrong or misspelled. We think permanent mistakes on your body is patently awesome, but forget doing it asian style. Why not just get misspelled ENGLISH phrases tattooed on your body? What says "this guy has a steroid-popping problem" more than the following phrase scrawled over your entire back:

"if you raed this ill punhc you hard"

Pack your expressions with misspellings, grammatical errors and backwards letters. Because a real man doesn't have time to proofread, even when it comes to shit that's going to be on his body forever.

As far as "manly" images go, the problem these days is a literal butt-load of losers now sport all the masculine designs. We're not gonna start dissing tigers, dragons, wizard hats or swords here. That shit is pure man. But any Billy, Logan and Lance could get those placed on his pale, hairless chest. So until our "testosterone-requirement for tattoos" bill passes in the senate, you're gonna have to switch up your game.

We suggest going meta. Rather than getting a tattoo of a tiger, get a tattoo of a guy getting a tiger tattoo. That'll blow more minds than a MAD Fold In. Another idea is to get a cartoon of your tattoo artist telling you he's all out of ink and can't finish your tattoo... and the actual tattoo has the appearance of ink slowly drying out.

But our all time favorite suggestion for a manly tattoo design is to get something you absolutely dislike tatted on a prominent place on your body. Hate Dr. Who? Then get a huge Dr. Who logo on your forearm. Hate Derek Jeter? Get Jeter's portrait on your neck. A lot of people like to refer to their tattoos as "conversation starters." Well that's straight up bitch made right there. We think the manly way to do it is to tattoo "fight starters" on your skin. That way, when someone sees your tat and remarks "Oh, I love 'The Last Strafighter' too!" you'll have perfect justification to pulverize his sci-fi obsessed posterior. Boo ya!

LOCATION

Location, location, location. Location. Where's the manliest place to get your tat? Your bicep? Your back? Your entire chest? Psssh. Might as well get a tramp stamp and get it over with, douche.

The key to a manly tattoo location is showmanship. How can you one up all those other losers out there getting "ink" at the mall? You've gotta choose places on your body that most lactating mama's boys wouldn't even dream of.

Take the traditional "LOVE" and "HATE" knuckle/finger tattoo that a lot of insanely pansy ass bikers get. Sure, it adds up, you have four fingers on each hand for the four letters in each word. We're down with symmetry. The golden ratio is manly as all fuck, don't get us wrong. But why choose a pussy-ass place like your knuckles. We suggest you slam both hands with a hammer until your fingernails fall off. Then get your "LOVE" and "HATE" tats placed on the skin where your nails normally grow over. Now THAT'S manly. Oh, be careful of gangrene though. Moving on...

Another "unconventional" (some might say "advanced") move is to get the tattoo in a place where no one can see it. A lot of so-called bad-asses will get their inner lips or spots between their toes tatted up as a sign of manliness. Cool... you can look at your between-the-toes tat while you're pissing sitting down, ladies. If you wanna inject some testosterone into this idea, take it to the next logical extreme -- tat your insides. Where's a better place for your "I HEART Mom" tattoo than on your actual heart? What better way to show your commitment to quitting smoking by tagging one of your lungs with a "no smoking" sign. And what's a funnier gag than inking the phrase "If You See This, I'm Probably Dead" on the surface of your brain?

But you know where the manliest place to get your tattoo is? On other people. There's nothing quite as raging-ly male as demonstrating your dominance over other human beings by forcing them to get a permanent ritualistic body marking of your choosing. Where's the best place for your celebratory "Giants 18-1" commemoration? Why, on your wife's back, of course. When you stare it while she's trembling in the bed next to you, a smile will spread over your face for two reasons: you'll remember your team's glorious win... and you'll know you're a man, through and through.

THE METHOD

You may think that prison tattooing is the manliest way to go about this.  If you do, you may also think that Tom Selleck is sexy, because you are a sad old lady.  Don't get your doilies all bunched up by reading on.  We did, however, approve of Steve-O getting a tattoo while off-roading in a Hummer driven by Henry Rollins.  That's still not the ideal way to go about this.  The first thing you have to do is secure your ink, and this means you need to kill a squid.  As the old saying goes, "The bigger the squid, the more vagina the resultant tattoo will bring you."  It's Inuit; don't question me.

Naturally, you have to kill the squid... naturally.  This means no modern machinery, especially spear guns.  You either have to capture the squid by hand and choke it out in your rowboat, or, if you're feeling up to the challenge and are mechanically inclined, you can set up a series of Ewok/Arnold-in-The-Predator traps for the squid, because those are bad-ass, and then, when they fail miserably due to being underwater, capture the squid by hand and choke it out in your rowboat.

Now that you have your ink, you have to find your artist.  Any blind epileptic will do, but if you can find one with paranoid delusions -- a man who may suddenly confuse you for his dead, abusive father and unleash the stabbing fury -- you can prepare to enter tattoo heaven.  It's not really a tattoo if it doesn't puncture a few organs.

CONVALESCENCE

Generally, when people speak of convalescence, they speak of resting so that one can regain their full strength.  Well, a man doesn't show weakness, so you're going to have to switch your healing game up.  You will not allow yourself to rest even for a moment, sprinting away from your tattooist with the needle-tip still embedded in your flesh.  For reasons still under scientific consideration, this tactic is known to increase the fertility of the average male fifty fold.  For an already preternaturally manly man such as yourself, you should be able to impregnate the woman of your choice simply by thinking her name.

Encouraging vagrants to slap your tattoos during the healing process -- yes, even the tattoos on the membrane surrounding your brain -- will not only be a hearty test for your immune system, it'll make the vagrants happy.  As you're fighting off the potentially lethal infections, remember that whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger... and if something does kill you, well, you should have grown stronger before you played your hand, cowboy.

REMOVAL OF OLD, UNMANLY TATTOOS

So what do you do with any and all tattoos you got before reading this guide? Right off the bat, let this be known: paying for tattoo removal is the pansiest of all pursuits, right up there with attending salsa dancing lessons and playing all-male nude soccer. Instead, why not get creative?

What works better at removing skin that a nice smoldering burn? You don't wanna go overboard and end up like that kid from "Mask," so we suggest heating up a fireplace poker and "blotting out" the offending tat. But you better keep this a DIY affair; having a friend help would be decidedly un-ballsish of you.

Another dicey but effective method is to shotgun the tat off. A few bits of buckshot would do the trick. So the key to this method is standing the correct distance away from the person firing the shotgun. Too close? You're dead. Too far away? Now you're just wasting pellets. Trial and error on this one is gonna be fun!

A lot of idiots out there have attempted to get an old unwanted tattoo turned into something new. You think we can't tell your "I LOVE tRICKs on my bmx" tat used to say "I LOVE RICK"? Pssshaw, we say. Psshaw. If you're gonna go this route, there's only thing to do: get skin color tattooed over your old tattoo. Pick the perfect pigment, shade, shape etc and just get your lame old craptoo covered up with some skin-tastic skin tone. The funny thing is no one will be the wiser until you go to the beach and everyone notices there's a patch of skin on your shoulder that's not getting tan. "Oh that spot?" you'll say. "I've got that same skin disease as Michael Jackson." Dude, you're gonna TOTALLY get laid with that line.

Now your tattoos are alll MAN'd Up.