body modification – Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

It has been about ten years since my last tattoo. I have six of them right now, two of which are invisible under normal lighting, so maybe I should just say I have four. I have been thinking about the next tattoo for a decade and still don’t have it. I want a new tattoo, dammit! My arms are bare!

The problem is I’m really picky and I need an idea to be great for a while. I’ve turned on a lot of ideas that I thought were good at first. Most of my tattoos are literary in nature, so variations on these have come up. One of them I’ve even talked about in a previous post:

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Hunter Thompson is one of my favorite authors, but lots of people have that tattoo already– which, I admit, didn’t stop me with my Lord of the Rings tattoo. But two tattoos that I know I’ve already seen on other people? Is kind of a problem, which makes the Hitchhiker’s Guide image an issue as well despite the fact that that book has also been a favorite for nearly my entire life. And the one with the pencil is a nice mix of a politics tattoo and a writer tattoo, which I like, but I’ve been thinking about something similar to that image for over a year and I haven’t pulled the trigger yet so I don’t think I ever will do it at this point.

Which brings me to this, an image I know good and goddamn well no one else has:

Azamoeg

That’s the symbol of Azamoeg, and it shows up a lot in the Benevolence Archives books– I actually use it as a section divider in the print versions of Sanctum and BA Vol. 1. I designed the damn thing myself, so I know nobody else has used it. And I can have an actual artist jazz it up a bit too, if I want to.

But I’m not in love with that idea either.

So. Internet, do your thing. Find my next tattoo!

Normally when I blatantly steal an idea for a post from an author, it’s Scalzi– in fact, some of my highest traffic posts in the history of this blog have been topics I got from him. So I’m proud to announce that this particular blatantly stolen topic has Jim C. Hines as its originator instead. I have never read a word of Hines’ fiction, and I do not have any idea why, because I feel like I’ve been following him on Twitter and through other means (which, mysteriously, I can’t recall) forever, and he entertains me, so what the hell, man, go buy some of his books.

Anyway. He’s been doing this series called Writer’s Ink, which are short interview posts where he interviews a writer about their tattoos. Jim C. Hines has never met me! He’s never heard of me, either! Which makes it unlikely that he’s going to be interviewing me about my tattoos. But I’m a writer! And I have tattoos! So I’m posting about them, because I’m pretty sure posting pictures of my Great Hairy Pastiness is something that I’ve not done around here yet. And, as it works out, nearly all of my tattoos are book related.

So, working more or less chronologically:

LEGS:

That is, and have fun wrapping your head around it, my right leg on the left and my left leg on the right. The tattoo on the left is the first tattoo I ever got, and it’s a Bible verse: Genesis 4:9, to be specific. It says “Am I my brother’s keeper,” which is what Cain famously says to God when God asks him what happened to Abel. Why I got it is a post in itself; needless to say I used to be a biblicist in a former life and I find this particular phrase specifically as well as this story in general endlessly fascinating.

If you don’t recognize the other tattoo, we can’t be friends anymore. It wraps completely around the leg.

LEFT SHOULDER:

This is my only hand-drawn tattoo; I drew it myself, which is kinda fun. It’s an ibis, the Egyptian symbol for the god Thoth. (For the record: I read Hebrew, so I know that one was right. This tattoo I had checked out by a buddy of mine who is a literal Egyptologist. So this ain’t like me showing you a Chinese letter that is actually the character for dim sum and saying it means “Strength” or “Honor” or some shit like that. Never tattoo yourself in a language you or someone you trust can’t read.)

Why Thoth? Thoth taught the Egyptians language and mathematics.

RIGHT SHOULDER:

El-Ahrairah, from Watership Down, which you should read if you haven’t yet. This image is directly from the film version of the book, and if you’ve seen it you know it’s from riiiight around the time he pisses God off, which always entertained me. Watership Down is one of my favorite books ever.

There’s also a tattoo on my left wrist, which I won’t be reproducing here because it incorporates part of my name. It’s in backlight ink! It’s really cool! Sorry. 🙂

I feel like I should be tagging somebody. Other people! Tell me of your tattoos!