all dressed up with no where to go

does anyone know where I could find a photograph or a good drawing of a nightingale in flight? I want to get one tattooed on my back (middle, left side) because I love John Keats, but there only seem to be pictures of nightingales on branches/being held by someone, and I want my tattoo to be of one in flight. thanks. :)

also, does anyone have any White Noise tattoos? I just finished the book last night and I'm in love with it.

Does anybody have any Twilight tattoos?

Hi Guys!

I'm new to the community here, but I've been looking at Lit tattoos for a long time now. I've got two tatts already on my back and I'm itching for a new one. I want Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland Quote:

"Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat

"I don't much care where..." said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

I think I might want the last line, followed by an image of the cat(or just his grin :D ), but I'm not sure where. Hrm. I'm debating on the ribcage under the breast but I realize that this is a fairly common place for lit tattoos. I'm not sure if that puts me off at all >_<

Do you think its too much if I use the entire quote? I feel a bit piecemeal at the moment.

( Here are a pic of my current tatts )

Opinions?

So I have been thinking about getting another tattoo for quite some time now, this one literary related....I am thinking about getting a heart (not sure if it will be anatomical or design yet) with the quote "this is my heart...it is what keeps me alive" written around it. This quote is from Everything is Illuminated  by Jonathan Safran Foer.

The whole quote: "This is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive."
 
Big question about placement.

Instinctively I think it should be a chest piece just because of the heart, but I already have quite a bit going on on my shoulders, and I am not sure how a heart would fit into what I have already. I really like the uniqueness of what I have right now and I feel like a heart might be too much right there.

Any other ideas for placement?

For reference here I am.

how long does it typically take to receive your invitation after medical clearance? I received the toolkit notification of medical clearance last week and got my medical clearance letter last friday (I actually thought it was my invitation.) I eagerly await the mail everyday in hopes to get an invitation and just wanted to know if I should just wait it out for a few weeks.

Hey all, first off I want to say that I love all that tattoos I've seen here, they're all really original and creative. I'm going to be 18 soon, and I want to get my first tattoo sometime in August. I understand that it's a permanent body mod, and I've put a lot of thought into what I want (although my questions may not show it). I'm not very artistic, so I was wondering if I could have a bit of help with general design. I want to get my tattoo on the underside of my forearm, just above the ditch. I'd like it not to extend too far, I want to be able to wear a 3/4 length sleeve to cover it. These are the ideas I have narrowed it down to:

-"regret nothing" without the quotation marks, in either a bold typewriter font or something a bit more sketchy.
-"Do I dare disturb the universe?" is a bit longer and I've always thought a quote would look odd on me if it were perpendicular to my wrist.
-"stock your mind" from Angela's Ashes, perhaps curved with a book or books under it.
- I love the quotes "You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be" and "I want out of labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure. A sphinx. A mystery. A blank. Unknown. Undefined." both by Chuck Palahniuk.

I guess my questions are, which option is most viable for the forearm? I'm concerned about letters bleeding together in the future, but I love all of these ideas and it's hard for me to narrow them down to just a few words. Any advice you could give would be most greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Also, if I the font I choose is sketchy, would that affect its tendency to bleed together in the future?

Show me your Tolkien and Shakespeare tats!

I've been toying with the idea of getting either "not all who wander are lost" or "for in that sleep of death what dreams may come" (from Halmet, but also the title of my favorite novel. Possible with only the 'what dreams may come' portion). But I already have one text tattoo ("power to change") and am planning at least two more ("no day but today" and "when i'm sixty-four").

Right now, it's a toss up between the Tolkien and Shakespeare ones and "even warriors, they still cry" (a lyric by the same artist who wrote the song that 'power to change' is from). Thoughts? My latest tattoo is around my ankle, 'no day but today' will go around my other ankle. And my back is currently occupied by a music note and paw prints up my spine, so that's out. So any placement ideas? Preferably something that can be covered and isn't on my chubbyness. Lol, I just made a lot of limitations, I realize.

First of all, apologies for the multiple postings. They're of different topics, so I figured it'd be silly to try to lump them together. Not to mention, nobody enjoys reading a novel in a journal post.

As for the subject line, it's not the absolute truth, but it doesn't stray far from reality. I haven't been a complete mute; however, it does feel weird to go day to day without really saying much. Gone are classes (and classmates), work for all intents and purposes (and thus coworkers), and roommates (one of the new ones just moved in, but she's gone most of the day, and I feel like we wouldn't be that compatible conversation-wise). Most everybody else in town is settling into new places and new positions, so that's a bust too.

The small pang of loneliness is starting to make its dent. I'm trying to chase it away with tv, books, practicing guitar, and packing (uncovering all sorts of old tucked away things is proving to be a whole separate emotional adventure), but it's temporary at best. I like the free time, yes, but I can't help but be a bit envious of those who are actually getting a move on with their lives. I'm essentially marking time for the next 6 weeks.

But that's not the reason for this post. I could go on and on about the weird mish-mash of emotions and thoughts of the present, but given that they have yet to come to any sort of coherent distinctions, it's not even worth the effort.

Instead, a singular thought kept nagging in my consciousness that it begged vocalization (or in this case, publication?). I dyed my hair last night back to my favorite of shades, a medium-not-quite-dark red, then I went back to Cat's Eye this evening to get my bangs trimmed a good deal shorter so I could wear them forward. Back story: when I went to get my hair cut last week, I was hoping for a completely new look. Granted, it was still a great cut, but it lacked the "wow, that's different!" effect I was going for.

Now, in a new shirt I got earlier this week sporting my red, sassy hair and crazy almost-fuchsia lipgloss that's been sitting around unused since I bought it earlier this spring, I feel like I could tackle the world.

This whole ordeal thus begged the question, why do I get such pleasure out of constantly changing the way I look? Or rather, why do I get the urge to change the way I look so frequently? No joke, I get bored with the way I look on about a monthly basis, and it's at that time that I'll dye my hair, get a hair cut, wear my makeup differently, try new clothes combinations, or style myself somehow differently.

It's not a self-esteem thing, I know. If it's one thing my parents were great about, it was raising me as a confident woman with little to no image issues that afflict so many other women.

It's not an identity-crisis thing either. I know I'm not a finished package - I believe the greatest gift of life is the constant process of growing, learning, and improving - but I have indeed figured a lot of myself out these past four years.

Sheer boredom then? Who knows. The physical changes do often correlate to emotional changes, but they're not generally emotionally-charged decisions. I think I'll just blame it on boredom this week.

Two recent movies I've watched have hit quite a chord, and only after some time to digest them am I starting to understand why they have resonated as such.

Film 1: "Once"

It's the simple, poignant story of a man and woman trying to make the most of the short time they truly have together. He's a street performer, and she's a mother with a husband abroad. Nothing could ever come of their chance relationship; however, they savor each day and end up making an album together. The music they make together is beautiful as is the tragic, but true-to-life ending. He eventually leaves for London (the plan all along) and leaves as a gift for her a piano from the music store where they played together for the first time. As much as the romantic in me wanted them to throw caution to the wind and give it a shot, that's not the way the world works. It ended the way it should, I suppose.

Film 2: "Little Children"

A suburban mother in a loveless marriage strikes up a friendship with a suburban father in an equally loveless marriage that eventually leads into an affair. Amidst their passionate romance, there's also the intertwined stories of an ex-cop tormenting a convicted child molester that just moved into the neighborhood. Again, the two lead characters find themselves in a situation that is fleeting at best. After a skateboarding accident and frightening rendezvous with the child molester in the local park, respectively, the man and the woman separately abandon their plans to run away together (unbeknown to the other). They return to their homes, their families, the status quo.


Now, the question at hand is why, days removed from the initial viewing of these two films, do these stories still stick with me? On a most basic level, I feel like I can connect with the idea of a being in a somewhat dead-end situation. However, even after moving out here, I know that it's not really the definitive end to things. It's a weird paradox nonetheless.

I know there's got to be more to it, though.

Are there any Divine Comedy inspired tattoos in this community? I've been toying with the idea of getting a literary tattoo for awhile now (though I am yet to be inked at all-I can't seem to settle on something that I can imagine having for a lifetime) and I'm considering getting one of Botticelli's images of Beatrice similar to ( this ), perhaps to the left of the small of my back. I first read The Inferno in my freshman year of high school in English class and the idea of treating myself to this tattoo before I head off to college in the fall is appealing.

Hey all - I've been wanting a tattoo for a few years, and this place has been one of my favorite places to come for inspiration. Yesterday my brother and I went and got tattoos together...here's mine: ( possibly nsfw...a bit of bra showing... )

Here is my latest tattoo, it does include text but isn't quite literary.

However, if I were going to put a literary quotation along with it, it would be the following:

"Grave: a place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student." DEVIL'S DICTIONARY. Ambrose Bierce. 1911.

The tattoo signifies my decision to register with the University of Alabama-Birmingham's Anatomical Donor Program, ie making a bequest of my body for medical research after my death.

http://thebluerosetattoo.com/files/tattoos08/bequest_copy.jpg

I had to read this script today:

"Some said...feed the skin by the whitening nutrients would give radians skin from inside. That is so true. :)" [sic]

I ultimately decided to bring all the ideas I had to the artist and talk to him then. We both decided that for it to avoid looking too crowded on my arm just to add a few poppies, and I love it!
( +2 )

What kind of printer are you using for those of you who are DIY-ing your invites? My HP PSC 2355 won't even print on plain stock scrapbook paper from Michaels. It won't pull it into the printer at all and keeps telling me that my printer is out of paper. Bleh :[ There goes all my DIY ideas. :[

Hi! I am planning on getting a quote from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. The quote is "And the walls became the world all around." I have a couple of questions about it though.

1. Placement! Where do you think I should get it? It should all be in one line right? I currently have a tattoo dominating my right shoulder, and my left shoulder blade.

2. I'm kind of torn, should I keep the "and" in the quote? Or start it as "The walls became the world all around"

Howdy,

Have a few questions - anyone out there have a JD? I'm running through my last year of law school, and I have been considering the PC for a long time now. I'm not married to using the degree by any means, but it would be nice. I know a few jobs incorporate it into the work, but I was hoping some people out there could shed a bit more light on it.

Thanks

i just moved to plano, tx.
im trying to get a small quote written on the inside of my right wrist, however..
i want the best of the best.

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions where to get a beautiful tattoo in the dallas/fort worth area
(websites would be wonderful!!)

Completist collectors of elysesewell idiotica will be pleased to know that I failed to confirm the date of my Chinese visa expiration, only bothering to look in my passport to check on it after I was already in the country illegally. I had to evacuate Shenzhen quicklike, as in late at night, with my head still lacquered in the day's swathe of makeup and Hairstyle. Fortunately, I didn't get fined or searched or imprisoned; the immigration officer just made me trundle my enormous suitcase off to a little back office and spend twenty minutes in a sweat of uncertainty while he produced a written warning.

So I arrived in Hong Kong a few days early, and the little hovel my agency had prepared for me was not yet ready. I had to spend a few days in the agency's model quarters, a weird place indeed: a half-floor of a huge industrial building, a warehouse retrofitted into a giant apartment. All the bedrooms were bricked-in, windowless chambers with portable dehumidifiers chugging away 24/7 lest they explode with mildew. Every model from the agency lived there- a lot of girls, but no one knew exactly how many because some emerged from their concrete mausolea so infrequently.

After a few days there and a few enjoyable moments of chewing the fat with my Zadie Smith-reading chambermate, my hovel had been vacated (I asked the previous occupants to set aside any unwanted stuff they'd accumulated during their stay so that I could use it instead of the maid just throwing it away, and what did I get? A couple of bent-ass wire hangers, some margarine and half a jar of Skippy) and I was able to move in.

The new hovel is not swanky: it's the smallest apartment I've ever lived in, and in a less-than-ideal neighborhood, but it was the best anyone could rustle up during the summer of the Ohhellnolympics. This is how I summarized it (via email) to my quondam cellmate (the 'Bay and the Wanch being two neighborhoods of HK):

I had a feeling, had a hunch:
it ain't in the 'Bay, it's in the Wanch.
Many hallmates pitter patter.
Crappy aircon rattle clatter.
Narrow slot for model's butt
Like Gulliver in Lilliput.
But I dassn't bitch and daren't moan,
For here I lay my head alone.













Far right: hanging laundry sack.


My friend in Seoul would make a beeline for the bottles of squid ink sold in every Korean grocery store and roll one around in his hands, moaning, "I want to buy this SO BAD but I have no idea what to do with it." Mike, unless you've decided to take my advice and chug it straight from the bottle, may I offer you this sinister inky spaghetti and squidballs? Just be sure to make frequent mirror-checks: it turns your teeth black.


Finally, Jumpshot 101: raise the ISO or there will be blurred.