If you are not a native Trobriander, full-blooded Celt mystic, or are in any other way a "tribal" poser, a tatoo is stoopid.

Piercing is pretty stupid too . . .

One from South Carolina where I went to MOS School and the last stop before entering the fleet.

One from Guam where I went on on vacation with an ex.

One from Minneapolis where I grew up.

One from Japan where I spent most of my tour.  There is a good story behind that one as it isn't easy getting a tat in Japan.  At least when I got mine.  Things are changing some nowdays in Tokyo at least.

I would have liked to get one in Thailand.  Plenty of oppurtunity, but just too dangerous.  I didn't like the cleanliness of the parlors over there and the high rate of Aids in the population.

I will not bore you by getting into the details of the designs and the reasons behind them.  The point is for many people right now getting a tattoo is the trendy, cool thing to do.  However for others like me it is a deeply personal form of artistic expression.  All mine are covered up when I wear a t-shirt so almost no one ever sees them.

My opinion is just my opinion; don't take it too seriously. I'll admit they can actually look kinda cool sometimes. I'll bet yours are in that category . . .

The problem really is when posers get them I guess. I'm remembering a line from a book on the Navy SEALS I read a few years back. Can't remember which one, but if folks are curious I can scrounge it up . . .

Anyway, the guy who wrote it was a Captain and had trained in the first batch of SEALS back in the 60s, so he was probably in his 60s himself. But in the early 2000s he went through training with one new cadre. Two comments in the book that stuck with me. (a) he commented on how many of the candidates were enormous iron-lifting types; gigantic pecs, and arms, huge triangle torsos set on top of thick powerful football player legs . . . IIRC, it was his observation that these guys had a HIGHER than average rate of washing out, and it was the average-size wiry, high-cardio-capacity guys who tended to fair much better.

That reminded me of the standard weight room culture in the U.S. (and based on my experience in Botswana, maybe everywhere that weight rooms get set up?). A few enormous, grotesquely muscled types who are the role models for all. Most folks paying more attention to watching other guys, and seeing if they are being watched, and making sure they don't "lift too little" and consequently choose weights for any given workout that are probably too heavy for their actual goals, and consequently wind up doing 6 to 9 reps and that is it. Related to this, I know that the two muscle group once per day approach and shooting for exhaustion at 8 to 10 reps is widely used; great if you're a football player, not so great if you want to do anything else . . .

Me I go for full-body workouts, once to 1.5 times per week (giving enough time for it to heal up): chest (1-2 sets, alternating flat, incline, decline sorta randomly), back (also with dumbells only 1 set only), shoulders (3 sets with only about 5 or 7 pounds), lat pull (1 set of 25 or 30), bis and tris (1 to 2 sets alternating the curl bar, straight bar, dumbells, and preacher seat pretty much on the whim of how I feel), squats, leg curls, let extensions, bicycles, situps, some kinda forearm workout, maybe sometimes a bit of something extra if if feels like that group could use it, 10 to 20 minutes of cardio . . .  I bike to work about 4 or 5 times a week, so I'm getting plenty of cardio . . . Basically, I try to do resistance training the way your body would actually naturally get worked out in a "natural" human setting (hunting, fishing, gathering food in a hunter-forager kind of context): whole body for about 1 to 1.5 hours, fairly low weight, fairly high rep (20 to 30 reps on each set, and only 1 to two sets of each). I came up with this based on going to weight rooms since I was 16, watching what others do, reading various books, and studying human biology and natural history. I know of no one else who does any workout quite like this, and I don't really care. Most guys care MOST about doing something that is proposed by someone else, and being seen doing it.

(b) the Navy SEAL book author also commented on Tats. He commented that, there were a lot of candidates with Tats, and they were disproportionately washouts.

So, there are probably some very cool people with tats, who did it to be individuals, and because it was a ritual, and sign that means something very deeply to them. But the Navy SEAL (and my own opinion) suggest that: there are a lot of poser wannabes with Tattoos.

It is THOSE particular tats that are Stoopid