Ok, so I had to try the band name generator at bandnamemaker.com.
I didn't really expect much but certainly couldn't miss with "Lubricated Docloco Of The Malicious Winter".
I wonder what kind of programming genius is required to make a computer (my computer!) think of that!?!
Oh well.
I am supposed to be drafting a genius response to Ferndale's ordinance declaring tattoo artists to be sex workers.
This is a depressing part of the job.
I suppose it doesn't matter much that the government is slandering us wholesale.
It might not even matter that we perform our tattoo and piercing services as the services of our ministry, just as we have since we began tattooing 20 years ago.
Our services were services of the Ministry in Michigan and still are in Utah and now are to be in Michigan again.
We (myself in particular) have always maintained as recorded in newspaper interviews and our own literature that I believe ALL tattoos and piercings to be "spiritual" in nature.
It does not matter if the recipient realizes the spiritual character of their act - the act of "personal declaration" speaks for itself and cannot be denied.
Those who detest Personal Freedom and the Freedom of Personal Expression are the people who Hate Tattoos and Piercings and Perpetrate Hate Laws and Hate Crimes in their Bigoted, Ignorant, Lazy and self-righteous - nazi-like way against ................people who ..........want to be the "individual" that they believe their "god" or "other" made them to be.
Who is to deny that?
What law?
It might not even matter that the main purpose for tattooing and piercing historically, where it is found in every single culture that has ever been discovered back to "the iceman" from 5,000 B.C. is as a spiritual act performed as a spiritual and often religious ceremony.
One of the main complaints of the Romans against the Christians that they were trying to catch to feed to the lions was that they tattooed each other with mystery symbols that made it hard to infiltrate "the cult".
The oldest and only absolutely continuous "Christian" church - the Egyptian Coptic Christian Church tattoos it's members and the tattooing of religious pilgrims is a highlight of the pilgrimage for millions of "Christians" from all over the world.
In the islands of America tattooing and piercing has traditionally been an established "right of passage" for men and women and is attended to with sincere reverence and ceremony - usually performed as a "spiritual" service.
To categorize the application of a tattoo or piercing as a "sex act" or to compare it to the sale of a sex toy, book or other sex object is simply insulting and wrong.
So, according to Ferndale law, there is an area from approximately a couple inches above the aureole of the breast to somewhere below the lowest "hanging point" of the scrotum - mid thigh at least - that is described by Ferndale ordinance 1004 (which I won't have till Monday - though I have several others) as the area wherein any service is considered a "sexual service" and any business apparently who offers services where the service is applied to the (basic torso) of the client is engaged in an "adult, sexually oriented business." and is therefore under all the restrictions of such businesses such as location to schools, churches, etc. and additionally some restrictive law that tattoo businesses can't locate within a certain distance from each other (1,000 ft.) as if we need protection from competition.
Now, to be fair, I have to include that if I only tattoo or pierce arms, legs (up to a point), necks and heads, I am ok, and do not fall under the 'sex service worker" catagory, but I still have to comply with the distance requirements because they are stated in a different ordinance and do not give any reason whatever for their inclusion and thusly offer no reason for exclusion either.
No really, they are afraid of "blight".
I grew up here - right in Detroit.
I know about blight and "flight", the sissy xenophobic motherfuckers.
Of course I can take a million pictures of every kind of church, government, medical, eduational and any other kind of business you like that shows some of them absolutely contributing to "blight".
Blight is not "business specific."
Blight has to do with care of land and property, not what service you perform in/on it.
Blight is a Community "Poor" Self-Image Issue that cannot be laid at any one door, but must be shared by the entire community that endorsed and perpetuated it.
People make blight, not services - sexual or otherwise.
And unless the supposed "blight" can be proved to actually be a "real" (not potential) hazard to the community, or takes away certain rights from neighbors in the act of exercising them for themselves (that's the big one in Utah "all the rights are ours - you don't get any!")
And, really - I know some beautiful areas in Detroit that people "just take care of" and the people are just as beautiful but are shunned because of the excessively depressed nature of their neighbors and the lack of care exhibited on properties and social perspectives.
I am still all for a Detroit studio myself. I married a suburban girl though (23 years now) (my 3rd try - her 2nd) (unless you count that one time) and we kind of compromise I guess, or we did while we had a business and kids to take care of all at once.
When we first opened our studio in Michigan, tattooing was still not legal in the actual City of Detroit. Many major eastern cities outlawed it in the 1960's.
The good artists went to the coasts or overseas. The slimeballs who were out in the sticks (Ferndale in 1960) just stayed put since they were under no law at all till 1998.
And it is these slimy operators (2 in particular) that this law is supposed to "hold off".
Sadly, it's just a load of poorly thought out and lazily slapped together crap.
Of course, now that I am considering such, I don't know that I believe even those laws are constitutional, they certainly aren't "Christian" from a historical perspective and "according to Christ" (if you can believe Him!) that churches or the services they provide are most appropriately located in the "thick of it" so to speak.
Ask Mother Theresa (well, she's dead, but ask anyway) why she didn't locate her mission in an area "zoned" for "worship only" (oh, and any other business, except ones that draw attention to the human body or sell alcohol).
I'm sure she thought that all people are God's Children and that there are no rights implicit in "religion" to dictate who your neighbors may or may not be.
It seems that to dictate based on a supposed "moral" ground actually is "the gooberment" imposing some standard of "religion" on the community which is actually AGAINST THE LAW.
Illegal laws are not to be obeyed and must be overturned.
I am all for the aims of the law here actually.
It is just that the government took a "good ol' boy", cheap, lazy, sleazy and illegal shortcut to attempt to "protect" the neighborhood, but really they have made a very wrong and embarrassing ordinance that cannot be enforced.
Katrina and I intend to fix this.
We did not buy a home here to have our local lawmakers commit civil rights violations against us by passing illegal and unconstitutional, immoral and prejudicial laws, based on unresearched profiling and personal bias NOT on any actual or potential threat to the community.
This law was certainly passed based on two of the sleaziest tattoo people in the industry, both of whom made Ferndale their home base for years and years when there was no law, but who in no way represent 99.9% of the body art industry.
It's like automatically labeling every gun owner a murderer.
Or every Bible owner a Christian.
It's just stupid!
And its evil.
And it's ILLEGAL, CHEAP AND LAZY!
So, while we still can, we want to take our town's motto:
FUN, FREAKY, FABULOUS, FASCIST FERNDALE and just take out the FASCIST part.
For a town that is known for "Hippies and Homo's", this is NOT what we expected.
At least this is one time I know I can trust the Homo's to help me out.
They have been fighting this fight for awhile already.
Speaking of Homo's...
Wasn't it supposed to be God who made them too?
What the fuck was God up to that day?
Is God just plain fucking stupid?
What did He make "different" people for?
Why can't God just accept that most people believe that "Diversity is Evil"?
Oh, God!
You...........just......................ooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Don't we really worship the great God of Xenophobia who blesses the world with endless, massive Genocide, endlessly and (essentially) equally - mostly promoted by "religion" and "progressive government".
And mostly we humans only worry about - who gets the stuff!
Talk about a bunch of ignorant MONKEYS us humans are!
I appologise for insulting monkeys.
There is a saying in the tattoo world:
The Only Difference Between People With Tattoos
And People Without Tattoos
IS
People With Tattoos
Don't Care
If You
Don't Have One.
Good-day to all ignorant, lazy, bigots and hypocrites everywhere - and a big fuck-you too!
What kind of xenophobe are you - red or blue?
