So, I've decided to finally get the BTW logo tattooed on my left forearm in October. I decided to get the tattoo years ago, and have now completed the mandatory "six months of certainty" waiting period several times over, I've just never committed to a date. I still haven't pinned down a specific date, but it will happen sometime between October 1st and All Saints Day. In theory, you should try to expose a tattoo to as little light as possible; solar radiation breaks down the inks, leading to fading. This isn't really an issue with the skull-and-crossbones on my right forearm since it is a pretty simple design and only one color, black. Even if it fades, it won't be a big deal to have someone go over it with more black. The BTW monkey logo isn't terribly complicated, but it's still more intricate and more colorful than the skull-and-crossbones. My hope is that by having it done in October it won't be exposed to nearly as much sun in its first few months as was the skull, which I got on May 10, 2002. Now, do I want to have it done at the same parlour as the skull-and-crossbones or find a new place? As I've said, I'm very happy with my first tattoo; so, in all probability I'll return to S & C Tattooing in Ann Arbor for the second.

Deception and Deceivers
On the last day of July, I drove to Jackson to see the Michigan Shakespeare Festival's production of Twelfth Night, a play revolving around a woman disguised as a man and her unrequited love for her master, a nobleman. The woman acts as an intermediary between her master and a local lady, to whom the master is a suitor. It's both funny and quite touching. I was accompanied by an online acquaintance, the Friendster Girl; knowing she is a theatrical actor, I invited her on a whim. It was the first time we had actually met, but we'd been exchanging emails for several months and we able to maintain a lively conversation about a number of topics. And then the oddest thing happen: she called me a liar.

Now, make no mistake, I have told my fair share of tall tales; so, in certain contexts I might rightly be called a liar. And I have, in a phrase of which I am perhaps overly fond, an adversarial relationship with the truth. But for all that, it's not like I walk around with my pants perpetually on fire. I had given the Friendster Girl no reason to call me a liar, yet that's what she did. Not in so many words, but I told her of my nigh-legendary resistance to inebriation, and she said flat out that she did not believe me. If she does not believe to be true that which I insist to be true, she is calling me a liar, yes? Now, just wait one cotton-pickin' second, lady, where do you get off calling me a liar? Were you there on any of the nights when I gave inebriation the old college try? Have you seen the lists of what I imbibed? Have you even seen me take a single drink, let alone down eight Guinnesses in three hours? In answer to the last three questions, no, no, and no.

So, I'm done with her. My time is too precious to squander it trying to convince virtual strangers of the veracity of the facts of my life. I've deleted all the emails we exchanged and removed her from my list of friends at both Friendster and MySpace. This was not a romantic angle I was working, this was just someone who had initiated contact with me out of the blue. If nothing else, I suppose this incident has reaffirmed my suspicions about the sort of people who contact strangers online. Call me a liar, will you?