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Your understanding of tattoos, much like your dermis layer, is about to be indelibly altered.
Much love and many thanks to announcer Moira Quirk.
Your hosts are Danno Sullivan and Clare Sera.
Love the show? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Every episode, with transcripts, lives at experteasespelledwrong.com.
Our audience tonight is composed mostly of sailors, brothel ladies, tattooed people, and Danno, that's your Expertise. Spelled wrong? Naturally. Good afternoon and evening to our gentle podcast listeners. Clare, it is a real pleasure to be here with you on Expertise, the information podcast. You've been diving into the history and of course, fascinatingly, tattoo history goes back thousands of years. And speaking of going back, let me just adjust here so you can see my back. Oh. Oh, my goodness. See that? Now, what looks to you like a beautiful tweed jacket, that's a tattoo, Clare.
No. Yeah. And let me turn this woolen necktie, that's a tattoo. Oh, my gosh. And I see that if I move in the light, it switches to more elegant evening wear. We use a special light adjusting ink now. It's gone so high tech, you wouldn't even believe it. The whole thing is done with a laser process, this almost magical light adjusting ink that changes based on the angle that it's viewed from. So wait, am I correctly viewing that you are- I'm completely naked. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. There are certain angles that I've learned simply not to turn to. Well, you derp, derp, oh, look, I'm a little flustered.
Let me adjust the lights just for a second here, Clare, and watch as the suit changes into heliotrope pajamas. Oh, my gosh. So do you just have to carry your own lighting rig? I've learned to always have the rig with me. Occasionally, I will wear a pair of cutoff shorts, and that's just in case the lighting goes wrong, because maybe your extension cord isn't long enough, maybe the sun comes out at an unexpected moment. So the modesty shorts are always just a good safety backup. Well, you don't want to get arrested, or do you? Because what kind of advertising would that be?
Yeah, and you know, some of the best tattoo ideas do come from the convicts. That really is coming full circle. A lot of the convicts now are using this new technology. We do the black and white striped suits for them, and then change the light, and it becomes a new, more modern orange jumpsuit. And then when they are set free, hopefully, which is the goal of all convicts, do they need to then have a lighting rig to look like they're dressed like- Oh, you mean when they're released from prison? Yes. When you said set free, I thought you meant take off the modesty shorts.
No, I actually meant being released from prison. So that's a very complicated system. It's complicated, and yet it does simplify things overall. Does it though? Well, what do you mean? Well, I mean, I understand the concept of being entirely naked, never having to purchase clothes again, being fully free in your body, but having to be on some sort of a dolly lighting rigged system that has to also be plugged in. Claire, you sound like the small-minded older generation right now. Who among us does not cover up and hide in shame some aspect of their figure?
Do you not wear clothes? Do you not wear glasses? Do you not wear a hearing aid or a head brace? I do wear all of those, as you are pointing out to our listeners. Well, I wasn't sure. I thought they might be a tattoo implied. No, I am... My skin is virginally clean of ink. You are free of ink, but you're not free of inhibitions. I'm saying let's let it all hang out, baby, and reveal what you wish as the sun goes around. So speaking of this extreme tattoo, and this is an extreme version of tattooing, you definitely need to keep it up because if at any time you're not fully inked, and if there are children present, you could be sent to prison.
Oh, sure, sure. For unpleasant revelations. Is that the charge? Yeah, that is the charge. Yep. Subsection 4C. So what we're encouraging a lot of parents to do now is to get their children tattooed early. That way they can grow in to the clothes that we tattoo on their body. A lot of kids are going with hand-me-down tattoos, but that's kind of awkward, you know? You get a tattoo from your older brother, and it doesn't quite work on your body. It's really just a way to save money, keep a tattoo in the family. Some of these are available secondhand, you know, if you go to the Salvation Army or something.
A tattoo? I cannot recommend getting a tattoo. A secondhand tattoo. At the Salvation Army. So what are your plans for the future? You know, Claire, tattoo artists are like anybody else. We're working for a living, and you take the job that comes along. God bless a freelancer. And I suppose, I mean, work is limited for you, because your appearance is, you know, really quite off-putting. Let me shift this way. Oh! So handsome! Yeah, yeah. I'm pretty proud of my handsome ink. Right, yeah. But, oh! Nope! Sorry. You can't. That wasn't me. That was a cloud moving across the sun.
Dammit. Right. See, that's a problem. You can't work outside. I do have a rake tattoo. So I can go out fully naked and rake in the yard, for example. I kind of just shift my leg around, do a little shimmy with my leg, and it looks like I'm raking because of the tattoo. But how do you make money at that? Oh, I offer to rake for the neighbors. I can't tell you. When they see a naked man coming up the driveway with an offer to shimmy his leg in the front yard, so you ask, you know, what's tomorrow, you know, I'm not worried about where the money comes from. At this point, wake up, don't get dressed, wait for the sun to come up, and then go and shimmy in the yard.
A lot of them will actually just pay me to go away. That does make a lot of sense to me. Donald, I'm going to wrap us up for today. This has been almost too much for me to really take in. But I did have a question that you may or may not be able to answer. It's just sort of a fun part of the podcast. We like to ask everyone who comes on what the etymology of their expertise is. And I'm wondering what the word tattoo comes from. It's such an interesting word. I don't know the origins of it. So it's T-A-T-T-O-O, right? Yeah. It sounds like a Glenn Miller song.
The word tattoo, Claire, comes from Hawaiian. It comes from Hawaiian? Yes. From the Hawaiian language? No, from the actual word Hawaiian. So got a scrap of paper, write down H-A-W-A-I-I-N. You hear the double I in there? Now flip your page upside down. Oh, yeah. I see it. Okay. And the letters take on a different shape that way. And you can start to see how they're transforming. Now cross out the A because that's upside down, but the H is still right side up. The H is the same. Separate the H, and you'll see that at the crossbar, it becomes two Ts. Oh my gosh. It just did right on my page.
Now the double U of Hawaii becomes a double O. Got it? Oh, yeah. Flip it around, right side up again. Hold it up against a mirror, and you'll see that if you close one eye and squint through the other eye, you see it? Oh my gosh. I see it. Tattoo. Yeah. Oh, I know. I was missing one. Right. That happens sometimes when you first try it. But that's the evolution of the word. Oh my gosh. That makes so much sense. And especially when you think about how many one-eyed Hawaiians there were in the early days of Hawaii. Thanks, Danno. This has really been quite enlightening.
