Tag: bizarre

A really messy tattoo mistake

Several sources (including WMAR-TV, weinterrupt.com, and Het Nieuwsblad (article in Dutch)) report on a tattoo session where the customer, Kimberley Vlaeminck, an 18 year-old girl from Belgium, quite literally got more than she bargained for.

According to Kimberley, she wanted three (possibly four) little stars on her face, but wound up with a mind-numbing total of 56 when she fell asleep during the session. Not surprisingly, she is a little shy about showing her face in public. Kimberley is suing the Romanian tattoo artist, who she claims did not understand her correctly, for what appears to be €11,000 or so (the Euro equivalent of US$15,000).

The artist, Rouslain Toumaniantz, paints quite a different picture of what happened, stating that Kimberley was not only awake but saw herself in the mirror several times during the procedure. Rouslain has offered Kimberley a discount down to €50 (the cost of the four stars she originally wanted) but flatly refuses to pay for the removal surgery.

I don’t really know who to believe here. However, I do have four observations:

  1. I remain committed to never getting a tattoo;
  2. I advise my readers who insist upon getting tattooed:
    1. make sure there are no communication problems (ideally, the artist speaks the same language, fluently, and if not, have a trustworthy interpeter along), and
    2. make damn sure you stay awake through the whole thing;
  3. Some tattoo artists look scary as hell to me, even without a tattoo gun in hand;
  4. Finally, I will admit, the design would looks great as a facepainting, but not as a permanent tattoo.

Hopefully the lawsuit will receive an equal amount of press coverage. I plan to follow up on this one.

Artist’s fake bombs made from carrots cause uproar

You really can’t make this stuff up.

The BBC reported on an art project in Sweden that turned into a bomb scare. Or maybe, that was the idea from the beginning. You be the judge. (There is also a Radio Sweden article about the event for those that desire a perspective closer to the events.)

[Artist Conny Blom] taped bunches of carrots together with black tape and attached blue and red wires and a clock to them.

Police received worried calls from members of the public who thought they were real bombs. Mr Blom was forced to remove his art – and may face charges.

The article goes on to say that Mr. Blom describes the event as a “harmless stunt.” The police agencies involved may describe the event a bit differently; Blom may face charges.

The article I found lacked a picture of the actual carrot bombs themselves, opting instead for just a generic picture of a bunch of carrots. UPDATE: Nina from Sweden commented with a link to pictures on the artist’s site.

As much as I despise the use of intent to distinguish between criminal and non-criminal conduct, that may be the only thing that makes sense here.

If Blom was making genuine hoax bombs (which are illegal here in Texas, USA) and disguising the carrots to appear more like real dynamite sticks, then I can see pursuing criminal charges. But, if it’s obvious enough they are just a bunch of carrots made into “a caricature of a bomb” I don’t see why there is so much fuss. Given that Blom was working at the request of a local art gallery, I doubt there was much intent to have the bombs look convincing to all but the dumbest and most gullible passers-by. Of course, the quote from P.T. Barnum may be proven right yet again: “You’ll never go broke overestimating the stupidity of the general public.”

This event does speak volumes for how hyper-sensitive we have become to terrorism, across the entire planet. Prior to 2001, this may well have gone over as “oh, look, someone made a fake bomb out of a bunch of carrots, some wires, and a cheap alarm clock, how cute.”

One last semi-topical aside: I am reminded of a TV news report I saw once on a local station when I was a kid. A bum snuck onto a bus, whereupon the passengers in the back shouted “there’s a bum on the bus.” By the time the driver heard it, it had changed into “there’s a bomb on the bus.” When the report aired, this was kind of funny. I have a feeling it would not be nearly as funny today.

Just plain bizarre: American family on Czech billboard

While whacking the StumbleUpon button today, I landed on this guardian.co.uk story.

A friend of Jeff and Danielle Smith was traveling across the Czech Republic when he spotted a billboard with those very familiar faces. Upon closer inspection he found they were indeed the Smiths and their children.

As it happens Danielle Smith is a blogger, and not surprisingly, blogged her own take on the story at extraordinarymommy.com. She picked a very sharp and damn near spot-on opening line: “So, this is the price we pay for indulging in social media, I guess.” The story goes on to mention she originally heard about this via a Facebook message.

Social media is only part of the equation here, I think. The guardian.co.uk article mentions that the shop owner “thought [the picture] was computer-generated.” So it’s really a mixture of several factors here: technological illiteracy, the world shrinking thanks in part to the Internet and social media, and (what I personally think is probably the most tragic of the three) a decline in manners caused in part by these but which was probably already in motion years prior to the Internet becoming a mainstream form of communication.

This decline in manners is made more evident by an edit Danielle makes to her post, adding:

…if you are part of the smaller percentage who are commenting only to say that a member of my family (or all of us) are ugly, I won’t be approving the comment.  I won’t allow it on my site.  I imagine you understand.

That’s right. People have been commenting on her blog, just to say her family is ugly. How tasteless. How shocking. How revolting. How stark a reminder of just how low we are sinking as a society. It’s tragic, when you think about it.