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ZombieJesus vs. ZombieWizard

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Change of venue

Hello loyal readers,

I have realized that I am no longer able to update to this blog every day, and so I have decided to move to another site which you can all check daily and get new updates, some of which will be mine.

funvampires.com

I just did a best-of-the-worst retrospective and will be making all Awful Tattoos updates to that site from here on out. I'll be posting on here to let you know when the updates are for the first few weeks or so.

Thanks,
Alice

Kokopelli - Trickster God

Kokopele
Kokopelli-mana or Kokopelmana (actually, Kokopelli's wife) (Hohokam)
Kokopeltiyo
Kokopilau
Neopkwai'i (Pueblo)
Ololowishkya (Zuni)


Kokopelli is a fertility deity, usually depicted as a humpbacked flute player (often with a huge phallus and antenna-like protrusions on his head), who is worshipped by many Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States.

Like most fertility deities, Kokopelli presides over both childbirth and agriculture. He is also a trickster god.

Because of his influence over human sexuality, Kokopelli is often depicted with an inhumanly large phallus. Among the Ho-Chunk, this penis is detachable, and he sometimes leaves it in a river in order to have sex with girls who bathe there.

Among the Hopi, Kokopelli carries unborn children on his back and distributes them to women (for this reason, young girls are often deathly afraid of him). He often takes part in rituals relating to marriage, and Kokopelli himself is sometimes depicted with a consort, a woman called Kokopelli-mana by the Hohokam and Hopi.

Kokopelli also presides over the reproduction of game animals, and for this reason, he is often depicted with animal companions such as rams and deer. Other common creatures associated with him include sun-bathing animals such as snakes, or water-loving animals like lizards and insects. Because of this, some scholars believe that Kokopelli's flute is actually a blowgun (or started out as one), but this is a minority opinion.

In his domain over agriculture, Kokopelli's fluteplaying chases away the Winter and brings about Spring. Many tribes, such as the Zuni, also associate Kokopelli with the rains. He frequently appears with Paiyatamu, another flautist, in depictions of maize-grinding ceremonies. Some tribes say he carries seeds and babies on his back.

Origins and Development

Kokopelli has been worshipped since at least the time of the Ancient Pueblo Peoples. The first known images of him appear on Hohokam pottery dated to sometime between AD 750 and AD 850.

Kokopelli may have originally been a representation of ancient Aztec traders, known as pochtechas, who traveled to the Southwest from Mexico. Such traders brought their goods in sacks slung across their backs, and this sack may have evolved into Kokopelli's familiar hump (in fact, many tribes make Kokopelli a trader in this way). These men also used flutes to announce themselves as friendly as they approached a settlement. This origin is still in doubt, however, since the first known images of Kokopelli predate the major era of Aztek-Anasazi trade by several hundred years.

Another theory is that Kokopelli is actually an anthropomorphic insect. Many of the earliest depictions of Kokopelli make him very insect-like in appearance. The name "Kokopelli" may be a combination of "Koko", another Hopi and Zuni deity, and "pelli", the Hopi and Zuni word for the desert robber fly, an insect with a prominent proboscis and a rounded back, which is also noted for its zealous sexual proclivities. A more recent etymology is that Kokopelli means literally "kachina hump".

Because the Hopi were the tribe from whom the Spanish explorers first learned of the god, their name is the one most commonly used.

Kokopelli is one of the most easily recognized figures found in the petroglyphs and pictographs of the Southwest. The earliest known petroglyph of the figure dates to about A.D. 1000. Kokopelli was one of several kachina dolls sold to tourists. The Spanish missionaries in the area convinced the Hopi craftsmen to omit the phallus from their representations of the figure. As with most kachina dolls, the Hopi Kokopelli was often represented by a human dancer. These dancers apparently had great fun with missionaries and tourists by making obscene and sexual gestures that the foreigners did not understand.

In recent years, the emasculated version of Kokopelli has been adopted as a broader symbol of the Southwestern United States as a whole. His image adorns countless tourist items such as T-shirts, ball caps, and keychains. A bicycle trail between Grand Junction, Colorado and Moab, Utah is now known as the Kokopelli Trail.

Kokopelli bears a passing resemblance to Bradshaw Paintings of North-West Australia (examples), which could be mere coincidence or sign of a common origin; some have suggested that ancient astronaut theories in the model of Erich von Däniken have attributed both to a common celestial source.

Wizards III: wizards with balls

Here is an assortment of my favorite tattoo theme: wizards with glowing and/or fiery crystal balls.

Glowing red eyes just make this wizard look like a snake, and what is up with the weird pointy shoulder on the left? I can't even begin to discuss the money ball...


This wizard is the best of the bunch, technique-wise, but what is up with the Q-ball? The sparkles are a good touch.


This guy gets bonus points for having eyes, but negative points for the half-assed glowing ball.


Not only does this wizard look like a zombie with shark teeth, but his magic ball is made out of DRAGONS and he has flying decapitated hands.


I love the robe but this wizard looks like he's about to hike a football, not cast some serious magic



And finally, I know this bad picture obscures the badness of the tattoo, but just pay close attention to the pointy red fingernails, the snake-eyes, and the fire that looks like it is in zero-g.

When you really, really love a musician...

It still doesn't mean that getting their portrait tattooed on you is a good idea.

Star Wars II

I got this email from a reader in my inbox this morning. Thank you so much! This chewie is amazing!
this is my friend's arm, proudly displaying chewbacca over an Irish
flag... this tattoo came to him in a dream.


It prompted me to do another search for bad Star Wars tattoos so that I could fill out a post. I already had this one saved. It's an internet classic and one of my favorite awful tattoos:


I found a couple other wonky chewies:

The color shading in this one is pretty funny:


And finally: one of the worst tattoos posted on this blog to date. It's Jabba with slave Leia, in case you can't tell! Her hair is coming out of her face, her six pack is atrocious, her arms and hands look just like her braid of hair, her nose looks alien, and she has the weirdest shoulder I have ever seen. Jabba actually looks pretty decent, but then there's the weird leafy neon background behind them.

Rockabilly Tatoos

Followers of the rockabilly trend tended to be rebellious in many different ways. Their style of dress broke away from the standard, hair styles were different than what was popularly acceptable, and the music was a brand new creation like nothing that had ever been heard before. Rockabilly tattoos were also a form of rebellion. Body art was not the popular trend that it is today when rockabilly began back in the 1950’s. Rockabilly tattoos were some of the first in a trend that would explode through the decades. Other cultures across the world had been decorating their bodies with ink for centuries, but as an American art tradition, this was practically unheard of and looked down upon severely. However, this did not stop rockabilly tattoos from becoming a fashion statement among these rebels.

Girls, cars, and musical symbols and instruments tended to dominate the subject matter of a rockabilly tattoo. Women, for whom it was much less acceptable to have a tattoo, often wore necklaces with pendants referred to as “rockabilly tattoo necklaces”. The pendants on these pieces of jewelry often sported the same artwork as men’s rockabilly tattoos, like cars and pinup girls, as well as sayings like “faith” or “rock” written with an artistic fashion and surrounded by decoration.

Rockabilly tattoos began a trend that turned into a phenomenon. Today, many rockers, country artists, and rockabilly lovers alike have body art, some of them covering large areas of their body with body art. Some have even gone to the extreme of covering their entire body with tattoos. It’s gone far beyond the pretty heart with a woman’s name worn on a man’s arm. Whatever the favored subject matter, rockabilly tattoos were some of the first body art to be worn in visible places, and the showy artwork inflamed society into a world of tattoos.

Alien Invasion

Alien tattoos are pretty much always a little cheesy, but these ones are next level:







And finally, an internet classic:

This is for the bike punx

Just a reminder that A) sunscreen is your best friend when you get tattoos, and B) bike tattoos are not always super cool, especially not homemade ones.















p.s. thanks to the awesome readers who brought these photos to my attention!