A STUPID QUESTION DESERVES A CLEVER ANSWER.

the 'L' sign plastered on my face is due to a conversation Wayne and i had yesterday. we were trying to come up with incisive responses to the three most commonly asked questions directed at heavily tattooed people. and always asked by a sub-species of beings i'd like to define as the 'Loser Brigade'. these entry-level humans mysteriously seem to possess a sort of starter-pack brain-like organ. there has to be SOME sort of control center in their cranial cavity. otherwise what coordinates their legs and their lungs to function at the same time?

i mean REALLY, what kind of person does it take to walk up to a total stranger and start asking them personal stuff? i have no idea. but what i DO KNOW is that there are a SHIT LOAD of them.

hang on a minute... i've just got the answer to that question right now! for every cool person on this planet there are HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of UNCOOL people. and they are genetically encoded with all the social skills of an irrational rouge bull elephant. who hasn't had sex for about a year.

these people find it socially acceptable to interrupt a person during say, a meal. with like, your PARENTS. and ask you to get up so they can take a look at you. or scream done-to-death platitudes like the old, hackneyed 'hey sexy!!!' line at you from across the street. or hanging out of a car - i have to pause and wonder if there's a SINGLE WOMAN in the HISTORY of women, starting with Eve, that's responded favorably to that line. okay, i can think of one: an inmate who's just been released from a maximum security penitentionary where she'd spent the last decade in solitary confinement.

'hey sexy!!! nice chops sexy...' ugh. yuck. super-gross. violating, contaminating and... SUB-HUMAN. gross...

so we engaged our right brains to find creative responses for these fools who find it EASY to barge in where angels fear to tread.

1) 'excuse me, what did that cost?' (this was particularly offensive to us).

answers: 'what's your salary? after tax...'. 'how much is that pair of pants?... and underpants?... and socks?... and so on'. 'what will it cost to buy you social etiquette?'. and, my personal favorite, 'it cost a HUNDRED TRILLION BILLION rand!'.

2) 'excuse me can we look at your tattoos?'.

answers: 'could you lift up your shirt and show me your breasts (or pull down your pants etc for men)?'. 'only if you show me your BACK walking in the opposite direction to me'. or, the one that'll probably be most successful, 'sure, that'll be R2 500 a minute thank you. starting... NOW' as you pretend to hit the stopwatch on your phone.

3) 'excuse me, wasn't that sore?'.

answer: (sorry but NOTHING can beat THIS) 'i have no idea. i was drugged and abducted by Columbian drug lords when i was a just a girl and, by the time they found me, i woke up looking like this!'.

we also DETESTED the way every common pedestrian dumb-ass with a string of barbed wire around his bicep or butterfly on her ass would walk up to us, pull off items of CLOTHING to show us their little piece of crappy... i actually don't know what to call these creations (because it CERTAINLY wouldn't pass as a tattoo in OUR own private Idaho THAT i can say without hesitation), and they'd act like they were on the same strata of Über-tattooedness as US! i mean REALLY. that's like me walking up to Douglas Coupland and asking him to read my blog. appalling. madness i tell you! and an insult to us of the highest order.

response to this: 'ooo shame dude you should never EVER tattoo yourSELF! but i guess you realised that when you sobered up' (thanks for that one Moorecroft).

Wayne and i are going to do some intensive testing of these lines when we take our bodies to the beach. the one who doesn't get to do all three is the LOSER. and the penalty? i think they'd have to do something like walk up and down in front of a troupe of Loser Brigaders - a group of construction workers springs to mind - wearing only their underwear. (i'm obviously confident that that person will not be me)



P.S. THIS JUST IN! i've just had a picnic (yes, you read correctly, i went to a picnic. but it was the HYDE PARK of picnics oKAAAY?! a FIVE STAR picnic!) with Wendy, Nicky and the-most-beautiful-boy-to-walk-the-face-of-the-planet. or Christian for short. it was there that i got the privilege to experiment with my first line!

here's how it went: when we got up to leave our waiter just COULD NOT hold himself back for ONE SECOND longer and, you guessed it, he asked me if 'that was sore...'. i was not feeling myself at that stage and, when your brain starts heading south, or east or west, who can be sure, you simply have NO ROOM for politeness - i'm glad it works out that way because i'm very fond of take-no-prisoners rudeness. and i can't always achieve this in real life.

i looked at him through my half-focussed-double-visioned-big-brown-eyes and delivered my FAVORITE LINE OF ALL (this was a very kind gesture on the part of the Universe. although it owed me because i felt like my temporal lobe could burst through my eye sockets every time i opened my eyelids after a blink).

i said: 'i have no idea. you see i was abducted by Columbian drug lords...'.

he stood there. stunned. staring at me. frozen. perplexed as to whether i was telling the TRUTH or not. this almost pulled my head straight it was so brilliant!

so i guess that's one - love to me my dear Wayne. tsk tsk, i sincerely hope you get the opportunity to catch up on the beach tomorrow, or the dress code is you-know-what paraded in front of you-know-whom...