Photo source: The Sporting Blog

[The Sporting Blog] Spencer Hall over at the TSB checked in this morning with a tale of intrigue and deceit (and poor decision-making) that could only have occurred within the confines of collegiate sports. Kirby Freeman signed with the Miami Hurricanes a little while back and, in an attempt to assert his devotion to the team, got the team’s “U” logo tattooed on his back. Well, as Hall writes, sometimes these things aren’t meant to be. Things were going well …

Until now! (DUH-DUH-DAAAAAAHHH.) Freeman transferred to Baylor after losing his starting QB job, and has had the tattoo changed to either a zero or an “O” for “Ohmigod, that is one lopsized zero. Did you play for Oregon?”

[…]

This reminder that a scholarship is four years, but a tattoo is for life comes from The Sporting Blog.

Sound advice!

[Intelligencer] Ha ha, so apparently all the children in Belleville, Ontario, have taken up the time-honored tradition of good old-fashioned cigarette smoking, and some of the elders are displeased. A youth activism group, Unfiltered, has taken up the task of weaning these kids off smoking by handing out temporary tattoos, apparently? At this point, this article takes a delightful turn wherein the townspeople become very concerned that this trickery could actually lead to the young’ns wanting real tattoos, which would be at least as bad as them smoking a pack a day, probably.

“People have been smoking forever, but we just found out that it’s not healthy,” Dolan said. “People have had tattoos forever, maybe it’s going to take us a longer term to find out it’s not healthy.”

Dolan told the board he has been told permanent tattoos put a strain on the body because some of the ink enters the individual’s bloodstream and is then filtered through the body. This, he said, puts an extra strain on some organs.

Dr. Richard Schabas, medical officer of health, said he was not aware of any medical problems linked to tattoos. The only concerns, he said, would be with the needles used to inject the ink. If those needles are not properly sanitized there can be infection problems.

Schabas said the health unit does carry out routine inspections of tattoo parlours in the area. However, he told Dolan there may be some validity to his concern.

“As a matter of policy, I’m not sure we should be encouraging tattoos,” he said.

Schabas said using temporary tattoos to appeal to children is an understandable tactic but may need to be re-examined.

“You walk a fine line here, Bob. You want to relate to kids but, on the other hand, we want to ask ourselves if we want to normalize a behaviour that, maybe, we don’t want to,” he said.

First of all, yes, we “just found out” cigarettes aren’t healthy, what, yesterday? Sixty years ago? Whatever. Anyway, this whole thing makes my brain collapse in on itself. How old are these kids that are smoking? If they’re over the age of 10, I don’t think the temporary tattoo offensive is going to have much success, sadly. But at least the Belleville town council is doing its part to combat the “normalizing” of Pagan dick-choppery like tattoos and such. Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a world where people thought it was OK to get tattoos? Terrifying.

[NY Post] Continuing this election season’s trend of all candidates (and their families) engaging in ritualistic anti-American ink-jamming, as they call it, Caroline Kennedy, one of the front-runners to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacant Senate seat, apparently has a miniscule tattoo on her forearm that nobody had ever noticed until the New York Post realized they were short a column the other day. It is apparently a butterfly but it may as well be a birthmark or a bruise — it is seriously barely there. Naturally, though, because she is a Kennedy, and there is always some sort of sordid tale behind everything those freaks do, this is not just some innocuous splotch of ink:

Kennedy got the tattoo while vacationing with her family in Asia during the late 1980s.

During a night out in Hong Kong, Caroline, her brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., and her cousins Edward “Teddy” Kennedy Jr., 47, and Kara Anne Kennedy, 48, challenged one another with a mischievous dare, a source said, noting that the group had consumed a few drinks.

The boys challenged the girls to get a late-night “tat” at a nearby parlor.

Caroline and Kara went first and emerged “bruised and bloodied,” emblazoned with butterflies on their arms.

But when it came time for Teddy and John Jr. to reciprocate, the men “chickened out,” refusing to go through with the dare, the source said.

When reached for comment, Kennedy corrected the horrible newspaper, and said she actually got the tattoo on a dare from Governor David Paterson, thereby securing Clinton’s Senate seat. Ha ha, timely references.

[Twitter] Hey, did you know BME has its own Twitter feed? True story! If you like BME, but don’t feel like it’s quite pithy enough for you, add us! And while you’re at it, head on over to BME Shop! The holidays are fast approaching, and there’s no better present for grandma than one o’ them split cock T-shirts. And keep on sending in your photos of you decked out in BME gear and jewelry!

[YouTube] This one’s a little on the esoteric side, but do you know BME mainstay and perpetual image-leaderboard contender Perk900? (Of course you do.) Well, some time ago, he apparently worked at Blockbuster Video and was the subject of a short film, which you can see below. Did someone say Cable Ace Award?