Help a velocipede-inspired dancer out

Via Coilhouse: Hollis Hawthorne, a performing artist who--like so many performing artists--is without health insurance, was hit-and-run in India and left with brain stem injuries. Stanford Medical will treat her as a charity case, but her friends and family need to raise around $150,000.00 to evac her overseas.

According to the latest update, she appears to be improving, but brain injuries are tricky. And it's hard to be a performer or an artist without your brain. Even if some of us try.

So if you have a few extra bucks, considering checking out Friends of Hollis and chipping in. Because the internet can actually accomplish positive things, too.

Two hours in the chair

Today I did what I've been wanting to do since November, and got my tattoo to celebrate selling the Necromancer Chronicles. Several weeks ago I went into Atomic Tattoo (the one on Burnet) looking for guidance, and met Scott Spencer. I showed him the cover of matociquala's New Amsterdam, and said I wanted something like the skull detail and filigree. A week later he called me with a design. I brought matociquala in as a consultant during CupcakeCon, and we both loffed it. So tonight I went in.

Scott was wonderful--not only a fabulous artist, but someone I don't mind being trapped in a chair with for two hours. He has pictures of his dogs above his table.

The line inking was pretty much cake. It hurt, something like the lovechild of a beesting, a razor cut, and a sunburn, but it's so quick and fine that the pain never builds up badly. (I noticed during this that even when I felt pain reactions in my face, I couldn't see them in the mirror, and Steven couldn't see them--I begin to understand why some people think I'm hard to read.)

The shading was where the cake became a lie. That shit hurts. The skin is already sensitive, and the strokes are broader. Every time we stopped for a break, the pain tripled when Scott started again. The razor-slice feeling goes away, but the stinging and burning is worse. And wow, do you find out where the nerves run. The back of my arm and top of the shoulder hurt like crazy, and when he did the top I felt it down my collar bone. It took two hours to finish the line and shading, and by the end I had the shakes and woozles and decided I wasn't butch enough to get the coloring done. I'll check back in in two weeks to schedule that.

Two hours later and the pain is pretty much gone if I don't poke it. Which makes me feel like a wuss for stopping when I did, but then I remember the shakes and dizzies, and decide I chose the better part of valor. My arm is stiff, but half of that is probably climbing last night.

But anyway, I loff it. It is the gorgeousest ever! It looks kinda like an arty Necroscope cover, but way cooler. Follow the flickr link to see it in all its gruesome glory. Okay, flickr hates me, so I'll stick them behind a cut.


The stencil.

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And now I need to get ready to go eat a slab of beast-flesh, and then go see Watchmen.