Tattoo

I want a tattoo. I’ve wanted to have one done for about a year now. I know which one I want too. I want my social security number tattooed somewhere on my body in barcode form. “Somewhere” is not defined yet, I can’t decide.

I want the barcode to be “streetlegal”. It has to be able to be read by a scanner. Personally I’m very fond of the UPC-A, which is the UCC american retail standard, but that doesn’t incorporate an international country code like the EAN-13 standard does. Also, the EAN-13 standard is the world-wide retail standard, while the UPC-A is United States only. The only problem with EAN-13 is that it has several checksums to which my social security number will never hold up. And then there’s always the Code 39 and Code 128 standards if you want to incorporate alpha numeric as well as numeric digits.

There’s only one problem…

…there’s always a problem, isn’t there? Yes, there is, and this is it :: The ink of tattoo’s will slowly fade and spread over the years, the capilary veins in your skin will make the ink slowly spread and a straight, fine line will slowly blur. If you would simply tattoo a barcode on your skin, you’ll have one big black ugly mass a few years later as the thin lines will merge together. Also, the thinnest lines of a standard barcode can’t be reproduced with normal tattoo’s.

The solution :: Make the barcode bigger. But in making it bigger, it will become humonguous and therefor ugly. Also, I could opt for removing some of the lines from the barcode, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having a real barcode on your body. I might as well just think up something that likes kinda cool.

I’m contemplating finding a permanent make-up visagist in order to see if they have special tools that will be able to create the lines I desire.

Also, I should wait a little while since it will look totally tacky if I, in the wake of the computer game Hitman – Codename and the television series Dark Angel, get a tattoo of a barcode now.

And yes, I have considered it well. I’ve considered the social implications and the reactions of everyone from my mother on to jewish holocaust victims that were locked up in concentration camps during WWII.