I'm Pretty. Honest.

Being a pioneer in body modification guaranteed two things. The first was that people would think I was so fucking cool.

The second was that those same people, being untalented dolts, would copy what I was doing and compete to be the best little body manglers on the block.

I knew this going in, having previously spent a lifetime as a blues musician. Several decades ago I became sick with watching middle class working stiffs go to places, and spend enormous money on watching poor black men play music, then turning the entire ordeal into some kind of empathetic reunion of souls.

The blues, that is to say the REAL blues, is not something white middle class working stiffs should be listening to. It was not invented, nor were there "great minds," at work during its development. Instead, the music was borne out of history's worst episode of human-versus-human, as a means to keep a people who, should they ever realise communally just how truly fucked they remain to this day, would kill themselves.

The blues gives vent to the kinds of feelings middle class people simply do not experience. You are not downtrodden because your boss makes you stay late and won't pay you overtime. You're not deprived because the Benz doesn't come in the same pink as your iPod.

You are a prince in a nation of phony princes, overprivileged, and deserving of a fate very similar to what those from who the gift of blues music came from endured while you were becoming so.

Body modification, sorry, REAL body modification is a similarly doomed statement of disenfranchisement, and freedom through rejection of all that is, by your clueless standards, good and pure.

To take what "god" hath made, and to stamp upon it one's own personal certificate of ownership is perhaps the most primitive, and humanly sincere form of expression. Permanent destruction is, after all, outmatched only by human sacrifice in proving just how fucking serious you are about the whole matter.

Of course, this purity, this fucking noble control over one's own self is misinterpreted by, first and foremost, the codependent self-loathing whiners who think the world should be staring at them, regretfully, at all times, and in all circumstances.

At that point, real people tend to make the mistake of believing their own hype, and commit the high crime of letting bonehead losers endure a little cosmetic pain in order to gain what fucking morons term, "street credit."

Thus, is the truth of clique rejectionist behaviour hijacked and prostituted by middle class working stiffs, and turned into just another American economic resource. And that way lies perdition for the soul of the entire nation.

The sign that a scarred and/or tattooed person is a fucking moron is very easy to detect. The word "aesthetic," enters the language surrounding the behaviour, and suddenly it is all about looking good.

Note to world: anyone who destroys their flesh, but insists it looks good should be shot immediately, and fed to zoo tigers.

In the same way that blues music, and Harley Davidson culture were "reconfigured" to make them palatable, and thus marketable, to white middle class dolts, body modification now exists in two grossly mismatched camps. There are "rubs," which term comes from biker culture to describe "rich urban bikers," and there are "human beings."

A rub is not, in fact, a human being. Its decision to participate in abberant behaviour is based in a calculation of how much personal gain can be returned on the "investment." You will not catch many bankers who drive to a Rolling Stones concert stamping around violently pissed off about what the a) white b) British c) wealthy sons of nobles are peddling as "the blues."

You will not see the managerial consultant under a bridge shooting heroin and pouring caustic chemicals on his forearms in order to scream at the world the he knows it's a fucking asshole. He'll be fashionably smoking crack, or bragging about the THC content of his government-grown pot, making sure everyone thinks that God took a shit and rolled him out the Almighty ass.

Art is not aesthetic. It is the method by which the human animal, cursed with higher awareness and analytical cognition is able to maintain composure in its individual circumstances. What are the circumstances of someone who can afford a five thousand dollar tattoo? I'd say pretty goddamned good.

There are a very few who remain faithful to purity, with incidence rates that could make pancreatic cancer look like a pandemic. The greater problem is, that agony over the commercialisation of abberant behaviour has itself become chic, and the traitors are often the very people who, mimicking me, are vocal about why poseurs should be killed, immediately.

The blues are not raw, or gritty, or rock 'n' rolly, or Delta, or High Delta, or dirty, and nor do they belong to the rainbow of flavours record producers have engineered in order to maximise the diversity of the market. The blues are a fucking guy telling the world who he is.

Period.

Put your fucking sleeves down. You're not cool. Go back to work and leave the suffering to we who rule the world.