The Concatenated order of Hoo Hoo

Also, my bad tattoos

I have a few really bad tattoos. The first really bad tattoo I ever got was a black cat, which I’ve now had since I was 22.

That black cat tattoo was at least partially inspired by this:

…which was the sign for a chain of lumber stores here in the Portland, Oregon area. I liked the image because I had been called “Bad Luck” by lots of people, and I also liked it because someone told me it “was a union thing.” I knew, somewhere in the depths of my mind, that black cats were associated with the Wobblies, which was a thing I thought was cool without entirely understanding what the Wobblies actually were. Just—you know. Labor. Worker’s rights. Something like that.

This is “Sabo Tabby,” the mascot for the Wobblies, i.e. the IWW, i.e. the Industrial Workers of the World.

Also pretty cool. But, you know, I really didn’t understand that much about it, other than that it was “pretty cool.”

Unbeknownst to me at the time I got this tattoo, which came from a very badly-drawn image, by me, and was originally inked with a homemade tattoo gun by a drunk then-boyfriend, the Copeland Lumber cat was actually the logo for the Incatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo, which was a union/brotherhood for people who worked in the timber or lumber industries.

Unsurprisingly, they were originally totally racist and sexist, but allegedly they are not either of those things anymore, presuming they still exist, which I think they sort of do. Who knows whether this is true, I’m just reporting what I’ve read.

Note on their gowns, above, they’ve got names like “Bojim” and “Snark.” These were their Lewis Carrol-inspired nonsense-seeming “titles” for the ranking officers of the brotherhood.

Apparently, the order of Hoo Hoo was a pretty informal org, as brotherhood-type groups tended to go. They didn’t really enforce any rules and the entire thing was founded by guys who clearly had a sense of humor about the whole thing. It sounds, in a way, like the whole thing was based on a kind of inside joke.

So, why am I thinking about this? Well, two reasons. 1. I’m possibly perhaps about to get my shitty tattoos covered up, because I’m sick of looking at them, but I don’t want them removed; I like having a tattooed arm, but I don’t like it that my tattoos look like shit-garbage. I DID get my cat tattoo “fixed” after the homemade tattoo gun fiasco, (the guy who fixed it did an amazing job considering how fucked-up it originally was, It was Don Deaton from Sea Tramp tattoo, he’s sort of legendary around here) —but the tattoo is so faded now it just looks crappy and weird. I never liked the cat’s proportions anyway; but there was only so much the guy could do.

OMG I just found out that Don Deaton died like THREE MONTHS AGO! Maybe this is a sign? Sorry to be superstitious, but—sometimes I kind of am.

WELL, I’m tired of associating myself with “bad luck” even though I originally intended it to be a joke; my second tattoo was supposed to be about the Queen of Swords/Queen of Spades, which was another thing I had kind of associated myself with in a weird abstract ways, and I don’t want to associate myself with that anymore. I have decided that I have outgrown it, and I have also outgrown having shitty-looking tattoos. Or whatever.

Please note that the tattoo you can’t entirely see in the above image looks HORRIBLE. It blew out and got blurry almost IMMEDIATELY after I got it. It was based on this image, but looks almost nothing like it:

I don’t know what to do with that tattoo other than cover it up somehow, but I’ve had a hard time figuring out how to make that happen. I have thought about getting my shitty-looking cat altered to look more like Sabo tabby, but…

While I’m still a huge supporter of labor and worker’s rights, it’s not really something I can truly and earnestly identify with, in the sense that I’ve never personally belonged to a union and I’ve never done anything like fight for union rights. I will say: years ago, the teacher’s union helped my now-ex-husband not lose his job after he got in trouble for being online during school hours, (that is a long story that I know he’d love to completely forget, but I still chuckle about it from time-to-time…) and my brother is a card-carrying wobbly, but I feel at this point like that’s really sort of meaningless. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they still have some sort of clout, who knows?

Other than that, I feel like I would be a poser to sport a genuine Union-themed tattoo. When I was 22, I was too dumb and self-involved to worry too much about being a poser, I guess. I just wanted a tattoo that looked “cool.”

And 2., this is on my mind is because of the entire concept of things like “brotherhoods” or “clubs” or “exclusive groups of people with a weird running inside joke,” because that’s a concept I’ve been intrigued by for a long time anyway, especially weird running inside jokes that incorporate things like nonsense-word seeming fake titles that barely even mean anything.

Well I don’t know if it’s going to be possible to effectively cover up my tattoos. I am emailing with a tattoo artist right now about a potential design, which is based on some art nouveau designs that are from antique sewing machines.

I sort of hate how nowadays, any reputable tattoo artist INSISTS on drawing the image themselves, and any non-reputable tattoo artists basically just give you…shitty tattoos that blow out and get blurry immediately.

Okay well that’s all. I need to get some sewing done.