Cheektowaga, NY—Cleve Hill resident Shawn Morrissey is planning a summer 2019 release of tattoo book titled: A Beginners Guide to Bad Tattoos. This guide book will delve into the history and psychology of tattoos and will also provide practical advice on choosing new skin art and how to compensate for mistakes, which is Morrissey’s real area of expertise—the bad tattoo choice. 
An early look at the book, which is still coming together, reveals a broad picture of tattoos throughout history. The art form originated in Southeast Asia before the Christian era and came to the United States by way of sailors who had visited these South Pacific ports. But it wasn’t until the Civil War that skin art became popular in America, when soldiers on both sides of the conflict, started to be earnestly tattooed. Morrissey, though he never served in the military, cites his love of the military movies: Stripes with Bill Murray and A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise as major contributors to his love of ink. He can recite long stretches of dialogue from Stripes—Who has greater potential for growth than me? I’m the acorn that becomes the oak—and has ironically named his two-pound Yorkshire Terrier: Sergeant Hulka. Morrissey also spends long periods of time in front of the mirror each day making menacing faces and imitating Jack Nicholson’s character from A Few Good Men— You can’t handle the truth. Both of these movies make him feel like he has sort of done military service which led to love of body ink.
Once the realm of soldiers and bikers today we are finding that every Tom, Dick and Sherry mutilating their bodies with tats and in the book Morrissey explores the psychological underpinnings of this phenomenon. He speculates there is some cultural appropriation occurring in the growing popularity of skin art. That, in a world where a reality TV star is the President and ten-year old kids have millions of YouTube followers bored white people, who have no real purpose in life now that the malls are closing and the Gap is going under, are looking for other ways to get attention. A desperate plea where they seek to appropriate the “badness” and “coolness” that was once the domain of soldiers and bikers with tattoos to get the validating attention they need for their pathetic lives. It’s the same sort of dumb mob mentality that led to mullets, topsiders and thinking Coldplay was cool.
Other chapters include: Your Stupid Face-The Final Frontier; Making Leg Tats Count; Prioritizing Your Skull & Crossbones Ink; Compensating For Your Blackout Drunks Tats; Cleaning Up Your Messes With More Skulls & Crossbones; What To Do With The Name Of Women Who Dumped Your Sorry Ass; Why Pet Tats Are Winners.
In addition to sharing personal images Morrissey is also looking for photos from the public of tattoo successes and failures to incorporate into a chapter titled: Look At The Shit People Do To Their Bodies. Photos will be accepted till the end of the year. Please no Unicorn renderings as Mr. Morrissey has an irrational fear of of horses with pointy objects growing out of their heads. The book is slated to cost $24.95 and will be available at retailers nationwide.
