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Bear in mind that the proportions of a tattoo only stay as constant as the skin under them. The ink will look better on taut skin/firmer surface (which will usually be more painful). Due to skin's elasticity, the way people age, and weight gain/loss, tattoos tend to drift and contort. A subject which is a study of ideal proportions hardly lends itself to this medium.

I'd think that other people's homophobia would bother him more. A lot of people have juvenile senses of humor, and any girlfriend/boyfriend/wife is going to play with the tattoo (you know, pulling or pushing the skin to change the size of figure's genitals). For him to not eventually see it as a curse, he's going to need a long fuse and a good sense of humor. From the grandiose description of its intended meaning, I'm under the impression he's thinking of this from a serious standpoint.

Considering design, a tattoo looks best if it matches the shape of the body part under it. This one should probably be put along the center line of the back because of its symmetry (as an added bonus, upper back will show less drift, but sun damage can be a factor).

I would suggest that you start this design as a traditional sketch (on white paper, this digital background texture you have detracts from the purpose). Once he's happy with the design there, you can draw it in pen. At that point, you can have a tattoo artist scale it and turn it into a transfer, so you friend can "test-drive" it for a few days. If he still likes it after that original excitement wears off, he can go ahead and set a date for the pain. In the meantime, get to know your artist and his work. Make sure the studio has an autoclave. If he charges more than 200 an hour, he's either a rip-off or an underground celebrity. And always, ALWAYS leave a 15% tip.

I'm sure he doesn't want to end up with something from here: http://www.badtattoos.com/

They will give him some guidelines on healing and ointments (no Petroleum jelly, etc. Although antibacterial soap like Dial works just as well as Bacitracin or any specific tattoo goo). The tattoo will leak, especially if the design required a lot of ink, so he should be prepared for a few shirts or sheets to be ruined.

It takes a confident person to get a penis inked on them.

Your friend might want to stick with some harmless kanji lettering, or perhaps one of those contemporary tribal designs that all the frat children are sporting these days.

I really like the mish mash of photos/illustrations in various perspectives. One quick crit- it would be great if you slightly darkened the ground textures and lowered their contrast. Right now they are a little busy and fight for the viewer's focus.

I agree that the title screen seems a little out of place. You might want to try and find a photo instead. Try Gettyimages.

EA is in a complex that has restaurants, a lounge, fitness center. I've heard that many employees stay there for days at a time, working 12-16 hour days.

The more I learn and experience about the gaming industry, it seems to revolve less around entertainment and more aorund torture.

Unless of course, you're one of those penny-pinching independent developers that scrape by...

Not the CL, but what are the smudges on the ground in the first two screenshots? I don't remember the comics having anything like that.

Must be willing to work overtime.

Love it.

http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax/comics/5229950

Kill me now.

The voices, the lines, the measly polygons -- like it's all part of some bad dream, or perhaps it's just virtual reality from "Hit the Road".

I wish they could have Sam say something without giving a parody-like soliloquy.

I'm positive this is just a late April Fool's joke.

Keep it away from my hard drive.

Don't catastrophes usually get immediate coverage?

Is that your argument against the official explanation?

When I see a plane smack into a building, I don't assume it's the government trying to fuck its citizens. Because of this, your theory is the alternative hypothesis not the null.

Skiddish is not an apt word. It will take more than hunches and circumstancial evidence to convince me of a secret conspiracy against innocent civilians.

Radiant, my point was the bulk of the fuel was consumed in the initial fireball, and the fires did not burn hot enough, or long enough to weaken the steel to the point of collapse. Ã, The towers were over-engineered, and I believe the creators specified that even if two of the main support columns were entirely cut, the towers still would've stood.

It is interesting to note that none of the steel from the wreckage of the towers was tested or studied to see what caused it to fail.Ã,  The towers were allegedly built with very high-intregrity steel, which would've have easily survived the heat.Ã,  If these two buildings were the first in history to entirely collapse due to melting steel, you'd think that'd be worth investigating.

"Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F."
(http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=4&c=y)

In addition refer to http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34342,00.html. Apparently, some asbestos insulation could've gone a long way.

The fact is: The 09.11 was used as an excuse for USA to play the war game. So were Saddam's bombs. USA doesn't seem like the good guys to me. Sad, but true.

What?
With the 1988 Genocide of the Kurds under his belt (close to 200,000 men, women, and children), Saddam's not exactly an innocent softie. Unlike Santa Claus, he does not want to deliver presents to the children of the world. And maybe the fact that UN inspectors (can anyone say mole?) could not find evidence in Iraqi weapon facilities means that the US invasion was timed well enough to be preventive. There's still little things like this: http://www.slate.com/id/2139609/ that I find suspicious.
I just don't feel sympathy for the guy.

But that's a whole other hive of bees.

Hey Barbarian, sorry for the misunderstanding. I meant that the people on ground zero spreading the theory showed no respect for the losses of New Yorkers.

Thanks for sharing the documentary.

If you ever partake in movements more politically provokative than fencing, you might experience this too.
And this doesn't happen in most western European countries today.

I only said that fencing gave me the opportunity to travel, experience different cultures, and meet more diverse people than a lot of the Americans I know.

Your statement is insulting because it assumes that this sport is the extent of my political involvement, something you can't possibly know. In addition, it belittles the international experience I've earned from the sport. For instance, it's one thing to talk about racial tension in France, and quite another to be attacked by a gypsy in Strasbourg.

I see this as a put down, a sort of "well, that's nice you can play with your toy swords, but leave the real thinking to me, the mighty gym-attending, self-actualized Andail and my erudite fellow Europeans".

As far as an insult goes, I was hitting more at your English learning method than your actual spelling.

If you'd like to clarify, please enlighten me.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html
(Some good answers to the physical evidence)

If we assume that the government did plan this, it raises strategic questions. The scope of the attacks leaves more room for error (as more people would have to be in on it, leading to a greater chance of information leaks) and creates many logistical problems. Also, if the government were trying to make it look like a terrorist attack, they wouldn't have made it seem like a coordinated effort (as there has never been a terrorist attack this organized before).

It's especially insensitive that these conspiracy theorists would go to ground zero and try to convince mourners face to face. Many people lost loved ones and family members, and it saddens me to see salt rubbed in their emotional wounds.  No respect.

Well, I didn't exactly EQUATE the two. In the same message, I did say it depends on your working definition of freedom (the one you stated earlier involved not getting shot on the street).

Federal income taxes restrict the financial leverage a consumer holds in society, thus reducing their freedom in any monetary exchange for goods or services. Does that help clarify? It may not be an end all measurement, but it's nice to have a quantifiable metric in this otherwise subjective argument.

You make a big deal out of spotting a typo when you debate with a foreigner.

You make fun of my sport, I make fun of your English.

Your money goes farther on individual items (like consumer goods and services) when you spend it yourself. Money in the government has to pass through many layers of bureaucracy. This system works for buying expensive things like jets, but is inefficient for lunches.

This is a total hijack. Perhaps a moderator would split the threads.

Maybe I had taken that a bit far.

I seriously am interested in hearing about people personally experiencing greater freedom in a certain country than in America. Perhaps this needs its own thread.

I think we can strike Switzerland off as a candidate, since mandatory military service for males from the time they turn 18 to 65 doesn't strike me as "free".

A few others may be disqualified, due to high taxes (the US actually has some of the lowest personal income taxes in the world: http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Taxes/P148855.asp?GT1=8011).
(from article, single with no kids)
Belgium - 55.4%
Canada - 31.6%
Sweden - 47.9%
Denmark - 41.1%
US - 29.1%

Still depends on the working definition, that being said.

He says:

"Seriously, if the terrorists hated freedom, the Netherlands would be fucking dust! As would Denmark and Sweden and Switzerland and New Zealand and Canada and every other country that's truly freer than we are."

I guess what I'm saying is you're shooting yourself in the foot, big brother.

I only used Mr. Show as a goofy reference. I have not watched/listened to everything Odenkirk/Cross/Silverman/etc. have their names on.

This is not an example of shooting myself in the foot. I never said that there AREN'T places more free. Please read my last post more thoroughly and focus on my question rather than any obscure comedic reference.

BLAM! Arrg, your foot! It's bleeding!

This is quite ironic, considering your misuse of the idiom. Looks like you're the one who just blew his foot off.

DGMacboy: Oh God, my foot is gone. Oh fuck me up the ass, why did I just do that to myself! (wails hysterically)

After this statement, immature in diction as in sentiment, you seem both amused and surprised that I didn't get your "point" (but please, pretty please, feel free to enlighten me about this point of yours).

I didn't realize this was going to be so obtuse. I attacked a generalization with specifics. If you want to tell me that there are countries that have more freedom than America, please list them. Create a working definition of freedom, and tell me why these countries have more of it than the USA. I'm not saying that they don't exist, only that I haven't been to them. In almost every one of my replies, I've tried to clarify and ask for examples, but you seem intent on feeding me bullshit. Who's really immature here, buddy?

The goofy list was a reference to the TV show that I put in paranthesis in my original post (Mr. Show).

And yeah, thanks for the fencing put-down. Next time you might want to spell "provocative" correctly when you're trying to make me feel uneducated. Mortal Kombat isn't a good reference for learning English.

For the record, I've been to some 25 countries on 4 different continents, and I've been involved in exchange student organisations since 2001.

When it comes to freedom, it's a matter of what you value. For me it's a sort of freedom being able to walk in a school or a street without risking being gunned down.
Then again, last time I was in the Sahara desert I was part of a convoy surveyed by armed policemen, which wasn't very free at all.

This is nice, but you're still missing the original point. I'm not trying to have a tourism competition with you (I only wanted to know I'm slightly more traveled than your average Yank). In fact, I've already admitted I'm not as traveled as most Europeans, so you win!

Of those 25 countries you've been to, which ones have more freedom (your definition) than the US (assuming you've spent a few weeks here)? I for one, have never been gunned down walking on the street (in fact, the only place that this possibility occurs to me in the slightest is the ghetto NJ area in which I live).

If we assume I didn't say "parts of the Sahara and Gobi", what about the other two options?

Two more minor corrections:

-Never, never, never, NEVER use age as an excuse for ANYTHING.

-Don't diss your own graphics. Work until you're proud of them.