Another tattoo that's been a long time coming

It occurs to me as I set out to compose this post that a lot of people reading it wouldn't recognize the story behind my newest tattoo without an explanation. That's a big change from when I coined the term it's a reference to. While it's a vulgar term, there's no NSFW imagery involved so I won't put it behind a cut.

I worked with a lot of LJ people back in 2007 and everyone referred to in this story was an active user at the time. No point in tagging anyone because they aren't now! One day, James was bent over the short wall next to someone's workstation talking to them, when Nick went up behind James and made a punching motion at his ass. My teammate next to me said, "Oh my god, Nick just fisted James." I asked her to show me what he'd done, and she made a fist and did a punching motion with it.

I explained that this simply isn't realistic, you can't just punch your way into someone. It takes some finesse, and a different hand position. I said it's like a duck's bill, but it's a duck that never speaks. A silent duck, if you will. So of course "silent duck" became a thing, and one day AJ and I were hanging around at my apartment and decided to try to make it even more of a thing. He took a picture of my hand in the position and slipped a reference to "silent duck" into the Wikipedia entry about fisting. 15 years later, it's still there!

And in that time, whenever anyone looks up fisting on Wikipedia, they see it. People like the Estonian death metal band Necro Strike, who wrote a song called Silent Duck. There was a band in my hometown called Silent Duck, and there's another that's still active in Adelaide Australia called The Silent Ducks. The biggest thing that happened was when Lars von Trier put a reference to it in his movie Nyphomaniac Vol. II. I can't tell you how surreal it was to see Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stellan Skarsgård have a conversation in a movie about a term I made up. A movie that also has Shia LeBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Udo Kier, and Jamie Bell.

The silent duck tattoo I originally wanted was the band logo from the Albuquerque band, but whoever's running the Facebook account of the band they became next never answered my inquiry. Maybe it's because one of the members happens to be the nephew of one of my best friends from high school who ended up having a pretty tragic life? Who can say. I couldn't blame the dude for being weirded out if he clicked over to my profile and saw that I know his uncle.

When I was on Catfish's table getting the bowling trophy tattoo, I spent a lot of time looking at his flash designs on the wall next to us. He has a lot of very funny and nasty stuff, and I realized he'd be a good person to do the tattoo. So I told him all about silent duck and said I'd love it if he could tattoo one on me, with a nipple clamp holding the bill closed. He loved the idea, and I was there again less than two weeks later. This is when it was fresh, as always, pardon the blood.

Another tattoo that's been a long time coming

It occurs to me as I set out to compose this post that a lot of people reading it wouldn't recognize the story behind my newest tattoo without an explanation. That's a big change from when I coined the term it's a reference to. While it's a vulgar term, there's no NSFW imagery involved so I won't put it behind a cut.

I worked with a lot of LJ people back in 2007 and everyone referred to in this story was an active user at the time. No point in tagging anyone because they aren't now! One day, James was bent over the short wall next to someone's workstation talking to them, when Nick went up behind James and made a punching motion at his ass. My teammate next to me said, "Oh my god, Nick just fisted James." I asked her to show me what he'd done, and she made a fist and did a punching motion with it.

I explained that this simply isn't realistic, you can't just punch your way into someone. It takes some finesse, and a different hand position. I said it's like a duck's bill, but it's a duck that never speaks. A silent duck, if you will. So of course "silent duck" became a thing, and one day AJ and I were hanging around at my apartment and decided to try to make it even more of a thing. He took a picture of my hand in the position and slipped a reference to "silent duck" into the Wikipedia entry about fisting. 15 years later, it's still there!

And in that time, whenever anyone looks up fisting on Wikipedia, they see it. People like the Estonian death metal band Necro Strike, who wrote a song called Silent Duck. There was a band in my hometown called Silent Duck, and there's another that's still active in Adelaide Australia called The Silent Ducks. The biggest thing that happened was when Lars von Trier put a reference to it in his movie Nyphomaniac Vol. II. I can't tell you how surreal it was to see Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stellan Skarsgård have a conversation in a movie about a term I made up. A movie that also has Shia LeBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Udo Kier, and Jamie Bell.

The silent duck tattoo I originally wanted was the band logo from the Albuquerque band, but whoever's running the Facebook account of the band they became next never answered my inquiry. Maybe it's because one of the members happens to be the nephew of one of my best friends from high school who ended up having a pretty tragic life? Who can say. I couldn't blame the dude for being weirded out if he clicked over to my profile and saw that I know his uncle.

When I was on Catfish's table getting the bowling trophy tattoo, I spent a lot of time looking at his flash designs on the wall next to us. He has a lot of very funny and nasty stuff, and I realized he'd be a good person to do the tattoo. So I told him all about silent duck and said I'd love it if he could tattoo one on me, with a nipple clamp holding the bill closed. He loved the idea, and I was there again less than two weeks later. This is when it was fresh, as always, pardon the blood.