We are headed towards a cultural oblivion, yet we continue to write the story of our collective destruction one tattoo at a time. 

by Teddy Fikre  written:  Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

This article was inspired by one of my boys, a DOPE artist, a DOPE poet, and a DOPE wendem overall.  He is actually my conscience, behind the scenes he is always telling me to get my shit together and stop writing baseless and asinine articles about useless souls who attack me and instead focus my God given talents to write about humanity—its flaws and it’s beauty.  I have a thousand consciences heeding me to lead Ethiopians down the path of redemption instead of invoking hatred and a vindictive nature to lead us down the path of damnation. 

So today, I asked my conscience behind the scenes what I should write about on www.browncondor.com.  Yeah I times I run split lick dry out of ideas and thus I turn to my friends to give me a topic to split open like a coconut and nourish the minds of Ethiopians with the milk of magnesia of that very coconut.  Thus he told me to split open the coconut of the taboo that is tattoos in the Habesha community.  Damn it, I was thinking about writing an article about Single’s Korner, a page that I was about to set up on Brown Condor to give single Ethiopians a place to link up with like minded Ethiopians.  Oh well, I will put that on the back burner and talk about tattoos instead.  I am sure this article will infuriate a thousand Ethiopians and Eritreans and will have two hundred Pente folk giving me high fives in the ether.

Anyway, let me pop my collars in Hurricane Tattoo and let me pray that I don’t emerge from the winds with ink blots on my eyes.  A quick disclaimer, I have a homemade tattoo on my right arm that a teenage convict from Compton designed and tatted me up 20 years ago using the old fashion method of a needle and strings with indigo ink.  That shit hurt to kingdom come, seriously I had to close my eyes and envision being fed gursha by Queen Sheba just to get through it.  On top of that, I am a brother of Omega Psi Phi, so I have 6 brands in all—two on my right arm, two on my chest, and two on my left arm.  Thus, this is not me getting on my soap box to preach against sinners, shit I am a sinner like the rest of you; I have destroyed my God given body by blotting it with ink and scaring it with blazing irons in order to display my inner narcissism.

But I guess that is my tire tsega beef with tattoos.  At the end of the day, tattoos are nothing but a display of our narcissism; they are a helpless call for attention.  Tattoos are nothing more than bright neon signs that beg for the attention from other folks. We turn our bodies into walking billboards for other products.  We ruin our perfectly good bodies for the sake of displaying the voids in our hearts by filling it with black ink and spilling our red blood in the process.  I am not sure what it is about humanity, we are never content, we insist on testing the limit and in the process continue to destroy our temples. 

The fucked up thing is that the same tattoo that looks like a Lion of Judah on your chest will morph into an unrecognizable monstrous creature once gravity and old age turns your chest into a crumpled up heap of wrinkled skin.  Yet we press ahead, thinking that our bodies will remain intact as is for an eternity.  We press ahead and get tattoos of women, or apples, or our astrology sign, or lions, or tiger, or bears oh my.  We get tattoos of our dead fathers with a bible quote to boot even as we refuse to step one foot inside a church.  We get a tattoo of our mothers even as we barely call them other than once a year on Mother’s day.  We get tattoos of our children even as we refuse to pay child support.  We get tattoos of our girlfriend only to regret that shit once she breaks our hearts.  We get tattoos of hearts right on top of our hearts even as we continue to eat Popeye’s chicken that will eventually shred our real hearts up—and no that tattoo of a heart will not pump blood for you once you have a heart attack.

But here is the shit that bothers me the most—Habesha people who get tattoos of Lalibela crosses.  Shit, you do realize that Lalibela is a church town that is the equivalent of Mecca for Ethiopians.  You do know that God beseeched human beings not to desecrate our bodies and treat them as temples?  So what gall, what audacity, what authority do you have to defecate on our culture by getting a tattoo of a Lalibela cross on your body as you neglect God, as you ignore our culture, and as you continue to show your narcissism by begging for attention while adorning your body with the black ink of sin?

The shit that gets me the most about Habesha obsession with tattoos though are the Habesha women who are intent on tatting up almost every inch of their body.  I won’t lie, I find it sexy as shit, but I also find it a bit classless—remember though I told you I have a tattoo and six brands so I am not sinless and I am just as classless.  And recently I found out that women that have tattoos on their lower back; that shit is called the “Cum Spot” because that is where guys pull out and nut once they finish having sex with tatted women doggy style.  So imagine that, a guy nutting sperm on a Lalibela cross—I am pretty sure that is not what God meant when he said “go forth and multiply”.  The only shit you are multiplying is the amount of seamen that you collect on your tatted up lower back ehetoch::

Anyway, this is just one man’s take.  I am sure this article will get me tons of hate mail from dozens of tatted up Habesha ladies in DC and will also get me an honorary membership on the board of a local Pente church.  Oh well, easy cum easy go, just like cum on the back of a tatted up Habesha girl I guess.  This is a reminder that we should really think about the direction we are heading in as a people.  We are slowly losing our culture in the bright lights of America. We are headed towards a cultural oblivion, yet we continue to write the story of our collective destruction one tattoo at a time.  Fuck it, let me join the club, tonight I will get a tattoo on my back that reads “Hi I’m Teddisho” and will go out hunting for a Habesha lady with a tattoo of a Lalibela cross on her back and see what “cums” up.  One suggestion, instead of a Lalibela Cross Tattoo on your back ladies, please spare our culture and get a tat of a bull’s eye target, it will make it easier for us guys to aim that way.  Peace.

“Your body is a temple, but how long can you live in the same house before you redecorate?” ~Unknown

[click to watch the Tattoo King Lil' Wayne talking about the Ethiopian Lollipop I will be licking tonight]

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Teddy Fikre

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