It must be terrible not to get your monthly copy of SKIN&INK. Not terrible in the sense of losing a limb or a loved one, perhaps, but terrible because it's a breach in continuity. The sudden absence of something you count on to keep in touch with the tattoo scene. You get included, you acquaint yourself with the cast of characters, their absurdities, their obscenities, so to speak, and, poof, someone in the mailroom oversleeps or leaves the address labels in his car, and the whole thing is turned upside down. This hardworking, underappreciated cog in the gear makes the smallest of errors with the biggest of repercussions, the mail doesn't go out and Mr. and Mrs. Alfonso H. Babbleass don't get the monthly issue of their favorite tattoo periodical.

Or the kid next door swiped it from your mailbox. And he stays up all night leafing through the pages, staggers to school the next morning with not a single drop of breakfast in his belly and scribbles sleep-deprived doodles and cartoon caricatures on his Social Studies binder only to be sent to the principal's office, the same principal he tattoos five years later at one hundred and fifty bucks an hour.

Maybe the warden borrowed it. Whatever the case, the issue is missing. You paid for it to show up in the mailbox and it isn't there. And you walk by the newsstand at the supermarket and guess what; the brand-new issue with the pretty tattooed cover girl flashing a smile is beckoning to you like a pole dancer at a titty bar in downtown Cleveland, but you won't buy it because you already sprung for a twelve-month subscription and it would really piss you off to pay for it twice.

So, of course, the only real solution is to do exactly that; buy the newsstand copy, and if it turns out to be an extra, so what? Hey, you're probably a tattoo artist pulling down over a hundred grand a year, so what's another six bucks to a guy like you, anyway? Plus, if you look on the bright side, buying a second copy would increase sales on our end and the publisher would have no other choice but to reward yours truly with a substantial raise, so I could live in an even more lavish lifestyle than you erroneously fantasize I live already. And I could buy certain luxuries like a Bell UH-1 Huey helicopter, so, when you hear one of those babies flying over your house at night, you wouldn't be scared and think a band of car thieves has gotten away with your chopped and channeled '54 Merc, because it would be me and it would be warm and comforting that someone who edits your favorite tattoo magazine is flying through the night sky and training my chopper searchlight on suspicious-looking characters who have other people's copies of SKIN&INK clutched in their grimy hands and are making a run for it. Copies of your SKIN&INK magazine. That is a crime. And a very serious one, if I say so myself. But, let's face it, not as serious as last year's loss of Hunter S. Thompson, a gonzo journalist of the highest order, and the person to whom this editorial is respectfully dedicated.

Bob Baxter
Editor in Chief

baxter@skin&ink.com
www.skinandink.com