Ye Gods and Little Fishes

I have no idea whether this is post-post-modern, ironic, desperate or just plain nasty but this morning I saw, with my own eyes, a slightly paunchy middle-aged businessman carrying a spare shirt on a hanger and a T-shirt with a tribal tattoo emblazoned on the front. I know the shirt was his because it was exactly the same size as the spare business shirt he was also carrying. This crime against taste was plain white and baggy with the tattoo in black poorly screen-printed across the chest. No further attempt at design had been made.

This bamboozled me somewhat. Tramp Stamps or Arschgeweih (arse antlers) as they're known in Germany are things I associate with blonde, teenage hair-dressers with orange perma-tans and IQs less than their shoe size. They can also be associated with similarly haired and tinted young men who use the word "gnarly" in earnest. But at least they, however ill-advisedly, actually had the nerve to get the tattoo done. This T-shirt seemed to be saying to me, "Hey, I'm edgy too. I've still got it!" whereas what it was actually said was, "I'm desperate and really really want to have sex with a blonde hair-dresser". It is not a good look and it suggests an even worse state of mind. Or perhaps it is post-post-modern, but I doubt it somehow. He was also carrying a copy of the Daily Mail.