Candidate #3

I realize that this for purely personal reasons, but I'd like to nominate James Howard Kuntsler (and I could not possibly make that last name up) for the next IRYG Internet Douchebag of the Week.

James Howard Kuntsler is the owner/author of the Web site Eyesore of the Month. In addition to being remarkably active on his homepage and in the world of -- ahem -- literature, Mr. Kuntsler possesses an ethnic cleansing-like sense of what appears to right and wrong in his world (suburban New York). And by "appears to be," I mean just that. If he doesn't like the way it looks, it surely came from the devil.

For example, August's Eyesore of the Month, a tattoo shops in Saratoga Springs. As a person who has spent more than a few hours working, waiting, and, well, getting tattooed in tattoo shops, I feel confident in calling True Tattoo Studio quaint. I would even go so far as to call it cute. It's clean. It's in the suburbs. There are no bars in the windows. Judging by its appearance, it seems to be an absolutely respectable business in what Mr. Kuntsler admits is a sufficient business district.

Gentrify all you want, it's none of my business. I don't even live there. I'm also perfectly happy with my own tattoo shop, a historical gem located at a gritty intersection in the middle of the second most dangerous city in the U.S. What pisses me off is that Mr. Kuntsler's problem isn't that a likely profitable business exists on his own personal Main Street, but that the kind of people who go there just shouldn't be around...

The activity taking place here, however, is a symptom of the growing barbarism in American life. Tattooing has traditionally been a marginal activity among civilized people, the calling card of cannibals, sailors, and whores. The appropriate place for it is on the margins, in the back alleys, the skid rows. The mainstreaming of tattoos (on main street) is a harbinger of social dysfunction.

...Because, you know, keeping tattoo shops in seedy back alleys will do wonders for ensuring that the tattoo industry is safe and regulated. And because an art form that predates Christianity is clearly too declasse to survive in today's society. And because since I'm not a cannibal, sailor, or whore (although I suppose that would depend on which ex-boyfriend you ask), I must be a barbarian.

And most importantly, because any whiny suburban dick knows that tattoos and tattooing begin and end with shitty prison-style teardrops on the faces of people who are most definitely not from their neighborhood. Nothing like this, of course:

So, Mr. Kuntsler, this tattooed barbarian nominates you for the Internet Douchebag of the Week.