Another thing that should reassure me that I am firmly planted in my own generation is the fact that I am less scandalized and annoyed by the infection carrying whoring sea-donkeys on A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila and Rock of Love than I am by the waxy, dead-eyed, Stepford zombies on The Bachelor. I've studiously avoided The Bachelor franchise in all its incarnations, mostly because it doesn't seem very interesting. Cheesy rose ceremonies and prom dresses pale in comparison to giant novelty clocks, challenges involving roller derby, complete whack-job sociopaths and the careful dance that is maintaining the illusion that Bret Michaels is not going bald. For the last week or so, however, Vh1 has been running various iterations of the Bachelor pretty much non-stop, so while running on the elliptical at the gym yesterday I subjected myself to exactly 45 minutes plus cooldown of NFL quarterback bachelor Jesse and his quest to find true love on major network television.

I guess what offended me so much about the entire production was the sickening earnestness of it. The fact that a doe-eyed boy from Florida really thought that ABC would present him with his heart's truest soulmate, and he just had to be smart enough to correctly pick her out of a lineup of 25 identically manicured women. I would rather watch Flavor Flav, who I know for a fact has an existing long term girlfriend, pretend to seek a relationship with one or several insane skanks, because at least it is an honest sham. And the very worst thing, on this particular bachelor show, was it was the episode where the bachelor's "best friend from home" (a woman who looked exactly like every other contestant) revealed her identity to the remaining bachelorettes, and, dude, that was so annoying. The "best friend from home" spent a full ten minutes in the beginning of the episode crying about how sorry she was that she had lied to the other women on the show, and that she wanted to be forgiven, and that "there is no peace in deception." And while I might agree with her, come on, did you really not think about this scenario before it happened? Quit crying about it now. Holy crap. It's just tv, it's not like a real life relationship will result from this. Effing idiots.

I've gained many things personally from changing my habits and going to the gym almost every day, not the least of which are muscle tone, increased endurance and agility, many ridiculous choreographed step routines from my favorite aerobics class and the ability to undress and shower in a room full of strange women. This last one, however, has lead me to what I think is the most important lesson I've learned at the gym over the last 8 months; most tattoos are awful.

Since I was 14 years old, I've been dreaming of different ways to mark my body in ways that would express my true essence to the world. When I was 15, the very coolest thing I could possibly imagine was to have my name tattooed on my back in orange flame writing. Uh, yeah. Seriously. Lucky for me, I had the kind of sensible and non-permissive mother who wouldn't even let me get my belly button piecered, so the matter of permanent body art was a non-starter. Let me repeat, orange flame writing. Mom, thank you. So, when I came to my senses roughly six months later, I was quick to grasp that taste is an evolving and ever changing concept, and ink scarred into your epidermis is not. Forward from there, I would envision typewriters on my forearm, and hearts on my abdomen, and victorian pen drawings of animals and chandeliers, always knowing that it probably wouldn't happen, and that was probably for the best.

The last several months have taught me that even if your tattoo is something deeply personal and important and a song to your dead cat or something, it still probably looks dumb when you're toweling off in a locker room full of strangers.

As evidence, here is a list of the terrible tattoos I've seen on women at my gym:
1. Pooh Bear, the size of a silver dollar.
2. Countless, seriously, countless Asian symbols littering the flesh of lily-white girls who I am positive do not speak any Asian languages.
3. The ubiquitous "sweet-tribal-tramp-stamp." Except I didn't need to join the gym to see this one, because I've been to college.
4. A zebra head? Just the head? Really?
5. Truly unattractive flowers. I can understand why you might want a tattoo of a pretty flower, but why an ugly, unrealistic one?