Man sells his tattooed skin to art collector who will flay him when he dies

boing
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Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/02/man-sells-his-tattooed-skin-to.html

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Has this artist been reading Roald Dahl? I remember this story! It didn’t end so well in the Dahl version.

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That is one awesome ink job! But, I’d feel more comfortable owning one of pigskins myself.

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Flaying people for art reminds me of Nábrók (“necropants”):

In Icelandic witchcraft, nábrók (calqued as necropants, literally “death underpants”) are a pair of pants made from the skin of a dead man, which are capable of producing an endless supply of money. The ritual was practiced in the 17th century.

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Tan me hide when I’m dead, Fred
Tan me hide when I’m dead…
So we tanned his hide when he died Clyde and that’s it hangin on the shed!
Everybody now!

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Then mine should be worth much more. He can put whatever he wants on it; afterwards.

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Akimitsu Takagi, THE TATTOO MURDER CASE - immediate post-WWII Tokyo crime novel with this subject as a side-issue. A collector is hanging around for skins in the middle of a murder case involving a tattooed victim. Very creepy ending.

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i can’t honestly decide which thing horrifies me more: that someone wanted to sell their skin, or that someone agreed to buy it.

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Very important to get the wording correct on this kind of contract. Death first, then flaying. Getting it the wrong way around can really make you look foolish…

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Seems like the kinda thing that wouldn’t be legal. You can’t sell your body parts while you’re alive. But you can sell parts of your future corpse? I’m not complaining … just seems like something some law would prohibit.

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I dunno - I like the idea. Why let it go to waste?

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“…so it turns out I misread the fine print and actually gave the guy permission to flay me alive! Hah ha! Boy is my face red. As is everything else. See because I have no skin.”

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That was my immediate reaction too. Though I thought it might be the collector who’s been reading it. :fearful:

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I would get myself tattooed entirely with pictures of lampshades if I were going to be the donor in this project.

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I can’t see this and not recall The Pillow Book (which has a flaying for body art).

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Eeeewwww!

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The reverse mortgage people are really stepping up their game

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I can’t decide which way to go here…

  1. But what a joke if he dies in a fiery car crash and the tattooed skin is burnt to a crisp.

or,

  1. It uses the cream or it gets the hose.
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i have an agreement with my best friend. if i should die before he does my head will be removed from my corpse prior to cremation and be cleaned up by a scientific house which will then give my skull to him as an heirloom for his family. if he should die before i do i am to divide up his cremains into enough containers and mail them to various fake addresses around the world with false return addresses so that his cremains will become lost in the equivalent to the dead letter offices of the postal services around the world and he will then become global in scope.

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