The new issue we put out today marks the ninth straight week that we’ve had a Tattoo issue out there for the world to read. We haven’t done that since 1998. But what makes this year even more special is that we’ve also had six special editions — printing much of Samantha Perez’s amazing Hurricane Journal — during the same period. Even I don’t know how we’re keeping up this pace.
This week’s issue, by the way, has our second news feature about an veteran of Bristol’s clockmaking industry. This time, Zach Brokenrope interviewed a fellow who designed a clock in the 1960s that aimed at helping women who wanted to use the rhythm method for birth control. The clock didn’t sell too well — the company went under — but it is an interesting tale. We’re doing these stories in conjunction with the American Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol, a place that always knows what time it is.
We’ve also got a personal story from Edrees Kakar, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan, about what Ramadan is all about. For the billion plus people who are Muslim, it’s old news, though we hope still interesting. But for the rest of the world, it’s a valuable reminder of what Islam really is in an era where crazies are trying to hijack the faith.
Molly Horan has a nice column about the back-to-the-past way she and a few friends spent their school’s homecoming night.
And, as usual, there’s a stellar cartoon from the talented Justin Skaradosky.
Don’t miss the whole thing at www.readthetattoo.com.
Oh go ahead – rub it in our face that Tattoo International is trouncing the pace at which we used to put out Tattoo pages when I was around.
Yeah…well, our iteration of the Tatto was cuter….
Having no idea what “iteration” means, I took the liberty of looking it up.
The definition is: “Solve a problem by repeatedly working on successive parts of the problem.”
Now how that fits in Joe’s last sentence, I cannot say.
But what I can say is that in the fall of 1998, The Tattoo was quite something. There were lots of solid news stories and plenty more. It was a great time — and Joe helped make it that way.
If anyone wants to see for themselves what those issues were like, click on the “All issues” link to the right of The Tattoo’s masthead and take a look at them. Don’t miss Joe’s stuff. Much of it is still funny.
An iteration is the repitition of a process that is continuing.
One iteration is one version or one repitition of its solution. Or at least that’s how it was explained to me.
In that sense our version of the Tattoo – a process that is continuing – was its iteration.
I actually only began saying it because a best-selling novelist with whom I took a writing class kept saying it until I asked him what it meant. But I think “version” may be simpler. I’m not sure when I started using it in regular conversation and not just to try to incorporate it into my vocabulary in the “Now use it in a sentence, dear” way that I always teach myself new words.