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Good News Week

Tattooed fish (GNW 7/9/09: Strange But True)

The latest fad in China is fortune fish: fish tattooed with lucky characters for things such as “Good Fortune”, “Long Life” and “Happiness”. Curiously there’s been little demand for “Mum”.

Mutilating live creatures has never been such good luck! / filled with good fortune!

It’s weird – every time walk into a tattoo-parlour and ask them to tattoo my goldfish, they refuse.

The sellers claim the fish are lucky. Although, clearly not lucky enough.

It’s meant to be good luck – although, clearly not for the fish.

The sellers claim the fish are now bringers of good fortune. Gotta justify tattooing them somehow, I guess.

And if you want a REAL lucky charm, buy one of the fish that escaped! / escaped the tattoo parlour!

The fish find it a terrible trial. The pain sears itself into their memory, which makes for a traumatic three-seconds.

At last you can get a lucky tattoo at the same time as torturing fish!

But… how do you tattoo a fish? I would’ve thought it’s hard to get them that drunk.

Of course, you can only tattoo a fish if they give full consent. And are over 16.

Most of the fish are getting tattooed with symbols meaning luck, prosperity, and good fortune, but of course some are just getting big-breasted devil-women riding skulls surrounded by flames. / getting little angel wings, just above their arses, so you can see them when they wear low-cut jeans.

Of course, fish aren’t just getting tatts. They’re also swimming around with piercings, scarifications, and in many cases, gills.

The tattooing is much better at getting the symbols on to the fish than branding ever did. Sure, the symbols were clear, but the fish always ended up fried.

Not only are they getting tatts, but gill-piercings are at an all time high!

But it’s not just fish that can be tattooed. I’m sure we can extend out disrespectful animal-mutilation to all sorts of other creatures.

Tattooing fish has been a long-standing Japanese tradition, ever since some guy figured he could make a buck a couple of years back.

And the tattoos do seem to provide good luck. At least they’re less likely to be sushi.

Though I’d be careful about the luck bestowed by any tattooed fish that you find in your sushi.

They’re Hell’s Angelfish.

You know the tattooed parrot fish have gotten really tough if they take to wearing a leatherjacket.

A popular choice is the Chinese characters for “May your business boom”, which has certainly been working for the fish-tattooers.

They tattoo the fish using lasers. And yet still I wait for my lightsaber.

No-one has studied how the tattoos will affect the fish. But there has been a marked increase in fish motorbikes.

The hardest part for the fish is riding the Harley.

And I thought ‘tattooing the goldfish’ was a euphemism.

By Wok and Mat

Warwick Holt and Mat Blackwell are long-time writing partners, who created the mega-award winning web series Bruce, and wrote loads of jokes for TV shows including Good News Week, The Sideshow and The Glass House. Several years of their raw material for those shows is posted right here on this blog.

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