the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck

    All the recent talk about tattoos (mine and others) has prompted another flurry of searching for The Next One. (When will it end? Nobody knows.) I'm leaning toward a Korean dragon on my left thigh, at least part turquoise. A couple of friends have indicated a preference that it "climb" my leg, rather than "prowl". Since the image that I have is horizontal, I'll need to find something new. The best candidates so far are this "tribal" dragon (which, oddly, has three legs):

And this one, which has an awfully devilish look for my purposes:
In searching for them, though, I found what I think is the coolest tattoo EVER, which I would get if (a) I weren't such a wuss, and (b) I had the body for it, which alas, I do not:
I would also like a small, plain, Asian-inspired line drawing of a mouse, somewhat like this lion:
    I'd been looking for a mouse skeleton (long story) or footprints, but haven't found anything remotely close to proper in that area.
    Finally, this is just awesome. Wouldn't want it, but I absolutely love it:
    In other news, my foot is healing, slowly but surely. Most of the other bruises and scratches are much further along than this. It still hurts when I bump it (yes, I try not to bump it) but looks terrible, worse in person than in the photo. The injury is bad enough, but the old saw about adding insult to it has come true over the past few days; Toby has contacted me again. It seems that he has no recollection whatsoever of the events of last Monday, does not particularly believe my version of them, and "wants another chance." He has no articulated at what he desires to chance again, and I have not asked. I've ignored several of his messages, responded coolly/abruptly to a couple, and directly addressed a few. It culminated (I hope) in a pouty flurry of texts in which he expressed his disappointment at my "coldness" and, in essence, "if that's they way you're going to be, don't even bother contacting me again." Okey doke, thanks, bye.

[title quotation by William James, from The Varieties of Religious Experience]