I may be a tad old and sometimes I really do sound like my parents, but it does seem to me that some of this tattooing and piercing stuff is getting' kinda' weird.

When I was young I used to wear ill-fitting clothes (remember elephant pants?) and listen to strange music but when I got older, I just stopped doing so. The time for that kind of thing in my life had passed.

But I wonder about the fate of our younger people because tattoos and many kinds of piercing leave a more permanent reminder of younger days that isn't just going to go away when the wearer gets older. Not that there aren't some really beautiful tattoos nowadays. I've seen some very cool ones on women and men, many of them my age.  But some of the stuff going on is getting really bizarre.

Case in point: when I was in Denmark this summer with my family we visited the amusement park Tivoli. While there, we ran into a whole group of youngish men and women whom I believe would be called "Goths". As a friend of my said, a couple of them looked like they'd fallen face-first into a fishing tackle box and come up worse for wear.

I've never seen such an array of piercing and black makeup and... well, you get the picture. But - and here's the strangest thing- one of the young men was sporting a nifty pair of horns on his forehead. I'm not kidding; he had a pair of two-inch nubbins created by implants buried under his skin.

His face was also heavily tattooed, as was every bare inch of skin that I could see. He and his buddy also had those earlobe discs-thingies and when they took them out to go on the rides, their stretched earlobes hung down the sides of their heads and moved like turkey wattles.

So what, you say? It's their business, not yours! Yeah, I agree. But I'm intrigued why anyone would do that kind of thing to his or her body. They are certainly making a public statement but I'm not sure what they are saying.

When we got back, I spent some time surfing the web to find out what's happening on the so-called, "body modification" scene. Let me warn you - this isn't the kind of research I would recommend to anybody. The horn implants are tame compared to some of the stuff that people are doing to their bodies.

Many of the disfigurements/mutilations are deeply disturbing and very, very permanent.

Although there were a few articles about their reasons for doing these things, there's not much rationale offered. I wonder if this kind of stuff is based on the deepest of narcissisms or perhaps they are trying to say, "I'm so alienated from human society that I don't even want to look like a person..."

I don't know; I'm just guessing. But maybe, just maybe, these are very sensitive people who feel, like many others in our time, utterly powerless to significantly change the world in any other way so instead they "alter" their own bodies. 

Maybe they are tuned into and even reflect the deep angst felt by creation itself as the extinction rates of our neighbours speed up and the unsustainable economies crash and often the whole world looks like it's heading you-know-where in a handbasket.

If so, maybe adorning oneself with a pair of horns is quite appropriate for the destination. In any case, his body accoutrements and decorations certainly drew a crowd at Tivoli and people were snapping pictures of him every time they thought he wasn't looking.

Maybe he just wants to appear freakish and likes the attention, but maybe, in his rather extreme way, he's saying something about how extremely alienated many people in our time feel.  

Perhaps it's always been thus with the upcoming generation but I sense there's something deeper going on nowadays on many levels and I believe it does signify a global paradigm shift in almost everything we do. Desperation is running high - but so is hope.

I hope he and all those who feel utterly on the fringe of society hear that possibility, too. They awaken many of us with their bold body statements.  There's simply no "butts" about the changes that are upon us.