Eat My Ink

“Jeffrey Dahmer says, ’Remember kids, tat-toos taste great!’”

If you’re appalled to the max by this bumper sticker, says Penny Hackney, 25, of Tattoo Shop II (3603 Perry, across from Fair Park), you’re probably a parent with teen-age children. “The kids think it’s funny,” she says. “It’s just for shock.”

What kind of kids get a chuckle out of this brand of barf-bag humor? “These are straightedge kids,” Penny says. “They don’t drink or use drugs; they don’t even smoke cigarettes. When I was a teen-ager, this was what we did to rebel. You gotta have something. Now, it happens to be sick humor,”

Penny’s husband, Robert, came up with the idea to promote business. The bumper stickers went over so well they made T-shirts with a caricature of the infamous cannibal- killer eating a snack that bears a clearly discernible tattoo. The shirts, stamped with Dahmer’s bizarre “endorsement,” sold out at $16 each in five hours at the recent national tattoo convention in New Jersey.

The shirts were such a success that the Hackneys had some made for their store as soon as they got back to Dallas. And, if you feel you need even more shock power, you can load up on the dreaded serial-killer trading cards, Penny says, next door at the Skull and Bones. These items are guaranteed to get Mom and Pop’s attention.