"I own a tattoo shop, Gas Chamber Ink. so ink is always on my horizon," said Shannon Moore. "It's true what people say, getting tattoos is addicting. You have to be a fan of art and appreciate it; you have to know what you want and you have to know you want it. I know I'll be happy with my ink until the day I die."

Spending more than 100 hours in the tattoo chair has earned Moore quite the cache of permanent souvenirs. "I've got an old school skull and crossbones on my neck that represents a traditional tattoo," he said.

The word "Extinct" is hidden, etched in black letters across the inner portion of his bottom lip. "I thought of the worst place to get a tattoo, to see if I could take the pain. My lip was probably the worst feeling I had as far as any of my tattoos. I was on the liquid diet for a few days."

The tattoo Moore considers most meaningful is the dragon sleeve that blankets his left arm. "The dragon is a strong creature with so much power; it represents a time when my mother and I had to take care of my father, who had gotten into a car accident. I had to step up at that point and be the dragon -- the man of the household."

The tribal design on his right arm was a creation by one of the artists at Gas Chamber Ink. "It doesn't have a lot of meaning, but it's just something cool," he said. The "Made 1979" and "Hard Knox" that's spread across the outsides of both sets of fingers is his birth year and a "reminder that in life sometimes you have to be a hard, callous individual that fights for what you believe in."

Finally the "2*B* M*E" imprinted across his abdomen is about coming of age. "Everyone goes through a point in their life where they find out who they really are as a person; I got that done after I figured out who I really was."