Speaking for myself, if I saw a COBOL tattoo, I'd most likely think "Duuuude, old school... respect!" ;) Not so sure about JS though - is it perhaps more likely to seem like Visual Basic in 40 years? As a JS monkey myself, though, I like it* :)
As for alternatives... would a Lisp tattoo be better?
* Apart from the i coming out of nowhere, which keeps setting off my this-is-a-bug alarm ;)
Well, I was thinking more about the contrast between the supposed permanence of tattoo and a programming language construct. Now that you have pointed it, however, it might give a certain feeling of "old school" ("self modifying code in COBOL!?") -- and I expect closures to be still "reverenced" in 2060.
As for alternatives... would a Lisp tattoo be better?
* Apart from the i coming out of nowhere, which keeps setting off my this-is-a-bug alarm ;)