Jumat, 28 November 2008

Reader Kat has emailed me yesterday this photo of her husband's back:

tattoo_shi1shou4wei1kuang2fu4

He got it done four years ago and the characters should be Knowledge, Loyalty, Courage, Warrior, & Father.

Since Alan just got back from Japan, I forwarded this to him. Here is what Alan concludes:

Besides the terrible calligraphy, the character is missing a dot at the upper right-hand corner. Also, the stroke at the bottom center of 寿 is supposed to be a separate dot rather than the incorrect connected stroke pointing down and to the right that we see.

Anyway, the characters mean roughly as follows:
knowledge, consciousness
寿 congratulations, celebration, long life, sushi
danger, dangerous
crazy, insane, mad
father

Is this supposed to mean "celebrate the knowledge of a dangerous, crazy father" or something?

I don't get the whole picture but it doesn't sound very complementary to the "father." The characters do not seem to mean anything like they think they do.

http://www.rankmytattoos.com/tattoo-designs/chinese-symbol-tattoo-11776006292354.html

Another gem from Rankmytattoos.com, it is a mirrored (death).

Selasa, 25 November 2008


A hasty post to share the absolutely splendid rough for the proposed cover of the French edition of what we commonly know as MBT2 Lamplighter. Mr Lacombe you have made my day!

And I am liking the spontaneous character descriptions, too - will seek to do something with them in the new year I reckon...

Selasa, 18 November 2008

...& and here is the link to my Winter Blog Blast Tour interview at Finding Wonderland from yesterday. Thank you so much TadMack & Aquafortis for such excellent questions, they were a joy to answer.

Please make sure you check out all the other interviews this week past a present - so much authorly goodness... if I was not needing to get back to writing I'd say more on it. Only a short while left before I am handing the 1st draft in.

Senin, 17 November 2008

My word, you folks sure got close to 80 comments. Impressive - but you are not a jedi yet... I certainly gave you enough time to have a red hot go, as "they" say. But alas, guilt has got the better of me and here I am posting after a bit too long not posting... um... I'm like, an excellent writer and stuff...

On with the show!

As much as the hype is off-putting, I am very glad the Twilight series has my niece reading; she would not look sideways at a book before. Now, who knows, she might venture out further into the realms of the written word and for that I can only be grateful.

The uber-series is an interesting creature - perhaps making reading cool again; I often marvel that without Master Potter's 7 tomes there would probably be no MBT, not through any influences (though I read a review today that suggested I was apparently employing the good ol' school-environment shtick a-la Harry P, to make Lamplighter work...) but because Ms Rowling has forged such ground that publishers are willing to give odd ideas like mine some listroom. For that I salute you, Ms Rowling!

For the funness of it all the Winter Blog Blast Tour begins! Organised by the tireless Chasing Ray, it is a veritable smorgasbord of author interviews. Mine own interview will be found on Tuesday 18th November (why else would I be telling you, right?) over at Finding Wonderland.

Oh, and shouts out to Portals whom I had the wonder of meeting in living flesh not last weekend but the one before, I hope it was not too underwhelming...

BTW the ever increasing vocabulary of the Varificon or "Word Varification Dictionary" is growing at an impressive and rather funny rate. Please, continued...

Minggu, 09 November 2008

HS reader Anna sent this photo to our attention:


http://jjb.yuku.com/topic/418982/t/New-tattoo.html

Its owner, LuvBug, said she got this exact tattoo along with two other friends and it meant "emotional and spiritual strength. "

Besides the obvious botchery of two characters, the phrase is not 100% grammatically correct.

In my opinion, the proper version should be or . However, Alan is much lenient & thinks is good enough.

Kamis, 06 November 2008

Nothing like last minute information but here goes...

People living in or near Sydney will find me if they dare to look in at this year's FreeCon 2008 Science Fiction Convention, both on Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th, at the Norman Selfe Room of the Sydney Mechanics School of the Arts (SMSA) building, 280 Pitt Street, good ol' Sydenytown. No charge for entry or any part of it, which is nice.

Here is their website for even more detail.

Sorry for the very late notice... I sure hope I see some of you there.
(especially you, Anna, because you live soooo close and all...)

Minggu, 02 November 2008

This week's word is:

calimere.

I have no idea what it means yet, just found it today as the word verification code to place my comment on the previous post. It could either have something to do with potives - maybe a piece of equipment; perhaps some type of swamp, or the name for a place... hmmm.

It is always a joy to find new things that grow the Half-Continent and once I have settled on new word and its meaning, or developed a concept further, though it might be freshly minted it always feels like it has ever been that way far back into time. Odd, huh?
User "Silat1" posted this photo in tattooartists.com:


http://www.tattooartists.com/images/asian%20tattoos/kanji-tattoo.jpg

The seven virtue of Bushido are so poorly done, many have left with missing strokes.

Rectitude ()
Courage ()
Benevolence ()
Respect ()
Honesty ()
Honor ()
Loyalty ()

The character for rectitude has been spited into two, & . Instead of representing righteousness, it is "king me" which sounds more like a term from Chess. Or "The King and I", if he is a musical type.

Both respect & honesty are missing a stroke.

Any self-respecting samurai would have committed suicide long time ago to defend his reputation and honor.

These pseushido (pseudo+bushido) douchebags are such pussies.


Stuff White People Like #58 - Japan
This photo's caption says "My girl's 'Bitch' tattoo. So fitting"


http://www.checkoutmyink.com/tattoos/grampagravity/bitch-2

However, means "prostitute".

Why would anyone want that to be displayed on their body?

Even so, she should at least tattoo a price list underneath. It is so hard (no pun intended) to haggle, when all the blood has left the brain and gone into the boner.
From checkoutmyink.com:


http://www.checkoutmyink.com/tattoos/winkydinkink/30767

Not a good looking tit or tat .