Sabtu, 30 Mei 2009



For those who want to be a complete douche-bag on a Saturday or any other days, perhaps a little karate, this is the shirt for you.

tshirt_palmercash_saturday

Who cares what those characters mean or even if they are correct. When you got this shirt on, you are so badass, even Chuck Norris would cover his nuts.

$21.97 at Palmer Cash by Vintage Vantage.
Superdry
www.superdry.co.uk

Alan forwarded me a link to a British apparel company called Superdry.

We are certainly not experts on the subject of brandnaming, but "Superdry" automatically equates to anti-perspirant or deodorant in the world of marketing (Back us up on this, Steve!).

The phrase (しなさい) is very strange in Japanese, especially with しなさい in parentheses.

It seems like someone was told to translate “Superdry” into Japanese, but the translator could not decide whether it is supposed to be an adjective meaning “extremely dry” or a sentence meaning “dry extremely well” so they just fudged it and left the imperative form しなさい [shinasai] in parentheses, indicating their uncertainty.

It is just so random that this uncertain translation was immortalized in the logo without any subsequent editing.

Rabu, 27 Mei 2009

I thought it would be simplest to show you the very beginning of Lamplighter. I will make some comment on each version but will let them speak for themselves - my hope is that when you click on an image it will show it at a better, more readable size.

Please, ask any questions you like.

As you can see my initial beginning was markedly different from what we now have in the book. My first thought was to start the very next day from where Foundling left off. I am glad that I did not. The where to begin a story is one of the big challenges in writing. Apart from this, other problems clear to me (now, at least) are a/ that Grindrod is unrealistically harsh & b/ the excessive use of capitals for his voice.


Next is the proper beginning to the story; it is bloated and clumsy - but that is the nature of my first drafts for you... The comments on it are made by the fair hand of my publisher, Dyan Blacklock.


The change from first to second draft is hard work but seeing the better, tighter story emerge from all the pain is a genuine joy. The scribble in green is my own hand as I continue to improve the text - all those little details and tweaks that feel make the tale a whole lot better.

This final stage is what are called pages. It is the properly typeset book printed out on ordinary A4 paper for me to go over for any final and usually small corrections. I, however, made some significant changes - as you can see by the highlighted text, which, if memory serves, was shifted and cut. If you get out your copies you shall see what I mean. This is not normal at this stage, of course, but most was agreed to by my editor (the purple penciled Celia Jellet), for it indeed made the whole work again that much better. (I paid for the re-typesetting, btw - 'tis only fair...)

There you have it! Just like that. This book writing thing is easy!

Also Gareth of Falcata Times asked me to point you all to their review of Lamplighter, which fits well with this post, the final end for this whole process: people reading it and even reviewing it. Thank you, Gareth!

For breakfast today I had porridge with sultanas and a cup of Irish Breakfast tea.

Jumat, 22 Mei 2009

Just put up another poll for your pondering (just scroll down a bit)... more substantial posting coming soon.

Minggu, 17 Mei 2009

from: Joseph B.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Wed, May 13, 2009 at 10:45 PM
subject: Does this tat really mean this?

Love your website and had to ask you.

The owner of this tat claims it says "Only god will judge me", is this true? I have heard it means something about being a slave??

Thanks for your help!!!!

JB

Does this tat really mean this??

The top character may intended to be (large or great), however it is the wrong character, .

In Japanese, 大帝 refers to a "great emperor", which does not mean Christian God. is used when referring to the Christian God. Other words for God are (literally "the Lord") and 天主 ("the Lord in Heaven").

上帝 is used in Chinese when referring to Christian God. 真主 and 阿拉 typically used for Allah, the Islamic name for God. Funny thing is that 阿拉 means "we" or "I" in Shanghai dialect.

大帝, 玉帝, and 玉皇 are variants of 玉皇大帝, Jade Emperor, from Chinese Taoism mythology. The Goa'uld System Lord Yu from Stargate SG-1 is based on this. Ironically the production company did not cast a Chinese actor for this role, rather Vincent Crestejo.

The verb 裁く [sabaku] does mean "to judge" and [boku] is a common word that Japanese males refer to themselves, meaning "me" or "I". means "to cut" in Chinese and sometimes it is associated with tailoring. means only "servant" in Chinese.

But unfortunately, the grammar and word order of the sentence 大帝裁僕 is not proper for Japanese, so it looks sort of "Chinese" to a Japanese person. A Japanese person could possibly try to read it in 漢文 style, giving the sentence:

大帝は僕を裁く [Taitei ha boku wo sabaku.]

The character is also read "shimobe" meaning manservant, so the phrase could also mean:

"The great emperor judges the manservant"

or

"The great emperor's tailor"

It doesn't really mean what it is supposed to mean, in either Japanese or Chinese.

Sabtu, 16 Mei 2009

I have received several emails from readers to inform me about one webisode from NBC's The Office.



nbc_theoffice_webisode_blackmail

In the video, Andy Bernard made an announcement that claimed his tattoo is "nard dog".

Although it is not exactly "nard dog", "n " (n dog) is close enough.

Senin, 11 Mei 2009

Just in case you thought I had shuffled off somewhere, I am still about, honest, being very preoccupied about editing (actually a major rewrite - you should see all the green pen scribbled over each page, the inserted pages with even more green scribblings) and slack about blogging.

I heard once that you need to post at least once a week to be considered a real blog, so I don't know where that leaves us...

Just thought I would acknowledge that "clede" (a corruption of Mr Hranac's 'cledu' verificon word) meaning a country dance, and most likely "verger" (coined by Alyosha's daughter) meaning a builder of fortifications, might well have a place in the Half-Continent. 'Tis a bit perplexing about how such things work though; can I even have them to use? They are other people's stuff after all. I could sit here and just plunder you all and never have to come up with my own stuff - though where is the fun in that...! endless invention is entirely the point. It is just that some words are just right for the idea. Then again, there have been several times I have had to let some entirely perfect 'word' go because it is someone else's property, which just pushes me try again, to dig deeper, to slide sideways and get inventive. What I do not want is to be is a thief.

Back to the rewrite... (oh, and I will put up some old variants of bits of Lamplighter soon, to show what editing does for me -and you too, as the end users... did you know that you are 'end users'? Sounds a bit cold...)

Hope you all are well.

Sabtu, 09 Mei 2009

Alan and I are very curious about this Madsteel woman's tattoos:



We have no idea what those six characters across the top of her back mean.

The same person also posted many of her photos in BMEzine.com, like this one:


http://www.bmeink.com/A40403/high/iam00022266.jpg

What does 喜 and 壽 have to do with Madsteel?

The most interesting ones are on her feet:


http://www.bmeink.com/A90318/high/f4dt-madsteels-footie.jpg

I don't think 鉄狂 has any significance in Chinese. (If she had 鉄拳 from the video game Tekken tattooed on her hands, that would be awesome.)

Alan's guess is that it could be "railway fan" or "railway maniac" in Japanese. Railway workers call them "foamers" (those guys that know the names and car types of every single piece of railcar traveling over the rails and Details magazine recently had an article about these railway fans.)

Remember the movie Trainspotting? In Japanese, railway is 鉄道 and 狂い is a common suffix for a maniacal fan of something, so 鉄道狂い could be shortened to 鉄狂.

Judging from the name of the poster, we guess her feet tattoo are supposed to be a sort of
translation of "Madsteel" but if so, shouldn't it be in the order 狂鉄? Notice this young lady has the same two characters tattooed on both feet, but in opposite order.

Also, is only iron and steel should be .

Interestingly enough, there is a Japanese punk song by バミューダ バガボンド (Bermuda Vagabond) with the same title.