Beware of Bulls Eye Tattoos

My good friend Alan writes:

Hi Tian,

I thought we had pretty much covered all of the really silly tattoos out there so far, but evidently not. We have seen a lot of them already on their unknowing victims, but I just happened upon some of the tattoo “flash” with bogus Hanzi actually being sold on the Internet.

Here is one site:


http://www.bullseyetattoos.com/

The scary thing is that they are advertising that they have “thousands of professional tattoo designs.” I guess the hapless tattoo consumer is supposed to “download full size tattoos with the line art stencil a tattooist will need to transfer & ink the perfect tattoo.”

The tattoos in the “Kanji” section are hardly perfect.

Not only are there many kanji with poor brushwork, lots of them have completely wrong English translations like:

色 “Wild” – really means “color”

子 “spirit” – really means “child” but with an extra unnecessary stroke at the top

夕 “child” – really means “evening”

天 “To Die Young” – really means “sky, heaven”

荒 “Passion” – really means “rough, violent, coarse”


But the one that really cracked me up was this one:

生現 “Live For Today”

As is, this gibberish means nothing in Japanese or at least nothing like “live for today” and I don’t think it means anything in Chinese either. The only meaning I can guess is that if it were written 生きて現れる, this would mean “to show up alive” or “turn up alive” as if someone thought dead had appeared alive. Anyway, it sounds pretty spooky, like seeing a zombie!

I think the person who made this up just looked in a dictionary for the word for “to live” 生 and a word that means something like “now” 現 and thought you could stick them together to make “live for today.”

It doesn’t work like that.

The worst thing is that this tattoo appears on their “best sellers” page.

Expect to see these tattoos on gullible people near you soon!

I can’t believe they are actually charging money for this stuff.

Thanks for everything as usual.

Best,

Alan


Dodgy tattoo supply dealers are everywhere, buyers please be aware of that. After all, it is your skin these designs would end up on, these dealers could care less if you have made fools of yourselves.

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And done! (for now...)

Mate!

It has been one crazy, no-other-life-but-writing kinda time, but Draft 2 of Book 2 is done and in the hard-working hands of those mysterious folk who make it better. At this point I managed to excise 4 chapters and roughly 25,000 words (give or take) - very satisfying result. I don't mind this one bit. I have a tendency to over-write and all this fat-cutting does is make the text more readable, better-flowing, better connected.

For breakfast I had Echinacea for a chest infection that has just taken residence in my lungs.

Answers to questions coming very soon, honest – just catching my breath.
(If I may say, I am heartily glad Mr Bomber is still positing his curly queries...)

Will be back shortly.

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Deep Gratitude

To my friends who have left their encouragements I say a most grateful thank you. With the text for Book 2 now two chapters and 20,000 words less (and much better for it) and the deadline fast approaching, your words - and your concomitant patience - have been most excellent and welcome.

I shall have answers to questions in the next couple of weeks.

… and for breakfast this morning I had some wheaty-fruity cluster thingies.

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Wrong Chapter from Tao Te Ching

道德經, or Tao Te Ching, is one of the oldest exemplars of classic Chinese literature. Millions, perhaps billions, of people have read it since it was first written by Lao Tzu (or Lao Zi) around 600 BC.

For some, it is considered to be the Chinese equivalent of the Holy Bible. It has formed the foundation for Chinese philosophies such as Legalism, Neo-Confucianism, and Taoism. Thus, if someone decides to get sections of Tao Te Ching tattooed, he better do some serious research.

However, this person and/or his tattooist did not:


http://www.bmeink.com/A70313/high/bmepb474982.jpg
http://www.bmeink.com/A70313/high/bmepb474981.jpg
http://www.bmeink.com/A70313/high/bmepb474980.jpg

Three photos titled with “This is one of the TAO proverbs. So far I have 88 charaters. (by Jeniffer, Liberty Tattoo's, Sacramento Calif.)” were posted in BMEzine’s gallery on March 13, 2007.

Most of the text was from Chapter 64 of Tao Te Ching, which should read:

其 安 易 持 ， 其 未 兆 易 謀 。
其 脆 易 泮 ， 其 微 易 散 。
為 之 於 未 有 ， 治 之 於 未 亂 。
合 抱 之 木 ， 生 於 毫 末 ;
九 層 之 台 ，起 於 累 土 ;
千 里 之 行 ， 始 於 足 下。
民 之 從 事 ， 常 於 幾 成 而 敗 之 。
慎 終 如 始 ， 則 無 敗 事 。

However in the photo shown above, the section circled in red is actually from a completely different chapter.

Chapter 29 reads:

將 欲 取 天 下 而 為 之 ， 吾 見 其 不 得 已 。
天 下 神 器 ， 不 可 為 也 ， 不 可 執 也 。
為 者 敗 之 ， 執 者 失 之 。
是 以 聖 人 無 為 ， 故 無 敗 ﹔
無 執 ， 故 無 失。
夫 物 或 行 或 隨 ﹔ 或 噓 或 吹 ﹔
或 強 或 羸 ﹔ 或 載 或 隳 。
是 以 聖 人 去 甚 ， 去 奢 ， 去 泰 。

The mistake would be less noticeable if he did not have the chapter title tattooed near his butt cheek.

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Chicago Tattoo Typo Lawsuit

A few days ago I got a tip from Marisa of Needled.com about a man in Chicago suing his tattooist for misspelling his tattoo.



The client, Michael Duplessis, wanted "CHI-TOWN" to be tattooed in capital letters as a tribute to the city of Chicago. However, the tattooist Sam Hacker of Jade Dragon Tattoo & Body Piercing gave him "CHI-TONW".

In a bizarre twist, even when Sam Hacker admitted his mistake and offer to repair the tattoo, a group of his friends are supporting him by getting "CHI-TONW" tattoos.

When I took a quick peek at Jade Dragon Tattoo's gallery, I saw this:


http://www.jadedragontattoo.com/slow/tattoos/oriental/index.htm

I am curious if Mr. Duplessis did win the lawsuit, will I be called as an expert witness to testify at series of lawsuits about botched Chinese character tattoos?


Related: Needled.com, Chicago Tribune, Google News, Yahoo News

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I'm Back...

Well.

My time blogging at Inside A Dog is now done. It was a blast and for me very frequent (though perhaps not frequent enough for the folks who frequent Inside A Dog with greater frequency) .

Editing progresses.

Time runs short.

Time, time, always time...

The 'mountain' is steep but if I keep looking at how hard it will be to climb then I just will not get anywhere, frozen by fear. So head down and on with todays work: those handful of chapters designated as today's challenge. Tomorrow's challenges for tomorrow.

This brings me to the necessary yet painful revelation that MBT Book 2 will not be out in May of this year, that being 2007. It is more likely to come out late this year (2007) or early next (2008) - but certainly no later than this!

*wince*

I am so sorry to have to do this to those of you hanging in there with me. I apologise for the misinformation several posts ago. That was out original target, yet the process of making MBT 2 any good is taking some time. For those of you who continue with us in this, I truly think it will be worth the protracted wait. I truly believe, however, that a good book late is better than a bad book on time.

For those of you who are still here and have not vacated in frustration at this revelation, Winter expressed curiosity at the origins of the vinegar seas. I sometimes wonder if eagerly divulging my creative process is ruining it for people, like seeing the strings on a marionete or getting that blue-screen fuzz about a spaceship that is meant to be hurtling through space ... I could go on. What do folks think? Reveal all - or keep the mystery?

Having said that I'll answer Winter's curiosity and say that there were two things most directly influential on the invention (if I may call it that) of the vinegar seas.

First came my delight at Homer's term "the wine-dark sea", and wanted an equivalent in the Hc that had a similar poetic impact, a way of refering to the all-inportant oceans that was more that just a technical name. I do not recall where exactly the idea of "vinegar" came from - probably the association with wine - but having settled on that as possessing the right 'vibe' I then had to justify why the seas were named so.

The second part? Watching a documentary on flamingoes I was struck by those multi-hued soda lakes in Africa, the very home of these birds. A conjunction formed in my thoughts: I had actually wondered if the Homer's "wine-dark sea" might actually be deep red in colour, and these soda lakes were red (and torquoise, and yellow and so on) in colour. So perhaps the vinegar seas are actually alkalai oceans filled with all kinds of exotic chemicals to make them odd and lurid hues, that the appellation "vinegar" comes from the sharp, sour-wine-like smell of the various chemicals within the waters. Click. For me it all fitted and so the idea became firmly a part of the Hc.

From there it was - and continues to be - a matter of allowing for the adaptions and habits such an aquatic world might force on people, on shipping and seaside living, and what manner of creatures might lurk beneath the turbulent waves.

I hope this does not ruin the idea for anyone.

And as yet I have not had breakfast, though it is most likely to be Sultana Bran [TM] with a few extra saltanas for increased sultanary goodness.

... and I am still very very sorry for the disappointing news of MBT2's later than expected publishing date.

NOTE: MBT = Monster Blood Tattoo, Hc = Half-Continent

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"I love sucking ass"

"Dave" sent me a photo of his friend's tattoo about two weeks ago with:

A couple of days ago a friend of mine got a tattoo, and upon asking him what it meant, he told me it was a "secret". I know my friend isn't the brightest of stars and I suspect that he had help translating it after he got tattooed and found out it meant "I love sucking ass" or something similar, so I would REALLY love to know what it really means, and since he can barely speak English, let alone Japanese.



At first I thought 举节际乐 (traditional format: 擧節際樂) was some kind of idiom. When my own research turned up fruitless, I then forward it to Alan and he replied with:

What does this jumble supposedly mean? I have no idea. This means nothing in Japanese. Except for perhaps 举 would be recognizable as a variant of 拳.

Even looking at the traditional forms, the characters would be recognized but I don't think that any Japanese person would discern any meaning other than the meanings of the individual characters.

What is this supposed to be? I wonder if the owner of the tattoo simply picked the characters at random.

The whole thing could be backwards (or actually inverted bottom to top), so it should really be read 乐际节举.

This is all I can guess now, but it is really strange that the tattoo would be written inverted even though the characters themselves appear to be fine. Maybe the tattooist was working from a computer-generated font that was cut apart and re-stacked incorrectly like the case of Kimberly.

I tend to agree with Alan and this could be just another case of gibberish been tattooed on one's body. It has even happened to CIA's "Kryptos".

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