Don McLeroy & "Crazy Chinese Words"

(photo: tfn.org)

The Texas State Board of Education recently issued a recommended reading list, which has been criticized for lacking diversity: Educators rip book list in English plan.

A draft of the curriculum, released Wednesday, includes more than 150 literary works that Texas public school teachers should consider using for their courses. Only four of them reflect the Hispanic culture, a woefully low figure they fear will limit the exposure of the state's 4.7 million schoolchildren to cultural diversity.

When confronted with criticisms, Board Chair Don McLeroy, who responded by saying:

"What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book?" he said. "You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That's not going to help you master... English. So you really don't want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child's time trying to learn a word that they'll never ever use again?"

He added that some words -- such as chow mein -- might be useful.

Not if the child decides to get a tattoo later on, Don. Or the child might become U. S. Secretary of State, quotes what he/she thought was a Chinese proverb, and get his/her's ass laughed at by those "crazy Chinese" as well as late night comedy show host. All because he/she never read "those Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them".

If you would like to add your thoughts & comments about this matter, Mr. McLeroy's contact information is available at Texas State Board of Education website. It might helpful to drop a few "crazy Chinese words" like 閉門造車 in your comments.

New Tattoos and Stinky Feetses.

I don't know what I like better. Having clients that basically just come in and say "draw me something Z" or people that come in for their first tattoos and get way more than they expected (and paid for according some a coworker, lol).

This girl came in, and after looking in all the portfolios about 4 times, looking on the internet for about 2 hours, and just generally looking around and I guess thinking about what she wanted done, she came up to me and said she wanted a violet. I asked her if she wanted realistic, cartooney, what was her flavor, and at first she said realistic. She then saw a picture on my wall that I had put on my sister-in-law of a lotus, smoke and ohm, and told me "You now what? Just draw me something halfway in between, and if I like it better, then we'll do that instead."

here it is:




Also, if you know ou are getting a tattoo near your foot, or somewhere that your tattoo artist needs your shoe off, or on your foot, wash your feet. Please. My boss has got some swampfoot stank going on. But, he also let me start a really fun tattoo on him. Can't wait to finish it.

Audrina Patridge's Pork Fried Rice

Thanks to OK! magazine, Defamer, WWTDD & many others for bring this to my attention:





Ms. Audrina Patridge has recently got 豬肉油煎的米 tattooed on her forearm. It is unclear if the tattoo is genuine or some kind of publicity stunt.

However the tattooed phrase is not grammatically correct. What has been tattooed is direct translation from English word-per-word to Chinese of "pork; oil fried; rice grain".

If she wanted "pork fried rice", it should be 豬肉炒飯.

Tyler Durden has summed this up:

"...White people need to knock it off with the Chinese lettering tattoos. I'm a big fan of white people and being white is terrific, but we're kind of dumb, and the overwhelming majority of us don't know how to use Chinese... God only knows WTF she thinks it means. It turns out that guy [tattooist] isn’t an expert on Chinese. Shocking, yes?"

Yes, I Know

that this is my third post today. But I just noticed the google ads on the side of my page. As this is a tattoo blog, filled with images of tattoos I did (and some I didn't do), why is google ads all about laziness? They've always been confused about what to put on my blog apparently. I've seen things about brains on the google ads, I've seen some things that are just completely off the wall...but now....is google trying to tell me something?

Tattoo Aftercare, And What Not To Do.

So you just got a tattoo. You blithely leave the shop and realize that either the artist didn't tell you what to do, didn't CLEARLY tell you what to do, or you didn't listen. So you're trying to figure out what to do. Here's what I tell my clients.

What you'll need:
Aquiphor
Dial antibacterial handsoap (unscented)
unscented, alcohol free, sensitive skin lotion. (I generally give out Eucerin, or Cereve)

Take your bandage off after 45 minutes to an hour. Take a shower (no baths), washing the rest of your body FIRST with whatever you normally use. Then, on the tattoo, use your fingers (no loofahs, washcloths, sandpaper, ect...it'll hurt like a bitch) to wash your new tattoo using a circular motion. Try to use rather warm water, the warmest you can stand, but not OHMYGODMYSKINISMELTINGOFF hot.when done, rinse, letting the water hit your skin ABOVE the tattoo, not directly on it, and then switch to cold water. Using warm water opens your pores, letting excess ink that isn't in the right layer of skin out, and then cold water closes your pores. Pat your tattoo dry with a clean towel, and then apply a very thin layer of the Aquiphor, just enough to cover the tattoo, but not stifle it. Kind of glisteny, but never shiny like you just took a vaseline bath. Use the Aquiphor for the first three days plus the day you got the tattoo, about 3-4 times a day. In other words, do it the day you get the tattoo, and then the next three days. Try to take at least a shower a day, and if you think your tattoo is dirty, it is. Wash it.
Now, three days have past, so put your aquiphor to the side, as you can use it on your next tattoo, and many others as well, and go to lotion. Try to put the lotion on 4-6 times a day, or whenever your tattoo is looking kinda dry. Your tattoo will peel, flake, it may have scabbed. Do not pick at your tattoo. Once again, do NOT pick at your tattoo. And also, here comes the worst part of ever getting a tattoo, worse than the linework, worse than the shading. It will itch. It will itch so badly that you want to rip your skin off. Do not scratch your tattoo. You could fuck it up. Once it is done peeling, generally it's done healing. If it is a particularly awesome piece, this is when you go back to your artist so they can look at it, and take healed pictures. We appreciate that.

Now, any questions? Feel free to email me. Supernummy@gmail.com
I don't care if I have never met you, even if I did not do your tattoo, I don't mind shooting you an answer to a question about your healing tattoo. But generally, it is best to ask your artist, unless you got the tattoo in a house by your uncle's best friend's wife's son's homie.

This is what can happen with improper care of a tattoo:




Oh, and before you ask, neosporin, vaseline, triple antibiotic are your enemies when it comes to healing tattoos. Don't do it.

A Gift

I finally took the time to sit down and finish something for my husband. Between working and kids, projects I start as gifts for my husband always seem to end up on the backburner, and finally rolled up in a tube, forgotten in some dark drawer.
Yesterday was a pretty slow day, so I finally just drew something for him. Aphex Twin helped me out.

This is his drawling.

Washington

Reader Welton from Brazil sent in a photo of his friend's tattoo. It supposed to be his name "Washington".



However according to Alan, this tattoo is wrong in several levels:

First of all, the name Washington is usually written ワシントン [washinton] rather than ウォシントン [woshinton] as was presumably intended by the tattooist.

Next, someone left out the first ン, leaving only ウォシトン [woshiton]. Then, they used the large オ rather than the small ォ, making the tattoo actually spelled ウオシトン [uoshiton], so I guess it would be pronounced sort of like the English words "Whoa Shit On." That's probably not quite what Mr. Washington wanted when he got his tattoo...

And finally, they left out one stroke in オ, making the character look more like the character 七 but backwards.

It's sort of sad that people don't check these things before getting a huge tattoo that covers their whole arm.

Chino Latino

Minneapolis restaurant Chino Latino (612-824-7878) uses pseudo-Chinese characters as profanity alternatives in billboard ad. (Photo by Beijing Sounds)

If the restaurant wanted to advertise and not get fined by the FCC, why not put some effort into it & do it correctly:

"A 2-hour vacation from the 他媽的 weather"?

What is written on the billboard are repetition of "新仿宋文[体]", which means "new imitated Song typeface".

A better question would be:

"Why did Chino Latino chose its location to be at a 鬼不生蛋的地方?"


* Speaking of bad weather, I was in Quebec City last week & right before my return flight was scheduled to take off from Québec Jean Lesage International Airport (YQB), a Canadian medical plane crash landed after its front landing gear collapsed & slipped off from the runway.





Due to this fiasco, my flight was delayed for two hours, consequentially I missed my connection at Detroit & had to stay there over night. Detroit is a very depressing city. It looks like a nuclear bomb has gone off there.

Cameron Mark, aka. Kamokuron Shinkai

From Alan Siegrist:


http://www.bmeink.com/A80220/high/npsq-cameron-mark.jpg

From the caption, this tattoo (Feb. 20, 2008 in BMEink) with the characters 火目論真開 was evidently supposed to represent the name Cameron Mark, but I think it falls a bit short of the mark, so to speak.

Now, there might be “cute” ways to represent English names in Japanese using kanji instead of the traditional katakana. For example, Cameron in katakana is カメロン [kameron] but this might be a bit boring so some people might write 亀論 (which is similarly pronounced kameron) for a play on words meaning “Turtle Theory.” If you like turtles, why not?

But in our example火目論真開, using the characters 火目 for [kame] is really “forced” because this is a strange combination of different types of readings of characters. The 火目論bit could be something of a lame joke meaning “Tuesday-Thursday Theory” (火曜日 is Tuesday and 木曜日 is Thursday) but then it must be read Kamokuron not Kameron and is no longer a play on words.

And to top it off, 真開 cannot be pronounced anything close to “Mark.” The character 開 is definitely wrong. 真開 could conceivably be read マカイ [makai] but not マーク [ma-ku] which is the Japanese equivalent of the name “Mark.” In fact, 真開 is a rare Japanese surname read しんかい [Shinkai].

So the guy has managed to name himself Kamokuron Shinkai.

Mixed Martial Arts Figher

My good buddy, Jon Rahoi, sent me photos of a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter.



Jon says:

One of these mutant fighters was sporting some Chinese tat, that, upon further inspection, was actually Japanese. I think it's trying to say, "I'll win in spite of yesterday?" or something like that.

Plus, making "I" two characters wide on the top makes it confusing at first glance to figure out if it should be read top-down or left-to-right. Anyway, not sure your final verdict on this but it's totally suspect.



HS senior resident pro-bono Japanese consultant Alan Siegrist concludes that:

The order of characters is strange, and I guess someone has left out a few words or characters. The grammar is also wrong because they are using the future tense for something that happened in the past.

This is very weird.

Anyway, I guess the intended order is: 我は昨日のに勝つ.

This would mean roughly something like "I will win yesterday's ___."

I guess the word in the blank is supposed to be "match" or something, since these guys are some sort of MMA fighter guys.

Maybe he didn't have enough money to let the tattooist finish the tattoo or maybe he weenied out at the last minute. Maybe he couldn't stand the pain.

David Beckham's Chinese Tattoo

I have received many emails regarding David Beckham's new tattoo.



Many gossip sites are questioning the actual meaning & legitimacy behind his tattoo.

Lucky for Beckham, his tattoo styled in Chinese Cursive Script (also known as Grass Script) is correct.

生死有命 富貴在天, which is Chinese proverb of "death and life have determined appointments, riches and honor depend upon heaven."

Electricity and Body Piercing....Fun Combination?

(January 2008, Pennsylvania) A 23 year old man with various body piercings decided to see what it would feel like to connect his workplace test equipment to his chest piercings. Several co-workers tried to convince him that it was a bad idea to connect himself to the electronic control tester. He ignored their pleas and proceeded to connect two alligator clips to his piercings. He hit the test button...

When the police and rescue personnel arrived, his co-workers were stiill trying to revive him with CPR and rescue breathing. They were not successful.

One Great Weekend

Generally I get to do a tattoo that I'm really into about once every two weeks. I got two this weekend. The first one was a tattoo that a good client had been thinking about getting for awhile, that seemed challenging to me, that he finally decided on. Too bad it was right before he moved, which is always a sad day for me (had two of them this week, as I work near Lackland AFB, which is where all the air force trainees are, well...trained).

His feesh..



The second one was a girl's first tattoo, and I always love tattooing birds.



I love seeing people when they see their new tattoo for the first time looking as excited and as happy as this girl did.

Don't Die!!

This has got to be the stupidest news story I've heard in a while.

Clickatron for stupidity!

Digital Tattoos?

Digital tattoo

I still havent decided wether this is awesome because I love technology, or stupid is hell because I love my way of tattoos.

Space Bunnies, Baconstaches And Karate Kids

So, before I'm a tattoo artist, I'm a mom. My son is in karate, and his oversized gi needed his name on the back. So, I go get some iron-on letters, and put them on his gi. Now, I'm supposed to be an artist. How hard is it to get irn-on letters on fabric? Apparently, it doesn't work for me. I put his name on so crooked it looks like a politician. But hey, I couldn't get my son to stop moving.


(That was a joke there, son.)

And, since this is a tattoo blog, how about another tattoo?

We have an apprentice at the shop, named Bacon. He was named by my six year old daughter when she walked up to him one day and said "You smell like bacon. Carry me Bacon!" and when he said something to her, she yelled "Talking bacon?!?!" and ran. So, I have called him Bacon ever since, and told him the other day that he was getting a bacon tattoo. He just needed to tell me where. So, he came up with this little gem.



Best tattoo I did all day.

Another fun one I started the other day was the Space Bunny. This was the girl's first tattoo, and, after my own heart, decided 'go big or go home'. Here you go.



I'm going to go back into it after it heals, smooth out the background and put some darker tones in it. I can't wait to finish it.