Tattoo Removal with Handheld Sander

tattooremovalwithhandheldsander.wmv (2.43 MB)

My friend Gordon just emailed me this video clip of someone getting a tattoo removed.

Instead of using a scalpel or laser gun, the person administering the procedure is actually using a Black&Decker handheld sander. It is unclear if the patient was given any anesthesia prior to the operation, but at least the "doctor" was wearing gloves.

The one minute video is not for the weak-stomached, especially the buzzing sound of sander grinding into human flesh.

"Che ne sarà di noi?"

Today I received an email from Professor Gorni of University of Udine, Italy, about tattoo in the 2004 movie "Che ne sarà di noi?" (in English, "What Will Happen to Us?").


http://flickr.com/photos/tiangotlost/490223003/

Since I personally have yet seen the film, Prof. Gorni described the scene to me as the following:

The main character gets the tattoo after his high school final exam. His buddies ask him what the chacaters mean. His answers "peace, love, bread" (yes, in this order!). When asked "why bread?", he explains that the tattooist had proposed "peace, love, freedom", but he just didn't like the shape of "freedom", and settled for "bread" instead, because it looked better.

Later in the movie, some girls ask him about the tattoo, and he gives the meaning as "peace, love, angel of death" (yes, in this order; no reference to bread).

Nowhere in the movie there is a clear indication that anybody was aware that anything specific was wrong with the tattoo. They only say, "luckily enough, nobody knows Japanese around here".

The correct translation for 愛和夢 is "love and dream" if they are read as one complete phrase.

A Serbian's Chinese Tattoo

http://www.bmeink.com/A70507/high/bmepb516698.jpg

Freshly uploaded in BMEzine's gallery, this one did not offer any translation with only caption of " Tattoos by Shone Liman, Serbia."

I am too lazy to get into the details. The only thing I can think of is:

Dear Mr. Serb,

If you admire Chinese culture so much, why not just build a Bruce Lee statue like what Bosnia did, perhaps bigger and made out of precious metal?

"Panda Process"

This photo was posted in BMEzine's tattoo gallery with the title of "Panda Process".


http://www.bmeink.com/A70430/high/bmepb514122.jpg

The top "character" does not look like anything I have seen before. The lower character has been blurred and distorted (probably from repeatedly copy one set of template many times) that I am not sure if it is 带 or 蒂.

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.

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.

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