Monday, August 20, 2007

Joyful Life

Amber's Tattoo from Big Brother 8

    I don't watch reality television shows, therefore I have no idea who Amber is. Apparently she is one of the house guests in Big Brother 8.

    HS reader & Big Brother 8 watcher Jenn G. emailed me this screen shot of Amber's tattoo,



    According to Jenn G., in one of the previous episodes, Amber claimed her tattoos are:

    Family
    Strength
    Honor
    Wisdom

    If anyone has seen the particular episode, please confirm if Amber has made such claim.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

The Banta Family

    This person went to Charlie at Asylum Tattoo of Covington, Kentucky and got some names tattooed, assuming they are family members names. The end result is posted in BMEzine's gallery dated Aug. 4, 2007.


    http://bmeink.com/A70804/high/bmepb577039.jpg

    My fellow katakana tattoo connoisseur Alan has this to say:

    As these things go, I guess this one is not so bad. It appears to be the names of people in a family, with the family name バンタ [Banta] written horizontally and the given names ジム [Jim], アネット [Annette] and タナー [Tanner] written vertically under it.

    The tattoo artist did make a mistake in that the final stroke in the name Tanner should be vertical instead of horizontal. This appears to be a common mistake that we also saw on Kimberley's tattoo.

Pocket-Sized Book

    Reader Lynn sent me this photo of a pair men's swimming shorts from Wal-Mart. Since she is a Japanese major, it was odd to her to see hiragana characters meaning "pocket-sized book" printed on the shorts.




    I confirmed this with Alan, and he says:

    The hiragana is clearly しゅうちんぼん [shuuchinbon], which is the Japanese reading of , meaning a "pocket-sized book" which was perhaps the size of today's paperback books, a handy size for carrying in the sleeves of kimono.

    But as to why someone would want to have this written on their swimming trunks, I have no idea. Bizarre!

    Of course, we both think it was meant to be a jab at the wearer's testicle size or the popular sport of pocket pool.


    P.s. why do people still shop at Wal-Mart?!