anaheim ink

aside from my many other serious work roles, i am a silent but cold-hearted tattoo critic. given the total surface area of flesh i observe on a daily basis, i have come to the conclusion that the world is in a very serious need of a tattoo shop with artists [native to] and [skilled in] writing in chinese. and i go as far as to specify, writing in traditional characters. i have seen countless glaringly botched tattoos in chinese. they are almost always horribly distorted - top or bottom heavy, biased to the left or right side. the spacing is not even. don't people just blow these things up on a xerox machine and trace them? i don't understand these rookie mistakes. let's just certify a class of people who know what they are doing and make everyone else's life easier.

people get chinese tattoos basically because they look cool. so they might as well get traditional, which is more intricate than the uh yeah simplified characters. but for some reason simplified seems to be the preferred system of the crappy tattooers. traditional is better. i don't just say this because it's the writing system i learned. the traditional character LOVE, which is popular, actually has the chinese character for HEART inside of it. simplified cuts this out. love without the heart. not as good. apply so on and so forth.

in the end, why would you get a tattoo in chinese on your body when you probably wouldn't permanently ink it onto yourself in english? because it would make you look dumb? that is how i feel when i look at you. on the rare occasions in which i can actually read the characters. i saw a man today who had PIG written on his arm in big bold chinese. i couldn't stop looking at it. he definitely wouldn't have done that in english. more acceptable to embarass yourself in front of a smaller segment of the population? also, how does it feel to not be able to read your own tattoo but to know that certain strangers on the street can? but if you're going to do it, at least get them done right. i saw a tattoo of LOVE the other day that was missing the top stroke so the tattoo wasn't technically of any existing character in the chinese language. how awkward.