Monday, February 16, 2009

From www.rankmytattoos.com:

I'm Robert (aka. iluvchickswithinks81), I got these Chinese and Russian characters at Hardcore Tattoo, also the tribals on my shoulders that go up onto my neck, my last name inside my arm in old english lettering and last but not least my nipple pierced.




Robert's back is covered with random characters. All of them are poorly done and some of them are not even correct. I have yet seen the Russian characters he is referring to.

This is absolutely shitty tattoo work.

27 comments:

  1. Tian, I (also) do not understand why you have to be so harsh and negative in your comments to the poor people who are contacting you to get to know the meaning of their tattoos.

    Robert is going to read this blog post too. Why is it that all he gets is just a few sentences saying that he has absolutely shitty tattoo work all over his back. Well, at least it is symmetrical and all the characters are of about the same size. I have seen way uglier tattoos than this. And one thing is to make fool of some pictures you find at the web. But this is aimed at a person who took confidence in you and wrote to you in person.

    Shame on you.

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  2. Dear Roselil,

    I am a terrible person.

    Please visit Cute Overload for your online experience.

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  3. Roselil, tian is giving an honest response; you're the one saying he got "shitty tattoo work." Robert went and got this ink done all on his own, so is probably not too upset with tian's response, which only referenced the nature of the characters. People who care about what tattooed characters mean should check the art work before getting inked!

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  4. Come now, Roselil. This fellow sent a message to a widely-viewed website known for offering public comment on tattoos. Tian simply offered an honest reply – one that this tattoo owner, and others thinking about getting similar hack jobs, should hear!

    Lots of people don't realize this, but they're paying big bucks for "Kanji" tattoos that are meaningless, backward, upside-down, half-missing, you name it. Most of the tats, like the artistic butchery in this post, are perpetrated by "artists" who cant write the characters. The result looks like calligraphy via a chimp's feet.

    Some people won't care that that's how their tats look, and that's their business. Others would care if they knew. I think this site can genuinely help people by offering blunt assessments! Shame on anyone who doesn't provide honest warning to people considering such permanent disfigurement.

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  5. Not sure, but it looks like Robert didn't actually actually contact Tian, but rather Tian found it on the aforementioned site. Am I correct?

    And yes, it's awful, awful, awful.

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  6. What's more, I suppose, he thinks that some of the Hanzi written on his back are Russian. Of course it's only his back, and maybe in front he has Cyrillic letters also.

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  7. Haha. There isn't a singe Cyrillic letter there. Robert is not only stupid enough to have random characters tattooed by a shitty artist, but he can't even tell the difference between Russian and Chinese characters. Nice find.

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  8. The "Old English" (blackletter) is also awful. All caps? For shame.

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  9. I wonder if the little pictures among the Chinese characters are supposed to be the Russian characters...

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  10. In fact the Old English isn't - it's just Gothic script. In Old English it would be "ᛗᛟᚷᛚᚫ"

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  11. That character looks like the simplified version of 廢, not 度.

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  12. Anon at 12:49 AM,

    If you mean 废, I think you might very well be right.

    -Alan

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  13. Speaking of multilingual tattoos, I just saw a couple more pics that might be relevant.

    Edilson Nascimento has what might be Japanese or Chinese on his right arm: http://i40.tinypic.com/2iw7bwo.jpg

    Antti Pelton has something in Latin and something in the Hebrew alphabet (could be Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, etc.) on his right arm: http://i42.tinypic.com/10si1rt.jpg

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  14. I agree Tian is too harsh sometimes. Some of the tattoos commented on this site, though imperfect, can be endearing.

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  15. roselil, how often have you laughed at someone with a knock-off "ROLOX" watch or a "LUOIS VUTON" bag? Something where the obvious workmanship is seen because there are horrible spelling mistake?

    This is the same case. Someone decided to get Chinese tattooed permanently on themselves, forever, and they don't know if it's even right. That would be insulting to me, if I were Chinese.

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  16. It's not totally random. One can make out words like 父亲 and 尊敬 and 滚开, although it doesn't change the fact that this tattoo is so big and so wrong that it'll be hard to correct should Robert ever decide to mend his ways.

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  17. I think the Russian symbols he is referring to are in the center of his spine, alternating with the Chinese characters, since four of them are not sinic ... ?

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  18. Well, they weren't supposed to be characters but rather "Chinese Symbals" as you may see by following the link posted by Tian!!!

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  19. http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0400.pdf

    Here's The Unicode Cyrillic Chart with the official Russian letters, archaic letters that aren't used anymore-if only within Slavonic texts, and the extensions found in Serbian, Ukrainian, Belarussian and other languages within the ex-Soviet area....so far I haven't seen any of those things on his back among the letters on this chart.

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  20. Check the comments (circa mid April 2007) at the first link Tian posted ("aka. iluvchickswithinks81"). It looks like "Robert" has more issues than just bad ink to deal with.

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  21. one of guys i know tatooed "Carpe diAS" in latin on the right hand, and on the left "alea iacta est" (this is correct exept the fact he thinks it means "life is a game"). poor people...someone has to tell them. and tian- very nice CUTE OVERLOAD hahahahahhaha

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  22. "Overused Latin Phrases" well...this might be another interesting category on lousy tattoo thing.

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  23. I think the "Russian symbols" he's referring to are actually Adinkra symbols originating from West Africa...? (http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra_index.htm) Although how you could confuse them with Russian is beyond me.

    The symbols I see are, from top to bottom:
    this, this, this one, and this one.

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  24. What is "old english lettering"? We're supposed to think that people in England used to write everything in Gothic font, all caps? Weak.
    Also, nice combination of "tribal" tattoos with "Chinese". What tribe is this guy in exactly?

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  25. OK, I am Russian. And there is no symbols from my language at all. I can see only poorly written Chinese and some strange ornaments that my nation didn't even use about 1000 years ago.
    That guy would know that Russian language don't have any special symbols 'cause we're writing in Cyrillic (Sorry if there's mistakes, I still have problems with my grammar).
    P.S. But if his back was covered with "Ы", "Ъ", "Д", "Ю" and "Ь" that would be a lot funnier.

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  26. I'm not Russian but I live in Russia and yes, there are no "Russian characters" unless one is talking about Cheburashka, Krokodil Gena, Ivan Karamazov, Raskolnikov, etc. Cyrillic is an alphabet, based mostly on the Greek alphabet(which is what our Western Latin alphabet is mostly based on).

    If one wants "Russian characters" tattooed on them, they should try this collection of "characters": ХУЙТА

    Luckily Cyrillic hasn't become fashion for tattoos, yet, but if anyone IS interested, there are a few things to be aware of:

    1. Writing something English in Cyrillic may look cool but can appear stupid to anyone who can read it. Also, Cyrillic uses several letters that appear the same as Latin ones, but with different sounds. This means that spelling something out phonetically may result in a word that contains few or even no "exotic" letters and seems to spell out something really stupid. Even actual Russian words like Ресторан(restoran) would be read like "Pec-to-pah" by someone who doesn't know it is Cyrillic.

    2. VERY IMPORTANT HERE: Я is not the Cyrillic 'r', it is pronounced 'ya'. И is not 'n', it is 'i'. Using these letters in otherwise Latin words is just plain stupid.

    3. In general it is foolish to tattoo anything Russian on your body as tattoos, though becoming more popular with youth, are generally associated with either prison, or the army. It is also generally assumed that Westerners, particularly Americans, cannot possibly have any deep interest in Russian culture, and certainly could not be of Russian descent. People assume that tattoos must have a specific meaning and "I just like Russian stuff" is going to get a lot of strange reactions.

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  27. the non-chinese symbols on his back (which I'm assuming he thinks are russian) are west african adinkra symbols.

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