Saturday, August 13, 2005

More Fat Please

Photo has been removed on behalf of Ms. Kerry Fitzmaurice's (aka. SpeedyTomato) request. The original can be seen here.

This photo of a spinal tattoo belongs to user "SpeedyTomato" on MySpace.com. Several readers have emailed it to me and want to know what the characters meant.

Other than the randomness of the phrases, the only mistake I found was (fat, plump, obese; fertile) with its incomplete right partial.

= beauty
= upright; upstanding; honest
= allow, permit; promise; betroth
= luck(ily), favor, fortunately
= love, be fond of, like
= fertile
[まいご] = lost (stray) child

I could not stop laughing after I re-read the entire tattoo as one phrase:

"Upstanding beauty [hottie] would allow [one] lucky lost-child [run-away] [to make] love [to my] fertile [body]."


UPDATE: Ms. Kerry Fitzmaurice (aka. SpeedyTomato) has emailed me requesting to have her tattoo photo removed, and here is the reply I sent her:

Dear Kerry,

Thank you for your email. The reason your photo was posted on my site is because several visitors to both your site and mine have emailed it to me. Also to note that the photo you have on your site is mirrored. I sure hope that is not what actually appearing on your back.

I don't know if you knew this or not, but everything and anything people put on the web will be archived one way or another. Therefore even if I remove the photo from my site, it can be easily found via Google and other search engines.

I do understand the tattooed phrases are meant to be independent from each other, but the placement of them has made the phrases to mean something else. Which you may have already known does not sound very flattering (unless it was your original intention). That is what happens when people trying to piece phrases together from another language without fully understand them. Check out my buddy Steve's site Engrish.com.

This is not the first time that someone had their photo made onto my site and then request me to have it removed. There was one young lady Naomi Chaney that had "crazy diarrhea" tattooed on her body, and I did agree to remove the photo after she sent photo to prove that she was indeed the original owner.

From the way my attorney advised me as well as information provided via Electronic Frontier Foundation about similar situation is that:

I am obligated to remove photograph from my site when the original owner objects in a written format (even though email is not really legit in some court, but I would accept it), but if the photograph exists else where on the internet, I have the freedom to link to it.

My advice to you is that if you don’t want people to see your tattoo mistakes, don’t publish it on a website. Better yet, don’t get a tattoo in a language that you do not fully understand.

Sincerely,

Tian

tiangotlost at gmail dot com