Something to consider when you get your next tattoo
Reprinted from Sept. 2002 — Pitt junior Brandon Smith wanted a tattoo that proclaimed his manliness, so he decided to get the Chinese characters for “strength” and “honor” on his chest. After 20 minutes under the needle of local tattoo artist Andy Sakai, he emerged with the symbol for “small penis” embedded in his flesh.
“I had it for months before I knew what it really meant,” Smith said.
“Then I went jogging through the Carnegie Mellon campus and a group of Asian kids started laughing and calling me “Shorty.” That’s when I knew something was up.”
Sakai, an award-winning tattoo artist, was tired of seeing sacred Japanese words, symbols of his heritage, inked on random white people. So he used their blissful ignorance to make an everlasting statement. Any time acustomer came to Sakai’s home studio wanting Japanese tattooed on them, he modified it into a profane word or phrase.
“All these preppy sorority girls and suburban rich boys think they’re so cool ’cause they have a tattoo with Japanese characters. But it doesn’t mean shit to them!” Sakai said. “The dumbasses don’t even realize that I’ve written “slut” or “pervert” on their skin!”
In the last month, seven people unknowingly received explicit tattoos from the disgruntled artist. Kerri Baker, a Carlow College freshman, paid $50 to have the symbols for “beautiful goddess” etched above her belly button, but when she went into Szechuan Express Asian Noodle Shop sporting a bare midriff, the giggling employees explained to her that the tattoo really said, “Insert General Tso’s Chicken Here!”
“I don’t even like General Tso’s!” Baker sobbed. “I’m a vegetarian!”
Sakai doesn’t feel guilty about using hapless college students as canvases for his graffiti.
“I think I’m helping my fellow man by labeling all the stupid people in the world,” he explained. “It’s not a crime, it’s a public service.
November 8th, 2005 at 3:19 pm
Hilarious, but it’s a hoax. Check out the third one down:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/roundup.asp
(Sorry, there’s no permanent link for it yet).
Ha, I beat Jek!
November 8th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
I was just going to say that there was an Oklahoma news story on tattooing today….. It seems Oklahoma is the only state in the nation where tattooing is still illegal and we had a group protesting on the south capitol steps yesterday with a tattoo artist actually inking one tattoo on site, but for some reason no arrests were made!…..
And, one nickel-plated copper star with a tattoo token for Huskysooner beating Jek to the punch in the hoax department!….. (What’s the Japanese symbol for Hoax buster anyway?)…..
November 8th, 2005 at 8:25 pm
Huskysooner, I guess I should clear these type stories with you & jek before I post. You guys always seem to be one up (or more) on me. What can I say, I’m just a gullible old geezer, I suppose.
November 10th, 2005 at 10:13 pm
We should all spend a minute searching to see if that wacky story we just read is an urban legend–especially before propagating it via email or blogs. It really only takes a minute. Your first stop should be snopes.com. Simply take a small piece of unique text from the story and put it in the Search field at the top. For this post, I used “Pitt junior Brandon Smith” (without the quotes) and Snopes immediately found HuskySooner’s link in comment 1. If Snopes doesn’t have it, then try searching Google for the same text.
BTW, I think it is more interesting when a poster adds personal insight when posting articles (true or false) from other sources, rather than only posting the article without commentary.
November 12th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
You have my vote, Jek……. My intention with this blog was to hear how this particular group of users view what’s going on in this convoluted world we live in (past and present)….. I have used “quoted” material on more than one occasion, but, I usually use it as a basis to allow me to throw my personal view into it…. That gives everyone a chance to agree/disagree with me and/or the article and/or both (is this getting confusing?)……
“You have to be insane to stay sane – MR”
November 13th, 2005 at 2:24 am
“The only difference between Dali and a madman, is that I am not mad !”
–Salvador Dali