Gives new meaning to "look like a monkey and smell like one too"

[kellinator]

A co-worker and I were just signing one of the birthday cards that gets passed around the library for another co-worker. One person always writes something in Chinese characters on the cards, and I just now realized that she could be writing "go to hell shithead" for all we know.

Comments

[thepeopleseason.livejournal.com]

It's a definite possibility: This is the graphic of a shirt that I had planned to make on cafepress.com.

What does it mean?

"Foolish Westerner"

batnandu suggested I make one that says "Fuck you, Roundeye," but I'm not really up on my Chinese slang.

[sempereadem.livejournal.com]

I would SO buy the roundeye t-shirt.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I would SO love that shirt.

[sujata.livejournal.com]

I could draw the characters for "go to hell shithead" for you to keep handy, so's you can double-check that... ;-)

[39orangestreet.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of the anecdote about Nixon in this story.

[poprockgrrl.livejournal.com]

that's it! i'm going to learn chinese!

i wonder what the symbol for asshat is?

[bouncepogo.livejournal.com]

"The word ASSHAT was not found in the dictionary but will be added very soon." (http://www.okdaily.com/cgi-bin/ecdict.cgi?english=asshat)

Babelfish:

[bouncepogo.livejournal.com]

简体中文版

[sempereadem.livejournal.com]

I really, really want to believe that's what she's doing.

Heh...

[scarcrest.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of this juxtaposition of fiction and fact, as pointed out on Andrew Vachss' page back in May:

From Only Child (2002), p. 49:

And for that one spot, I had even better security. The driver's door was now a replica of the alley wall—a white square against the dull-gray primer, with Max the Silent's chop in gem-cut black inside. You'd think this would blow the whole anonymous deal, but you see quasi-Chinese ideograms on everything today, from clothes to skin. They usually don't mean anything, but people who read comics for the ancient wisdom think they look cool.

There's a tattoo artist Mama knows in a basement off Mott Street. He always has a vast display of the symbols for customer viewing. They pick the one they like, and Hop Sing or Wo Fat or whatever he feels like calling himself that day makes up a story about what it stands for: Truth, Justice, Integrity, Honor, Power, whatever. Mama says there are hundreds of different symbols for "sucker" in Chinese, and this guy knows them all.

From Newsweek, May 17, 2004, p. 23:

"Britney was absolutely devastated when I told her." Actress Taryn Manning, on breaking the news to her pal Britney Spears that the Japanese symbols tattooed on her hipbone were meaningless gibberish.