The real reason we have tattoo parlours

Hi. Yeah, it's me again, and you? You're staring at my mordant blog, and now you get to say "Oh my God, it just twitched!!!"

So today's story that got me writing comes from the U.K., and props include a tattoo needle, a 19 year-old woman, and the Chinese alphabet. The results are either extremely unfortunate, or highly amusing, depending on whether you share my sense of humor:

Dorset, England (AHN) -- A teenage-girl just wanted to impress her mother by having the word "mum" tattooed on her back in Chinese letters. After the tattoo was completed, the girl found out that the symbols meant "Friend from hell."

A local paper said Charlene Williams, 19, only discovered something was wrong with her tattoo when a passing Chinese woman shouted at her, "Evil, evil, very bad."

"I was shocked and angry, Charlene said. "Dad joked it said chicken chow mein."

"It was worse than that."

The 19-year old girl said she paid $20.43 when she had the Chinese characters tattooed on her back four years ago in Poole, Dorset.

After the horrifying incident, Charlene covered the characters with an image of a leaf design tattoo that cost $81.72.

This is probably all bullshit, but if it isn't, don't you have to wonder what kind of mom would be "impressed" with her daughter for tattooing "Mum" in Chinese, on her back? Are we talking lower back here? Yeah, the mind reels, doesn't it?

That's it for today... see you next year.

UPDATE: Sweet Moses, it isn't bullshit, it's real. Here's the story. And here's Mum's precious little daisy:


Yeah, the mind reels.

That white American guy is stinking up the halls with his curry again

This is what I made for dinner last night... I pretty much improvised it all, so I'm writing it down before I forget. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. If you think it sounds good, maybe you should try it.


CitG Guy's Trans-continental Curry Lentils

The Curry Powder:

About an inch-long cinammon stick, 1/4 tsp blade mace, 1/4 tsp cardamom, 1/4 teaspoon fenugreek, ground in a spice grinder.

1/4 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1//8 tsp mustard powder

Mix it all up. (This is just how I found my ingredients. You can do whatever you like.)

Rest of the ingredients:

3 medium-sized vine tomatoes. Remove seeds and pulp, chop coursely, puree half, add the rest, set aside.
Juice of 1/2 fresh squeezed lemon.
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped.
1 small onion, chopped. (I used a small sweet onion a friend brought back from Hawaii. No need to be exotic, but this worked.)
1 medium-sized Idaho potato, cubed.
About a cup of coconut milk.
About 1/2 cup of fresh, roughly chopped cilantro (coriander).
1 package of Trader Joe's steamed lentils.
2 Tbsns olive oil.

Heat the olive oil in a large pot until almost smoking. Add chopped onion, sautee over high medium-high heat until slightly brown. Add chopped garlic, heat one additional minute. Add curry spices, "dry cook" them, adding a bit of oil if necessary.

Add the tomatoes, lemon juice; cook until the juices start to simmer. Add a small glass of water, bring to a boil, add the potatoes, cover, and cook over medium heat for ten minutes.

Remove the cover, start to evaporate some of that water. After five minutes, add lentils, coconut milk.

At this point I sampled the sauce, and decided it needed to be hotter. I like my curries hot. I added more cayenne pepper and ginger. It's up to you whether you want it that hot.

Continue to cook another fifteen minutes, remove from heat, add the chopped cilantro and mix, set aside; allow the cilantro to settle in.

Serve with basmati rice.

On a lighter note

I'm not sure why, but this made me laugh for about a full minute:


I needed that after all of those dead myspace kids.

The saddest place on the internet

Where do myspace users go when they die? Why, mydeathspace, of course.

Okay, all snarking aside, so many young people, dying much too young. If you don't feel just a bit moved by this site, you're heart is made of stone.

You borrowed your friend's "service monkey", and I didn't say anything

You put a diaper on it and took it to the local beer garden. I was concerned, but still, I kept my mouth shut.

You said, "I'm gonna use this monkey to meet women." Still I kept quiet.

But when that little beast bit some poor woman' thumb, well, that's when I had to say something.

You've been warned

If you are in the Seattle area and you want to sing anything by Coldplay at a karaoke bar, you risk being roughed up.

As you should.

Happy Frank Zappa Day! (Part II)

Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch: The ASCII Version:

-7
/____/\___

Happy Frank Zappa Day!

And in honor of Frank Zappa Day, let's watch Frank kick John Lofton's fat pasty Christianist ass:

My personal take on the Buñuel Martini - or the Changes in the Glass Guy Martini goes public

The Buñuel Martini doesn't seem to be remarkably different from what most bartenders would prepare, as far as ingredients are concerned. The key distinction seems to pertain to how the ice and equipment are chilled. Equipment:

Chill glasses, gin, and shaker the day before.

Ice:

Make sure ice is cold (at least minus-20 degrees centigrade).

I don't know about the temperature of my ice. I just figure that, if it's cold enough to turn liquid H₂O into solid H₂O, it's cold enough to change the temperature of gin and vermouth to something cool and welcoming after a hard day at work. I used to be a traditionalist, stirring, not shaking my martini. Lately, however, I've decided that shaking with ice really does something to the ingredients that stirring doesn't. It just makes them colder, sharper, more refreshing.

So I can't really improve on Buñuel's ingredients, but I have gone a bit further in equipment preparation. The gin, glass, and shaker go in the freezer the evening before the martini is to be prepared. Inside the shaker, I place four ice cubes, and the shot glass, upside down on top of the cubes. Vermouth stays in the fridge, of course.

I like a 2-to-1 martini, using either Bombay Sapphire or Tanqueray, depending on which the local liquor store is trying to unload. Like Buñuel, I also like Noilly Prat. Grab shaker from freezer, rapidly remove shot glass, fill quicly with Vermouth, pour in shaker, remove gin from freezer, keep moving rapidly, pour two shots into shaker, shake vigorously for 7 to 10 seconds. Remove martini glass from freezer, pour contents of shaker into glass (muy rápido), garnish with two olives (my latest preference: stuffed with blue cheese), enjoy.

Survey: The question CitG Guy America wants an answer to

Which is more annoying:

Crispin Glover’s Clowny Clown Clown



or Ween’s Push the Little Daisies?



Raise your voice and be heard, America.

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Gabba Gabba Hey!



Happy Fourth of July. Because what's more American than The Ramones?