Hanzismatter is a weblog dedicated to “the misuse of Chinese characters (Hanzi or Kanji) in Western culture”.
As you can imagine, the site is ruthless about tattoos.
Some poor soul has endured a lot of pain to be labelled as a “Kan Theatre Ticket”.
(Via Geisha Asobi blog)

In 1935, Shotaro Shimomura XXI took this photograph of the Christmas decorations of Bon Marche, in Paris. He was the Chairman of Daimaru Stores, touring the world, before establishing a subsidiary trading company.
The photos of that trip are now displayed by the American Museum of Photography.
There’s another lovely one under the fold:

Portrayed by Christopher Plantin, in Antwerp in 1569, a printer inks type while Fame floats above him on angel’s wings. Perhaps he was drawing himself bent to his work, beneath his own dreams. He may have been joking gently at his own expense.
Five and a half centuries later, a blogger types a search to be [...]

Hunter Thompson lit a fuse which has sputtered across my adult life, sparking through the words you are reading now.
He showed me that language could live in our own stories, could take the scalp-searing frenzy of our puling, puking times and hold them to a page while they blazed with defiance, contempt and righteous laughter. [...]

Here’s Hunter Thompson at his finest, in a collection picked out by Ralph Steadman himself.
“Fun and insanity: the doctor in his own words
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…” And [...]

According to the Rocky Mountain News, this is how Hunter Thompson died:
‘Loving’ farewell to writer
Wife details family gathering with Thompson dead in chair
By Jeff Kass, © 2005, Rocky Mountain News
February 25, 2005
ASPEN — Hunter S. Thompson heard the ice clinking.
The literary champ was sitting in his command post kitchen chair, a piece of blank paper [...]

I can prove that certain rural parts of Spain are full of hobbits.
They live in houses like this, which is a bit like Coober Pedy, if Coober Pedy had been dug out by Vogue.
The north of Granada seems to be full of cave houses, high mountains, fiestas and lurking invaders – these days just [...]

Prince Charles speaks out:
“”All my life people have been telling me what to do. I’m tired of it. My private life has become an industry. People are making money out it,” Mr Hewitt says he was told in today’s Mail on Sunday.”
After intensely reading Heidegger, Camus and The Australian Women’s Weekly, Prince Charles finally works [...]

Here’s a good question.
What are the baby boomer anthems?
This is one – obscure but true, written thirteen years ago and radioactive with frustration now.
“All my heroes are dead, and all the books I read,
Said “This is greed, this is wrong, fight your war at home”.
So I’ll stay true to them, and they’ll come home [...]

Wayne Wood at Troppo mixes the personal and the public with a lovely sense of grace. He is a preacher in a Quakerish way – moved to speak out of silence, his eyes on the floor polished by centuries, his voice bringing the air to quiet.
As his family gathers for their mother’s eightieth birthday, [...]