xenolinguistic terror!

I've made a crucial discovery. some vigilant soul is out there monitoring the madness that has oft been ridiculed: tattoos featuring logographic lettering. that is to say, getting 'good luck' or somesuch written in Kanji or Hanzi tattooed right above the ol' buttcrack. total class. so mysterious...

The blog is Hanzi Smatter, and its propietors simply field questions from computer users who send a picture of said body ink with a corresponding request for proper reading. the results are what you'd expect: often totally wrong. what's most interesting is the actual semantic content of the tattoo and the writer's conjecture as to how such a result was arrived at. (nice dangling preposition...)

to be fair, this discovery came on the heels of this post at Language Log, the University of Pennsylvania's linguistics blog, dated April of this year (the year of the Crocs ethylene vinyl acetate clog, 2009), confirms what was just as often states as the reciprocal atrocity; legion Chinese citizens inking themselves with western lettering.