But in Thailand, tattoos are more than body art…they can make you rich, get you laid and possess you.

Yan Tattoos

And of course anytime celebrities see something pretty and cultural they have to get in on it, so Angelina Jolie has some. I’m not that impressed since this is the same woman who walked around with a vial of her then-husband’s blood around her neck. Her tattoo must have the power to attract children since she has about 10 or so now.

It’s not as adorable as a lot of her stuff but is definitely fucked-up.

Oooh, Weird

Here\’s a Better Description!

Anyway, it’s based on a series of novels and now there is going to be a stage play. I have no idea how they plan to condense the story and shrink the cast enough to fit onto a stage, or how they’ll do the awesome-looking spaceships.

There will be a website about it up on April 10th so maybe there will more information then, unless of course the website is in Japanese.

ANN Article

Wakaresaseya!

Kuwabara approached the 32-year-old mother in a supermarket in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo, in the guise of a chatty stranger, and asked her if she could recommend a place that sold good cheesecake.

Yes, this is the way to get a woman to fall for you. Talk about cheesecake. Oh, yes. <– sarcasm

In April 2008, I was trying to figure out how Goto knew that I was writing a book about his liver transplant. There was a yakuza real estate broker; he was a good source, and I had paid him. I remembered having a conversation with him a few months back, and he was asking how my book was coming along — I suspected he might have been sounding me out for information. So I went to his office and said, “Listen, did you sell me out on Goto? Did you tell him I’m writing a book”? And he said, “Yeah of course. He pays much more than you do. Why wouldn’t I? It’s not like we’re friends. It’s nothing personal.” He didn’t even try to deny it. So I said to him, “Remember a couple years ago when Sugiura got hit? I’m gonna tell my friends in the Sumiyoshi-kai that you gave away his location. They may not believe me, but they might come ask you some questions, and when they do I don’t think they’ll be very nice to you. Nothing personal.” And as I turned my back to leave, he jumped on me. He started hitting me really hard and kicking me. So I ran to the corner of his room and got a golf club, and kept hitting his knee until his knee broke. I was just running around in circles aiming at his knee. Even after his knee broke, he was still crawling at me. I was like, god! Why don’t you just give up?

This is apparently just the beginning of a slew of Yakuza-centric goodies that Katayama and Adelstein have planned in the near future. Should be fun…

(Linkage from Boing Boing)

Here are the Asian-themed picture books he has:

	This little kid goes with his grandpa to a library in the middle of the woods. He takes along his red fish in a bowl (no small feat considering they are riding a bicycle). The fish hops out of its bowl and into a book. A trippy sequence ensues as the kid chases his fish through the book. It’s all very surreal. This book is gorgeous. Best of all, I got it for free from my friend who picked it up at a librarians’ conference.
	Yoko is an anthropomorphic cat who likes to chill with her grandparents in their ultra-traditional Japanese garden. But when Yoko’s family moves to America, can she keep in touch with her roots? Of course she can, it’s a kids’ book. The cool thing about this book is that the drawings of Japan reselmble Hiroshige paintings, and a lot of the clothes and stuff are made with cutouts of patterned origami paper.
	This is pretty much “Beauty and the Beast” but in China and with a dragon. The heroine is so virtuous you kind of want to puke, but I guess it’s good for kids to emulate good people. There’s a lot of text so wiggly older kids probably won’t sit still for it all, but Gohan is still immobile so he’s hostage to my whims. The illustrations are really vivid and realistic (except for, you know, the dragon and the people flying on clouds and all).
	Nara is a famous artist known for his sullen-looking, creepy-ass little girl drawings. So it’s no surprise there is a sullen-looking, creepy-ass little gitl in this book. Poor puppy. No one ever notices him. Not because he is tiny, but because he’s huge- like, front paws in New York, hind paws in Russian huge. Then the little girl sees him and climbs up his leg and they play and go flying in space and shit. What I want to know is, if that thing is a puppy, how big will he be when he grows up?
	This is pretty much the saddest story ever, packaged with elegant illustrations. In this version, the husband is kind of an ass. The Decembrists did a good album based on this story. Again, there’s a lot of text and the pictures aren’t quite primary-colored enough to keep Gohan’s attention right now, but maybe someday if I think he’s too happy I will read this to him.
	Like “The Crane Wife” isn’t depressing enough. Here is the story of a dog who waits in a train station for his dead master for ten years because he doesn’t realize his master is dead. When we went to Japan I made Shapiro Keats go to Shibuya Station with me just to get a picture of the Hachiko statue there. I can’t read this to Gohan without crying. So Shapiro Keats will have to read it to him. Same thing with “The Mightiest Heart”, “Black Beauty” and the chapter where the White Witch kills Aslan.
	I have no idea why I bought this. Wait, yes I do. It was on remainder and I had some idea about not shielding kids from difficult subjects because they are smrter and tougher than adults think. I still have that idea but even I find this book disturbing. It’s about a little girl and her parents who manage to flee Hiroshima with radioactive fire on their heels and the horrible things they see on their way out of town. And escaping doesn’t even save them because they all get radiation poisoning. It’s going to be a long time before Gohan gets to look at this one.
	Again, lots of text but nice illustrations. I think Gohan needs to learn that girls kick ass as soon as possible. Because I heard cootie immunizations cause autism and I don’t want him to do that. ** I don’t believe vaccinations cause autism and I think Jenny Mccarthy is talking out her ass. The only study that ever showed a link was recently discredited. Gohan has gotten his shots and will continue to get them. **
	This book is awesome. An old lady obsessed wtih cooking rice balls falls down a crack into the underground world of the oni, who make her cook rice balls for them until she launches a daring esscape. This book rocks because when you read it you can give the old woman a really high voice and make all the oni have weird accents. Also the oni kind of look like this really evil math teacher I had in high school. Mr. R, if you’re reading this, you can suck it. I have never had to use algebra in my adult life so there.

I feel like I should have one more to make a round number but we only have nine. I’ll get on finding that tenth Asian-themed book right away.

But my mom couldn’t exactly pull me out of school. Nope, I had to endure it until I escaped to high school.

What seems weird about this is the statement of a school official:

A school director told reporters the princess had been frightened on Tuesday when a boy had run out of a classroom, which “must have reminded her of the rowdy behaviour of several boys in the past, who may have thrown things and made her uneasy”, Kyodo says.

“Must have’? ‘May’? Maybe her mom is so nutty she can’t stand to have her kid in school and away from her. Who cares? It’s their business. But people are nuts about their royals…no wonder Princess Masako is going crazy.

A jacket alone can fetch several hundred pounds, while one site is presently advertising a full set for more than £2,000. JAL’s domestic rival, All Nippon Airways, has a similar problem and an ANA stewardesses’ uniform is also on sale on-line for £3,745. Items that have been worn command higher prices.

“We have very strict rules on our uniforms and when people leave the company they are required to return them,” a spokeswoman for JAL told The Daily Telegraph.

“It’s a question of security, as anyone wearing a JAL uniform at an airport could quite easily access restricted areas, but we also do not want people misrepresenting the company or damaging our image in any way,” she added.

Actually, the bit about items that have been worn commanding higher prices was a bit too much information.

(via MetaFilter)

Update: USA Today reports that the problem is worse than initially thought. The uniforms might go not only to individuals but to the sex industry.

Scott Mayerowitz of ABC News reports that “in Japan plenty of people are willing to pay top dollar for an experience with a club entertainer clad in an authentic Japan Airlines flight attendant uniform.”

Of course, you can have an experience with someone clad in an authentic Japan Airlines flight attendant uniform for the price of a coach ticket, but she’ll only bring you a ginger ale.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So – predictably, things haven’t gone quite as planned. In addition to the usual kvetching about the importation of Western popular culture, there is also a competing interest in Huangshan who claims that Cameron namechecked their mountain range as the inspiration for Avatar’s funky visuals.

I liked Avatar as much as the next guy – but really, China…if you wanted to jump on the mountain-naming bandwagon, you should have done it when Peter Jackson pumped out the Lord of the Rings movies. Now THAT was a mountain.

An autopsy showed her death was caused by a long period of malnutrition.

The couple had become obsessed with nurturing a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online, police said on Friday.

The game enables players to interact with Anima and as they do so, help her to recover her lost memory and develop emotions.

I’m tempted to get very meta about this whole thing and wonder if a film adaptation by James Cameron – who mostly makes science-fiction movies for a living – even needs to live up to the kind of standard of veracity a historical account does. Almost every film based on historical fact I’ve ever seen has at the very least manipulated facts to fit the story the filmmaker was trying to present. Ridley Scott’s Blackhawk Down is a particularly good example. After reading Mark Bowden’s excellent account, I was stunned to see the liberties that Scott took with the storyline.  Various people are combined into composite characters, entire events are time-shifted, moved, or removed entirely, and though Bowden went to great lengths to interview Somalian fighters, Scott disposes of this viewpoint entirely. Even so, Blackhawk Down (the movie) captures the essence of the event. One could argue that the film’s viewpoint presents a particular kind of tunnel-vision with regards to what happened in Mogadishu on that day, but it’s an effective piece of work.

I think Cameron’s proposed film could be viewed in a similar fashion. Consider his own Titanic. The mechanics of the ship’s demise, as Cameron, portrays them,  are immaculate. Cameron went to great lengths to ensure that every popped rivet was accounted for and that his vision of the ship’s sinking would be as historically accurate as possible. And yet large portions of the film are dedicated to characters who never lived. It’s both the most and least accurate depiction of the Titanic sinking ever created.

Who knows – maybe we’ll get to see Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet fucking in the hold in of the Enola Gay as the bomb goes off in glorious high-definition 3D. I’d pay fifteen dollars for that…

A few years ago I took my son to the Hamilton County fair here in Cincinnati, Ohio. I’m not a big county fair guy, but my dad thought it would be entertaining. And it was, despite having to repeatedly curb my dad’s instinct for taking my three-year-old son on the various deathtrap rides that littered the fairground (’No, dad – he doesn’t want to go on the ferris wheel…seriously…’).

As we were getting prepared to leave, I saw a big trailer with the words ‘SEE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST MAN!’ emblazoned on the side. ‘Hrm’, says I. ‘This might be good for a laugh’. So I told my dad I was going to drop five bucks and see what that was all about. I was pretty damn sure what I was going to see was some wierd optical illusion or a hamfisted joke (’THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS!’). So, with my expectation dial tuned to a suitably low level, I entered the trailer.

In the middle of the trailer was a box, about three feet on a side, standing on a small platform. It was open on two sides, the top and rear, so that one would have to walk all the way around to the other side to see what was in it. Feeling the beginnings of a David Lynch-ian tingle at the base of my spine I approached the box and saw…

…a 24-inch tall Indian guy sitting on a stool watching People’s Court. No shit.

Needless to say I was dumbfounded. I think I probably waved half-assedly and said ‘Hey’ or something. He turned to face me and grinned.

‘Pretty hot outside, huh?’

Grin.

”Uhm – okay, well…see you ’round…’

That fucked my day up pretty hard.

The point of all this – actually, I don’t know what the point of that story was. But when I read about the Kingdom of the Little People theme park in Kunming, China I was reminded of that dude sitting in the box watching television. On the one hand it seemed fairly cruel to make that guy sit in a box and watch T.V. all day while an endless parade of overweight hicks wandered in and out of his trailer, each of whom had paid a fiver to gawk.  On the other hand, it’s not like he wasn’t being paid. I’m pretty sure they didn’t buy him from some uncrupulous dwarf-seller in Karachi. In all likelihood, this was a paying gig.

I still felt vaguely awful afterward, though…and I can’t imagine that visiting the Kingdom of the Little People would be any different.

Chen Mingjing’s entrepreneurial instincts vaulted him from a peasant upbringing to undreamed-of wealth, acquired in ventures ranging from making electric meters to investing in real estate. But when he was 44, the allure of making money for money’s sake began to wane. He wanted to run a business that accomplished some good.

And so last September, Mr. Chen did what any socially aware entrepreneur might do: He opened a theme park of dwarfs, charging tourists about $9 a head to watch dozens of dwarfs in pink tutus perform a slapstick version of “Swan Lake” along with other skits.

Mr. Chen has big plans for his Kingdom of the Little People. Imagine a $115 million universe in miniature, set amid 13,000 acres of rolling hills and peaceful lakes in southern China’s Yunnan Province, with tiny dogs, tiny fruit trees, a 230-foot-high performance hall that looks like the stump of a prehistoric tree and standard-size guest cabins.

You can read the rest of MSNBC’s piece on Chen’s ‘Kingdom’ here.

Turns out she was right. 

19 Dead in China Firecracker Explosion

How many freaking firecrackers were on the ground that they caused an explosion that killed 19 people? What the Hell kind of industrial-strength firecrackers were they?

I hate to say it, Gohan, but we’re going to be sticking with sparklers.