OK, so, the tat on this bad-ass hombre's shoulder:
Sure, so now the link don't work, so you'll have to scroll down on the page, sorry...
The character represented most closely resembles, in your opinion:

(Note: if you see an image not listed, you are probably too loaded/high to be operating a computer. Please pull over.)

More trouble...

Lessee here...



Now everybody knows what you're talking about, right chief?

P.S. Definitely Tweety. Or just possibly a Japanese octopus bosozoku.

________
You have to give up.

Hmmm, no takers on Rene...
Thanks, Col, when I did the image tag it kept coming up w/ a placeholder, but I wasn't sure if it was my browser or not.
Big fucking deal, you and me are the only ones reading this topic anyway.
Hey, what was the name for those grlzzz a couple years back who used to do the dark faketan/white lipstick/sparkly eyeshadow thing?
We had some of them here, but not too many.
Did you think they were hot?
I did, in a weird, androidy kind of way...

More trouble...

I live to dig up stuff for you

You're talking about the yamamba (or yamanba) gyaru, right?



(That's still the only image I can find.)

I always thought they were kind of scary and not very appealing. (The attitude and speech mannerisms associated with the stereotype were even more of a turn off than the makeup and the clothes, if you can believe it.)

[This message was edited by colin on October 02, 2003 at 01:20 AM.]

quote:

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Originally posted by colin:
(That's _still_ the only image I can find.)

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Since I got nothing better to do, I found some more.



Come to think of it, I realised that this is pretty much how Rene Zellweger would look when she'd be starring in The Li'l Kim Story

BTW Can any of you explain to me what these girls are saying? Just curious.

I have been documenting myself, and getting scared, about the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13), a true international gang.

It would be interesting to know what was the gangers handle, as it could be a representation of it. Certainly Tweety/Piolín is the highest profile of all the possibilities mentioned, although after seeing a couple dozens of tattoeed ganger's photos, there are skeletons that are quite similar in design and appearance. So it could be a skeleton dressed as a rapper.

At first I thought the tattoo on the side of his face was Salud, which is quite often used as a protective charm, but it is actually part of Salvatrucha, that will continue on the other side.

The more I read on them and their enemies of the 18, more frightening they become. Specially considering it all started in LA, and now there may be close to a million people in both gangs, all around America (the continent).

Warning to tattooed people. Some Central America countries may arrest you just because you have a visible tattoo.

José

quote:

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Originally posted by colin:
I live to dig up stuff for you

I always thought they were kind of scary and not very appealing. (The attitude and speech mannerisms associated with the stereotype were even more of a turn off than the makeup and the clothes, if you can believe it.)

[This message was edited by colin on October 02, 2003 at 01:20 AM.]

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Damn! I remember that thread!
For whatever reason, maybe because there were fewer here, they seemed to be a little older and sexier.
Honest, all over-18s.
I swear, your honor...

More trouble...

Heh heh. Always willing to oblige.

The yamamba on the right: "Yamamba rule!"
On the left: "Death to pachigyaru*!"
(Actually "Night dew death and pain" as far as I can figure out... Hmm.)

The, er, normal schoolgirls in the background are all thinking "Scary." (More like "frick'n scary") With two extra comments: "And they're huge!" "They're white around the eyes."

*As close as I can tell pachigyaru is a word for the cute demure schoolgirl stereotype, (beloved of otaku boys who spend all day in their basements playing romance simulation videogames), but I'd never heard of it before.

And actually the girls in El Gringo's pic are kinda cute, in their way. I guess I'm getting mellow (or desperate) in my old age.

________
You have to give up.

Saw a girl on the subway last week wearing those horribly out-of-style big honking kneesocks, you know, the ones where they look like she's playing hockey?
Anyway, my (4-year-old) daughter asks me, dude, like what's wrong with that girl's socks?
Fortunately, she asked in English, and we were fairly far away, so the girl didn't catch it.
My answer?
Stylu

More trouble...

More pics, http://www.livemusicstudio.com/mac/pages/ganguro.html

And I agree they are kinda cute.

I just remembered, when they were happening here, they were called (in Mandarin) Panda Girls...

More trouble...

quote:

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Specially considering it all started in LA, and now there may be close to a million people in both gangs, all around America (the continent).

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Jesus H. Christ.

As a result, in the late 1980s, some refugees and refugee members of La Mara and FMNL formed what is now known as the Mara Salvatrucha (MS) street gang in Los Angeles. Like many other street gangs, MS initially formed for protection, but quickly developed a reputation for being organized and extremely violent.

from a three year old article on the National Alliance of Gang Investigators Associations website (note intriguing use of the word "import" in the title).

One of the most feared Hispanic crews in this area is Mara Salvatrucha. Mara means "large group of juveniles or a gang"; salva is short for Salvadoran; trucha is slang for "slick, smart and streetwise." Rumor has it that the founders of the gang were originally Central American guerrilla fighters, but current members say the true founders were longhaired heavy-metal freaks from San Salvador. Whichever version is true, there's no denying the ease with which the MS obtain high-powered, fully automatic weapons through their Central American ties. This firepower is why the MS are one of the most powerful -- and deadly -- gangs in Los Angeles.

from Los Angeles magazine

Mara Salvatrucha/18th Street
70% of young people join one of El Salvador's two main gangs:
MS (Mara Salvatrucha) and 18 (18th Street). The rest belong to a wide variety of smaller gangs. MS and 18 have been at war for several years. The origins of the conflict lie in the United States. The war was exported to El Salvador because of the deportations of Salvadorian youths from the inner cities in the U.S. As a result, gang violence in El Salvador has increased.

from Radio Netherlands

I imagine JRE's sources were better.

BTW, I believe I originally voted "Tweety". I would now like to change my vote to "No disrespect intended, sir."

Yeah, give me a minute and I'll change the last one to:

"And may I add what a fine, fine looking tattoo is is indeed, sir, and can I get you something cool to drink??"

More trouble...

What I find really scary that either in Charlotte NC, or in Honduras (where they are better armed than the police), it is still the MS and the 18 who continue their war. The Salvatrucha even is expanding in Chiapas to take the war to their enemies country (Mexico), as the 18 did in El Salvador.

MS is supposed to have upwards of 450 thousand members worldwide, and the 18 is close behind. Of course, how many of them are hard core gangers is debatable, but they really have access to heavy ordnance and links with the FFMLN and other armed groups.

In San Salvador it is estimated that two thirds of the thousand murders last year are intra or inter gang violence. Considering that there is an estimated fifty thousand gangers, more than 1% are killed every year.

You have to be careful with your tattoos too, as one of the main intra-gang murder reason is spelling errors in the tattoos!

Mara comes from Marabunta (remember Heston's Naked Jungle?), the band of army ants that devour anything on their path. Now it has become any band of people that apply violence.

My sources are not necessarily better. Journalism in Central America is a high risk occupation. The Salvatrucha tried to kill a short time ago a TV presenter, who had attacked the gang on air and whose brother was also a member of the gang (and was allowed to leave the scene unharmed). My sources possibly are closer, however.

The Honduran government is considering paying a laser tattoo removal treatment to gangers wishing to integrate back in society. In this case the tattoo just pigeonhole you in a marginal life.

José

I feel I have to pop back in on this thread to correct two egregious errors in my above posts.

1) The yamamba girl on the left is not saying "death to pachigyaru" at all. She is saying something like "Regards to the pachigyaru." The kanji 'Night dew death pain' is a typical bosozoku (Japanese street gang) way of writing yoroshiku. Yoroshiku is often used when asking a favor, or just as a simple emphatic. In other words, I don't have a whole lot of a clue what I'm talking about when I translate Japanese. Don't trust me.

2) I would also like to change my vote from "Tweety" to "ThatisthecoolesttatooIhaveeverseen Iwantonejustlikeit pleasedon'thurtmesir."

________
You have to give up.

[This message was edited by colin on October 05, 2003 at 07:03 AM.]

quote:

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Originally posted by colin:
I feel I have to pop back in on this thread to correct two gregarious errors in my above posts.

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sing song voice:
ha ha, colin said gregarious when he meant egregious!

Thank you for not waiting an hour to gloat though.

My God. My errors flock like sheep!

________
You have to give up.

quote:

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Originally posted by colin:
The yamamba girl on the left is not saying "death to _pachigyaru_" at all. She is saying something like "Regards to the _pachigyaru_."

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Whoa! Japanese must be some tricky language! You better think twice before giving your regards to the local Yakuza-boss, Colin!

Well, it's sort of a pun. The way it is written makes it look, at first, like something really horrible (Death! Pain! Night dew! ... ?) and then you realize the reading of the characters is yo ro shi ku, which has nothing to do with the meaning of the individual ideograms. Oh, ha ha. Or you don't realize and you show the whole world (or about half-a-dozen people on a message board) how little you know.

The way that the reading of a word can be somewhat independent of the meaning of the kanji is one of the tricky parts of Japanese, I find.

Greeting a yakuza boss would not give me this problem; it would give me a host of much more serious problems. (As the girls say: kowa--)

And now, to distract people, an off-color joke:

A businessman named Smith is in Japan for the first time. Things go pretty well at the meeting and he is invited out drinking on Friday by some executives from the company he is visiting, and then to a golf game the next day.

On Friday they go to an expensive bar and the girls are all over him. He ends up taking one back to the hotel room, even though she doesn't speak much English. As they are going at it she keeps shouting something. I must be pretty damn good! he thinks.

In the morning he has a splitting headache and his wallet is a lot lighter. The girl is gone, but hey, it was great sex. So he goes out to his golf game.

Everything goes great at the game too. In fact, he makes a perfect shot and plunk, a hole in one! He pumps his arm and shouts the words he heard the girl saying last night.

The Japanese executives look very confused. They huddle together for almost a minute whispering amongst themselves. The businessman begins to sweat, thinking he said something extremely rude and has blown the whole deal. They seem to reach a decision and a young executive steps forward, nervously.

"Ah, excuse me Smith-san, but why did you say 'wrong hole'?"

________
You have to give up.