Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tattoo Art Body
tattoo art bodyDue to the development and innovation in the society, the Japanese tattoo art has also developed. Nowadays, body art has gained popularity not only for younger people but the adults alike. For younger people they acquire this work of art just to keep in the fashion trend but for others they put tattoo in their body for some sentimental reasons. Upon knowing the transitions of tattoo art in Japan you will surely appreciate to have any of the designs and symbols inked in your body.
10. CATCHING FIRE
Suzanne Collins 2009
In this second book of the Hunger game series, Katniss has to fight her way out of the Capitol's intense desire to punish her severely. Her seemingly defiant behavior has now started a rebellion of the twelve districts of Penam against the Capitol.
"Every person in the crowd presses the three middle fingers of their left hand against their lips and extends them to me. It's our sign from District 12, the last good-bye I gave Rue in the arena."
"In that one slight motion, I see the end of hope, the beginning of the destruction of everything I hold dear in the world. I can't guess what form my punishment will take, how wide the net will be cast, but when it is finished, there will most likely be nothing left."
"I'm filled with awe, as I always am, as I watch her transform from a woman who calls me to kill a spider to a woman immune to fear. When a sick or dying person is brought to her... this is the only time I think my mother knows who she is."
"Now a new kind of confidence is lighting up inside of me, because I think I finally know who Haymitch is. And I'm beginning to know who I am. And surely, two people who have caused the Capitol so much trouble can think of a way to get Peeta home alive."
"Then I step away quickly to watch the reaction on the Gamemakers' faces as they read the name on the dummy."
"But I'm not naked. I'm in a dress of the exact design of my wedding dress, only it's the color of coal and made of tiny feathers. Wonderingly, I lift my long, flowing sleeves into the air, and that's when I see myself on the television screen."
9. the HUNGER GAMES
Suzanne Collins 2008An engaging horrible reality TV in the future when North America is Penam and we are left to watching children kill each other off. It's not violent at all, if you can believe it. It's the story of a brave girl Katniss' survival of the hunger games.
'When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.'
'When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol.'
'The reaping system is unfair, with the poor getting the worst of it. You become eligible for the reaping the day you turn twelve. That year, your name is entered once. At thirteen, twice. And so on and so on until you reach the age of eighteen, the final year of eligibility, when your name goes into the pool seven times.'
'But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim's place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touched the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me...It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.'
Oh well, I think. There will be twenty-four of us. Odds are someone else will kill him before I do.'
'At the last minute, I remember Madge's little gold pin. For the first time, I get a good look at it...I suddenly recognize it. A mockingjay.'
'But whenever my father sang, all the birds in the area would fall silent and listen. His voice was that beautiful, high and clear and so filled with life it made you want to laugh and cry at the same time.'
'A kind Peeta Mellark is far more dangerous to me than an unkind one. Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.'
'I want the audience to recognize you when you're in the arena," says Cinna dreamily. "Katniss, the girl who was on fire."
"She's excellent," says Peeta. "My father buys her squirrels. He always comments on how the arrow never pierce the body. She hits every one in the eye. Its' the same with the rabbits she sells the butcher. She can even bring down deer.'
'Somehow the whole thing-his skill, those inaccessible cakes, the praise of the camouflage expert-annoys me. "It's lovely. If only you could frost someone to death," I say.'
'Well, there is this one girl. I've had a crush on her ever since I can remember. But I'm pretty sure she didn't know I was alive until the reaping.'
'Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to... to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games.'
'Ladies and gentlemen, let the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games begin!'
'I pick my tree carefully. A willow, not terribly tall but set in a clump of other willows, offering concealment in those long, flowing tresses. I climb up, sticking to the stronger branches close to the trunk, and find a sturdy fork for my bed.'
"Because we're going to be thrown into an arena to fight to the death. Exactly how am I supposed to work in a thank-you in there? Somehow it just won't seem sincere if I'm trying to slit his throat."
"He hasn't accepted his death. He is already fighting hard to stay alive. Which also means that kind Peeta Mellark, the boy who gave me bread, is fighting hard to kill me."
"Rue, who when you ask her what she loves most in the world replies, of all things, "Music." "Music?" I say. In our world, I rank music somewhere between ribbons and rainbows in terms of usefulness."
Tattoo's galore
Tattoo art being displayed by one of the attendees at the second annual London Tattoo Convention. The three day event was held at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane and showcased over 100 tattoo artists from around the world.
Japanese Tattoo Art
The tattoo making during the Edo period became a taboo to the Japanese culture because it is used by prostitutes. The yujos inked body art in their body to attract customers that is why tattoo has gained negative impact in the society.
Monday, March 29, 2010
8. A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN
Betty Smith 1943
A novel about Francie Nolan and her family, growing up poor and struggling in Brooklyn with her mother Katie, her father Johnny who is an alcoholic and Neely, her brother. It's an endearing account of her everyday life with a big emphasis on education and music.
"The tree knew. It came there first. Afterwards, poor foreigners seep in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people."
"The library was a little old shabby place. Francine thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church."
"Oh, magic hour when a child first knows it can read printed words!"
"Francie is entitled to one cup each meal like the rest. If it makes her feel better to throw it way rather than to drink it, all right. I think it's good that people like us can waste something once in a while and get the feeling of how it would be have lots of money and not have to worry about scrounging."
"To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time."
"Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography."
"He drew notes on the blackboard; he drew little legs on them to make them look as though they were running out of the scale. He'd make a flat note look like humpty-dumpty. A sharp note would rate a thin beet-like nose zooming off it. All the while he'd burst into singing just as spontaneously as a bird."
"Well, a person can only cry only so long. Then he has to do something else with his time."
"No! I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me... I want someone to need me."
7. the KITE RUNNER
Khaled Hosseini 2003
A dramatic story about the lives and friendship of Amir, a wealthy Pashtun boy and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As little boys, Hassan is Amir's kite runner. It is set in tumultuous Afghanistan.
"Hassan's face changed. Maybe not changed, not really, but suddenly I had the feeling I was looking at two faces, the one I knew, the one that was my first memory, and another, a second face, this one lurking just beneath the surface. I'd seen in happen before- it always shook me up a little."
"Children aren't coloring books or shuffling aroung the house like he's lost in some dream."
"Forgive? But theft was the one unforgivable sin, the common denominator of all sins. When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no act more wretched than stealing."
"Panic. You open your mouth. Open it so wide your jaws creak. You order your lungs to draw air, NOW, you need air, need it NOW. But your airways ignore you. They collapse, tighten, squeeze, and suddenly you're breathing through a drinking straw."
"But I knew I had to leave as soon as possible. I was afraid I'd change my mind. I was afraid I'd deliberate, ruminate, agonize, rationalize, and talk myself into not going."
"Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it."
"Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is...God help him."
6. WATER for ELEPHANTS
Sara Gruen 2006
In this charming historical fiction, Jacob Jankowski, the protagonist, is in his nineties and lives in a nursing home. He is informed that the circus is in town. This ignites his failing memory and through a series of flashbacks, he relates his life as an animal caretaker of a travelling circus. He remembers his friends Camel and Walter, the ringmaster August, Marlena who becomes his wife, and Rosie the magnificent elephant. She will stay with you forever.
'Only three people were left under the red and white awning of the grease joint: Grady, me, and the fry cook.'(opening line)
'She was on the opposite side, standing against the sidewall, calm as a summer day. Her sequins flashed like liquid diamonds, a shimmering beacon between the muticolored hides. She saw me, too, and held my gaze for what seemed like forever. She was cool, languid. Smiling even. I started pushing my way toward her, but something about her expression stopped me cold.'(4)
'You start to forget words: they're on the tip of your tongue, but instead of eventually dislodging, they stay there. You go upstairs to fetch something, and by the time you get there you can't remember what it was you were after. You call your child by names of all your other children and finally the dog before you get to his. Sometimes you forget what day it is. And finally you forget the year.'(5)
'Age is a terrible thief. Just when you're getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back. It makes you ache and muddies your head... (12)
'Although there are times I'd give anything to have her back, I'm glad she went first. Losing her was like being cleft down the middle. It was the moment it all ended for me, and I wouldn't have wanted her to go through that. Being the survivor stinks.'(13)
'I'm lying on the floor, looking up at the stripper's dangling breasts. Her nipples, brown and the size of silver dollar pancakes, swing in circles- out and around, SLAP. Out and around, SLAP. I feel a pang of excitement, then remorse and then nausea.'(63)
'I've decided it's not about me at all. It's a protective mechanism for them, a way of buffering themselves against my future death, like when teenagers distance themselves from their parents in preparation for leaving home.'(109)
"No, August -- you have an elephant. Her name is Rosie, she's fifty three and she's perfectly brilliant. The best bull they had. I can't wait to see the act you come up with --"(124)
'When I return to the lot, Rosie has been installed in the menagerie tent. I don't know how, and I don't ask.
She smiles when I approach and then rubs her eye, curling the tip of her trunk like a fist. I watch her for a couple of minutes and then step over the rope. Her ears flatten and her eyes narrow. My heart sinks, because I think she's responding to me. Then I hear his voice.'(148)
'Marlena begins swinging... The drum roll mounts as she gains momentum. Before long she's swinging parallel to the ground. I wonder how long she's going to keep this up and just what the heck she's planning to do when she suddenly releases the pole. She sails through the air, tucking her body into a ball and rolling forward twice. She uncurls at her feet, straighten up, and thrusts both arms into the air. The band launches into victory music and the crowd goes wild. Moments later, coins rain down on the hippodrome track.'(165)
'It's hard to reconcile this August with the other one, and to be honest I don't try very hard. I've seen flashes of this August before -- this brightness, this conviviality, this generosity of spirit -- but I know what he's capable of, and I won't forget it. The other can believe what they like, but I don't believe for a second that this is the real August and the other an aberration. And yet I can see how they might be fooled--'(229)
'Elephants like alcohol... One whiff of this and she doesn't care about cabbages anymore. Ah!'
'I lie motionless, savoring the feeling of her body against mine. I'm afraid to breathe in case I break the spell.'(273)
'Even so, I wonder whether our affair isn't obvious. It seems to me that the bonds between us must be visible.'(280)
an Algonquin Books First Paperback Edition
331 pages
Book owned
Quotes updated: May 2, 2011
Saturday, March 27, 2010
5. MIDDLESEX
Jeffrey Eugenides 2002
An intriguing unique novel written in the form of a memoir of Calliope Stephanides, a hermaphrodite born to Greek descendants Milton and Tessie. Calliope introduces us to the story of her grandparents Lefty and Desdemona as they escape their small Greek village and make a new life in Old Detroit. The confusing journey of her transformation to become Cal is so convincing and brilliantly written, it is hard to believe the story is a work of fiction.
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."
"As a baby, even as a little girl, I possessed an awkward, extravagant beauty. No single feature was right in itself and yet, when they were taken all together, something captivating emerged. An inadvertent harmony. A changeableness too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts."
"The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It's a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison."
"But the glimpses those men's rooms afforded were on the whole disappointing. The proud phallus was nowhere in evidence, only the feed bag, the dry tuber, the snail that had lost its shell."
"And so a strange new possibility is arising. Compromised, infinite, sketchy, but not entirely obliterated: free will is making a comeback. Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into mind."
"...my family found that, contrary to popular opinion, gender was not all that important."
"The lesson of Desdemona's suffering and rejection of life insisted that old age would not continue the manifold pleasures of youth but would instead be a long trial that slowly robbed life of even its smallest, simplest joys. Everyone struggles against despair, but it always winds in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye."
4. the TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE
Audrey Niffenegger 2003A brilliant and exceptional book about Claire Abshire, an artist from Michigan and a time-traveler's wife. Her husband is Henry de Tamble, a librarian from Chicago who is afflicted with a rare genetic disease of time traveling coined Chrono-displacement . She is six years old when she meets him, and through the years that he travels back in time, they fall in love and later marries. A truly remarkable and unique love story.
'It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. It's hard to be the one who stays. I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.'
'When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant, an animal who runs and hides. I startle old women and amaze children. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true.'
'I fear finding myself in a prison cell, an elevator full of people, the middle of a highway. I appear form nowhere, naked. How can I explain? I have never been able to carry anything with me. No clothes, no money, no ID.'
I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.'
'I'm Claire Abshire. I knew you when I was a little girl...I'm at a loss because I am in love with a man who is standing before me with no memories of me at all. Everything is in the future for him.'(4)
''What is the Meadow?" I am practically hopping with excitement. I have never met anyone from my future before, much less a Botticelli who has encountered me 152 times.'
'I don't usually tell myself stuff ahead of time unless it's huge, life-threatening you know? I'm trying to live like a normal person. I don't even like having myself around, so I try not to drop in on myself unless there's no choice.'(21)
Where was I when I saw me?(27)
'Now for me, it's different. Because I am a time traveler, I jump around a lot from one time to another. So it's like if you started the tape and played it for a while but then you said Oh I want to hear that song again, so you played that song and then you went back to where you left off but you wound the tape too far ahead so you rewound it again but you still got it too far ahead. You see?'(45)
'All my life I have pretty much accepted Henry as no big deal; that is, although Henry is a secret and therefore automatically fascinating, Henry is also some kind of miracle and just recently it's started to dawn on me that most girls don't have a Henry or if they do the've all been pretty quiet about it.'(71)
'Well, technically speaking, I'm your husband. Since you haven't actually gotten married yet, I suppose we would have to say that you are my girlfriend.'(90)
'When Clare draws she looks as though the world has fallen away, leaving only her and the object of her scrutiny. This is why I love to be drawn by Clare: when she looks at me with that kind of attention, I feel that I am everything to her.'(104)
'One of the best and most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive.'(109)
'I realize that I have forgotten my present Henry in my joy at seeing my once and future Henry, and I am ashamed. I feel an almost maternal longing to go solace the strange boy who is becoming the man before me, the one who kisses me and leaves me with an admonition to be nice. As I walk up the stairs I see the Henry of my future fling himself into the midst of the slam dancers, and I move as in a dream to find the Henry who is my here and now.'(162)
'Henry sighs. "My whole life is one long deja vu."'(178)
'He has this idea that every piece of music should be treated with respect, even if it isn't something he likes much. I mean, he doesn't like Tchaikovsky, or Strauss, but he will play them very seriously. That's why he's great; he plays everything as though he's in love with it.'(201)
"But don't you think," I persist,"that it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?"(239)
'The compelling thing about making art-or making anything, I suppose-is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances.'(284)
'When I was a child I looked forward to seeing Henry. Every visit was an event. Now every absence is a nonevent, a subtraction, an adventure I will hear about when my adventurer materializes at my feet, bleeding or whistling, smiling or shaking. Now I am afraid when he is gone.'(285)
"Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust"
First Harvest edition 2004
540 pages
Book owned
3. POSSESSION, a romance
A.S.Byatt 1990
A romantic story told in parallel, between two couples - Victorian poets, Randolph Henry Ash and Cristabel LaMotte from the late 1800s, and literary scholars Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey from 1987. The story unfolds after Roland's discovery of Randolph's love letters.
"If you can order your Thoughts and shape them into Art, good: if you can live in the obligations and affections of Daily Life, good. But do not get into the habit of morbid Self-examination."
"Letters...are a form of narrative that envisages no outcome, no closure...Letters tell no story, because they do not know, from line to line, where they are going...Letters, finally, exclude not only the reader as co-writer, or predictor, or guesser, but they exclude the reader as a reader; they are written, if they are true letters, for A reader."
"Never have I felt such a concentration of my whole Being-on one object, in one place, at one time-a blessed eternity of momentariness that went on forever, it seemed."
"I have dreamed nightly of your face and walked the streets of my daily life with the rhythms of your writing singing in my silent brain."
"The true exercise of freedom is-cannily and wisely and with grace-to move inside what space confines-and not seek to know what lies beyond and cannot be touched or tasted."
"This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the midpoint, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere."
"Dust falls from us daily as we walk, dust of us, lives a little in the air as is Trodden-we sweep away-Parts of Ourselves-and shall all these-jots and omicra-cohaere?"
2. the SHADOW OF THE WIND
Carlos Luis Zafron, english translation 2004
A story set in Barcelona, about ten year old Daniel Sempere's adventure soon after he picks out a book, The Shadow of the Wind from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. He then goes into a quest to find out about the life of the book's author - Julian Carax. It is part mystery, part thriller, and ultimately a love story.
"I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time."
"This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strngthens."
"A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept."
"Making money isn't hard in itself...What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting your life to."
"Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.
There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse."
"Gustavo Barcelo had a way of listening that seemed both contemplative and Solomonic, like a doctor or a pope."
"Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen."
"Sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up."
"Coincidences are the scars of fate. There are no coincidences. We are puppets of our subconscious desires."
"Of all the things that Julian wrote, the one that I have always felt closest to my heart is that as long as we are remembered, we remain alive."
"Julian had once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise."
1. the BLIND ASSASSIN
Margaret Atwood,2000
A novel within a novel. The main storyline is set in Ontario, Canada, and involves Iris narrating by a series of flashbacks, how three deaths early on in the story (Laura, her sister, Richard, her politically ambitious wealthy husband, and her grand-daughter Sabrina) came to be. The other storyline involves an affair between an unidentified couple, one of which wrote a novel entitled the Blind Assassin.
"Why do we always assume at such moments that everyone is staring at us. Usually nobody is."
"I dont need that fluff on my coffee.Looks like shaving cream. One swallow and you're foaming at the mouth."
"But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also; they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past-the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace."
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
"Where was the threshold, between the inner world and the outer one? We each move unthinkingly through this gateway everyday, we use the passwords of grammar-I say, you say, he and she say it, on the other hand, does not say-paying for the privelege of sanity with common coin, with meanings we've agreed on."
"All the speech-making can bloat a man up. I've watched the process, many times now. It's those kind of words, the kind they use in speeches. They have a fermenting effect on the brain. You can see it on television, during the political broadcasts-the words coming out of their mouths like bubbles of gas."
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Chinese Dragon Tattoos
Types of Dragon Tattoo Designs
There are many Chinese dragon tattoo designs. Among them, the most common is the Horned Dragon. This particular tattoo design is believed to produce rain. Other types of dragon tattoos include Winged Dragon, Celestial Dragon, Spiritual Dragon, Yellow Dragon, Underground dragon and many more. There are also some Chinese zodiac dragon tattoos.
Apart from these dragon tattoos there are several other designs that are also becoming very popular in the recent times like tribal dragon tattoos, Celtic dragon tattoos and many more.
Placements
Where you get a tattoo design inked is totally a matter of personal choice. However, there are some most apt and popular placements for each tattoo design. In case of dragon tattoo, shoulders, upper arms, chest, ankles and lower back area are the preferred choice of tattoo enthusiasts.
One can choose any portion depending on their comfort level, size as well as how much visibility they want for their design. For instance, while chest and back areas are perfect for an elaborate dragon tattoo design, the placement is not suitable if you want to flaunt your tattoo most of the times.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Where to put Tribal Tattoos
Tribal tattoos are a feasible tattoo choice as they can be placed anywhere on the body. Tribal tattoos can be placed on the chest for men and on the lower back for women. One of the most common places to find tribal tattoos on the body is the fact that they can be easily used as an arm piece through the use of a sleeve or arm band.
Most tribal tattoos are black and dark in color as they can be simplistic but make a large statement when they are chosen to tattoo on the body. Tribal tattoos are a great way to choose a neutral tattoo that can be combined with other designs that may already be present on the body, or designs that are planned for the future.
Tribal tattoos should be placed on the body where they can be bold enough to make a statement about the person that has chosen the tribal tattoo.
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