Filipino Calligraphy

Something that took more effort to find then I would like: Filipino Calligraphy! Tis a video of the character for "Love" and "Expensive," same word apparently, being written in old Baybayin script for a poster. More can be found on their website.

The Mahal Poster - Series 1 from cyphaflip on Vimeo.

http://thebathalaproject.com

Tattoo ideas.

Since I have started working on the tattoo design above, I have decided to revisit a few other ideas I hope to eventally get inked as well. The above design is most likely going to have to wait until I have enough proficiency writing in Arabic to do the circle myself. That or I need to start working on my photoshop-fu to more cleanly wrap the text around the symbol without the letters become mismatched as they are. I am also not sure where to place this particular design on my body.

More simple word art. This time it's the Hebrew letters Nun, Dalet, Vav, Mem, and Reish. The meaning... is a secret. What is also apparently a closely guarded secret is where useful non-standard Hebrew fonts can be found. The above was made with a font for old Talmudic texts but still comes off as a little Comic Sans (ugh). The tendency for the characters to look like a little person from the right angle doesn't improve the ascetics. This is on the back burner until I can find an appropriate font. I hope to get something that is reminiscent of arabic rosettes but with Hebrew. Or maybe a Hebrew font reminiscent of Cyrillic or Arabic script. The location of this would be on my upper right chest.

This was actually taken from an old Vampire: The Masquerade supplement on Middle Eastern vampires. I found that I liked it at first glance because it integrates the ankh, the Christian cross, the star and crescent moon, and the star of david in one symbol. Indeed, with some alteration I could easily adopt this as my personal symbol... which anime and Final Fantasy have taught me is something that all main characters do. This would be placed lower on my body around my waist line, opposite a similar ankh.

Least developed of my ideas is a tattoo of my favorite Hindu deity, Ardhanari. Being combination of Shiva (the god of the cycle of destruction and and creation, ascetic and esoteric wisdom, etc) and Shakti (the goddess of divine energy, transcendence, and generally the only deity that can match Shiva in any real way), Ardhanari is the most dynamic of all the gods I have studied in purpose, symbolism, and imagery. I plan on get a large piece on my arm but the problem I having is finding a design I would like. The dancing imagery of Shiva would he a good starting point for dynamic piece but I still have to research mudras for any potential position. Hopefully I can get something that looks like a cross between Shiva as Nataraja (On the left) and, ironically, Shakti as Shiva from Final Fantasy (on the right). The final product would also have to be black line art to work well with my other tattoo designs.

Before I forget.

I am suddenly in the mood to figure out two questions....

'Is altruism real?' and 'What makes killing an enemy combatant in war different from murder?'

The first question keeps going around my mind in circles, making my brain dizzy, hovering around a position based on liminality and the Hegelian dialectic. I need an Anna for this argument as I am sure that she is one hundred percent on the altruism is non-existent side.

The second question just keeps coming up for me because of the news and the fact that I have too many friends and family in the military. My immediate reflex judgement is that murder of a sentient being is always that with the exception of self-defense. However, the U.S. has a volunteer military and self-defense doesn't seem a reasonable validation for killing if a killer chooses to put themself in harms way.

I need people to bounce ideas off of...