MOUSELING.net

Important words & symbols

There are many many words and phrases and symbols that are important to me. I might as well catalogue some of them here...

Oracle bone script 鼠

This one is so important to me that I got it tattooed on my shoulder. This is the very first version of the Chinese character for mouse or rat, although I am sure that this specific design has been exaggerated to look more rat-like compared to the other more reputable ones I see which are a little less recognisable.

Oracle bone script has been a strong interest of mine ever since I was twelve. I love languages and writing systems and especially the way things might have originally been invented. It's so lovely! And, obviously, I love mice and rats (and all rodents and rodent-like creatures).

So this one, out of everything, really means a lot to me.

ぼくときみだけのせかい

This is admittedly the title of my favourite band's fourth album, although they write it with duplicated characters, as ぼぼくくととききみみだだけけののせせかかいい . The official English title is SEKAI: YYou && MMe, which is cute, but it doesn't get the full point across and doesn't explain why I love it so much.

The idea of boku to kimi dake no sekai feels a little "pure" to me. A world just for you and me. The "just for" detail, which was left out, is really important to me. So I keep this phrase dear to my heart.

The days of relying on "software" like clothes and cars to express yourself are over.

I found this on a late-90s Japanese body modification webpage that I can no longer find the link to, and as such, I have lost the second sentence in this statement regarding hardware. But I really love this phrase a lot.

I used to have a lot of holes in my face... actually, the holes are still in my lips, but the jewellery is gone. I even had four eyebrow piercings on one eyebrow—which I miss really badly—and I think everyone should try an eyebrow piercing just once, if nothing else. I also have one tattoo and am thinking of getting more.

I'm not into super advanced body modification (Devil horn implants! Elephant man head! Designer tails! Third leg, fourth leg, everyone a hermaphrodite!) on myself, but what makes this special to me is how plainly it puts things. Like a good personal computer, one should be able to play with his hardware just as much as his software.

四海之内皆兄弟也

This is a famous Confucius quote. Across the four seas, all men are brothers.

I really do believe that all humans are alike and have loads in common. I believe that a person on the other side of the world, living in a totally different culture, is equally as likely to love food and alcohol and some type of music in a similar way to me, or to love their pet dearly. When I look at the image chosen for the Wikipedia article on human beings, I see an image that a Neolithic farmer might understand just as well as I do.

Despite the differences, all men are brothers.

𒀭 — Dingir

Dingir is the ancient Sumerian word for [a] GOD. It is also one of the words written in Sumerian Cuneiform that is written using a logograph, rather than being written out phonetically.

I think it's so incredibly striking. Out of all the images you could use to represent the concept of a god, whether it is any god or the one God, I think this comes closest.

It is important to me because I am convinced that, if I saw God with my own two eyes, the one thing I would be able to draw coming back from the experience would be this symbol.

〠 — Japanese postal mark, with a face

The sylised Japanese symbol 〒 is the yuubin kigou, literally meaning "postal symbol", and is used to represent Japan Post & the postal service. There is a further stylised version, who was once the mascot of Japan Post, and he is even in Unicode.

He has a nice face and some eyelashes. Everything to do with mail is very special to me, for various reasons that I cannot bring myself to explain in public. But international mail is the reason that I can own all my CDs and clothes, and it is the reason that I can send letters to my friends, and a cute face to represent the post is fantastic.

The image used here, where he is drooling, is a spoof character named 郵FUCK (or You FUCK), but the explanation for that may come another day. He was created for Muchi Muchi Anago merchandise. He is also my best friend.

When I grow up I want to be a radical terrorist.

We all love Calvin and Hobbes. For some reason, this quote has stuck in my mind regardless of the origin.

I have always found radical political extremism incredibly interesting, on any side of the spectrum, both in thought and action. It's not like I condone violence in the majority of situations, but I do think it's really cool. It's ironic because I don't actually have an extremist sense of thought and I'm not going to be an activist in this lifetyle.

One of the coolest things in the world to me is the Japanese New Left, and especially the East Asia Anti Japan Armed Front. They don't really make good old fashioned left-wing terrorists anymore... which is a shame, because they're more fun to analyse.

Metronome's bonji logo

Again, I love language and writing systems, and I truly love the invented Sanskrit character that the band Metronome use for themselves on occasion.

In Japan, bonji—which just means Sanskrit characters—is used for various Buddhism-related things. Metronome fashioned this logo to represent themselves because they were originally supposed to be 21st-century religious music. If you know me, you will learn how much Metronome means to me already.

I love you

This is the most human phrase in the entire world. I, the person typing this, love you, the person reading this. No matter who you are I strive to love you.