Death tattoos: Santa Muerte - origins and significations

Santa Muerte (literally Holy Death or Saint Death) tattoos are extremely popular among the Mexican people. Santa Muerte (also known as Santisima Muerte, Señora de las Sombras (Lady of the Shadows), Señora Blanca (White Lady), Señora Negra (Black Lady), Niña Santa (Holy Girl), La Flaca (The Skinny One), Santa Sebastienne, etc) is the beloved goddess of death who's origins date to the pre hispanic period of Mexico. The origins of the myths of Santa Muerte aren't completely clear, but is quite obvious that the cult of Santa Muerte is a syncretism...

Failed tattoos

"If you can't spell, you should think twice before get a text tattooed on your body!" I think that this piece of advice should be written at the entrance of every tattoo parlor. Obviously, there are plenty of those who don't care about this simple rule. Because of the misspelled word "mayd" the meaning of this tattoo is a bit ambiguous: it's a king of love statements or this person claims that he / she used to work for the so-called "Maid for you" company? He's Awsome. Not awesome, only awsome. I could't find this word in the dictionary so I suppose...

A failed tattoo? Not necessarily.

The tattoo in the picture below is often given as an example of a failed tattoo (I've founded the same confusion even on hanzismatter.blogspot, a blog which belongs to someone who seems to have vast knowledge of Chinese and Japanese languages). If we consider only the Chinese reading of these characters, the tattoo's meaning is "fool, sucker" - 呆 (pronunciation: dai with the first tone) = dull; dull-minded, simple, stupid; 子 (pronunciation: zi with the third tone) = offspring, child; together they form the word 呆子 (daizi) which means "fool, stupid,...