Indeed, added to mine as well. I think here in the south-west I might use the variant "dude-bra", although that does sound like something else entirely.
I totally share your opinion of most Chinese character tattoos. They reek of someone walking into a tat shop and pointing at the wall and going "that one. The one that means 'douche'" Right up there with black panthers, pixies, dragons, dolphins, and your current significant other's name, they generally make for terrible tattoos. The reason I'm really gung-ho on this is I have done some serious studies into buddhism, buddhist mysticism, eastern religions, tao etc... and have developed deep personal significance with many of the meanings of "qi" or "chee" as it is often pronounced. It's a fairly amorphous idea that means different things to different cultures but I like what it does for me, it's one of the only paradigms I've kept around for over a decade, and I just don't see bastardizing it into english. The only reason I don't have it right now is probably for a lot of similar reasons, I don't want to be that tat guy with the retarded asian tattoo he doesn't know anything about, but I've thought about it forever and come to the conclusion "fuck it, I'm just not into other people's opinions that much."
I mean there's english equivalents, kinda, I guess I could have "spiritus" or "ka" done, but it just wouldn't mean the same thing, not to me.
Opinions? Thoughts?
Add: Nah, I knew the tolerance and general opinion, I didn't want to yell or whatever, I just expected to be called retarded and maybe be sent to a site with decent translation resources. I've found one since. I fully expected a less than friendly dialog to unfold. Just a little more hostile than I initially expected, but not completely surprising. Again, it's not like I don't see where you guys are coming from on this.