October 02, 2005

Oceania Postcards and Picture Galleries The images of Oceania are both diverse and fascinating. [Caution: possibly some may be considered NSFW by the stodgy.] Via Eye of the Goof
posted by beeswacky 19 years ago
  • Beautiful! Why am I not there again? Everything looks laid back and carefree . . . except those tattoos. Yow. Bring forth the kava!
  • Samoan winger, Lome Fa'atau, shows off his traditional Samoan tattoo (pe'a) during the Rugby World Cup 2003 held in Australia. Lome said, that the pe'a was a way for young Samoan men to honour their heritage and show respect for their culture. The pe'a took nine days to complete with the entire operation being carried out with a pig's tooth attached to a drum stick. OUCH! A pig's tooth? eh, well, I maybe stodgy, but Lome's got some nifty tatoos. *waggles eyebrows*
  • Ever drink kava? Tastes like dirt.
  • ...stodgy.... Was thinking of stodgy bosses at work, BlueHorse, since some folk can get upset leafing through old National Geogrpahics, apparently.
  • kava is not a friend to your liver.
  • Kava doesn't work for Caucasians.
  • Kava loves tomatoes and black-capped chickadees
  • Kava could've baked the most delicious cake in the world
  • Been interested in ephemera, and it was the postcards which attracted my attention at first. Then I found the photographs by Robert Louis Stevenson, and was hooked. Went on to read about the British penal colony on Norfolk Island, and am still working my way through the site.
  • Those are some great pics, thanks beeswacky! I've enjoyed a couple of wonderful trips to Vanuatu in my youth, and would be totally happy to retire there one day and never leave. Also, Polynesian women (nsfw) are among the most beautiful in the world (and the guys are pretty gorgeous as well)... Finally, Chyren, I'm as caucasian as they come, and I can assure you that Kava works on us just fine, thank you very much. In fact I have a whole largish jar of powdered Kava here that a friend brought back from Tahiti for me, and I'm so inspired by this post that I think I might just make up a Sunday evening nightcap to prove my point!
  • And he was never heard from again...
  • I told u I wuz hardcore.
  • A good chunk of these postcards look like they're straight out of one of my anthropology textbooks. As for Lome Fa'atau's tattoos, there's a station identification ad (you know, nice music and the channel logo) that shows a guy getting one of those tattoos in a ritual. It's not pretty to watch, and I don't really understand how the TV station thought that would be a good idea. (Presumably something to do with tying all the various nationalities together because the ads are very multicultural, but there's got to be a...nicer Samoan tradition to display for a commercial.)
  • Also, on a somewhat related note, my cousin has a Samoan tatoo. Just a medium sized back piece. The trick, he said, was to go early in the day so you could have the blood wiped away with a clean piece of cloth. Only cost him 10 dollars and the good will afforded to him by his volunteer work.