That’s Casey McGehee on the left.  Who’s that you ask?  No clue.  Never heard of him myself.  Doesn’t matter.  Let us instead focus on the Chinese character strategically tattooed on the anonymous forearm to the right.

For those dear readers who are unfamiliar with the Chinese language, that is the character for “child”.  Pronounced zi, in certain contexts it could be understood as “son” or “seed” or for those extremely esoteric folks with a penchant for ancient Chinese time-keeping methods, it could also be interpreted as the first of the twelve earthly branches.

In other words, it’s not really something you get tattooed on your arm.

Yet trendy wannabe-hip US Americans continue to find Chinese characters in tattoo shops around the country, discovering them to be viable testaments to who they are, even if they have no idea what the hell they mean.

Seems silly to me.  I have tattoos.  You know, you can’t just scrub ’em off.  I put a lot of thought into them before I went off and had my skin permanently inked. 

And I like to think that other people have the common sense to do a little research before putting a foreign language on their body for eternity.  But what do I know?  I ain’t no professional baseball player; I’m just a lowly Fulbright Scholar. 

Don’t hate me ‘cuz I’m right.

Peace,

Jeffy

(Image courtesy of the Associated Press)