Back in the days when I was young and foolish, I cruised up to East Lansing, MI and got a tattoo with my now ex-girlfriend, Liz.  Thinking myself clever (and wanting to avoid imprinting her name forever on my body), I decided to go with a latin phrase  I had found  on the internet that I considered particularly profound: “Esse quam videri“.  In English this literally translates to: “to be, rather than to seem to be”, which is actually quite difficult to say when explaining tattoo to every single person who spots it.  ”Well, to me it’s really just a sort of… kind of… stand against… you know… hyprocrisy… kinda.” It doesn’t really make sense, and it definitely doesn’t roll off the toungue well at all.

This isn’t the worst of it however.  Shortly after having what felt like ten gallons of ink shoved forcefully into my skin, I was proudly showing off my new tattoo, when I was informed that my thunder had been stolen 97 years before I was born when North Carolina adopted that very phrase as its state motto.  Not only that, but while the old state of NC might  be the most notable of those to adopt my leg tat as a motto, it is certainly not alone.  According to Wikipedia, at least 77 schools, two sororities, one fraternity, a sporting organization and a submarine have also chosen to represent (at some point or another) the very phrase I bear on my body.  At least I’m repping something greater than myself, I just wish I had known that fact before I went under the needle. Moral of the story: do your research and carefully think about tattoos before getting them.

Now that I’ve imparted my hard earned wisdom to all who may find themselves fortunate enough to read this post, I’ve prepared a brief description of my newest (and more carefully thought-out) tattoo idea:

That’s how it’s done folks.