fridays, romans, annoyances – lend me your ears!

well, kramer should be at least semi-happy…

…i finally did a (somewhat) Shakespearean title for a bit! (i’ll even capitalize the “S” to seal the deal)

so here’s a lesson for all you folks wanting to get roman numeral tattoos – there’s no apostrophe in roman numerals. remember back when you were in high school and you could get a shirt that looked kinda like this?

co95

well, the “‘” that was before the “95” denotes that something is missing – in this case the “19” in “1995”. it’s like in the word “can’t”, which is short for “can not” the “‘” replaces the “o”. in english, and with the arabic numerals used therein, we use an apostrophe to denote something has been omitted.

the romans didn’t use those.

so when you get a roman numeral tattoo to signify your wedding date, but insist it say “XII-XXV-XIII” instead of “XII-XXV-MMXIII” you’re not celebrating the the year you got married, you’re celebrating the year jesus got pubes. the year 13ad, not 2013. because there’s no apostrophe in roman numerals. on the upside you knew that, so you didn’t try to get “XII-XXV-‘XIII” which looks even more stupid. on the down side, you now have a tattoo to signify jesus’ bar mitzvah, not your wedding.

mazeltov!

but you’re not to blame for this, little miss annoyance (i only use the term “miss” because most of these requests come from females) – no, you can blame this bitch:

riri

r&b sensation rhianna, who if you look closely got a tattoo on her shoulder in roman numerals ending in “LXXXVI”, or “86” – about half a century after christ died, but NOT the year i ended my freshman year in high school, which was “MCMLXXXVI” or “1986”, which i’m sure she was trying to denote. i use this as an example when people try to do the wrong year ending with, “that’s what rhianna chose, but she also chose to take chris brown back after he beat the shit out of her, so maybe we shouldn’t use her decision making skills as a benchmark, m’kay?”

sometimes the truth hurts…

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