Monolingualism in effect

Everyone’s seen kanji tattoos where the person thinks it says “strength” or something, but it turns out to actually say “goat cheese.”

Well, we double-checked these red characters, and we’re pretty confident they don’t mean anything. We consulted people who claimed to be able to read Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, French, English and Pig Latin. Everyone said “no, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s probably just a design.” (But they all said it in their respective accents, like “eets pro-bob-lee chust a dee-zane,” or like that.)

Still, we have some lingering paranoia that it actually says, in some language foreign to us: “If you can read this, don’t tell me what it says, because I am a poopyface.”

Wear this shirt: and constantly wonder whether the proprietress at your favorite ethnic restaurant thinks you’re a poopyface.

Don’t wear this shirt: to a court appearance. Even if it doesn’t say anything at all about your being a poopyface, that’s a venue where you want to make a shirt-with-buttons kind of impression.

This shirt tells the world: “I may or may not be a poopyface. Probably not. But maybe.”

We call this color: jokey!

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