Runcible Blog

Friday night I decided to get poked with an ink-filled needle at Masterpiece Tattoo in Salem. I wasn't sure what to expect of the pain because everybody responds differently. At first, during the outline, it felt like a razor was scoring my arm slightly (I actually know how that feels). It wasn't too bad, but about ten minutes in, my ears started going blank, and my eyes started to fade out into blue. I felt like I was going to throw up, pass out, or fall asleep peacefully, but I didn't do either. I closed my eyes for a little bit and eventually started feeling normal again. The endorphins must've kicked in by the time Joe (the tattoo artist) started filling in the Pi. It felt much milder by that time, and I chatted with Joe a bit (cool guy). After about 45 minutes it was done, and I was happy, I think. Actually I don't remember feeling anything. It was as if π was already on my arm; I just had to get it filled with ink to see it. Pretty deep, huh?

Err, well as to why I picked π, unfortunately I don't have a plausible explanation or justification for it. Someone else wrote an explanation for his π tattoo that sounds good to me. I think it's fascinating to know that because the decimal expansion of π is infinite, everything I write and everything I read occurs somewhere in the digits of π. That's hard to imagine. For instance, my birthday occurs starting at 60,467,529 places after the decimal point in π, and my phone number occurs 12,964,862 places after the decimal. If you could search through the entire length of π (which you can't), you'd find everything -- every string of numbers and every string of characters converted to numbers. Imagine that!

But if that justification doesn't appeal to you, I suppose the easy thing to say is that since π is an irrational number, I figured it'd be a perfect tattoo for an irrational guy like me.

I'm sure I'm not done with tattoos considering I'm the kind of person who wears his beliefs on his sleeve. I want my grandkids to know what a big dork I used to be (assuming I don't become a dorky octogenarian).