Seized by the Day

How many lower backs, shoulder blades, ankles, I wonder, have had the words "Carpe Diem" tattooed on them since the phrase's introduction to mass consumption in 1989?

How much petty theft and vandalism has been performed in its name; how many STDs spread and contracted? How many painful, tacky, entirely pointless gestures have been lamely justified thus, then regretted, then forgotten for all time?

Indeed, I wonder if Horace ever thought the slogan so inspired as we do that he'd really care that 2000 years later it should be substantively indistinguishable from calls to, say, Seize the Pizza Pocket!, or Seize the Game Boy!

More seized by the day than seizing.