BME Social Media

Word of mouth has been our method of reuniting the community, and it has brought a substantial amount of us together. I am inspired by your loyalty and I want to remind more people of BME’s existence. In 2020 we gained control over @bmezine on Instagram. It has been sitting dormant since then, which we are changing now. I believe that we can reunite thousands of past BME members by getting exposure there. Initially, I would like to feature you on our page. If you have any works you are particularly proud of, please send submissions to [email protected] and include if possible your artist, any interesting details about the work, and you @ if you would like to be tagged.

I have ideas of interviews, videos about different body mods, and news, but you know exactly what you want to see. If you have suggestions or ideas please email me at [email protected] .

BME continues to exist because of all of you. Thank you,

Nefarious Larratt

BMEShop

Despite the hurricanes in 2015 which destroyed almost all of what Rachel owned, she managed to save the original inventory from BME. We have relisted some of the stock on BMEShop.com with the hopes you may be interested. 

Our first drop includes a selection of one of a kind skeleton statues, originally hand carved in Indonesia from animal bones. Depending on the success of this drop, future drops will include jewelry, suspension supplies, rare body-mod books and different types of body modification supplies. 

Every purchase is very appreciated as 100% of the profits go directly to the restoration and maintenance of BME. I am very grateful for the continued support BME has received and I will be hand writing a thank you note for everyone who orders from this drop. 

– Nefarious Larratt 

Rachel Larratt 1980-2022

Unfortunately, when we lost some of the ModBlog content, it included the post about Rachel’s passing. (Original Post) Rachel passed away on June 22, 2022. She died in her sleep.

Even now, it’s extremely difficult to write this post. Rachel meant so much to so many. She was my friend but she was so much more than that. For me, she was family and today, just a week after what would have been her 43rd birthday, the pain is still very raw. For those of us who really knew her, Rachel was a light and a force. She was passionate, generous and kind. She was goofy and ridiculous. Without even knowing it or trying to, she could command a room.

I’ll never stop missing you Rachel.

Come Join Us

For those of you still with us. We’ve setup a new (temporary?) site where we can all connect with each other and share our photos and stories again. SOCIAL.BME.COM is that place and we hope you’ll join us. While I don’t expect a swarm of people signing up, due to the currently limited resources, we’re doing a controlled rollout to ensure the performance and availability of what little we have online right now.

The software is called Mastodon, it’s a decentralized social networking software. At this time we’re keeping this community (node) private. Meaning your posts do not show up on the network (only on this node), nor do they show up to non-logged in users. Currently we have no plans of opening it completely public, but it’s not impossible. Of course any future changes to visibility will be communicated to all users.

We hope to see you there.

https://social.bme.com/invite/uqpMbjaC

-jonathon

To The BME Community

I hope you might remember me, my name is Nefarious. My childhood was surrounded by BME and I have missed it in the past years, so hello I hope you are doing well.  As you may already know, today 10 years ago my dad Shannon Larratt passed away. And if you were not aware, my mom Rachel Larratt passed away last year in June. Together they built BME and created a place where people truly had freedom. BME may have not been as active recently as it was in the past, but I do not want to let it die with them. Unfortunately through those years of neglect, the site and community have deteriorated. Since my mom’s passing we have been dealing with hosting issues, unforeseen struggles, and a string of bad luck. We’re still gaining full control over some accounts. It is very complicated, but we are asking for patience. We are trying to get it back, but this time it will take longer than it has before.

I cannot promise that the millions of photos and videos since its inception in 1996 are safe right now, but if it does come to it, together we can create a new collection. Jon, Jen, Marks and I have worked tirelessly trying to keep BME online, and we will continue to do so. In the meantime we will keep this blog running, and we are launching a private website that will allow us to stay connected.

Times have changed and so have all of you. BME on the other hand has had nearly no changes in the past 15 years. We are overdue for more than just a makeover and recent events mean that BMEShop is our only source of income right now. If you ever want to make suggestions, or even just want to send a friendly letter, please reach out at [email protected]

– Nefarious

We’re still here. We’re not giving up.

I wanted to provide another update since it’s a new year. As you can tell I’ve not managed to import any of the old Moblog content yet, but I’m hoping to work on that soon. I was away for the holiday spending time with family. I believe I have been able to fix the main site billing issues so you should hopefully be able to create new subscriptions or if you had one that expired over the holiday it should renew very soon.

We are continuing to keep the site alive and online and we’re working in the background on some plans for the future. Please stay tuned, as we hope to make some announcements on the future path for BME. Thank you all for the support.

-jonathon

We’re back, but…

As you can see we’re not quite 100%. We were able to recover file backups (images, scripts, etc) of the sites on the machine we lost. However we’ve not been able to recover database backups (posts, comments, etc). On top of that the backup server in our rack has crashed and isn’t responding. We may need to get someone to physically reboot the machine which will take more time. And even if we get that server back online we don’t know if we’ll be able to find what we need*. I’m really sorry, and I assure you nobody is more upset about it than I am. Jen and I will continue to do our best to keep things running until we have a clear plan of what the future will be.

In the mean time we’ve setup a new blog and we’ll do our best to provide some meaningful updates and regular content for you. The theme isn’t quite what it was but I hope it brings some kind of familiarity while we work on recovery.

If you’re reading this and you care about BME, we’d love for you to leave a comment as a show of support so we know you’re all out there. This feels like a very lonely place right now and that is very much the anti-thesis of what BME stands for.

Sorry I don’t have any good news.

* We’re working on scraping the internet archive for old posts and comments.

-jonathon

Rachel Larratt 1980 – 2022

It is with a broken heart that I must make this announcement. On June 24th, 2022, Rachel passed away in her sleep. What can I possibly say? Rachel was a force and a light in the world. She had a passion and a love for the body modification community. She did so much for so many and without looking for any praise. In addition to our BME community, Rachel was well known in the car racing community and had just returned from the Gold Rush Rally, where, I’m told, she had the time of her life.

Right now, we are broken. We are deeply grieving this magnificent person whose life was cut far too short. Please keep her fiancee Marks and her daughter Ari in your thoughts and please respect theirs (and my) privacy at this time, while we try to come to terms with the unimaginable. Rachel leaves behind countless friends and loved ones who mourn her.

Rachel’s good friend Jimbo posted a video that can be seen, here.

We’ll miss you, Rachel. Your memory will remain a blessing for all who knew and loved you.

BME will be right back!

BME suffered a hardware malfunction on Sunday, April 5th. This has caused a site wide outage. This affects BME and the “friends of BME” sites that are hosted in BME’s colo cabinet.

While the hardware that needs to be replaced is fairly minor, it is a critical component of BME’s hosting environment and can’t function without it. It is also a specialty item that can’t be sourced locally. Due to closures and delays caused by COVID-19, what could normally be sourced in a few hours, will likely take several days.

Please bear with us while we obsessively check the mail patiently wait for the replacement to arrive.

Remember to wash your hands and practice social distancing!

Find more information at CDC.gov! 

(Update: In case you missed it, BME has been back up since April 10th!)