It’s surprisingly hard to write a modblog post when a homeless person is outside your window yelling about the color of the bricks on your building. I’m tempted to yell down to him “those aren’t bricks, it’s stucco” just to see what he says.
Indy sent in some photos of a scarification he did recently in Brussels, Belgium. I’m sure he’ll send in some healed photos once this piece heals up.
See more in “Misc. Cuttings“ (Scarification)
What’s that catch phrase Paris Hilton used to rattle off? Loves it! Jezabel-Propaganda definitely hits my top ten list for babes in bathtubs. The photographs are by J’Accusse Photography
See more in “Modded Women“ (members only)
There’s a little bit more when you click through..
Our tree is decorated. There are a pile of presents under the tree. The majority of them are for my daughter but I’m hoping that Santa might be able to stop in Sweden and pick up Spheniscus for me. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
Since I’ve posted about this in a couple places, I figured I should also post it on Modblog. It’s been over a year since I last posted about BME being sued and we’re still deep in the thick of it. As it stands now, BME owes about 50k in legal fees and I’d really like to get some help to pay those bills down. If one day’s worth of visitors to Modblog donated a dollar, I’d have way more than enough to pay my legal fees and start the BME Legal Defense Fund that I’ve been working on but haven’t had a way to fund as of yet and buy a house, a car and retire (I am only slightly kidding but Modblog has A LOT of visitors).
Since BME can’t accept paypal or other similar payment processing sites, I’ve put up sets of sticker packs that you can buy to help support BME and contribute to it’s legal fees. Click here to get your fundraising sticker pack. Not only will you get to help support BME but you’ll get some limited edition stickers which unless you’ve been hoarding the stickers, they’re impossible to get.
I’ve set it up so there are 5 donation levels.
The levels available are:
Bronze – $20
Silver – $50
Titanium – $100
Gold – $500
Platinum – $1000
You can mix and match any donation level or add multiple quantities to get to the desired amount that you want to donate. Once we get out of this mess, I’ll be converting any left over legal funds to the BME Legal Defense Fund and start going after cities that are zoning shops out of business and helping out artists and practitioners around the world who need help. Before I can get that done, I need your help to put the final nails in this frivolous lawsuits coffin and give this guy what he deserves. When we win, if I’m awarded my legal fees, since he’s the one who brought this frivolous suit to begin with, I’ll be donating those funds to kick start the LDF.I’ll be leaving the sticker packs up as an easy way for people to continue to donate to the defense of Body Modification worldwide.
I will also be making a permanent Thank You page to those who donate and support BME. If you’re a business who has been profiting thanks to the free advertising you receive on BME, consider giving back to help us recover from this devastating and draining lawsuit. I know BME’s staff and I would really appreciate it. If you only want to donate and do not want the stickers sent out to you, please send us an email at BMEshop and let us know. If you want to donate anonymously and not be included on the public and prominent thank you page, please email us and let us know that as well.
I’ll be posting an update in the next couple of weeks as to where the lawsuit is at once I get the approval from my lawyer about what I’ve written up. For now though you can check this link from November of 2008!
I removed the post that Sean put up earlier which was causing such controversy. I didn’t want the discussion to keep revolving around one person’s tattoos because we don’t know if that person is a racist or just an idiot (if it’s the first then it looks like the answer would be both).
Shannon and I have been discussing the post via email earlier and he reminded me of this old post of a Hitler portrait from a tattooer in Singapore. As it stands now and has been the policy for years, racist and hategroup tattoos go into the Political Section of BME. Similar to the Animal Tattoo & Piercing sections, we don’t support it but BME’s mandate is to archive and catalog the evolution and history of our community, even the ignorant aspects of it. However, that doesn’t expand to other parts of BME like IAM.
IAM’s long standing TOS states the following:
“IAM is a community built around principles of tolerance. You may not post hatespeech (race, gender, or sexuality-based attacks). This includes use of terms like “gay” or “fag” or “kike” in a derogatory manner, even in jest. This rule is very strict, and extends to racist codes and iconography (“14″, “88″, and so on), as well as NSBM and racist band lists and so on. This includes verifiable offsite posts. To be very clear about this: if you are a bigot, onsite or off, stay off IAM. This is not a ban on racism. This is a total ban on bigots.”
This begs the question as far as political commentary on racist tattoos. I personally don’t want to see them get any more attention than they deserve, which is why they’re generally quietly filed away, along with other ill advised modifications. We can’t sit back and pretend that they don’t exist but we also don’t need to give them any room in the spot light that is Modblog.
As both Sean and I have said in the comments section, neither of us recognized the tattoo as a Totenkopf. At first glance I thought it was three skulls because you couldn’t see the entire tattoo. I was sent some messages stating that the racist aspect of the tattoo should be ignored because it wasn’t the focus of the post. The focus of the post was the small boobs and not tattoos. I don’t agree with that line of thinking. One of the other reasons we can’t flat out reject racist tattoos is that we simply don’t have the manpower to be fully adept at all the secret racist codes out there. As none of the staff on BME are racists, we don’t know the secret handshakes. So we try to file the tattoos where they belong. Maybe it would be more helpful if racists grew balls and weren’t so embarrased by their beliefs that they have to disguise them.
The reasoning for this post was to give you guys a post to comment on that wasn’t attacking a specific individual. So let your thoughts fly.
At first when I saw this photo, the tourist posing with photographs from super heroes on Hollywood Blvd popped into my head. Luckily enough for us though this is just one kick ass couple that met through BME. I love the juxtaposition of his heavily modified face and her perfectly plain skin. Gnomoweb and his bride to be are yet another couple from Brasil. 🙂
See more in “Couples who met through BME“ (Culture)
I dedicate this post to Google Adsense. The more Google tells me I can’t post images like this, the more it makes me want to post them. I hate being told what to do. I like to make my own decisions and this is one reason that I’ve never wanted to have advertising on BME. I don’t want to be forced to bow down to pressure from advertisers telling me things are “too extreme” or “too weird”. This is my community that I love and cherish. I will fight for our rights to do what we want with our bodies till the day I die and I hope you all will stand up and fight with me.
Thanks to Jared from The Loft in Columbus, OH for the photos. Click through for more, including googles version of pornography!
The world is not a just fair place. I’m an adult. I get this. I am fully versed that when deciding to heavily modify yourself, you have to take the challenges and obstacles that come with it. Take Modblog for example. It’s usually not a hard task finding photos to post, after we try and hide some watermarks in there so the sites that steal photos that are submitted to BME can actually be caught but it’s a gentle reminder or a swift kick in the pants how fucked up the world is. I see all of these sites that steal our content and then get linked from other sites and receive hundreds of thousands of hits from stumble upon or Digg. Even though you can’t link to BMEzine.com from those sites. So the BME is blocked but not the sites that steal BME’s submissions and post them on their own all the while displaying advertising, which is generally google ads.
Some of you may have noticed that I no longer have Google ads displayed in any of the galleries on BME. Here is an email that I received the other day:
Hello,
While reviewing your account, we noticed that you are currently displaying
Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our policies. For
instance, we found violations of AdSense policies on pages such as
http://www.bme.com/ritual/supsus001.html. Please note that this URL is an
example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of your
website.As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to
place Google ads on pages with violent content. This includes sites with
content related to breaking bones, getting hit by trains or cars, or
people receiving serious injuries.Please make any necessary changes to your webpages in the next 72 hours.
We also suggest that you take the time to review our program policies
(https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) to ensure that all of your other
pages are in compliance.Once you update your site, we will automatically detect the changes and ad
serving will not be affected. If you choose not to make the changes to
your account within the next three days, your account will remain active
but you will no longer be able to display ads on the site. Please note,
however, that we may disable your account if further violations are found
in the future.Thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Uhm, excuse me?? Did google just send me an email comparing the act of suspension to the same content as breaking bones, getting hit by trains or cars, or people receiving serious injuries?? Yeah, they did. When I wrote them back.. oh wait, you can’t write them back because all contact and demands are sent from no-reply email addresses so you can’t even have a rational discussion with a human being. I had a contact email address for a google ad rep so I forwarded them this message asking how they can compare something like suspension, which is a right of passage in ancient cultures and a very personal and spiritual (and I don’t mean in a God kind of way) experience for an individual. I tried to explain to them it’s not the same as some “gross out” type site that films people getting into car accidents or being hit by a train but their only reply was that they also found ads being displayed next to “pornography” which was actually the image I’m posting below.
Oh no! Seriously! If this is the type of thing that’s considered pornography, then I’m in a heap of trouble. Please remember if you see sites stealing photos from BME, please use this url to create a ticket so that we can get the images off of their sites. I’ll be following this post in a second with a ton of suspension photos as a hearty dose of F-U-Google!
What a beautiful morning. There definitely isn’t going to be any snow this Christmas here in Los Angeles but that’s one of the main reasons I live here. I’m going to be in and out over the next couple of weeks so please understand that while you’re on vacation from school or work, that we here at BME are putting the final touches on the new BME so that we can launch it around the second week of January. Modblog is going to have to take a back seat for a couple weeks while we plod ahead with that. It’s almost two years in the making and I hope it’s worth the wait.
I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has continued to support BME. The community is really about you guys and it is what makes this place so great. I’d also like to thank the new contributors I’ve had helping me keep up and especially thank Sean and Jen for their help with Modblog. I’ve enjoyed reading their posts and I hope you have too.
Before you click through, make that guess. Don’t forget that you’ve only got a couple more days to try to catch up to KitanoKaryuudo who has submitted 45,670 images this year. Check out the leaderboards to see where you are at. The top 20 contributors in each section will be getting awards!
See more in “Female Torture Play“ (members only)
I recently wrote about how the Saddle Ranch Chop House abuses their “Anti Gang Tattoo” Policy to keep out heavily tattooed “gang members” like myself and my tattooer friends but the real reason that we were at City Walk was to see the newly released movie Avatar.
Now anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a huge movie buff. Most of the time the biggest response you’ll get from me is “it was okay.” which generally means just that. When asked about Avatar, I said I liked it which means a lot coming from me. One of the things I liked was the integration of mods into the characters. It was so seemless and natural that is it wasn’t for the fact that some characters had stretched lobes and some didn’t, I would have assumed it was just the way they were “born”.
The movie’s male lead is a “jar head” and has stereotypical tribal tattoos. I couldn’t find anything better so I’m using the images from the movie’s website. He’s got a tribal half sleeve on one arm which you can see a smidge of and a tribal armband on the other arm.
I’d be interested to know if these are Sam Worthington’s real tattoos or if they were fakes used for the movie. Google was about as helpful as ever in directing me to celebrity tattoo sites that had the typical Angelina Jolie tattoos and not much else. This stuff isn’t as interesting, click through to see some more shots from the movie.
Nothing like scantily clad tiger/cat people to make your night more enjoyable. The female lead in the movie, Neytiri, has what look like 1/2″ stretched lobes, as did several of the other planets indigenous population. Coupled in with natural “stripes”, which remind me of Katzen, they flowed extremely well. I know it’s only a movie and these are just characters but that’s one beautiful looking cat lady.
The last “modification” though not a consensual one, is a mod that we’ve featured here on Modblog many times. We’ve seen all sorts of facial scarification like this one done on bouncers, bounty hunters and other people who want to look like they’ve either been stabbed or attacked by bears. Either way, I think the makeup department did a great job on this one because it looked really realistic on screen.
All of that being said, I definitely would recommend the movie. We saw it in 3D but I think it would be exceptional without the added special effects.
If I had more time, I’d make an IMDB style database of all the mods in movies, just for fun.
**Images are courtesy and property of Fox. Visit their website for more information on the movie.