Tattoo Survey

I received the following request for a tattoo survey. If you’re interested in participating, check out the information below.

Are you a tattooed job seeker over the age of 18? If so, you could get a $5 Amazon gift card by participating in our study at the following site, https://msupsych.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_78Onuts5qRiJ6O9. We are a team of researchers from Michigan State University interested in your views on tattooed individuals and the job search process. The survey is anonymous and no one will be able to link your responses back to you. The information is being collected solely for research purposes. In exchange for completing this survey, you will receive a $5 Amazon gift card.

Patches!

People have asked for these for a long time, well that time is finally here. BME patches!

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If you would like to buy your very own Hockey or Calm patches, you can get them here:

Hockey Logo Patch
Calm Logo Patch

You may have heard about the recent flooding in Columbia, South Carolina. Unfortunately, Rachel was affected by this flood. She lost all of her belongings in the flood and the home that she lives in with Ari and her boyfriend David received serious structural damage. Things were lost that money can never replace and during this devastation Rachel has been working hard to help others in her community. FEMA and insurance won’t come close to covering their financial losses and a friend of David’s set up a GoFundMe to help them out. If you’re interested in helping, you can check out the GoFundMe here.

Monsters of Schlock needs YOU!

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21 time Guinness World Record Breaking freakshow and body modification enthusiasts the Monsters of Schlock need your help in reaching their crowdfunding goal of making their sitcom pilot into a TV series!

The great Orbax, longtime BME contributor and emcee of the Toronto BMEFests, along with his brother Sweet Pepper Klopek the barb-wire bat wielding lead singer of the BMEFest fan favourite the Legendary Klopeks, have been traveling the world for the last ten years with their comedy freakshow. They’ve achieved some amazing feats in that time such as Sweet Pepper’s Guinness Record for the most mousetraps released on a tongue in one minute (https://youtu.be/64L5Vz5AaUc) and Orbax’s record for towing a 9000 lb truck for 111.7 metres using two shark hooks in his back (https://youtu.be/USgV62alu1U).

Last year they shot a sitcom pilot, entirely funded and produced on their own. You can see it on YouTube (https://youtu.be/GXslnT8HUZk) or watch it below. The concept is Flight of the Conchords meets Super Dave Osborne, but with a freakshow twist.

Their Kickstarter has rewards ranging anywhere from buying the DVD’s to getting your own personalized stunt, to having them show up at your house and do their live freakshow!

The only way the TV series is going to happen is if they can raise the money to pay for production, and that means that the only way you’ll get to see it is by pledging. Head over and help them out (http://kck.st/1F9O4Ut).

Maybe this will actually stump you….Guess What??

Let’s take it back a little bit to an old classic…See who’s still around, and who’s kept that keen eye sharp!

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Get it right?  If not, well, there’s always next time…

What we have here is a fresh tongue split performed by traveling Body Modification practitioner Chase Campbell (Instagram: Zentriratna), done on a heavily tattooed and stained tongue.

Want more?  Check back next week.  In the meantime, be on the lookout for new Modblog posts from a brand new writing staff for 2015!

Neck tattoos and the power of words

A lot of you have probably seen the article on Jezebel where a woman tells her version of events when she was turned down for a neck tattoo. If you haven’t seen it, you can have a look here.

The artist in question, Dan Blythewood, wrote a very even and well thought out reply to the incident and the article that was written about him.

Anonymous submission to BME

The reality is, none of us were there, so we can’t know for sure what went down. The problem, all too often, is that someone has an experience that was negative or that didn’t go their way and they take to the Internet to trash the business or person. All of us has had a bad experience somewhere I’m sure and maybe sometimes we can recognize that we were being unreasonable ourselves. If I’m being honest, I can think of times when I reacted poorly to a situation and the business/worker wasn’t really at fault. Trashing the business or person online can have serious repercussions and that’s something we should all consider before we exact our online revenge for some slight, real or imaginary. We are attacking a person’s livelihood or, in the case of a shop, attacking the livelihood of several people. Our words are powerful and if people choose to react immediate to one version of events, they can seriously harm a business. Sometimes our words are wholly justified but maybe it’s a good idea to think on it and take at least 24 hours to decide if this is worth the wrath of the Internet or if maybe we handled the situation poorly. All that said, I don’t know Dan at all, but I do know that the policy of not tattooing hands, necks and faces on people who are not already heavily tattooed or otherwise set in their life path where visible tattoos won’t hamper their future, is a common policy and one that many professional artists apply to all sexes.  At the end of the day, personally, I’d rather see an artist who has ethics than one who will just take my money and do whatever I want, regardless of how foolish or detrimental it may turn out to be. (Please note, I’m not calling visible tattoos foolish in this instance because I happen to think they’re beautiful however I do believe it’s foolish to not consider the long term consequences of something so visible.)

I’m sure there are many who could write far more eloquently on this topic than I can but those are my thoughts and I have a hard time believing things went down as described by the person seeking a tattoo. At the end of the day, she got her tattoo elsewhere and I’m not sure why she felt it necessary to take to the Internet to not only trash the artist but mock his work as well. Please leave your comments and thoughts below but please also remember to be respectful. Name calling (either way) is not helpful and doesn’t invite further discussion.

Note: The photo at the top of this article is not of anyone involved in either article. The photo was submitted anonymously to BME.

ModBlog News of the Week: June 12, 2015

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Here is your news roundup for June 12, 2015:
* Chicago police union fights policy banning visible tattoos
* Tattoo removal becoming popular for unpopular body ink
* Woman’s Tattoos Mistaken for Cancer on Imaging Test
* Thousands sign petition calling for ban on children’s ear piercings

In celebrity news…
* Miley Cyrus superfan to REMOVE tribute tattoos after singer branded them “ugly”


If you read any news stories relating to body modification please do send them in.

Submit news stories.

ModBlog News of the Week: June 5, 2015

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Sorry for the delay, I’ve been having a hard time finding news stories and last week I had a medical procedure and then ended up really sick. But we’re back with more news. Don’t forget, you can help by sending in news stories to share.

Submit news stories.

Here is your news roundup for June 5, 2015:

* Texan gets Frankie MacDonald tattoo after dare
* A Sketchbook Full of Synthetic Skin Lets Tattoo Artists Safely Doodle
* Becoming disabled by choice, not chance (this article actually quotes ModBlog)
* Jack Rudy on Tattoos’ Stigma and Why It’s Good They Hurt
* Tattoo removal a booming business now it is quicker and cheaper

In celebrity news:

* Rumer Willis Dishes on How Her New Tattoo Commemorates Her ‘Journey’ on Dancing with the Stars
* Introducing Caitlyn Jenner
* Bengals Tackle Devon Still Dedicates Two Tattoos to Daughter Leah’s Cancer Battle

Sweet pussy

Thanks to Ekaterina Split_mini-LDG for the submission of her with her sweet pussy. No info on any of the mods was included but maybe she’ll let us know more about the (what I assume are custom made) plugs she’s wearing.

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PS I apologize to both her and you, dear reader, for my lack of imagination when it comes to titles.

Artist Campaign

I was asked to share the following from an artist who is running an IndieGogo campaign:

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Aloha! My name is Rose Adare, I’m an evocative artist disabled by a muni train in 2005. To get through the hard times, I began painting truly inspiring, brilliant, out of the box people, and now I have solid offers for shows guaranteed in Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle, AND Brooklyn, NY! But I need your help to get there!

I’m not asking for plane tickets or hotels. I’ll sleep on couches and eat ramen. But I need help with shipping and production costs.

I’ve had three amazing shows already, at the Hawaii Museum of Contemporary Art, The J+ Gallery in Holualoa, and the prestigious Maui Arts & Cultural Center’s Schaefer Portrait Gallery, but now it’s time to reach the mainland.

Hawai’i is 75 miles across and is 2,467 miles from California. That’s a long distance to move 31 paintings, 5 plexiglass shadowboxes, and 35 plexiglass descriptions—especially when some of the paintings are 10 x 7 feet! The powerful success behind Restraint & Revolution “took a village,” and now it’ll “take a continent” to move across the ocean.

http://igg.me/at/adare/x

More about her art and samples of her work after the break.

Amidst the marble halls of classical portraiture one rarely sees portrayals of body modification, let alone artists like Rose Adare. Sporting spikes in her ears and tattoos down her arm, Adare describes herself as an evocative realist, combining classical elements with dynamic subject matter. When a 60 ton municipal train knocked Adare into disability, she became no stranger to pain. Drawing with a pencil taped to her fingers, she explored the world of punk-therapy, playing loud music to drown out her migraine while trailing torches over her body as a fire-dancer—just to feel something more than the ache in her bones. Settling in a house of body-mod artists on the volcanic island of Hawaii, she began painting her amazing portrait series Restraint & Revolution. But now she needs your help to ship her gorgeous paintings to booked shows in Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. Check out her amazing book, which contains inspiring life stories of her truly boundary-pushing models! She’ll even sketch you, draw you, or paint you, whoever you are, however you are, in all your beautiful diversity.

Excerpts from Restraint & Revolution: The Art of Adare

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Primal Buddha
Kala Kaiwi, Oil on Belgian Linen, 24 x 48 in.

Holding the Guinness World Record (2015) for largest, non-surgically made flesh tunnels, Kala’s stretched earlobes are 4.3 inches in diameter. Instantly recognizable, his body is his art. “When I started researching about it, and finding out about the traditional aspects of the piercings, the cultural beliefs, the background behind piercings—you know, why people originally started getting piercings, were a lot of the African people started stretching their lips and beautifying themselves by stretching their ears—I started realizing—wow! This is a whole different world!”

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Venus Unbound
Jesi Collins, Oil on Belgian Linen, 36 x 48 in

Born with congenital hip dysplasia in Port Angeles, WA, Jesi spent most of her childhood in body casts. When they finally cut them off, she laughed: “Look Mom! I have knees!” Growing up in a 12 volt, off grid house in Hawaii, Jesi spent a lot of time drawing, or else swimming in the old, redwood pickle barrel rain catchment tank when her parents weren’t looking. “In 4th grade, I stole a tattoo magazine out of my brother’s room, the Sept. ’94 edition of Skin & Ink.Until then, I hadn’t ever thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up, but secretly I wanted to be the lady in the article…I decided then that being a tattooist would be a really cool job.”

ADARE.ARDENS

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Robert Bennett, Oil & Silver Leaf on Belgian Linen, 12 x 48 in.

“Weather change: rain, lightning, huge tree. Scared the crap out of me. The pain during the actual hooking procedure was the worst part of it, then your body kicks into high gear and you don’t really feel it anymore. But when they pulled me up into the actual tree? Rain, thunder, light show? It was one of the greatest experiences I’d ever had. I became addicted to it after a while. I’ve done a lot of suspensions, but the last one was at my friends funeral. He used to do a lot of suspensions as well, and when he died we suspended off a tree in his backyard. Ever since then I a haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. I don’t think it’s dead in my life. I’d rather suspend other people and let them experience something new.”
RoseAdare.com