Collar Hearts

Cute and simple, Rachel‘s hearts were done by John Deweese at Great American Tattoo Company in Shelbyville, Indiana. I get a kick out of all these tattoos that are inherently linked to youth culture — in the previous generation of tattooed seniors, most people had military tattoos and sailor stuff and the general iconography of adulthood, but it’s going to be different this time around, with most people wearing the iconography of youth…

Una Poema

Since people seem to like the large-scale text tattoos (like the recent Kerouac tattoo, a typo-ridden ‘If’, a Bukowski poem, A Tale of Two Cities, and this big script piece), here’s another… This poem that Avonchorda wears was written by herself and tattooed by Alex at Las Calaveras Body Modification Studio in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, where she lives. You can see it in full on her IAM page.

Marking The Years

Secret South got the “32″ on his thirty-second birthday, followed by another friend who got his on his 36th birthday, and then another during her 33rd year. Finally, his lover got hers this past Sunday for Mother’s Day during her 34th year. I can make some guesses about their personalities from their individual choices of fonts, but the only thing I can deduce for sure is that Secret South is mature and prefers the company of people older than himself.

More CT scans and x-rays

I liked this CT scan from Jason Hinchee, who’s got a stretched 5/8″ septum tunnel in place. The CT scan was done for some upcoming surgery on his ear, so he was able to keep the septum in place… More images of others after the break.

Above is a moth xray which shows Rubber_Duckie‘s tongue web piercing — and if you look carefully you can also see a tooth gem, a nostril screw, and a tragus piercing. Below is Andrey’s xray (sent in by his friend Golddust) showing a couple tunnels and a tongue bar.

Where will all the boobies go?

Now, I saw good ol’ Giles cheering that ModBlog might soon be ruled under an enlightened era of feminism, while I saw other people opining, oh please, please, where will we get our boobie shots? Now, don’t worry… If my guesses as to who some of my replacements are going to be, I can tell you that they’re real sleazes, and you won’t have to worry about getting your fix. But, until a new era of shallow excuses starts, here’s a nice photo of Dagon taken by Greg Gabelman in Vancouver, with the chestpiece being done by Shawn O’Connor.

April Fools!

Yeah, I wish. Anyway, to give the new writers some time to get rolling on posts of their own, which hopefully will start quite soon, I’ve been asked to post a few more entries before I take off for the long weekend… It’s Victoria Day here so I’m looking forward to fireworks.

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

After a personally difficult legal dispute over BME, I’ve had to face the potentially insurmountable reality of being massively in debt, and I have chosen to transfer the business to Rachel (the details of this deal are sealed, so please don’t ask). Within the month my role at BME will come to an end, and new staff (made up largely of people who’ve been working on BME for some time as well) will be taking over. I will no longer be writing online about body modification, although I will be maintaining my regular blog and other projects of course, as well as working on several body modification book projects which I am eager to complete.

It’s definitely a very strange and mixed set of feelings, having run this site from the very beginning, over nearly a decade and a half. On one hand I’m very much looking forward to having the opportunity and time to paint and tackle new adventures, and on the other hand I will very much miss both the people and the subject in general that I came to know through BME. That said, when I grew up and fell in love with body modification — and later built BME — this was a very different and much more “outsider” culture, so maybe now, as not just tattooing but body modification as a whole enjoys unprecedented levels of popularity and acceptability, it is a good time to pass the torch on to a new generation. It’s my hope that they maintain the site in the spirit that it was begun, while taking on the challenges of a new environment.

I have very much enjoyed being a part of BME and I leave it with good memories. Thank you to everyone who’s been a friend of the site, and everyone who’s helped bring it to this point. I hope you’ve enjoyed my contributions — I know I’ve enjoyed yours — and I hope that you continue to enjoy what BME brings in the future.

See you in hell! 😛

         Shannon
         [email protected]
         zentastic.com