A Ship That Can Really Boogie

Posted on February 12, 2008 by Shannon Larratt

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One of the questions that’s been occupying my mind lately, is if you have about 175,000 sentences made up of about 2.3 million words total (ie. the titles and descriptions for all the pictures in the main tattoo gallery on BME), how do you quickly generate a list of the most popular phrases between 1 and 6 words long? As a programmer, these are the types of problems I greatly enjoy because on one hand it seems like a difficult thing to do because there’s so much data, but on the other hand, it almost always has a fast and elegant solution… I need this function to do automatic keywording, so for example, once a subject becomes popular enough in the tattoo galleries, it automatically gets its own gallery.

It’s actually really very easy to do this type of analysis… In my case I use a quick parsing function (written in assembly so it’s very efficient) to create a giant array of every phrase in every entry (about ten million entries), which is then sorted with a shell sort function, also written in assembly. At that point it’s a simple matter of counting the repeats to get the answer to the question — the whole process takes seconds. Incidentally, in the tattoo gallery right now there are about 2,000 useful keywords, and about 12,000 that aren’t useful — drove myself bonkers sorting them manually, but luckily it only has to be done once. Later today I think I’ll post some themed entries here from that data.

The other question that’s been occupying my mind lately, as I read the ModBlog comment forums, is why y’all gotta by such haters? For that purpose, I offer up this sacrificial lamb.

Interview with Toph

Posted on February 11, 2008 by Shannon Larratt

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I just posted an interview with Toph about his amazing stretched piercings, which include a nearly 2″ lip plate. Click through the picture rm bmeto read the interview now, and then come on back to comment or discuss it here.

Happy Birthday Mommy!

Posted on February 10, 2008 by Shannon Larratt

I hope people have a little more sense about this post than the analogous entry about the six-year old tattoo artist. Personally I agree that having your child’s artwork permanently made a part of your life is a wonderful way to hold onto a timeperiod that’s all too fleeting… And maybe will help you deal with them when they’re miserable teenagers, ha!

Anyway, Spiderlilly‘s daughter gave her a little self-portrait tattoo for her birthday, with some help from the folks at Suffer City Tattoo in Dallas, Texas. Too cute!

Therapeutic Genital Vacuum Pumping

Posted on February 10, 2008 by Shannon Larratt

A couple pictures for this entry continue after the break and there are of course more in the members galleries on BME.

Joanna, who says she’s a little shy to expose herself due to her handicap (having lost her left leg above the knee), writes,

I am a “big” women, at the end of my 30ies, not slim or looking like almost starving — many people like every grain of my “rich” body, others might think different.

I would like to contribute some pictures showing myself using the genital vacuum pump I had previously been prescribed by order of my gynecologist. He told me that my age-affected vaginal problems like dryness or loss of sensitivity could be solved without a substitutional hormone therapy but instead by a singular physical therapy in form of traditional vacuum suction…

….it works!

It’s definitely been my experience that many “problems” in modern times are solved with expensive, invasive, and dangerous means, when body modification (and other traditional paths) can very often solve the issues in a far simpler — and far more enjoyable — way.

STARfucker? Porn STAR?

Posted on February 10, 2008 by Shannon Larratt

Whenever I see Renny‘s star-shaped genital implants, I wonder if they’re uncomfortable for his partners. He’s had them for quite a long time now though I assume it’s all good — they were initially put in place by Jonathan at Tattoo Gallery in Valencia, Venezuela. Continue reading for the uncropped picture.

Riding the Cockstrich

Posted on February 10, 2008 by Shannon Larratt

This redcoat riding a cockstrich, accompanied by a turgid little cherub, is definitely one of the stranger tattoos I’ve seen, although it does have an air of tastefulness about it as well… It was done by Josh Schwegel at Slave to the Needle in Seattle, WA.

Tattoo Steganography

Posted on February 10, 2008 by Shannon Larratt

No, I’m not posting cute little fairy this to satiate the “navel piercings and butterflies on shoulders” crowd (as Serenity put it)… I’m posting it to see how quickly people can find the hidden message in this tattoo.

Unlikely but True: Achilles Piercing

Posted on February 9, 2008 by Shannon Larratt

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The last posting of an Achilles piercing here on Modblog generated a number of whiny complaints about how unviable and dangerous it is from conservative piercers**. Now, my feeling is that in what I hope will always remain a rebel artform — rather than an “industry” — that there’s no space for conservatism (or whining), so with that in mind there’s a Mr. Tetanus interview pending.

Mr. Tetanus, a performance artist, wears a self-made 10mm spike through his ankle, behind the Achilles tendon, and has had it now for about twelve years. In the picture below you can see it now, as well as a photo looking through the hole and showing the displacement of the tendon. He doesn’t take it out much because the hole closes up within about a minute, and begins to reseal itself within half an hour.

He uses the piercing in performances, swinging bowling balls and other weights (another performance artist — “Angel” — has actually hung from meat-hooks worn in this piercing), so it can definitely take quite a bit of abuse without crippling him. That said, he emphasizes that he doesn’t recommend anyone else try this, and notes that even after twelve years it’s never truly healed (that said, it’s not as if tongue piercings ever “truly” heal for many people either) and in theory continues to put him at risk.

Risk, Schmisk!!! Anyway, I’ll post the full interview soon, but I couldn’t resist putting up a teaser and a photo of his remarkable ankle!

** Note: Since there are some serious comprehension issues with this entry getting people even whinier, let me be perfectly clear: I couldn’t care less if a piercer feels that they don’t want to do this, and personally I don’t think this should be offered on the walk-in public. Where I have a problem is if people say that no one should be doing or getting this modification (or other heavy mods). Body modification is where it is today because people informed themselves about the risks and tried new things, often with what seemed like serious dangers at the time — and when that ends, body modification begins to die.

Unlikely but True: Finger Ring Piercing

Posted on February 9, 2008 by Shannon Larratt

Visually I’ve always been a fan of “finger ring piercings” — kind of like the finger version of a frenum ring. Unfortunately, they don’t tend to heal very well because not only do they take a lot of abuse, but they’re exposed to huge amounts of foreign bacteria. My friend Dominick from Starlight Tattoo in Belleville, NJ just sent me a picture of one that he did that’s now about two years old and looking quite impressively healthy.

If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that almost anything will heal on someone, no matter how difficult or prone to rejection!

Patchwork Flower

Posted on February 8, 2008 by Shannon Larratt

I like the colors and patterns in this simple flower tattoo, done by Anderson at Outlaws Tattoo in Petropolis, RJ, Brasil — especially the white flowers on red background, and the yellow/orange stripes, both without outline.

Anyway, I’m pretty tired, and have been working on a major and much-needed revamp of BME’s tattoo galleries that I hope to be able to post early this week, so if I don’t post much here this weekend, it’s because I’m focusing on that.