That doesn’t look very tasty

Raldy and Bia at Raldy Mods in Sao Paulo, Brazil, had a big keloid on the back on an inner conch to deal with, and decided, reasonably enough, to punch it out at a quite large 14mm. It looks great and turned out quite nicely, but… (continued inside the entry).

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I have no particular problem with autocannibalism, but I have to admit that I don’t really want to eat a big fat keloid. I have this notion that it probably has a texture and flavor somewhere between old leather and old, used bubble gum. Admittedly he does not look that gleeful about it either!

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Your (self-chosen) oldest modification

Not including modifications that were forced on you — circumcisions, ear piercings as a baby, and so on — what’s your oldest non-earlobe body modification? The reader in this entry tells me that she got her nipple pierced seventeen years ago at the Gauntlet in NYC — she’s 56 years old now and still loving it!

My nipple piercing (retired) will also turn seventeen on February 14, with my first tattoos turning 19 this year, meaning that I’ve had them for over half my life now. Roo and I were talking about our tongue splits as well, with 1998 being the year that tongue splitting exploded in popularity, many people will soon be walking around — still happy, like the woman below — with decade old split tongues.

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Is it body modification?

I’ve always been split on exactly where various forms of “tooth art” fall on the “is it body modification” question. Clearly wearing temporary caps on ones teeth is not (and if is is, so is wearing a hat or a mask), but permanent caps? I think one could make the argument that they’re beginning to move into the same realm as an implant? But then what about dreads?

Is tooth filing the same as cutting fingernails? What about gluing gems onto ones teeth? What if they’re set into a drilled hole first? In any case, I was looking at dental fangs made by iam:DistortedSmiles in NYC (who’s at myspace.com/distortedsmiles), and the thing I was most thrilled about were his unique “orc” or troll style teeth… As a big fan of warthogs, this is a sort of fang that I’ve been hoping someone would figure out for a long time. There are more pictures of them after the break, and for BME members there are lots of pictures of how he makes them out of acrylic in the next update (which I may end up posting early; later tonight).

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Forrest Gump

Please don’t ask me about what type of maintenance is being done on the IAM server or why, because I am not involved in it and not able to answer adequately. Here is my official answer to these sorts of things — if only to myself, but if it works for me, maybe it works for you too — at least for the next few months, as put to the flesh by Rodney Purrington of Piercing Emporium in Worchester, MA:

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