We’ve got more stuff than just this back in stock at BMEshop but check it out. You can also find the “Body Piercing is not a crime” tshirt, the Guess Where? shirt and Calm shirts and Team BME shirts all back in stock! Tax return money is right around the corner, why not help out BME and buy some stuff?
Check out four reprints added back to BMEshop Full runs in womens small to X-Large and mens small to 2XL.
Depending on the shirt/size, there could be as little as one print of that shirt. I’m working on getting some classic shirts redone like “In case of Emergency this bandage can be used as a shirt” by Jasonthe29th. As well as some totally new designs. Help support BME and buy some new shirts!
Are there any other things people would like to see available in the shop? More tshirts are always obvious but what about key chains? Baseball caps? toques? other accessories? Any ideas are appreciated!
Your Friday news, a day late and a dollar short. Forgive me ModBlog, I tried to work on this while visiting my father in the hospital and couldn’t get the file I’d saved to open. Then I forgot. Enough excuses, on with the news!
In Port Orchard, “tattoos get nod from veterans group“.
A man in China is offering to “sell the skin off his back“.
In Philly, a photography exhibition by Marianne Bernstein is currently on display which captures tattoo culture. The photographs appear in a book titled, Tatted. I definitely want a copy of this book.
Leave it to MTV, in another exploitative reality show a man who only withstood the pain of tattoos by having a few drinks first, finds he can’t get work with those unsightly markings. Read more about that, here. Sorry ModBlog, I never claimed to be an impartial journalist and this one really grinds my gears.
Out of San Francisco, we discover the allure of body art.
Boing Boing has a book review up for Tattoo in Japan. Looks like another interesting book to own!
Here’s an article explaining “Why People Regret Having Tattoos“.
Grilled cheese sandwiches and unicorns. Did I get your attention?
Record setting tattoo sessions? Kids these days, what will they think of next?
Here’s a nice story about a tattoo event for charity out of Rapid City.
The San Francisco Examiner is running a story about Ed Hardy.
Finally, an unfortunate story about a woman who was offered a job and then had the offer revoked when they found out she had a small tattoo on her wrist.
The last time we checked in with Dustin Poole from Sacred Balance in Calgary, Alberta, we were admiring this excellent sleeve and this sultry silver lady. This time around, though, we have this vulgar unicorn porno, starring this poor, once-majestic creature who passed out drunk one fateful night and woke up in a bathtub with those sinful male bits sewed to his forehead. Life can be so cruel.
See more in “Cartoon Tattoos“ (Tattoos)
I’ll confess that I did not recognize this hideous mutant as the “MSI pony,” but was instead attracted to it due to (1) the fact that its coloring is fairly unconventional but quite well executed, and (2) my inexplicable fascination with artistic representations of nightmarish animal hybrids and disfigurements (etc., etc.). And hey, I think this unicorn/fawn/octopus mash-up fits in nicely. For the record, when it comes to my favorite tattoo genres: food and monstrous animal concoctions. Hey now.
(Tattoo by James Clouser at Lucky 13 Tattoos & Piercings in Kutztown, Pennsylvania.)
See more in “Cartoon Tattoos“ (Tattoos)
Mike Beer and his offensive tattoos have received their fair share of attention on ModBlog, and the reaction has been … mixed, to say the least. Since the dawn of time, humans have wondered what goes through the mind of a person who devotes his skin to tattoos of jokes about child rape, transsexuals and gay Nazis. Today, we get a little closer to answering these questions.
Note: Most of the tattoos featured in this interview have been featured previously on ModBlog.
BME: First of all, tell us about yourself.
Mike Beer: Well, I lived in Northern Virginia my whole life, but recently moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to play in my band, Call The Paramedics, full time, as well as to be surrounded by assholes like myself. I have been getting tattooed since I was about 17 and am now about to turn 23. My first tattoo was a small hand-poked pentagram on my ankle, which I have had fixed so that it no longer looks like garbage, but I’ve had mad love for Satan since the beginning.
Humor is very important to me. However, since I would say I am rather desensitized to almost everything, the things that are hilarious to me are not very amusing to others, which is what brings us to this interview.
BME: Indeed it does. Have you always been an attention whore?
MB: Yes, I’ve been an attention whore for pretty much as long as I can remember — mainly because, when I was real little, my parents would beat me, lock me in the cellar, and occasionally make me put put on sex shows with our German Shepherd for them and all their friends while they would drink moonshine and throw dixie cups of scalding hot water on me. (Throughout my childhood, our dog Roxy was my best friend.)
I guess nowadays I’m just finding my outlet for all the pain and humiliation I endured as a kid … or maybe I just want to have an excuse to take off my clothes in front of strangers and everything I just said was a lie. Who really knows?
BME: Alright, enough of your yarns. How would you describe your sense of humor? What’s funny to you?
MB: I’d have to say my sense of humor is a cross between “modern” and extremely ignorant. I’ll make a joke out of anything: cripples, old people, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, whites … and any other things I may have forgotten. Your dog dies? Funny. You have a death in the family? Funny. A girl and her boyfriend have been trying for a long time to have a child, they finally get pregnant and eight months into the pregnancy she has a miscarriage? Hilarious. But don’t worry folks, whatever I dish out I can take in return.
BME: So it’s less to do with being funny and more to do with being an awful human being. Got it. Anyway, your declaration of love for Satan aside, what was the first “offensive” tattoo you got? Tell us about it.
MB: First “offensive” tattoo I got was the man with a pussy eating himself on my leg, although nobody ever really found it to be offensive. Shortly after getting that, I got the chick with a cock shitting on herself. Both tattoos were done by Eric Doyle at Jinx Proof Tattoo in Washington, D.C. Many people were not happy with chick with the cock, so I’d consider those my first offensive tattoos. I originally just wanted the guy eating himself and at the last minute decided he should have a pussy. The idea for the chick with the cock was merely an attempt at some kind of symmetry on my legs. And again, the poop was added last minute.
BME: Hey, when you’re right, you’re right — the poop certainly adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the piece. What came next?
MB: If I’m not mistaken, the white power unicorn tattoo came next. It was all downhill from there.
BME: The white power unicorn is offensive to pretty much every imaginable group. What was the thought process behind that one? Did you feel like you were crossing a certain threshold once you got a Nazi swastika tattooed on you, the ridiculous context and the fact that it was for the sake of a joke notwithstanding?
MB: The Nazi unicorn was also pretty spontaneous. My buddy Jason wanted to tattoo this piece of unicorn flash and couldn’t find anyone who wanted it, and I was obviously game under certain conditions — that is, I told him it had to be the most hateful unicorn ever. The best reaction I’ve ever gotten was, “How could something so beautiful be so ugly?”
For the record, I am not a Nazi — I just like to make fun of everything. People need to lighten up, and if they don’t like what I’m about? That’s fine with me, join the rest of the crowd. I didn’t really feel like I crossed over some kind of line, but that is pretty much when I decided that damn near every tattoo I got from then on needed to come close or outdo the last one, and I’ve been making good progress, with plans for much more.
BME: Have you gotten any memorably bad reactions to your work?
MB: Nothing that really stands out. I’ve noticed my mom on several occasions looking at the trannies on my legs; she knows that they are there but never really says anything. I’d imagine she is just bottling it up deep down inside and never letting it out. I’ve had trannies actually come up to me after they saw my legs, and they thought it was hilarious. Surprisingly enough I’ve gotten the most negative response on here, which is funny because some of the most horrible things I’ve seen were on BME. It’s kind of ironic.
BME: While I’ve got you here, why don’t you tell me a bit about your band.
MB: Well, I play drums in Call The Paramedics. We’re Atlantic City–based scumbag death rock. I guess our music could be described as Cannibal Corpse raping AC/DC while El Duce narrates. We attack the crowd, our singer cuts his face open, I blow fire, and this is all accompanied with massive amounts of cocaine. I’ve been told the music is pretty good too. You could say we’re for fans of GG Allin, rape, dirty needles, golden showers, cars parked in front of handicapped ramps, elderly shut-ins, and people broke down on the side of the road due to massive car pile ups from wandering stray dogs on the highway.
BME: Well, that sounds … great. Does anything offend you? Do you think it’s possible to go too far? Humor me here.
MB: Eh, not really. There are plenty of things that I think are wrong, but it doesn’t mean I won’t make a joke out of it. For example, I love animals, but I just got a dog in a kennel being put down tattooed on my leg. I would probably never rape a little kid, but I have “It’s rape time” with candy and little kids’ body parts tattooed on me, and so on. I live in an area and am friends with some of the most rotten people on the planet; around here it’s an ongoing battle of who can really lower the bar. I just want to fit in, you know?
BME: Nice of you to mention that you’d “probably” never rape a little kid. Classy. So where do you go from here?
MB: Aside from hell? There is nowhere to go but down. Oh, for all the ladies on here, holla at me. I’m a great “bring-home-to-the-parents” kind of guy.
Please consider buying a membership to BME so we can continue bringing you articles like this one.
Good afternoon, ModBloggers! Here we’ve got a nice cover-up job by Dave Duchene at Live Once Tattoo in North Bay, Ontario. I mean, I don’t know if I personally would have covered up the, um … is that a unicorn giving birth to a tiger, in space? OK, maybe a cover-up was due.
See more in “Skull and Skeleton tattoos“ (Tattoos)
And finally, to celebrate Toronto’s record-breaking heat today, here’s a shot of the lovely clockorange doing her best impression of a palm tree after doing some light dreadlock maintenance.
Kind of a big week around these parts. In case you missed it:
– We were cold killin’ unicorns.
– Pretty women wore nightmarish animal heads.
– We saw the Fnords. (Or did we?)
– BME Shop now features 25 percent more penis owls.
– The BME Podcast arrived, featuring very special guest Allen Falkner!
– A couple of dudes showed off their pussies, what’s the big deal?
And that is that, friends. We’ll be here over the weekend and should have a new article for you at some point, and if all goes well, another podcast early next week. Until then, enjoy Watchmen, give Rampage your love, be safe and, as always, thank you for your continued support of BME.
The worst part? That unicorn only had two weeks left until retirement.
(Tattoo on :suicideking: by Chris Hall at Way Cool Uptown in Toronto, Ontario.)
See more in “Old School (and Old) Tattoos“ (Tattoos)
[The Dieline] Surprisingly enough, this is not, in fact, some ass-backwards marketing campaign by foolish opponents of tattoos. No, instead, this is part of an art project by CCA student JuliAnn Miller, who, when given an assignment to design some sort of material for a political or social cause, she chose tattoos, and thus, the “Tattoo Tester” was born.
“This Tattoo Tester is a kit that comes with certain papers so that the user can create custom temporary tattoos (transfer paper and carbon paper). The kit also includes a brochure with information on tattoo statistics and a brief history of tattooing.”
The box is made from light cardboard and all printed material is printed on recycled kraft paper. All typography is in various weights of Myriad Pro.
The statistics are largely based on a poll that supposedly mentioned that most Americans who regret their tattoos do so based on the design and location choice, which, um, why else would someone regret a tattoo, really? At any rate, it’s a pretty slick looking project, and any effort to get people to give healthy consideration to tattoo work before getting it done is probably a step in the right direction.
[Gawker] So apparently there is some person named Peaches Geldof, whose father was Bob Geldof, and she is famous for, I don’t know, existing? Celebrity culture is just swell. Anyway, she was on a beach somewhere and lo and behold, she’s all tattooed! In the real world, this would mean she is a regular 19-year-old girl, but your common gossip vultures had a field day dissecting her tattoos, including the usually respectable-ish Ryan Tate:
– Doves = LOVE. Not to be confused with marrying a dude to his green card.
– Playing cards = good luck. Like being born to the right person.
[…]
– Unicorn eating chain of daisies = ???. WTF, because everything else about Peaches is deep and meaningful, you know?
[…]
– “An open book with a bizarre hangman’s noose hanging over the page” = to symbolize Peaches being “owned” by a metaphor-challenged ex.
Well, that was annoying. You criticize someone for being famous for being famous, and then you proceed to … give them the media coverage you’re criticizing them for craving? Hooray! Everybody wins/loses/dies, the end.
[CrunchGear] Oh what’s this, tattoos that people won’t regret or be made fun of for? What a concept! Some eggheads at the Draper Laboratory in socialist Cambridge, Massachusetts, have developed tattoo ink that will “change colors based on a person’s blood sugar levels,” which is an obvious benefit to people with Diabetes, or people who like to brag about their blood sugar levels.
The nano ink particles are tiny, squishy spheres about 120 nanometers across. Inside the sphere are three parts: the glucose detecting molecule, a color-changing dye, and another molecule that mimics glucose. When the particles are dissolved in water they look like food coloring, says Clark.
The three parts continuously move around the inside the hydrophobic orb. When they approach the surface, the glucose detecting molecule either grabs a molecule of glucose or the mimicking molecule.
If the molecules mostly latch onto glucose, the ink appears yellow. If glucose levels are low, the molecule latches onto the glucose mimic, turning the ink purple. A healthy level of glucose has a “funny orangey,” color, according to Clark. The sampling process repeats itself every few milliseconds.
This sort of immediate access to one’s blood sugar levels would be a major leap forward, although as with any technology, questions regarding the accuracy and reliability of such an invention have already arisen. Lab mice seem to be responding well to the initial experiments, however, and at this rate, it sounds like a human version may be ready within two years. Science, everybody!