Erin in Detroit (not Cere) says,
I did this tattoo on a friend for his school project. It was a story on why not to let a person that does not know how to tattoo do any work on you. I’m not an artist — obviously — but it’s a good long lasting laugh.
…or gone very right, depending on your goals.
A while back someone sent me a link to a site that purports to be about on-purpose infestation of pubic lice, which I was reminded of when I got this “mosquito attack” photoshoot, which I figure is in the same arena, related to play piercing, suspension, and other games that use your body’s nervous system in atypical ways to achieve pleasure of one sort or another. Continue reading if you dare.
I was reading about the bizarre anti-emo riots in Mexico, as well as Sophie Lancaster who was killed for being goth, and was thinking about how strange it is for people who in theory should be on the same side attacking each other. Although I suppose that’s always been one of the ways how the upper class stays in power — by tricking everyone else into fighting with each other. Anyway, I don’t know why all that really made me think of juxtaposing these two photos, but Yael writes of the photos below (including her boyfriend Nuke), that “While some people think that Israel is a desert where people have camels instead of cars, I have some pictures to prove them wrong.”
On the other end of the Israeli social spectrum, Hasson sent in his “Wicked” tattoo — perhaps I am wrong, but I’m guessing he’s more into kicking ass than picking flowers.
Some ancient culture Emily made this clay BME/Calm!
Praxis (photo by Demetruis Gonzalez) wrote me a beautiful note about her initially-not-intended-to-be DIY circle brand, explaining how it came to be self-done,
I had wanted a simple circle brand (or a few circles) for quite a while. I was too scared to brand myself and was planning on going to see John Joyce who I respect immensely. However, Syracuse was a good few hours from where I was going to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After I graduated from college I was staying in Boston for a few weeks preparing to go to Mexico for a year on a fellowship. I was staying with a very close friend Kirsten (iam:squiggles). She and I had met four years before through iam and shared a lot over the years. As the day of my imminent departure from Boston — the place I had spent the past four years and the home of the people I loved most in the world — approached, the thought of not seeing Kirsten again for at least a year was starting to weigh upon me. Over the years Kirsten had become like a sister to me, a kindred spirit. We shared a lot of experiences and memories but it seemed like we hadn’t shared enough, that we didn’t have enough time. Kirsten is the type of person who is always up for anything, who has an open mind and wants to experience and learn from life. With her I could always do anything, be myself, and not worry about her judging me. The prospect of not having someone like that in my life made me feel sick.
One day the worry became too much… I wanted to do something “crazy”, something I couldn’t do with someone else, something I couldn’t do on my own. I thought for a while and finally my mind settled on the circle brand and mentioned to Kirsten that I wanted one. Without prompting she immediately said, “I have a plain ring you could use.” She went to her room and came back with a silver ring in her hand. It was the perfect size. I told her I was scared to do it and she said she would to it to herself first to see what way of heating the ring worked best and so I wouldn’t be so nervous. She’s like that, always thinking about other people. So she disinfected the ring and put it in boiling water until it was hot and with a pair of tweezers pressed it to the skin on her thigh. It left a blister, but we decided that if I wanted a real scar, I’d have to heat it in fire. I held the ring in the fire of the gas stove until it was hot and then pressed it to my skin. Kirsten held my hand as my skin sizzled off, and as I reheated the ring and rebranded myself a few more times to make an even circle.
She still has the faint mark of a circle on her knee (and she didn’t even want a brand to start out with!) and I have my circle brand, a reminder of her and my friendship and everything we shared. Now, on my own in Mexico, when I see my brand I am reminded of everything Kirsten and I have shared and of our friendship, which continues to grow though we are no longer in the same city.
I think this is one of my favorite “buddy tattoos” that I’ve seen, based on Dr. Seuss’s The Zax. It’s on Sophisticunt and a friend and was done by Jason at Baltimore Street Tattoo in Hanover, PA.
So about a zillion people have written me about how the TSA has banned — at least in one ill-advised case — people wearing nipple rings from flying in America. Because, what, terrorists are planning on using exploding nipple rings? (Photo c/o Enrikay). Obviously this is a screener over-stepping their authority and abusing their power, rather than an official TSA mandate, but I think it illustrates both that the prejudice against even basic piercings is still strong, and that one of the strong arguments not to give any unwarranted powers to the government is that individuals always will abuse that power, even if the government itself is in theory “good”.
It also reminds me that the BME newsfeed has been sorely neglected over the last while — entirely my fault — despite the continued efforts of Ania and others. I’m pleased to say that Ania will be taking over managing the newsfeed, so over the next couple weeks, watch for regular updates (perhaps “this week in Mod News” or something) on what’s going on. IAM members, as always, can submit news here.
Update: The TSA has refused to apologize and stated that the above was in accordance with official policy, although they say they’ll be updating the policy to allow people to simply show their piercings rather than being forced to remove them.
Jean‘s back corset was done by Mary at Skin Canvas in this beautiful picture from Singapore. More pictures are on her IAM page and in the growing (since I only recently created them) corset piercing galleries.
Alan‘s little hedgehog, Max, posing in front of a memorial tattoo for his predcessor Ruby… Oh no… Oh no… Now I can’t get the theme song to Max and Ruby out of my head… damn you Alan!
A few days ago I posted a set of interesting industrials (which I’ve done before, and of course there’s the big industrial piercing galleries on BME as well with approaching 8,000 photos now), but I thought this placement by Trevor at Urban Art in Mesa, Arizona was interesting — a tragus to vertical lobe project.
