Lucas‘s tattoo is a f’ing laugh factory.
Why, helloooooo!
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Tag Archives: funny
Leprosy from body piercing
So I guess the latest BS fearmongering about piercing is the claim that anyone who gets a piercing should go get a tetanus shot. Ignoring that these days a majority of people are vaccinated against it, tetanus is a bacterial infection that’s contracted from the Clostridium tetani which lives all over the world in soil, dust, and manure. It’s very rare, with less than 50 cases yearly in the United States and almost all of the serious ones being limited to people over sixty years old.
It’s pretty crazy what theoretically reputable “medical sites” claim the risks of body piercing are — it’s not even that uncommon for sites to make bizarre claims like linking body piercing to malaria and even leprosy. Yeah, if you get a piercing you might become a leper.
It’s not as if people get getting piercings in leper colonies and sharing needles with lepers. It’s not as if people are first burying the needle and jewelry for a couple weeks, and then using manure for aftercare. By and large modern body piercing is done using sterilized equipment and the risk of catching long-shot diseases are miniscule to the point where you are literally thousands of times more likely to be struck by lightning than to catch tetanus, malaria, or leprosy via body piercing.
Anyway, a friend of mine’s mother just watched some TV show that was going on about how kids were at risk of tetanus to the point where if they got piercings, they needed to go right to the hospital afterwards and get themselves a tetanus shot… The following note was stuck to her door in the morning:
“Mom, it’s not a rusty nail!”
Seriously though, while it’s important to be aware of the risks of all things that you do, it’s also important to understand that worrying about risks that are million to one long shots is a slippery slope — with that attitude, you’d never leave the house. Or maybe you should leave the house because it could collapse. But if you go outside, you might get hit by a meteorite. But if you go back inside, a swarm of bees might follow you and consume you. But if you stay outside, it’s possible that a tiger that’s escaped from the zoo will eat you. Et cetera…
MetaWars.
Hey, Scar Wars got linked on MetaFilter today! Neat, right? I bet a highly intelligent and thoughtful discussion came about.
*** "GROSS. Gross, gross, gross. My skin is crawling."*** "WARNING: May be trigger material for people with SI problems. Maybe that warning should be on the front page."
*** “that’s incredibly disgusting. i don’t even know what to say about these people.”
*** “Guys, go ahead and do all the fucked up shit that you want. But girls. You beautiful, lovely girls of the world. PLEEEAAASSE stop it! That pretty little girl with the big bonsai tree cut into her (on the left). WTF!?!? Don’t do that!! You have not been made prettier!”
*** “Those people are so remarkably ill. I wish we lived under a dictator who would kill people who do shit like that to themselves.
Seriously, kill yourself, cutters– you’re just going to do that eventually anyway when all your skin is gone and you can’t get people to gawk anymore.”
Oh … right. I
Kill yourselves, cutters! Love, Metafilter.
Allen Falkner straightens a 6ga hook
Cue Nelson: “HA HA”
[Javascript required to view Flash movie, please turn it on and refresh this page]
DivX download link for BME members: Extreme2 or Full members
The critical moment is about 1:20 into the clip.
Like Diamanda Galas says…
It’s pretty common to hear “oops” stories about kanji tattoos — “I thought it meant ‘brave warrior’ but in fact it means ‘orange chicken!’” — but tattoo symbology is a rich subject, so I wanted to tell a story about my friend Mike.
That’s him getting tattooed by Joi, and the resultant biohazard symbol tattoo. He got it right before the 2004 Rhode Island SusCon. At a suspension convention, controlling cross contamination is extremely important and far from easy. I’ll let Mike tell how people responded to his tattoo in his own words:
I went back to my room and checked my e-mail. The friend to whom I’d sent pictures [of my tattoo to] had replied. His response was “Ummm…. Isn’t that usually for poz guys?” That was not the response I was looking for!
[Earlier Ron Garza had also] wanted to know if I knew the significance of my new tattoo. I felt myself getting nervous. He told me that among gay men, it’s an indication that one is HIV positive. At first, I thought he was joking. It took me a few minutes to realize that he was serious.
How the hell did all of these people know about the significance of my tattoo when I didn’t? I spent most of that weekend in a panic. Obviously, I was a little freaked out. The last thing I wanted was for people to think that I’m HIV positive when I’m not. As a gay man, that’s a pretty sensitive topic for me.
Oops!
He’d considered a cover-up, but Mike ended up deciding to keep the tattoo as a reminder to himself that he hadn’t done his homework, a mistake he never wanted to repeat. I should mention that Mike also has several gorgeous tattoos by Jon Clue, including a custom Dr. BME logo.
