Tag Archives: news

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

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After a personally difficult legal dispute over BME, I’ve had to face the potentially insurmountable reality of being massively in debt, and I have chosen to transfer the business to Rachel (the details of this deal are sealed, so please don’t ask). Within the month my role at BME will come to an end, and new staff (made up largely of people who’ve been working on BME for some time as well) will be taking over. I will no longer be writing online about body modification, although I will be maintaining my regular blog and other projects of course, as well as working on several body modification book projects which I am eager to complete.

It’s definitely a very strange and mixed set of feelings, having run this site from the very beginning, over nearly a decade and a half. On one hand I’m very much looking forward to having the opportunity and time to paint and tackle new adventures, and on the other hand I will very much miss both the people and the subject in general that I came to know through BME. That said, when I grew up and fell in love with body modification — and later built BME — this was a very different and much more “outsider” culture, so maybe now, as not just tattooing but body modification as a whole enjoys unprecedented levels of popularity and acceptability, it is a good time to pass the torch on to a new generation. It’s my hope that they maintain the site in the spirit that it was begun, while taking on the challenges of a new environment.

I have very much enjoyed being a part of BME and I leave it with good memories. Thank you to everyone who’s been a friend of the site, and everyone who’s helped bring it to this point. I hope you’ve enjoyed my contributions — I know I’ve enjoyed yours — and I hope that you continue to enjoy what BME brings in the future.

See you in hell! 😛

         Shannon
         [email protected]
         zentastic.com

 

Hong Kong Tattoo Documentary

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Jessica sent me the following email, asking for feedback on her high school media studies project.

I’m a 17 year old piercing apprentice studying in Hong Kong, and I intend to pursue a career in film and television. I combined my two passions together and for my final film project, I created a documentary about tattoos and piercings in Hong Kong.

As part of the project, I’m looking for feedback both from people involved and interesting in the subculture. I was wondering whether it would be possible for you to tell me what you think of it, or even help me post this somewhere so I can gain some criticism that isn’t the youtube “lol datz good”?

Happy to help! Here it is; let her know what you think.

 

No Nipple Piercings On Flights?

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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”.

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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.

Marketing With Tattoos

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Continuing this discussion of mainstreaming, I’m in 7/11 this morning and they have a new energy drink called “Inked”. It’s got a faux-tribal border, a “rock” font, and a neo-Japanese wave in the middle, and the flavor is called “Razzle Dazzle” — could there be a more embarrassing name? It’s as if they’re making fun of you for buying it. I’m reminded of the scene in Family Guy where Lois is running for mayor, and realizes that just by saying “9-11″ and “Jesus” and “terrorists” Giuliani-style, all of a suddenly the crowd starts cheering and buys whatever she’s saying… What, are tattoo fans so gullible that they’ll buy an energy drink just because it says “cool razzle dazzle tatties” on it?*

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* Yes, I bought it. It tastes like a sort of watered down “Tahiti Treat”.

Minor BME updates

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I made some very minor changes to the front page of BME and BME/extreme. Mostly it’s just making the text a little bigger, taking off unused elements, and expanding ones that are being used a bit more. There’s nothing particularly dramatic about it, but if the “latest updates” ticker breaks anyone’s browser, please let me know. The members page is more heavy updated as an index, but since it was just a list of small-text updates before, I hope that’s a good thing.

Suggestions (if possible, with a mock-up or example) are very much appreciated!

I’m going to try and dedicate a day every week or two to clean up an element of the site, with galleries being next on my list (most of that work is already done)…

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Mods Require Education

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So I was thinking about the recent post about job discrimination with body modification, as well as reflecting on the inspirational interview with Alvar from last year… it’s been my observation that the higher quality the job is and the better you have to be at it, the less relevant your body modifications become. On “low end” jobs it seems employers are much more able to get away with judging a person for petty things like earrings — but in the kind of job that I believe most exceptional people aspire to, one is generally judged more on ones frontal lobe than one’s 1″ lobe..

Anyway, so I was really pleased to see Kiowa from Missouri’s graduation photos proudly showing his stretched piercings, and wanted to use it as an excuse to (a) if you want to be free to live your life publicly modified, performing well academically is a great start, and (b) the BME 2008 scholarship application is available.

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Good things come to those who wait…?

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Yeah, that’s right — I’m finally updating under my own username! Much thanks to Roo for helping me get posts here until now, but, as much as that help was appreciated, I’m definitely relieved that era is over.

Just to keep everyone in the loop as to the update schedule that was hinted at elsewhere, I agree that main site updates can be expected very soon and am also very happy to see that happening. BMEvideo is nearly ready to be udpated and should have new content within a day or two, and the main BME site should be flooded with experiences and images early in the week, if not sooner, depending on when a small number of technical issues that are barring that update can be resolved. I’ve had a chance to skim through some of the content that’ll be going up over the next weeks and I’m very excited and pleased about it — giddy, really — and I think you will be as well.

Roo and I will need to focus primarily on getting the main sites caught up, so we may be a little slow here on ModBlog over the first week, but I do have a few things I want to post later today. Let me prelude to them by posting a couple pictures from one of my favorite anthropological photo books, Africa Adorned. On the left is a Murle woman from Sudan with decorative facial scarification, and in the middle and on the right a Dinka man and woman, also from Sudan, with forehead scarification.

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Anyway, stay tuned later today for a few brief posts.

How Refreshing!

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The BBC have just emailed me, warning that very soon the world’s going to be hit by an F5 shortage and a decrease in the availability of Apple + R’s!

Which reminded me of something, once you’re registered and logged into ModBlog, you can click here to see when the next scheduled update is due to appear. There’s nothing queued at the moment but when there is they will be displayed below the Posts widget on the right hand side.

That page is also available by clicking on Site Admin (on the right of this page below Archives) then Dashboard.

Do your bit, save the F5orests.

– Roo
[email protected]

(Usual updates will resume tomorrow morning at the latest.)

BMEshop Holiday Discount!

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As I mentioned, I was just visiting Santa (mostly hoping he could help me out with my peanut collection — it’s been a little boring around there), and he asked me to pass on some news about BMEshop that was written up in one of the fictional gift-givers trade journals. If you place an order over the holidays, and enter the coupon code “BME-HoHoHo” (at the checkout page, then hit “recalculate”), it will give you 5% off of your order. I believe this code is good from now until the 26th.

Remember, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings you order from BMEshop, a eunuch loses his nuts.

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