BME: Body Modification Ezine

A tattooed person suspends from hooks, laying flat, one leg higher than the other. Their head is back, and they seem to be smiling, dark hair dangling like an anime character.

Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.

Author: Shannon Larratt

  • You call that a septum ring?

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Those of you who are Christians and believe the Bible is the word of gawd, or who buy into the many “photos” of archeological dig sites showing it, there was a time when Andrew the Giant was known as Andre the Dwarf. Genesis chapter six begins (and you can look this up if you don’t believe me, I’m not pranking you),

    There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

    But what you might not know is that the Archbishop of Canterbury, when doing the King James Bible edit, removed the next line, which reads, “And those giants, they were pierced, they were pierced with fucking giant rings.” Carl, an archeologist at the California Tattoo Company, theorizes that the ring he discovered on a recent excavation is a septum ring, but I know better. It’s not called a Prince Gibborim for nothing you know. Zoom in if you’d like, by the way.

  • Poe by Ondrash

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I wanted to share the Czech Republic’s master tattooist Ondrash‘s latest stunner, a stunning bright multi-hue watercolor-style tattoo portrait of Poe. The portrait itself is beautiful of course, but the parts that really jump out at me are the little color blends where the hues flow into each other as if they were actually wet paint on paper. Be sure to check out Ondrash’s website if you like this, as well as the previous ModBlog posts — Eye of the Tiger and The Amazing Ondrash

  • Make it bleed!

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Remember when I said I thought maybe I was posting too many scarification photos? Yeah, remind me to delete that entry, and while you’re at it, remind me to rename my testicles “Ryan” and “Ouellette”. Then maybe people will think that my wonderful balls traveled to Linkoping, Sweden and did this wonderful Jean Luc Picard as Locutus of Borg skin removal scarification on Elin’s back. Fortunately for Elin though, it was the real Ryan Ouellette, of New Hampshire’s Precision Body Arts (precisionbodyarts.com) who created this gorgeous piece of Star Trek superfandom over six hours of assimilation with his blade (and a little help from Nick Kelley who did the initial artwork design). Beautiful work as always — and I have to wonder if in the distant future, when this piece has faded as all scars must, if it might be an idea piece to give a second life to with a bit of tattooing?

  • Tongue Splitting in the EVIL DEAD remake

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    A trailer for the new “Evil Dead” remake was played at and leaked from ComicCon, and it “wallows in limb-severing and tongue-splitting” because apparently when you are driven into evil madness, it expresses itself with DIY body modification. Tell me something I didn’t already know by the time I was summoning demons at age eight while sticking needles in my unmentionables. Anyway, here’s a screencap, and you can watch the cam-leak in the attached video as well — the tongue splitting is the highlight knockout punch that they put right at the very end of the trailer to seal the deal. Because you know there’s nothing more fucked up than someone splitting their own tongue. Gotta love mainstreaminbg and gentrification.

    [Edit: The video has been pulled, unsurprisingly, so you’ll have to wait for the official trailer to be posted or make due with the thumbnails I snagged. At least they should be legal fair use, not that this stops people from filing over-reaching DMCA takedown demands…]

  • COSMIC EYES FTW

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    I have been dying to show you Howie’s latest masterpiece for weeks, but he’s insisted that because of the much higher risk and complexity with multi-color eyes that he didn’t want me posting it until he was sure that they were a complete success. They are of course on Pauly Unstoppable, who was the very first person to have an eye tattoo done (although with a different procedure) by Howie just over five years ago at my house in Toronto when he, Josh, and I became Howie’s first clients and opened Pandora’s Box.

    Now, it can be hard to listen when your mind is blown — and if you’re anything like me, this makes you want to shove the next few colored objects you can find into your eye sockets — but Howie emphasizes that is the quickest, easiest, riskiest way to get yourself blinded. He has been developing this procedure slowly and carefully for five years. Because no one listens to urgings not to “try this at home”, Howie is in the process of putting together a seminar/information lesson on eyeball tattooing to (in his words) “minimize the worldwide story of blindness due to eyeball tattooing”.

    I would very strongly encourage all artists considering doing this procedure (or currently doing this procedure) to get in touch via lunacobra.net with Howie and get every bit of education they can before putting clients and risk. It’s irresponsible in my opinion to do otherwise. I know it’s exciting and I know you want to jump right into the deep end with your clients, but given how choppy the water is and what the consequences of drowning are, it’s negligent not to get the very best swimming lessons available. And of course clients wanting eye tattoos and other procedures can also contact Howie at that same URL.

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