BME: Body Modification Ezine

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Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.

Category: Editorial

  • Big Island Volcanos

    Written by

    Rachel

    Norm and I took a day trip to the Big Island of Hawaii to take a helicopter tour of th active volcano areas. There wasn’t as much active lava flow as we thought there would be but during the tour there were spots that would break open and expose the molten lava but by the time we’d swing around to take another photo, it would get hit with rain and cool down an turn black in seconds. It was amazing.

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    Click through for more photos!

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    This is where the lava flows like waterfalls into the ocean. You could feel the heat from the helicopter. We flew in a helicopter with the doors off. It was insane. The pilot said that they claim the water can be as hot as a thousand degrees. The color changes in the water was amazing. It was like a rainbow of blue and green due to the varying temperature differences.

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    This is a plume of steam from the lava hitting the ocean.

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    Toxic sulfur fumes leak through cracks in the surface of the cooled lava.

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    This is the only house left in a subdivision that wasn’t hit during the eruption in the 80′s which destroyed every home. The same person still lives there. He hikes out 2 hours to the nearest road and hitch hikes into town to get supplies. He has no running water, electricity or anything else. He doesn’t even cook on propane because he can’t get the propane back to his house. 2 hours of hiking just to get to a main road. It’s insane. The house is surrounded by lava flow. There is a black line of lava on the other side but this was the best photo I had of the house. We saw another area where they’d tried to rebuild. One house got rebuilt only to be destroyed completely 3 weeks ago. The other one only got the foundation finished which all you could see was six posts coming out of the lava. I’m not sure but I don’t think I’d go rebuilding in an active lava flow zone!

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    This is a waterfall just east of Hilo that we saw on the way back to the airport. All of the islands that we have been to are full of beautiful waterfalls like this. It’s definitely an amazing state. I don’t have any photos of us to stick in here as “mod content” but I thought they were cool enough to share anyway! Have a great weekend!

  • On the road to Hana

    Written by

    Rachel

    I don’t remember exactly what day it was this week but Norm and I decided to drive from Kehei to Paia. Once we got there we thought we’d drive to the first roadside waterfall that we could find. At each waterfall we decided to go to the next one until we were finally in Hana. One blink and you could have missed the town entirely. We refilled the gas tank and decided to be adventurous and take the road that the maps said were dangerous. It ended up being an amazing one lane unpaved road heading the opposite way back around the island that we’d come from. I’ve been to Maui several times and had not taken the drive out to Hana. The scenery alone was worth the 3-4 hour drive. If you have a reason to come out to Hawaii, I suggest you do!

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    Norm was surprised to find that his septum was still at least a 00ga. Click through to see more photos from our trip and the rest of this amazing tree.

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    The tree Norm used to check the gauge of his septum piercing.

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    Our route driving around Maui where we saw all of these amazing waterfalls that you’ll see photos of below!

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    This was one of the few waterfalls that had a large pool below it that you could swim it. Due to it being water from the mountains it was way too cold to actually go swimming in though we tried!

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    Norm is a bit of a rule breaker. On the other side of where I took the picture was a huge sign that said “Do not stand on this wall”. It was probably there because of the 60 foot drop down into a raging river on the left side of him.

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    Over looking the cliffs at the Garden of Eden Botanical Gardens.

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    Below is a photo from the beach in Wailea at the hotel where we stayed.

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    And another shot from in the pool. It’s a fresh water pool for those asking how I was able to open my eyes. Even with your eyes open though you can’t really see into the viewfinder to take photos so it was very hit or miss!

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    The internet here has been pretty hard to stay connected to. I’ve spent the past few hours trying to upload some photos to get posts going for tomorrow. I’m also in the process of uploading a video to post on Monday but it may not make it up at this speed until Tuesday. It’s an interview with Mike Rubendall and I hope you guys like it! We’re off to Tim Hendricks wedding tomorrow, which is why we’re here in Hawaii to begin with, I’m glad he’s getting married to an amazing girl both because he’s a rad guy and an amazing tattooer as well as it gave us a reason to get out to the island that is the farthest from any continents in the world!

    Aloha and Mahalo for supporting BME!

  • Greetings from under water!

    Written by

    Rachel

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    I’m still in beautiful Hawai’i for another couple of days. Some of you may have noticed that our billing is down. Someone has been successful in getting all of BME’s merchant accounts deactivated and I’m working to resolve the situation. While this happened on Wednesday, it’s now the weekend so it most likely won’t be resolved until after the Thanksgiving holiday. I’m not going to let anyone’s accounts expire. If your IAM page comes up for renewal, please email Jen at [email protected] and she will add more time. BME accounts will not expire so enjoy the free time you’ll be getting with your account until we get the billing issues resolved. BMEshop won’t be able to accept any orders during this time either. I was planning on having a huge Black Friday sale so hopefully we’ll be back up and running by then so you can enjoy the holiday savings and stock up for Christmas.

    I’ll be getting a couple posts up over the weekend but don’t forget to take a look at this weeks video interview with Henning Jorgensen which is the third episode in BME’s new video interview series. I can’t wait to get back home and work on the rest of the videos we have in the queue. There should be a ton of photos from my trip with my traveling companion and tattooer extraordinaire Norm which I’ll post over the weekend once I’ve got them all prepped. For now, here’s a quick shot from in the pool. I blow pretty sweet bubbles out of my nose.

  • It’s only a 30 gauge needle!

    Written by

    Rachel

    I took the post from my IAM page and I’ve made some changes to it so it would be relevant to post here so that more people could see it. As an update, I’m experiencing fairly heavy side effects from them but I’m hoping that the good outweighs the bad. Most people assume that since we’re heavily modified that it’s easy to give ourselves shots. The other thing that I am interested in finding out is if my injection site reactions will differ in the 6 areas that I have to inject myself that are tattooed. Does anyone else have experience with interferon injections and tattoos? I know that my healing abilities are nonexistant so I have slowed my tattooing down to once every 3-4 months because it usually takes about that long for new tattoo work to properly heal as well as I don’t want trigger my body into having a relapse. Please let me know your experiences with injection therapies (MS related or not). I’d appreciate hearing from you!

    “I made this video just few weeks ago to help explain the process of giving myself an interferon injection. I did the prep and injection part in under approximately 3 minutes, while talking through it. This is only the third injection I had taken and the FIRST ONE that I’ve done myself.

    I have been diagnosed with MS since the summer of 2007. I first noticed paralysis in my right side during an endurance race when I used to drive race cars pro-am. It spiraled from there into what doctors think was my second major relapse. The first was when I lived in Mexico about 2 years prior and went misdiagnosed as a brain infection.

    I have then suffered about 5-6 relapses a year lasting around 3-6 weeks each time. They ranged from partial paralysis to blurry vision to electric shock feelings when I moved my head, as well as a constant pins and needles sensation in my skin. The symptoms in each relapse don’t tend to go away with my type of MS. They just keep hopping on the pile though sometimes they lighten up.

    I have been in a state of denial until recently when I lost my vision for 2 months. I had gone from a fully independent woman to needing someone to help me do household chores, drive places, pick my daughter up from the bus stop and all sorts of things one would think a 29 year old should be able to do.

    As I say in the video, my doctor said by this time next year I will be severely handicapped at the rate I’m going. After some time waiting I was finally sent my prescriptions and again it sat around in the house for a couple weeks before I mustered up the courage to ask my husband to do the injections. We watched the DVD that came with my kit. We both heckled and mocked the people in the videos because they don’t seem real. They didn’t have a sense of fear or worry or dread, which is why they just didn’t seem real to me. They’re probably very experienced with the treatment, but I’m not.

    I decided to make this clip, hoping that maybe someone who was recently diagnosed would see it and it would help them to start their treatment immediately instead of being like me and allowing more and more lesions to form across their brain and spinal cord.

    I don’t want to go blind. I don’t want to be in a wheel chair. I don’t want to lose my independence. I don’t want that for you either and I hope that this helps in some way.

    If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.”

  • Art Theft

    Written by

    Rachel

    Canvas Los Angeles, the boutique and gallery of the tattooer arts, was robbed on December 12th. Thankfully, none of the gallery’s staff were injured, but sadly, two pieces of artwork were stolen. The two pieces stolen were by Alex Garcia and Guy Aitchison.

    This was a truly despicable act. It’s a violation, pure and simple, without any justification whatsoever, and it’s an insult to both the art and tattoo communities. Theft of any sort is inexcusable, but when you steal work from an artist, you steal the thing they produce, and you rob them of their livelihood.

    What we want more than anything else is simply for these pieces to be returned. If those responsible for this theft bring the paintings back, or if they are otherwise returned unharmed, Canvas LA will not press charges. All we want is for the pieces to be returned to the gallery — this is really just a matter of supporting our community, plain and simple.

    “Minty Fresh Death” is oil on masonite while “AutoMech #2″ is acrylic on canvas. Both paintings are approximately 8×10 and were framed at the time they were stolen. Please keep an eye out on eBay and anywhere else you may see art for sale or displayed, and report anything you see to [email protected]. Thank you all for your help and support.

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