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.

Category: News & Announcments

  • Welcome Back to Body Modification Ezine

    Written by

    Nef

    Dear BME Community,

    We’ve been gone far too long, but BME is back to give people a voice, a space, a community. With time everything evolves, and BME may be different than you remember. Our goal is to stay true to Shannon and Rachel’s values while changing with the times. We will be starting small with news, events, and a social page. Since we are currently based in NYC, there will be plenty of events happening in the city, but in time we will expand across the country. The site has always been built by the community’s collective contribution so we urge you to submit your creations, recommend people for us to interview, or volunteer as a writer yourself! We also have merch available on BMEShop.com with all of the proceeds going towards BME Projects.

    BME exists for you and thanks to you.

    I am excited to see how BME evolves and honored to further my parents legacy. They are icons to live up to, which is inspiring yet humbling. I am certain that if can make a fraction of the impact they did, they will be proud, as will I. They’ve taught me that community and knowledge are the most important things to hold close, and I think that is especially important with the world right now. We will foster this with BME, and as a community we will restore BME back to the force it was.

    This wouldn’t have been possible without the unwavering support of Jon and Erik, who have dedicated the past year to this relaunch. Their combined strength on both the business and technical fronts have been essential. I’m deeply grateful they chose to join me in taking on the responsibility and future of BME.

    -Nefarious Larratt

    8 comments on Welcome Back to Body Modification Ezine

  • BMEShop

    Written by

    Nef

    Despite the hurricanes in 2015 which destroyed almost all of what Rachel owned, she managed to save the original inventory from BME. We have relisted some of the stock on BMEShop.com with the hopes you may be interested. 

    Our first drop includes a selection of one of a kind skeleton statues, originally hand carved in Indonesia from animal bones. Depending on the success of this drop, future drops will include jewelry, suspension supplies, rare body-mod books and different types of body modification supplies. 

    Every purchase is very appreciated as 100% of the profits go directly to the restoration and maintenance of BME. I am very grateful for the continued support BME has received and I will be hand writing a thank you note for everyone who orders from this drop. 

    – Nefarious Larratt 

  • Rachel Larratt 1980-2022

    Written by

    Jen Savage

    Unfortunately, when we lost some of the ModBlog content, it included the post about Rachel’s passing. (Original Post) Rachel passed away on June 22, 2022. She died in her sleep.

    Even now, it’s extremely difficult to write this post. Rachel meant so much to so many. She was my friend but she was so much more than that. For me, she was family and today, just a week after what would have been her 43rd birthday, the pain is still very raw. For those of us who really knew her, Rachel was a light and a force. She was passionate, generous and kind. She was goofy and ridiculous. Without even knowing it or trying to, she could command a room.

    I’ll never stop missing you Rachel.

  • Come Join Us

    Written by

    Jonathon

    For those of you still with us. We’ve setup a new (temporary?) site where we can all connect with each other and share our photos and stories again. SOCIAL.BME.COM is that place and we hope you’ll join us. While I don’t expect a swarm of people signing up, due to the currently limited resources, we’re doing a controlled rollout to ensure the performance and availability of what little we have online right now.

    The software is called Mastodon, it’s a decentralized social networking software. At this time we’re keeping this community (node) private. Meaning your posts do not show up on the network (only on this node), nor do they show up to non-logged in users. Currently we have no plans of opening it completely public, but it’s not impossible. Of course any future changes to visibility will be communicated to all users.

    We hope to see you there.

    https://social.bme.com/invite/uqpMbjaC

    -jonathon

  • To The BME Community

    Written by

    Jonathon

    I hope you might remember me, my name is Nefarious. My childhood was surrounded by BME and I have missed it in the past years, so hello I hope you are doing well.  As you may already know, today 10 years ago my dad Shannon Larratt passed away. And if you were not aware, my mom Rachel Larratt passed away last year in June. Together they built BME and created a place where people truly had freedom. BME may have not been as active recently as it was in the past, but I do not want to let it die with them. Unfortunately through those years of neglect, the site and community have deteriorated. Since my mom’s passing we have been dealing with hosting issues, unforeseen struggles, and a string of bad luck. We’re still gaining full control over some accounts. It is very complicated, but we are asking for patience. We are trying to get it back, but this time it will take longer than it has before.

    I cannot promise that the millions of photos and videos since its inception in 1996 are safe right now, but if it does come to it, together we can create a new collection. Jon, Jen, Marks and I have worked tirelessly trying to keep BME online, and we will continue to do so. In the meantime we will keep this blog running, and we are launching a private website that will allow us to stay connected.

    Times have changed and so have all of you. BME on the other hand has had nearly no changes in the past 15 years. We are overdue for more than just a makeover and recent events mean that BMEShop is our only source of income right now. If you ever want to make suggestions, or even just want to send a friendly letter, please reach out at [email protected]. 

    – Nefarious

  • We’re still here. We’re not giving up.

    We’re still here. We’re not giving up.

    Written by

    Jonathon

    I wanted to provide another update since it’s a new year. As you can tell I’ve not managed to import any of the old Moblog content yet, but I’m hoping to work on that soon. I was away for the holiday spending time with family. I believe I have been able to fix the main site billing issues so you should hopefully be able to create new subscriptions or if you had one that expired over the holiday it should renew very soon.

    We are continuing to keep the site alive and online and we’re working in the background on some plans for the future. Please stay tuned, as we hope to make some announcements on the future path for BME. Thank you all for the support.

    -jonathon

  • We’re back, but…

    We’re back, but…

    Written by

    Jonathon

    As you can see we’re not quite 100%. We were able to recover file backups (images, scripts, etc) of the sites on the machine we lost. However we’ve not been able to recover database backups (posts, comments, etc). On top of that the backup server in our rack has crashed and isn’t responding. We may need to get someone to physically reboot the machine which will take more time. And even if we get that server back online we don’t know if we’ll be able to find what we need*. I’m really sorry, and I assure you nobody is more upset about it than I am. Jen and I will continue to do our best to keep things running until we have a clear plan of what the future will be.

    In the mean time we’ve setup a new blog and we’ll do our best to provide some meaningful updates and regular content for you. The theme isn’t quite what it was but I hope it brings some kind of familiarity while we work on recovery.

    If you’re reading this and you care about BME, we’d love for you to leave a comment as a show of support so we know you’re all out there. This feels like a very lonely place right now and that is very much the anti-thesis of what BME stands for.

    Sorry I don’t have any good news.

    * We’re working on scraping the internet archive for old posts and comments.

    -jonathon

  • , ,

    Support BME: Update

    Written by

    Rob

    Thanks to your support BME has surpassed the voting threshold needed to be considered for the small business grant!

    It will be a while before we know if we won the grant, but we just wanted to extend a huge thank-you to everyone who voted.  There are still 2 days left, and more votes won’t hurt, so if you haven’t yet taken a moment to vote for BME, you can do so by simply visiting www.missionsmallbusiness.com.  On the bottom right you’ll see a button labeled “Log in & Support”.  The site will link to your facebook, so you don’t need to create a profile of any kind.  Once you’ve signed in, search for “BME” and click the “VOTE” button for BME.com.  That’s it!

    So again, from all of us here at BME, thank you so much for your continued support.

    p.s. The t-shirts from the fundraiser for Ari are being printed right now and should be back from the printers in the first week of July.  So expect to see them in your mailbox sometime after that.

  • , ,

    Mission: Support BME

    Written by

    Rob

    As many of you know, BME is a small business.  With only 5 employees, BME still manages to be the world’s largest online tattoo, piercing and body modification community, historical archive and educational resource.  While there have been some changes over the years, most notably the gallery redesign, and the upgrades to IAM, not to mention staff changes, BME is still up and running.  For those that have been paying attention to Rachel’s IAM page, you’ll recall that the site redesign took about 3 years longer than was predicted, and cost a lot more than was estimated.  We’ve since gotten rid of the company that was screwing us over and brought in a new programmer that has been working day and night to address as many issues as possible.  Now with us having such a small staff, it’s obviously a lot harder for us to keep up with the changes that you’ve come to expect from your social networking sites. Now if BME were to receive a large sum of cash, we’d be able to bring in more programmers and get the features that you want to you a lot sooner.

    So what can you do to help?  Well, we’re not asking for your money, but we are asking you to support us as we’ve applied for a small business grant.  Showing your support is extremely simple.

    First, visit www.missionsmallbusiness.com.  On the bottom right you’ll see a button labeled “Log in & Support”.  The site will link to your facebook, so you don’t need to create a profile of any kind.  Once you’ve signed in, search for “BME” and click the “VOTE” button for BME.com.  That’s it!

    We need at least 250 votes to be in consideration for the grant, so be sure to ask your friends to vote as well.  The more votes we get, the better our chances of winning.  If BME receives the grant, you can expect a lot of the changes that we’ve been working on happening considerably faster.  So put this on your IAM pages, your Facebook wall, and your Twitter feeds!  Get the word out, and help support BME!  Voting ends June 30th, so vote today!

  • ,

    Hey Saturday, How You Doin’?

    Written by

    Rachel

    Phew! I’m covered in a variety of inks from printing t-shirts all night. I’ve been taking breaks between making mock ups of tshirts,  fixing old artwork so that it can be printed again and printing the t-shirts themselves.  It’s just been one thing after another but I’m having fun. The only thing I am longing for right now would be a heated workshop!

    If you hadn’t noticed, here are even more designs added to the shop since the last time Rob posted about it. Can you believe it? No.. Didn’t think so! I was going to add them all here but I figured I’ll just put the link right HERE and you can go and look at the 100+ designs that I’ve added in the last week.

    Now here is the fun part. I’m losing my second wind and I’m definitely going to crash but I wanted to give myself a little joy before I go to bed (that does not sound like how I meant it to sound..) and the easiest way to do that is to GIVE AWAY FREE STUFF! Yep, that’s right!

    I’m going to put together 5 “surprise packages” for BMEshop orders that come in today. This is how it’s going to work. There will be a “surprise pack” for the first orders placed on the shop for the following amounts:

    1. $20
    2. $50
    3. $75
    4. $100
    5. $200

    Make sense to you? It seems pretty clear to me but I”m the one that thought it up. Say two people placed orders on the shop. One was for $21.00 and the other was for $25.00. The first of those two orders, since they’re both over $20, would be the one that got the “surprise pack”. If we had people place orders for $25, $78, $90, $100 and $200, the person who placed their order first between the $78 and $90 dollar order would win the spot for the $75 order while the second person would get the prize for the $50 dollar or since technically they’re above $50 but they weren’t the first person to place the order for the $75 spot. Did that clear things up or is it even more confusing now? Either way, get shopping over on BMEshop and I’ll make it worth your while. The “surprise packs” will definitely NOT disappoint. Did I mention that they will be relative to the number that you win do the higher the dollar amount that you win for, the better the surprise!

    I love giving stuff away! Hope you all have a great weekend!

    Always Use Lube

    Always Use Lube

    Piercers do it with their gloves on.

    Piercers do it with their gloves on.

    Barbell Rides: The first one is always free.

    Barbell Rides: The first one is always free.

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