Due to insane temperatures slowing down shooting (well, you tell me — we have over 500 photos, is that slow?) we still have quite a bit of large format film left over from ModCon to kill off. So on August 12th, 2001 (Sunday), we are having a suspension and pulling party here in Toronto. Please note that this is NOT an open BBQ. You can't come unless you are either getting suspended, part of iWasCured, or coming as a guest of one of the suspendees…
Anyway, if we'll have the large format set up to shoot, so a really wonderful document of the event will be produced. If you'd like to take part there in either suspension or in pulling, let Phil know via his IAM page, or email him at suspension@bmezine.com.
Do I get a blue t-top 77 or a red convertible 72 with sidepipes…. hmm….
As some of you know, a bug was discovered in telnet, affecting most FreeBSD servers, as well as some other flavors of UNIX. Stileproject was hacked along with a number of other sites. BME has had telnet turned off since day one, and all my servers other than the BMEworld box have it turned off also. BMEworld was patched about an hour ago, so we should be safe.
One thing I was wondering, and I wonder this in all seriousness. I see a lot of people on IAM down on themselves, captioning their pictures with “I'm a loser” and “I'm stupid” and stuff like that. Diary entries reflect the same thing… My mind is absolutely boggled at this concept — how and why did it become cool to glorify this. Even if you're not thrilled with all aspects of yourself, why wallow in them? I understand self-degratory humor, but this almost seems like an entire culture built on low self-esteem… I can't imagine that'll turn out too well in the long run.
Which reminds me, I've got to mention some people who are definitely NOT losers. Pat, Allen, and Delaney from TSD did a vertical three-man suspension a couple days ago! That is, they hung Pat suicide style (from six hooks in his shoulders). Then, they put in six more hooks below that and used him to lift Allen, who then lifted Delaney… Amazing!!! Sorry the snapshots aren't the greatest, but if you get the new ModCon book, it's got the better photos in it!
Thanks to Shay for showing me this article in Ha'aretz which mentions BME. I hope my friends in Israel were amused!
Oh, and if you don't read Hebrew (seriously, it's a really enjoyable language to learn — go do it), he also helped out with some translation:
"Considering the fact there's post-modernism, post-feminism, and post-zionisim, the captain sees no problem with his favorite subject, "post-humanity". Those who speak on this intriguing topic thinks that humans still hadn't reached their final development. The technology that gets into every aspect of life, they presume, would slowly change the human race, like an evoluntiory process.
People got computer chips implanted inside their body (And do not hallucinate that it was done by Aliens or the United States' government) are walking among us for a couple of years now. In the near future, say "post-humanity"'s followers, that symbiotic relationship would get even bigger. The knowledge acquired by bio-technologists will create biological interface, and a greater combination between the human body and the machines. But that is not what the captain wanted to babble about.
When the captain typed the mentioned pair of words in Google, in order to start another session of cyber fantasies, the third or forth link was to a site about "trans-humanity." In the beginning, he though it was a new following, one that his neighbor, the one that hears that "Omm-Tza Omm-Tza" music all day long is a representative of, but after the page started loading, he found that it's something completely different.
A "trans-human" man (You can see some of those at https://www.bmezine.com) can decide, for instance, that he was a lizard in a previous incarnation, and now he is forced to live in a human body.
But he'd like to be a lizard, and he doesn't give up. So what does he do? For example, he asks a plastic surgeon to cut above the eyebrows, and implant there a couple of rugged metal implant (In the Hebrew, they didn't use the word for implant, but rather wrote - cut, insert, close.) If that's not enough, he could ask that surgeon to make a similar change in the cheek bones, or other parts of his body. Less extreme trans-humans are satisfied with tattooing their faces, and inserting loops, bars, and hooks into their ears, lips, nose, and under the skin. The totally extreme even hand them self from the ceiling with those hooks...
After the captain took a deep breath and downloaded several of those photos, he surprised himself. Once, he thought to himself, he'd probably get shocked to the bone from a picture of a human being that totally distorted his body, but due to the internet (That is a real good something) some things changed in the attitude towards the bizarre. Technology presented the human race with some bizzares that many people never imagined, and the word is still turning. People became more immune, more liberal, less shocked. And that's exactly what happens to your captain."
