Monthly Archives: July 2004

Vile stink-holes

I don't like being around this many people, and I don't like how dirty and dead it is. Rachel and I went out to where I grew up this afternoon. Everything was alive there, and you could feel the planet breathing become a part of it. We're so disconnected from life in these concrete prisons. All the lights and all the people sometimes fool folks into thinking the city has “more” life, but humans represent, what, 0.0001% of the biomass on the planet? You have to have a pretty inflated ego to believe that living somewhere that's all but eliminated the remaining 99.9999% of life is somehow healthy.

Image update posted

I've just posted the second half of the image update (on my predicted schedule for a change) with about 2,400 new images (4,000 new pictures this week thanks in part to all the BMEfest photos). Thanks to everyone who helped out, and thank you to Dita (and her supercute baby Chiya) for being the cover models.


So as you know, today the US senate narrowly defeated (by ten/twelve votes) the attempt by Bush (also supported by about 40% of Americans in the polls) to advance a new amendment to the Constitution specifically banning gay marriage. However, Republicans promise that the fight to ban the “unamerican” practise of gay marriage is far from over. Republican Senator Cornyn (likely driven by a lifetime of homophobic jokes due to his name) said,

"The assault on traditional marriage is not going away, and I hope that Congress will act to protect the most fundamental building block of our society. This is a national problem, and it requires a national response. Marriage is worth it; marriage is important enough to warrant the full legal protection of our laws."

There are two things I don't get about this whole “debate”. First of all, why in the world would anyone care who someone else marries? It makes no difference to me if someone else gets married to someone that's the same gender. Hell, if I'm butting my nose into other people's bedrooms, I'd probably rather see two good looking gay dudes than some typically unattractive out-of-shape hetrosexual. But the point is that it's none of my business… I think Pierre Trudeau (former Canadian PM) put it best when he said of government laws on homosexuality, “the State has no place in the bedrooms of the Nation.”

Admittedly his ex-wife was getting brown showers from Mick Jagger at the time, but still, I just don't get why anyone could care less what strangers decide to do with their social lives. Why is any of this even an issue? They say it could lead to someone marrying their dog. Hell, who cares about that? If someone wants to marry their dog it's fine by me too as long as I don't have to marry a dog as well.

The second reason that I think it's extremely weird that Bush is pushing for an anti-gay amendment to the Constitution is that it really makes Americans look like a bunch of backwards closed-minded hicks to the rest of the world. Due to the actions of the Bush Cabal, Americans are already the most universally hated people and country on the planet, so why also try and make them the laughing stock of the world? I believe Americans are good people, but if they keep letting their government betray them like this, the odds of a happy ending to their story will eventually dwindle to zero.

As a point of trivia, John Kerry has also said he'll block any attempts to legalize gay marriage. Yeah, he supports some wishy-washy “civil unions” crap. Bullshit. You can't give one group special rights because they decide to stick their cock into a different hole. Either have marriage for everyone who wants it, or for no one. Admittedly Kerry is opposed to the Constitutional ammendment, preferring instead to send all the gays to Hawaii and letting the mainland states ban it… Remind anyone of when the Northern states banned freed slaves from entering, and instead conspired to send them to Haiti and Liberia?

In this upcoming election, here are your choices and the stances these old friends (literally, except for that pleasure droid Edwards of course) have taken on issues that I've discussed here recently:


Kerry – Edwards    Bush – Cheney
Voted for Iraq War
Wants to expand Iraq War
Voted for PATRIOT act
Wants to expand policing
Opposed to gay marriage
Wants porn out of America
Skull&Bones member
Voted for Iraq War
Wants to expand Iraq War
Voted for PATRIOT act
Wants to expand policing
Opposed to gay marriage
Wants porn out of America
Skull&Bones member

Of course, everyone's going to go and vote for Kerry, sending the strong message to the US government that they can do anything they want to and Americans will roll over like good little slaves, actually believing that they're making a “choice”. I have to admit that I'm genuinely shocked that American politicians don't have more of a Chechnyan experience, where, instead of voting Nader, voters eventually realized that the way to institute political change is bullets not ballots.

If you read the last line and said, “hey, that does make sense”, please forget my name. If you have to blame anyone, blame that rebellious bastard Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the following in 1787:

"God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

That's how Jefferson and his buddies defined what it means to be American. Those were strange times back then — it must have been weird to believe in freedom so passionately. What an alien concept that has become. Oh well, times change, right?

Texas

Oh, the irony.

Body modification quotes

I was reading Walden (aka “Life in the Woods”) this morning again and I came across this great quote (Thoreau's expansion on I Corinthians 3:16 — “Ye are the temple of God”).

"Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them."
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1862)

Anyway, I was thinking about adding a quotes section to the BME encyclopedia. If you have a favorite body modification related quote, please post it in the comment forum… It can be quotes from people in the general public, relevant historical ones as above, body modification practitioners and personalities, or even people here.

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Shaking hands with the clown

First, if you're not interested in the news, just click the picture below instead.

Anyway, as you know, it now turns out that there was no link whatsoever between Iraq and 9/11, putting America into a position where it has neither legal nor moral right to be involved in this war… and the punch line is that no matter who you vote for (unless you vote Nader or something like that), you're voting for war — Kerry, Bush, Edwards, and Cheney all voted for the war. They also all voted for the PATRIOT act. They've all said they'll expand both the war and the PATRIOT act. Yay for democracy, I'm sure the Iraqis are looking forward to having so much choice when the period of martial law ends.

But, don't worry about having to choose. The Bush administration has already been asking the Justice Department exactly what it needs to do to legally suspend elections. Other than that, Cheney (who conspiracy gamblers are putting the following bet on: prior to the election, Cheney will have a “heart attack” and McCain will step in as VP, thus winning Bush the election) is up on a $7 billion set of charges in France for money laundering and bribery (more, more, more), as well as a $180 million set in the US as well… When asked about it, President Bush laughted, and had only this to say:

“Fuck 'em all”