We've had a one month rental on a Jeep which expires in a few days, so we went and picked up a car today. Still have to add it to the garage page, but here's a quick photo of the new BMEmobile. Image update later today by the way, I'm just starting the upload now.
The thing about transscrotal piercings is that you can't just clamp and pierce them with a standard barbell, so they're beyond what the average piercer can do. Doing them as a piercing risks trapping an infection (which won't be able to drain) inside the scrotum where it can rapidly (within a couple days) become life-threatening. I have friends who have nearly died from this piercing and other scrotal infections — take this risk seriously!
In theory, the “right way” to do this is by creating a larger hole or slot through the scrotum, and then the front and back are cleanly sutured together. This is the technique pioneered by Jon Cobb back in I think 1994 that is now used by virtually all professionals doing the procedure. Done right, the piercing can fully heal in under a month (and the larger hole has better drainage ability in the case of an infection).
I saw this technique linked on MeFi and quickly wrote a version of the action he described (although it has some fairly obvious flaws in it). To be honest it's easier to write it yourself than for me to provide a copy of it because even with the action you've got to “get” it to use it right.
Note: If you do want to see how I did this, here's the current version of the action. You will have to do a lot of the work manually still (like choosing your rotation angles, and applying any distortion to the lines). Note that the first time you run it, a few errors will be generated because of missing layers. Ignore them, but when it's done running the first time, press undo three or four times (until the 'Layer 1' reappears). Anyway: etchit.atn (F9 activated).
With Rafael's help as a translator and oracle we went down to the beach today to see about reserving it for BMEfest. Tecolote, the beach that's pictured in the BMEfest banner is still top on our list and we all pretty much agree it's the ideal place. The food is great, and we will be able to reserve the restaurant so it's all ours (the beach is public). It's big enough that we've got more than enough space, and pulling on the beach will be totally fine as well, although just out of respect to other people who aren't into that it'll have to be a little farther down (but that's better for people doing it anyway). Here are two more panoramas, looking down the beach each way from the restaurant.
“Excuse me. Excuse me, Señor. May I speak to you please? I asked for a mai tai, a margarita, and a piña colada. I asked for no salt, no salt in the margarita. But it had salt in it… If you do that again, I won't be leaving a tip. I won't be putting one down. I could check into a competing resort. I could write a letter to your nation's board of tourism and I could have this place condemned.”
“I could put… I could put… strychnine in the guacamole.”
I'm working on images and a new IAM toy (should get posted later if I don't pass out from exhaustion first), but I wanted to pause for a moment and show a few pictures of the BME staff shirts that Ryan just sent me, as well as one of the new Prof. Orbax shirts.
