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I've just posted another 1,100+ images to the public sections of BME (tomorrow is the HARD/extreme members update). Thanks to everyone who contributed, and to Dillon for the cover shot; as you may have guessed, he's a drummer.
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| Ack, is that a soldering iron? | Guerrilla gorilla suspension. | Why I'm getting tattooed next in Scotland. |
Earlier today, after a freak-out resulting apparently from being rebuked by the girls on IAM he was spamming, a user was deleted after posting an assortment of messages like the following tirade of nonsensical attempts to be as uselessly offensive as possible:
fuck you, you cunt fag whore son of a bitch nigger loving kike bastard cock licking bitch. NIGGERLOVINGQUEERASSWHORE hope you like, hag. and why do all you queer ass whores wanna look at eachothers cunts? fagggzzzz!!! i hate faggggzzzz!!
Anyway, he sent me the following “explanation” for his actions:
do you know that you have a large faction of communist riff-raff? if they can talk shit about Bush, i should be allowed to talk shit about homosexuals. your also breaking my right to free speach, being as you are a U.S. based site. i believe i could sue you for suspending me. but, i dont have money for that.
Communist riff-raff you say?
Oh no! The people here want to support each other and embrace community! How terrible. Anyway, for those of you who don't mind hanging out with commie queers like me, I've reinstated and upgraded the bucket. If you have extra IAM coupons that you'd like to let others have, or need one that someone else has donated, there's now an easy way. Click the picture to go there now:
Waiting for an image update to upload right now (I got spoiled by the ultra-fast Vegas connectivity) but in the meantime, some more complaints from AOL users submitted to IAM in an apparent confusion between “IAM TOS” and “AIM TOS”. We'll start with a complaint from sigman58 who is upset about the messages that affectionate4uuu sent him — here's the transcript he filed with me:
affectionate4uuu: did you do the warning thing to me?
affectionate4uuu: don
affectionate4uuu: do that
Sigman58: yea so u would leave me alone
affectionate4uuu: go fuck yourself
affectionate4uuu signed off at 12:48 A.M.
Oooh, call 911.
Emmitt is very upset about a user called Right Cali Baba. The whole thing started in some baseball chat room I guess:
i came into Baseball chat and he was talking some crazy politics... i came to talk sports..
Then he cursed me... I cursed back, but after being cursed at and embarresed at a point I was crying..
Please take action and keep creeps like him off the Internet.
Thank you and Walk in Peace
Poor Emmitt, brought to tears. Tell me more…
Talking about little boys Jeans being pulled down....In reference to Mike Jackson..
This is a baseball chat...
Please advise user of this, and that his comments are , while not exactly TOS incorrect at all times, he crosse, and I will not tolerate it!
As if that wasn't enough, Right Cali Baba upped the ante and Emmitt filed a third complaint:
Keeps talking about "whoring" and that is a violent term.. I think most would agree.
I have to admit that every time I get those messages I consider making the submit form genuinely ambiguous so I get more of them… but at least this way only the dumbest of the dumb write me.
Some of you got to see Andrew S's amazing transscrotal (at about 3″, originally pierced at 3/4″ by BadApple) at APP — and some of you got to do more with it as well! Thank to Stainless for this photo of it. Oh, and if you're into transscrotal piercing be sure to check out the forum.
Sometimes the lights all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been
- Robert Hunter, Truckin'
As you know, I was scheduled to give a talk at the APP — their 10th anniversary no less — about “extreme piercing and heavy body modification”. You'll hear more from Jordan when his articles on it go up, but I went into the whole thing with a great deal of trepidation and mixed feelings, not knowing how it would be received (would I be accepted? rejected? booed off the podium?) — and I must admit that I drank about five beers before (and in part during) my presentation to calm my nerves. In all honesty, the entire thing is a big scary blur that I don't entirely remember, and that's more because of my deep dislike of public speaking than the alcohol.
Either way, it seems to have gone well and a lot of questions were asked afterwards (thanks to Sean for keeping things going) that were centered around some of the concerns people have about BME (minors, DIY issues, and so on). It was a fully packed room, and at the end there was an extremely flattering standing ovation. I don't know if people were just flattering me or if it really turned out that well — as I said, big scary blur — but I received a lot of nice feedback and most of all I really liked hearing from the people who approached me to say “I'm one of those people that really didn't agree with BME, but now I understand where you're coming from and why you have that stance.”
On Thursday night was the Prom (a formal dinner-and-dance, sort of like the ModProm that Rachel hosted a few years back), so we got all dressed up for that — I even wore a full-on tuxedo. There were a series of joke awards, and then the APP's real awards as well… I was floored when I received the President's Award.
Me?
For once in my life I didn't feel like an outsider.
A few people said to me after all this how nice it was to see that the APP is finally coming around to “my way” of thinking on this subject — as much as I think my ego would love for that to be true, I don't think there has been any fundamental change in the APP's stance (nor should there be)… I think that it's closer to the truth that we've all just realized that we've been on the same path the whole time, fighting the same fight for the same people.
