There's actually tons of RFID implant videos on YouTube, but this clip of a bunch of non-bod-mod seeming people getting drunk, reading the Bible, and doing an implant is pretty funny to watch — “ah it worked i'm tagged! this is sick! my number 413 793 e7d! this is my identity!”
Anyway, I'm going to work on editing Pauly's long overdue interview this morning.
Thanks to Phil and Roo and loads of reviewers, BME is updated with lots of experiences and pictures, and BMEvideo has been updated as well both with new content and remastered old content.
So Nefarious's school has an incubator where they recently hatched some chicks, which I guess will spend the year being the school “pets”. I don't tihnk that they plan on keeping them indefinitely, so I've been wondering what they will actually do with them at the end of the year when no one is left at the school to care for them.
My strong feeling is that they should butcher them so the kids see the process of where chicken meat comes from — I actually think it may send an irresponsible message about the value of life if they don't*. Killing and preparing chicken is a fairly simple process, and depending on the method you use for killing (twisting the neck, bleeding it out, or just chopping the head off), it isn't particularly gory… And then they should have a BBQ with the fresh meat!
* What's worse — killing and confinement for entertainment, or for sustenance?
I know it's an old cliche that's been written over and over but I wholeheartedly agree that if you can't accept death like this you have no right to consume another life. Speaking of consuming another life, I was really taken by what UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia said about the experience of knocking someone out — he described it as taking fifteen seconds of someone's life. Fifteen seconds that you own, that they will never remember and never get back.
The reason I found it interesting is that when you start framing competitive sports in the guise of the victor consuming the life of the defeated even symbolically or temporarily, it becomes a magickal act, a ritual involving the transfer of energy from one person to another, as well as simply a physical test.
So people hassle me on ModBlog all the time because I manipulate the photos. Usually that just means upping the levels and saturation and so on, but sometimes (far less often) it means distorting the picture itself as well. In any case, some people see that as perpetuating unrealistic notions about beauty. I thought about for a bit, and I'd like to say in return that those people are perpetuating urealistic notions about ugliness.
I don't know that there's a way to try and reach for even a litte bit of that by messing with photos in an attempt to trigger the memory and experience of real beauty life, but that's really what I'm trying to do when it comes down to it I think… So I think that the amount of beauty that post-processing can force into a photo is more like “potential” — you can approach the true value, but you can never exceed it…
It's not so much about perpetuating unrealistic notions of beauty a la some mainstream magazine, but more about perpetuating realistic notions of beauty a la my eyes. Maybe those two things aren't so different — I'm not sure, but it could just be the same world seen through the eyes of two different story tellers — but while I don't mind explaining my actions on this subject, it's not something I'm about to apologize for in general.
You may remember that back in March, Tom removed several of the magnets in my left hand because they were compromised. We thought they'd all been removed, but about a week and a half ago it one that must have been totally buried under the finger pad surfaced. I don't know what irritated it and caused the new rupture and migration.
Anyway, I submit photos (by Badur) to BME just like everyone else, so here we go:
 1/10 Creating the flap (you can't cut straight down to remove magnets because they don't hold their form well enough) |
 2/10 Starting to open the flap to see how badly the magnet has decayed |
 3/10 Flap fully open, showing the darkness of the magnet just under the surface |
 4/10 The remnants of the magnet are now more clear and the amount of compromised tissue can be seen |
 5/10 The fistula-surrounded implant is exposed and ready to be removed, looking a lot like a cyst |
 6/10 After excising the pocket of tissue that the implant is surrounded in it can be lifted out |
 7/10 This is what the implant looked like at the time of removal; a clear bit of the silicone casing that had torn away, and the magnet with adhered flesh |
 8/10 The flap then gets closed using 4-0 sutures |
 9/10 Closeup of the silicone coating that had separated |
 10/10 Closeup of the magnet, cut in half with a scalpel: it has the consistency of a thick olive paste and has no real structure |
Anyway, whenever I post pictures like this I get messages from artists and practitioners telling me of all the people they know who've had removals. The informal numbers I've seen suggest that the silicone coated magnets, at least the initial dipped design, has failed in nearly 100% of applications… But I guess because people feel ashamed that it went wrong, they don't report this publicly. All I can say to people is that it's even more important to document it when it goes wrong, because it will protect others from going through the same pain as you did.
Big thanks to Tom for continuing to take good care of me!
I was thinking of printing up a bunch of large car door magnets/stickers, something akin to the mockup below (but cleaned up more, this is just a quickie doodle). If anyone else wants some as well, let me know… it should be cheaper if I do a bunch.
