keep on truckin’

I have not “slandered” anyone by pointing out that piercing certificates handed out by boards of health have little value in indicating the quality and knowledge of the piercer. They simply show that the shop has registered with the state and PERHAPS has met some basic minimum standards. Just like if a restaurant gets a health board certification, it doesn’t mean their chef can cook decent food.

I’m right about who this comment is from (Rafti?) then this is just sour grapes about being called out as foolish, and continued deranged griping.

If anyone here has an agenda and a personal motive to distort reality it’s you — totally obsessed with self-aggrandizing yourself as some expert on this industry, when in reality you have no actual first hand knowledge. What little you know was largely gained by reading BME and other online sources, and then plaigerizing them to try and pass off as your own work.

For those wondering who this person is, I quote from the wiki page, “William Rafti is a delusional monomaniac best known for his book, ‘The Body Piercing Encyclopedia’, a 340+ page compilation of various copyrighted materials stolen from all over the body modification community (including BME), as well as diagrams and text created by the author which are confusing, idiosyncratic and misinformative, at best.”

For a more amusing version of the tale, here is a sum-up of my first encounter with this person (sad that he’s still around and still obsessed over a subject that he’ll never really be anything but a stalker at the edges of): https://news.bmezine.com/2003/12/05/william-rafti-piercing-visionary-or-scumbag-con-artist-the-publishers-ring/

And yes, I think “stalker” is probably the best word for Rafti that sums him up concisely.

Rafti, please leave me alone. I’m not interested in what you have to say and neither is anyone else.

For many years now there has been a line of foam body parts designed for practice and display that eliminates the risk of needle stick injury because they are designed to be pierced with a toothpick with one blunted end acting as the tail end, but the APP doesn’t support anything from non-members and does so without any regard for safety for the industry; they have stated in one of their issues of their newsletter (The point) that the APP board of directors purpose is to do what benefits the APP board of directors, (while ignoring it’s own past and medical realities whenever convenient).

Shannon you too are guilty of suppressing and distorting information for personal gain, for example you slandered piercing certificates that were issued only to fully legal professionals working out of legitimate studios with a good reputation as being “bogus”, knowing full well that the real bogus certificates come along with tattoo starter kits that include a certificate that says “Tattoo Artist”.

While ignoring these included in the starter kit “Tattoo Artist” certificates for what they are (meaningless and misleading, A.K.A. “bogus”) the industry made a comical effort to get TLC’s “Tattoo School” off the air- so Certificates awarded to bona fide professionals by organizations (other than the APP) get slandered as “bogus”, as is anything to do with tattoo school, but if I pay Spaulding and Rogers $12 for a “Tattoo Artist” certificate (no questions asked) no one ever says a word against it?

It’s been said “sunlight is the best disinfectant” which of course is false, but when an industry has a multi-decade history of trying to falsify it’s own history and realities (like when the APP claimed that surface piercing wasn’t body piercing, and as such they had no opinion about it) a house cleaning and major public reality check seems long overdue, actually it’s probably already too late because the people who are most influential in legislation are those who aren’t artists or clients; and trust me a lot of them don’t think highly of us at all, sometimes for good reason, and sometimes out of the negative gut reaction that they get from looking at things that they rather not think about, or understand. For example eye ball tattooing was being considered for banning in Suffolk County NY and one of the board members (a surgeon with an MD’s license who claimed to ‘run’ several emergency rooms in the county) showed up month after month clueless as to if it’s even possible to tattoo any part of an eye at all, and instead of looking up the literature (online or off) he resorted to infantile reasoning “If we ban eyeball tattooing then it’s like telling people that it can be done, but no sensible person would even try to tattoo an eyeball…” (MD’s obviously should be FORCED to update and renew their credentials to get them out of practice before they stop caring about doing their job) so his position was eyeball tattooing should not be banned because it would only encourage people to do it if it was; and I didn’t correct him even though I was there and easily could have because he already made the right choice based on negligence and incompetence, instead of basing it on a proper search of the relevant literature to find and address safety concerns.

They were also looking to ban all piercings (other than ear and navel) but I proved that the one study they were using to support the ban showed 92% of all (self reported) complications were of the ear and navel, so if they were going to ban any piercings at all, ear and navel should have been the first to go! My point is “This industry tends to bring the worst ego out of people” (Jim Ward wrote me that to me in 2002) and I’ve clearly seen sadistic jackals and mental midgets that ignore or distort the truth on both sides of the issue, seemingly out of greed or indifference.