Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

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As predicted, I've just posted another thousand-plus images to BME — surprised I'm sticking with my promise? This update gets me caught up to submissions as of last Wednesday. The cover shot is of course a female pubic shot through some naughty fishnet panties, but the cool thing about Christina piercings is that you can show them off without exposing pink and moving into explicit territory.

I (personally) am responsible for the naming of maybe a dozen piercings or so, and worked at the studio (Tom Brazda's Stainless Studios) that named the Christina. Now, I've done some many sordid things when it comes to naming and renaming piercings, but my friend Tom kind of screwed over another friend of mine in the naming of the Christina (but I bear no malice).

When I first moved to Toronto, I lived at Vaughn and St. Clair, right next to the incredible icecream shop Dutch Dreams where I'd regularly consume more than one immense crepe wrapping three enormous scoops of homemade icecream, and one of the girls that worked there lived in the same building as me. I think she was regularly blowing my business partner, but I'm not sure — he's always had luck in that department. In any case, one day she approached me, knowing that I worked at a piercing studio, and asked me about getting pierced “down there”

“Where exactly do you mean?,” I asked.

She looked at me like I was some kind of idiot and said rather bluntly, “you know, where the outer labia meet — haven't you ever been with a girl?”

I told her I was fairly sure that wasn't a common piercing (or even a known one) — this was 1995 after all — and I think at that moment the piercing community got collectively more sexually naïve in her eyes. She was however excited to hear that as the first known recipient of the piercing she'd get to choose its name. I took her in to see Tom, and after he gave her genitals a once over to ensure the anatomy was suitable, an appointment was made to do the piercing two weeks hence.

Tom can't keep his mouth shut when it comes to piercing any more than I can (if it wasn't for his zeal, there'd quite likely be no BME today), and by the time midnight of the day of her visit had struck, a handful of other women had already lined up to have their pubic fold penetrated by him. A few days later, a friend of his (who didn't have to wait for an appointment in his busy schedule) was pierced.

…her name was Christina.

On the left above is “Christina” herself, but on the right above is my inventive neighbor who came up with the piercing in the first place. I can't remember her name, or even what she looked like. All that's left is a single blurry photo of her crotch… but still, I consider her the creator of this piercing, if not the actual namesake — and if I could go back in time and fix things, it would be known by a different name.

That said, I'm glad that Urban Primitive's corny suggestion that it be christened the Venus Piercing never stuck. Anyway, I hope that story was an interesting piece of piercing trivia. One of the cool things about being one of the loudest blabbermouths in the early days of modern piercings is that I've got a zillion more like that…

Other than that, there's plenty of good stuff in the update but I wanted to showcase here some fine work from the always gonzo Emilio Gonzalez, one of the most boundary shattering artists I know that's not a monster (except in a good way).

Heavy blackwork tattooing combined with heavy scarification always works well in my opinion. Anyway, enjoy the update, and thanks again to everyone who helped . Assuming I make it to tomorrow, there'll be another one then, and if not, I look forward to chatting with all my successfully suicidal friends in hell.

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I've mentioned them here a few times before, but the folks over at Forcefield have yet another amazing homebrew power project. This time they've built — using only “junk” parts and a home workshop — a 17' windmill capable of generating 3.5 kilowatts in relatively low winds.

While I'm keeping my fingers crossed for various yuppies who've dropped out to live the good life (and escape the peak oil apocalypse… or at least not feel the brunt of $300-a-barrel crude quite as harshly), it's these guys that really prove that humanity can and will survive the energy “crisis”. I don't know that “crisis” is even the right word, because it's not so much that we're running out of energy, it's more that we're hitting a wall where our rampant over-consumption of energy must come to an end. So to make an inappropriate analogy, it's sort of like telling a 1,000-pound man that he's going to have to cut down from 20,000 calories a day to 2,500 — not such a bad idea anyway.

Speaking of wind, I was really inspired by this story on wind-assisted ships… Instead of using a sail they're using a large inflatable kite, flown at about a half kilometer high where the winds are consistent and powerful, to drag ships around.

The power generated is impressive. Their larger sails generate nearly 6 megawatts, which is enough to move an oil tanker or large cargo ship (or at least cut power use in half)… it's got me fantasizing about building a big (and cheap) concrete barge and living on a portable island. One of the things you notice if you fly regularly is that the most amazing places in the world can only be reached by boat (or float plane). I like the idea of traveling around the world with Rachel, but I think I will have to build her a very nice boat to make a convincing case.

Anyway, it's kind of pathetic to end this entry on celebrity gossip, but Bruce Willis dating Lindsay Lohan? I'm sure they each have a different reason from the list, but… aw hell, what am I talking about, Rachel is like ten years younger than me (but at least ten years more mature mentally).

As always, I am in a glass house.

But that's OK, because as they say in the song, I do have opaque shower curtains.

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I'm so tired and dazed and generally out of it that it almost killed me to get it done — at one point I had to go lie down, thinking I was going into some kind of shock or stroke (most likely because of the dangerous mix of uppers and downers I subsist on), but I've just posted an image update with a bit over a thousand new pictures. Thanks to everyone who helped out and has been patient waiting for their images to be posted (I'm currently running about ten days behind right now on picture submissions).

I wonder… if the rabid push in America toward “virginity” is causing more teenagers to try anal sex because it's not “technically” sex, will banning facial piercings from schools cause more young people to get pierced south of the border? Anyway, I can probably get arrested these days just for asking that question…

There's lots of good bloody shots in this update, both in the public sections and in BME/HARD of course as well. I think I was a little disappointed that my facial cutting didn't bleed more — we didn't even leave a single drop of blood in the hotel room. Normally my face bleeds like crazy, but then again, it might just be that most of the time when I penetrate the skin which wraps my skull my co-conspirators and I have such alcohol-diluted blood that it flows like wine at some Dionysian orgy.

Thanks to Kevin for that frickin sweet bike image. He's a fan of the red elixir as well, but really, I don't think you could live for long in Saskatchewan without starting to hack away at yourself, so I consider it a very healthy impulse in his case. Thanks also to for the great cover shot. There are more pictures on BME and on her page, but here's a teaser:

You can never go wrong with blood. This next photo set (thanks to Lolli, one of only a very small handful of women I know that have done a chest suspension, for sending it), well, I wasn't sure whether I should file it in the CBT section or the play piercing section — it is 109 needles through a penis after all.

I think I'm starting to ramble a little? So if you like the pictures I just posted, just go check out the site update. I'll try and add more tomorrow but I'm feeling really “off”. Rachel is in Chicago right now dealing with some business, so the following article (found via boingboing) really sounded personal. It's an interview with Robert Crumb's wife:

In a recent interview he described himself as an "ineffectual individual," which is surprising for someone with such a prodigious output. Do you think he could survive without a woman like yourself in his life?
No, he wouldn't. He'd be dead without me. [Laughs.] When I met him his life was such a wreck. He's really a soft guy. He just wants to be liked too much. When he says ineffectual, he just can't say no to people. There are always parasites ready to jump on somebody like that. So I'm the bad cop.

It's sort of scary (sub in “pathetic” if you'd like) how much Rachel keeps me going. As much as I produce what I think is a decent amount of work, it's a lot more effort than I think people would guess… I joke that I'm an idiot savant, or that I can't remember what I did fifteen minutes ago, but it's true… it's not that I'm joking as in “making it up”, but just joking because there's not really anything else I can do about it.

It's now been almost four months since I last slept through the night. In that time period I have gotten at most and hour or two of uninterrupted uninduced sleep, except on the nights where I manage to knock myself out with a bottle of 151-proof Jamaican rum combined with whatever opiate I can get my hands on, escalating my sorry state where I'm playing a chicken-and-egg game with booze and brain damage. It's strange… I don't even really get drunk any more — it just slows me down a little.

I'm pretty sure Bukowski scripted my life, but that's okay because the most beautiful art lives and dies drunk in a gutter… but ultimately I think I'm too much of a mystic. Bukowski would likely beat me senseless and then rape me… so I'm sticking with Jodorowsky — “One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, 'Is it half full or half empty?' So I drank the water. No more problem.” The lower you fall, the higher you can rise.

I liked it coming out of that expensive
cafe in Germany
that rainy night
some of the ladies had learned that I
was in there
and as I walked out well-fed and
intoxicated
the ladies screamed at me
but all I recognized was my name.

I asked a German friend what they were
saying.

Germany hates BME? They tell me BME is endangering the German youth. Personally I think they are endangered in its absence.

“they hate you,” he told me,
“they belong to the German Female
Liberation movement…”

I stood and watched them, they were
beautiful and screaming, I
loved them all, I laughed, waved,
blew them kisses.

then my friend, my publisher and my
girlfriend got me into the car; the
engine started, the windshield wipers
began thrashing
and as we drove off in the rain
I looked back
watched them standing in that
terrible weather
waving their placards and their
fists.

it was nice to be recognized
in the country of my birth, that
was what mattered
most…

But why the picture of the rhinos you ask?

In a haze this morning I found myself driving down a marsh-side road in Canada when out of the reeds our truck was approached by a family similar to the one you see above, although they were somewhat deformed stylized and were pinkish in hue with large orange giraffe-like spots — I thought to myself, “I have to blog about this”, and reached for my camera only to find I'd left it at home. Irate, I suppose that he'd missed out on his chance for fame and fortune, the largest of the rhinos charged the truck! Rachel threw it in reverse, floored it, and we narrowly avoided the impact.

Slowly the scene faded and I found myself lying on the floor of my office, not sure if I should worry about my hallucination and/or astral projection, or embrace it as another piece of the rich tapestry that we willful lunatics enjoy. But maybe I'm making the whole thing up? In the interest of avoiding another unpleasant stay in the asylum, let me definitely say: it's all a story, told for my own amusement.

I think I'm looking a little more haggard than usual. I wouldn't post such an unflattering picture normally, but it seems that the rougher I look, the more nice things get said, and like some narcissistic Pavlovian dog I can't stop the saliva from flowing. In all seriousness, I think I'm going to build an isolation tank to try and help me rest as soon as we move into the new house. I don't think my mind or body can take not sleeping for much longer, and I never turn down anything that has the potential to open the doors to another dimension, or at least temporarily fool me into believing such a thing.

PS. What does the average BME member's bathroom look like most days? The picture above seems about right to me, and certainly is a scene I've seen play out with my own eyes more than once (much to the chagrin of my housemates I imagine). Ah, arterial spray, my old friend…