Today in history

1996 The Nintendo 64 is released in the US, selling half a million systems on the first day.
1995 US troops indicted on child rape charges in Japan.
1992 Magic Johnson announces his (short-lived) comeback.
1989 Jeffrey Petkovich and Peter DeBernardi become the first people in history to go over the Canadian side of Niagara Falls (and survive)
1989 A.A. Busch Jr (of Busch Beer fame) died.
1988 UN peacekeeping forces win the Nobel Peace prize.
1988 The first shuttle mission after the Challenger disaster is launched successfully.
1984 Prince has the number one single, album, and movie all at once, the first artist to do so since the Beatles.
1983 US Congress invokes the War Powers Act for the first time ever (to keep US troops in Lebanon).
1982 Seven people killed by cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules.
1978 Pope John Paul I died.
1977 Muhammad Ali beats Ernie Shavers and claims the heavyweight crown in the most watched prize-fight in history. (Also, this fight was the first to be officiated by a woman).
1977 Salyut 6 (Soviet space station) launched.
1973 Soyuz 12 (experimental Russian flight) returns to Earth.
1973 BME's Shannon Larratt born in Victoria, BC.
1963 The Rolling Stones start their first tour, opening for Bo Diddley and The Everly Brothers.
1963 Les Claypool (of Primus) born.
1962 Canada launches its first orbiting satellite. Alouette 1 studies the ionosphere from 1000km up.
1957 Andrew Dice Clay (the “actor”) born.
1951 First color television broadcast of a football game.
1948 Bryant Gumble (the news host) born.
1943 Lech Walesa (Polish solidarity leader) born.
1940 First US merchant ship (the “Booker T Washington”) launched under a black captain (Hugh Mulzac).
1936 First use of radio in a US Presidential campaign.
1935 Jerry Lee Lewis (the musician) born.
1930 First Canadian football game played under lights, UBC vs. Hamilton.
1929 Bob Newhart (the actor) born.
1922 Canada declares that it is not automatically at war just because Britain is.
1901 Enrico Fermi (the physicist) is born.
1895 Louis Pasteur died.
1890 First pro-baseball game, in which NY beats Washington 4-2 in NYC.
1829 Scotland Yard formed in London, England.
1789 The United States officially establish a military.

Kleenex

Thanks to MisterV for sending me this ad from today's Boston Globe for Kleenex. If you can't read it in the picture, it reads, “sixty seconds of anticipation plus two soft favorites equals one brave little big girl”, and at the bottom it calls this a “grown up moment”.

Not only is an old-style piercing gun shown (which even the piercing gun industry at this point largely accepts is dangerous), but it's being used without gloves or anything… You ever get the feeling that people are just getting stupider and stupider, or that society is stratifying into a small number that are “with it” and a giant number that are “extremely not with it”?

Wow…

It's raining like crazy here right now… I really like the rain, it's the blood of the earth.

Working…

Still chugging along on the update. I'll probably post it in about 10 hours or so. Big thanks to folks like luvpain99 (and many others) for all the wonderful pictures.

I wanted to mention this story brought to me by KannibalTheCat… It's not really body modification related per se — it's about assissted suicide. As I see it, clear-headed suicide is probably the single-most radical statement on “absolute personal ownership of the body” a person can make (whether you agree with it or not), so I follow the subject. Anyway, next week Hell on Earth will be doing a live webcast (assuming they aren't stopped) of a suicide (terminally ill, before you ask) as an art statement.

Other than that I ordered some CDs for BME/RADIO… With any luck we'll start doing some broadcast tests in this upcoming week. Watch here for details (once it gets rolling for real there will be a schedule on the main site that's always updated).

PS. One thing that weirded me out when I was in Hawaii recently is that long hair gets you instinctually called “Ma'am” pretty regularly. I don't think I've had that happen to me since 1987 here!

Funmail

To: Amy P**** <***@stopsinc.com>
From: Frank O'Derby
Subject: Re: banned from your gay ass chat

At 9/26/2003 11:50 PM -0400, you wrote:
>your sites bmezine, bme shop and , bme world are subject
>to a wide spread boycott by piercers who are frequent buyers
>and subscribers for the banning of me and others from the
>chatroom. the boycott will not be lifted until we are all
>allowed back in the chat. if you think you want revenge by
>sending me a virus, I have a firewall and word for legal
>forcers against such actions. write back, Zach P**** , FBI

I am terribly sorry about this misunderstanding. BME does host a free chat service about body modification, but it's not specifically about "Gay Asses", so I'm not sure which chat room you are actually trying to access. Perhaps you are visiting the wrong site. I'm sure if you type "free gay ass chat" into a search engine such as google.com you may find something more to your liking.

Perhaps myself and your legion of activists who feel strongly about your banning from this gay ass chat should sit down for tea some time and discuss this and other things, like baboons. I'm sure you are both a wonderful conversationalist and perhaps even conservationist. But then again, don't we all care about the rain forest?

Say hello to everyone at the FBI for me.

Sincerely,

Frank O'Derby
Chat Superintendent