Something I wanted to mention about the recent tongue splitting stuff that's going on… The bill doesn't just say something like “doctors only“. If it said that, in the right form, I might actually be able to support it. But what it actually says is that if a doctor does a tongue splitting in Illinois, they will potentially face jail time for doing a piece voluntary cosmetic surgery that is safer than most that's done more commonly.
The government has made it clear that they're willing to expel us from the education system, deny us even the most minor and basic of protections, ignore attacks on us, and now they're trying to legislate this community back underground and jail those who refuse, no matter how legitimate a path they choose — they're rather have us in the hands of underground cutters. They don't care if we're safe or not; they just don't want us in their world. So maybe we're reaching a critical decision point: do we fight this, or do we go back into the shadows? At least in the shadows you can do what you want… But who wants to live in the shadows?
Along those lines, BME might be dragged into court soon to defend itself on First Ammendment grounds (or the Bill of Rights equivalent). One of our regular contributors was arrested just over a month ago on alleged (fabricated?) child porn charges, which have since erupted into larger allegations that he's a serial killer. Among other things, his BME submissions are being used as evidence as such.
(The “assorted prescription drugs” are of course Xylocaine and Marcaine).
Anyway, one of the things they aren't going to tell you in the news is that this person was a caring individual that helped the people around him, and is well-spoken, intelligent, and I'd be genuinely surprised if he were to take part in a non-consensual act. That said, immediately after September 11th 2001, he was a vocal opponent and critic of US policy (one of the few people who sent me something other than hatemail at the time in fact) — in October of 2001 he told me he was worried that even writing some of the things he was could get him tagged as treasonous.
Anyway, I don't know if this is all fabrication, or if he's guilty of some “seed crime”, or what's going on, but things like this combined with the media attention on heavy mods right now makes me strongly urge all cutters and body artists engaging in heavy modification to maintain a low and discrete profile. In addition, I strongly urge those with heavy mods considering dealing with the media to not mention names unless the practitioner is 100% legal by all definitions.
Again (and I can't stress this enough):
We can't fight God with tanks and planes and special forces and bombs — that is who they perceive we are fighting. For each bomb that goes astray, we make a hundred martyrs with backpack bombs.Our military is in control... with a man in charge who has no understanding of what is going on with the new revolution in the world. That is scary...
This new revolution is the biggest one since the Reformation. A new rising middle class is coming up and demanding the things that the rising middle class of the 1500-1600's wanted. They fought against "the church" and the royalty who had all the money, jobs and property. Protestantism was a key player in that and a vehicle for great social changes, education, etc.. It was the driving force of the masses revolting against the lower class shackles of the middle ages. That energy was given by commerce. We now see the same mix: commerce is the energy and religion is the driving vehicle.
Where this revolution will lead, and if it will be violent or not is yet to say, but as we move jobs out of our two countries and Europe and into third world countries, we are making a new middle class even with the lower wages. As they rise out of poverty on the small amounts we pay them, they will want more and more and the only way to get more and more is for someone else to have less and less... the next few hundred years will be interesting.
On that note, perhaps someone can explain last night's The Simpsons to me? For those that didn't see it, two groups of kids (led separately by Milhouse and Bart) fought it out, and at the end Bart's group butchered the US anthem at a ballgame, making fun of it as the crowd expressed their outrage by shouting stuff like “my dad died in some war” and “you call this a large beer” in a strangely close to home parody of the cliched “ugly american”.
A fight then broke out which brought Marge to tears. When that image was put on the bigscreen, the crowd decided they needed to sing something “warm and soothing … not a hymn to war like our national anthem“. They then broke out into the Canadian national anthem and formed a huge maple leaf in the diamond. Afterwards Bart and Millhouse congratulated themselves on learning that “war is not the answer” — quickly followed by the quip “except to all of America's problems”.
Does this mean that Matt is off to Camp X-Ray?
