The ultimate in piercings
This is beyond description. So I won’t bother to describe it.
I’ll just add this commentary: what hath the Sixties wrought?
And this caveat: please, readers, DO NOT try this in your home! Or anywhere else, for that matter.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
OK. You are the psychologist. What is wrong with these people?
More facts to masticate on:
The tattoo-removal business is booming, according to a May Fox News report that highlights dissatisfaction with formerly trendy Chinese-language tats that were often either mistranslated as nonsense (“blood and guts” translated as “blood and intestines”) or were actually jokes pulled on people too cool for their own good (such as Chinese words for “gullible white boy”). A removal service in Beverly Hills, Calif., said it takes off at least seven Asian tattoos a week. [Fox News, 5-9-06]
News of the Weird
I’ve recently been watching the series “Dead Like Me”. One of the characters, a druggy named Mason, died by his own hand by drilling through his temple with a power drill “to allow more blood into his brain”. I thought it was just a bad joke. I should have known that no comic writer could have just pulled that out of the air. Thanks for the info.
I read the first sentence of the article you linked, and that was enough for me!
Didn’t need to read further.
I think Theodore Dalrymple got it right when he quipped that tattoos are a “refutation of the doctrine that the customer is always right. In the tattoo parlour, the customer is always wrong”.
That’s exponentially true for the procedure that Neo links to!
We’re beginning to worry about you.
Now, there’s a medical procedure I’m surprised to see making a comeback. The last time I looked at trepanation, it was as a sidenote in a college archaeology class when we were discussing various procedures relating to the excavation of human remains. Trepanation was presented as an exercise in determining the cause of death: If a trepanation had been performed and the edges of the hole in the skull were uneven, then the individual had survived the operation and died of some other cause after the skull had begun to regrow. If the edges of the hole in the skill were relatively smooth and regular, however…
I’d like to get about half of each of the valentine hearts I had added alongside my wee wifey’s name erased, so I could get them re-inked in a different shape. They are symmetrical, and I would like to squeeze and angle the point at the bottom so they would follow the slant of the lettering. Her name, however, is spelled correctly. I brought the checkbook along for the artist to work from.
Oh, I’m quite willing to do this procedure…but on a bar stool, one Guinness at a time…ok, I’m a traditionalist…
As to tattoo removal, sometimes one doesnt need to remove the whole thing: Johnny Depp had a tattoo that read “Winona forever” when he dated Ryder, now it reads “Wino forever.”
This brings out the vestigial libertarian in me: Self-trephination should be encouraged. Will give the trolls, so vulnerable to delusion, something useful to do, and hopefully improve the gene pool.
I find this fad–I sure hope its a fad–for extreme tattooing, scarification and piercings very weird. There have been TV specials about extremes, like New York socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein aka the “Lion Woman” and her imitators including one definite nut job who has had his upper lip split and plastic “whiskers” inserted into his face to become more “lionlike,” a former SAS guy in England who has had leopard spot tattoos all over his body and some steel balls inserted under his skin so he could “become” more like the leopard he desires to be, plus the types who also have steel balls inserted under their skins to present a bumpy appearance like a frog. Viewing these things, its not too hard to believe that the end times are here.
Most of these practices, correct me if I’m wrong, are plucked from primitive/barbaric/traditional tribal cultures where at least tattooes and particluarly scarification were, and in some cases still are, a very functional and deep-rooted part of the tribal cultures they came from; look at many D.C. cab drivers today and you can still see genuine tribal scarification. What the hell these tribal practices have to do with modern day kids and young adults, other than that they are a way to piss off adult family members and society at large, is beyond me.
Incidentally, I think that any plastic surgeon who performs these body modifications, including those who worked on Michael Jackson, should have his license yanked for malpractice.
Finally, as a former medic I can tell you that all those pins, door-knockers, rings etc. are going to leave pits and scars that I believe are going to be pretty hard to completely erase.
I have considered drilling a hole in my sinuses as a way to relieve a bad sinus headache. Does that count as self-trepanation? Would it work?