When The Levee Breaks...

Well, I almost shit a brick yesterday… I was leaving my buddy’s house about to head home and change for a party, when the clutch on my truck starts acting weird… To the point where I was utterly unable to put it into gear… Of course right when turning up onto a hill… So I roll backwards a couple blocks and land it in front of Goofy Dan’s place. Now, when you’re 23 days from a three month Europe trip, the last thing you want is a shot tranny or clutch (and I have to drive to UBC twice a week still). That’s the kind of financial IED that takes all the absinthe, wine and possibly food out of your trip. Realizing it was too late and dark to do anything about it, and being a tad mechanically inept, I decided to forge on into the night. Attempting to avoid that feeling like the one you get when you can’t move and someone’s coming at your ass with a lubed-up rubber fist, I managed to get a ride home, sent a stressed out e-mail to the girlfriend to help vent frustrations, and eventually managed to get convinced by friends to head down to the party. Armed with a backpack and a skateboard I managed to get down to the ‘Vous for Import’s B-day… Three parties later (and I must admit, the WWF themed party at the dilapidated punk house was a fun gig to crash, and though I didn’t know any of the crazy sponsored board teams at Skater Katie’s party, it was a groovy crowd) I was still feeling a tad lethargic, and still fretting about my beautifully beaten and currently handicapped truck. I caught a ride home, and packed it in.

So, this morning comes, and instead of my typical flea-marketing and shotgun-shooting Sunday morn, I catch a ride down to my truck before work. With some over-the-phone help from a mechanic friend, I manage to eventually pinpoint the problem… This little fucker:
Turns out (as I should have known) that my 4Runner has a hydraulic clutch… The little thing pictured above, a slave-cylinder, is responsible for supplying fluid for my clutch… And it was leaking like a pregnant woman. Ok, not the worst thing ever, and at least I now know it’s not the clutch itself. I get to work late of course, manage to hop out and grab the new part, which only wound up being $20, and proceed to have a rather slow mid-afternoon, before getting slammed with clients in the last couple hours of the day. Then I catch a ride into Cloverdale, and with Goofy Dan’s assistance and while racing against the setting sun, I set out to fix that bitch like a puppy in heat. Not even an hour later, covered in dirt, grease, and copious amounts of hydraulic fluids, I emerge victorious.

What a day. I’m leaving out tons of other little things I had to deal with, and of course I have had worse days, but there was some serious stressing going on. The ‘money for Europe’ situation is always at the forefront though… So much so, that I’ve decided to hock some unused stuff that I’ve had kicking around. In this last week I’ve sold a paintball gun, my spare suit of sword-fighting armor, and two swords...

And while stuff is just stuff, for a crass materialist like myself, letting go of possessions is a seriously hard thing to do. True, I haven’t even used that paintball gun in years (who paintballs when you own shotguns?). And sure I’ve got about 20-25 or so swords (plus battle axes, pole-arms, crossbow/bows etc), but I happen to love every one of my belongings. That’s why I tend to accumulate so much shit. Everyone gives me hell for it. “Why do you need 14 large boxes of books?” They ask and charge of me… “Action figures?! What kind of sick 24yr old has boxes of He-Man action figures?” or, “Hun, seriously, what the hell do you need 25 swords for?”

Ugh, some people just don’t get it… Oh well… But to see two of my swords go, even if I’ve only taken them out of their original box once or twice in two years, was kind of hard. At least they went to a co-worker, so they’re still kind of in the family. But let me tell you, they’ve never looked as nice as when they were in someone else’s hands. However, when it’s all said and done, I’ve got more money to put towards Europe and the amazing blast I will be having, and that you will be reading about (If you’re reading this now, you’ll probably be back… [preseumptious, no?]).

Anyway, one final thought to leave you with… I was driving to school earlier this week:

Looking out, with smoke in hand and coffee nearby, upon the bleak and dreary Tsawwassen landscape that appears as such: I was thinking about a conversation I had had the night previous with Tattoo Jake, about the coming identity chip. Now, if you have no idea what the identity chip is, you really ought to watch Zeitgeist. It’s probably the quickest and easiest explanation of the coming age of totalitarianism for the uninformed. You can watch a streaming version for free at:

http://zeitgeistmovie.com/

And trust me; it’s one of those documentaries you won’t regret watching… It’ll draw you in like Obama draws the black vote… You’ll be enraptured while some fat old whiney white-bitch yammers away beside you (Not that I have anything against Hill-dog here, it just works for metaphoric purposes). Anyhow, back to the identity chip. Long story short for those of you too lazy to educate yourselves, it’s a little chip that in a few years will be pretty much commonplace to have implanted subdermally. Not only is it GPS track-able, it will hold your banking info, identity info and more. Eventually, without one, you won’t be able to go into federal buildings, do any sort of banking, have any sort of valid identification, or leave the country. Hell, you probably won’t be able to start a car without one, and I wouldn’t be surprised if at that point automatic doors won’t open for you either.

Now like most, it’s pretty obvious that I’m openly against it, but just to play devil’s advocate here for a moment, I want to ask the same question of you that I asked Tattoo Jake. “What reason do you have not to put one in you?” Of course, the usual responses are that it infringes upon rights of freedom or that the government doesn’t have a right to know where you always are. But what most people forget is that from the moment that you’re issued a Canadian birth certificate, unless you change citizenship, the government owns your ass. Think about it, when you die you HAVE to be checked by a coroner, and taken for proper disposal. Your family or friends can’t take your body, and that’s because the government owns you. If they choose to institute a draft, you HAVE to go to war. You don’t have a choice. People rant about their freedoms all the time, but I have to ask what the hell they did to deserve those freedoms… I mean, give me a rationally compelling and logically sound argument for why the government shouldn’t know where you are. Hell, if I were the government, I sure as hell would want to know where all my citizens were… Less chance of getting assassinated that way. Most of the people I ask eventually cave and say that it’s because of the harmless but illicit activities they like to engage in on occasion; which in turn only fuels the fires for the supporters of the chip.

I guess my point is that I want you to think about the freedoms you have, and about why you actually deserve them. Have reasons for the shit you believe in, stand for, and make claim on. If you don’t want a GPS tracking chip in your ass, make sure you have a GOOD reason why not. Because not too long from now the Government is going to come down hard and fast on all of us and if you all can’t collectively give any decent fucking reasons for the stuff you object to, then bend over and prepare for entrance without lube. I have my reasons for objection, do you have yours?

My Very First Blog...

So I’ve been in a bit of a weird mood lately… distracted, pensive, eager, a little out-of-my-skin, and a tad unfocused. I’ve also been toying with the idea of writing a blog for some time now and I really don’t know what has spurred me forward into action like some pedophile at an elementary school track-meet… Actually, that would be a bit of a stretch, the pedophile would be all over that like Oprah Winfrey on a baked ham, while I’ve been putting this off for longer than I care to admit. Either way, I’ve decided to start blogging however infrequent it may be. Perhaps it’s because I want to have a travel blog for when I’m in Europe, and I have to start journal writing at some point. It may have something to do with just the novelty of having a blog; regardless, we find ourselves here, the first blog post. And if I, of all people, am going to fall to the Demonic Hoards of blogging, I suppose Body Modification would be as good a place to start as any…

I’ve been on a serious mod-kick of recent. Anyone who knows me knows this… In the last two months I’ve had seven tattoo sits, two genital piercings, a microdermal implant, and I’ve scalpeled my tongue again, twice. Some would say way too much for such a short time, and they’d probably have decent reasons for their unwanted and uncalled-for objections. But, I’m a Body-Mod artist, I know what I’m doing, and I know my body well. As far as I can see things, I’m in something similar to what an anthropologist would call “a liminal period,” between “fixed states,” referring to personal growth here instead of cultural rites of passage. Somewhere in that transition from one stasis to the next, with modification as a base ritual I’m slamming forward… And I’ve got my reasons, and yes they are many, and yes they are good ones… The fact that my girlfriend is halfway across the world and that long distance relationships can seriously suck a nut, does not bode well for my already somewhat pensive mood. But hey, I’m off to Europe in under a month (to stay for three!), so can anyone really expect me to be focused? I’m finding that modification, dear sweet modification that I know so well, is helping a fair bit with my headspace. I’m not exactly focused on school right now (not for lack of want); God knows it’s amazing that I’m even getting the grades I am with how little I’ve actually been to class. I’m surprisingly focused on work, as focus is a bit of a necessity in my line of occupation, and seeing as how it’s my means of income for my upcoming trip to Europe… However, it seems that I’ve been incredibly distracted nonetheless, and the intense physical sensation combined with the open ritual of change that Body Modification holds inherent is helping usher the coming personal æon.


Therefore, in light of this mod-kick, I’ve decided to post a little ‘somethin-somethin’ I cooked up while I was supposed to be paying attention in my philosophy of history class one day, about a month and a half ago. To tell you the truth, it’s a decent class, and I usually manage to pay attention when I’m there, but after this specific class, I was to be on my way to Elwood’s to have him scalpel my bifurcated tongue further in ‘twain... Now, I’ve cut it myself, on a couple occasions so far, but sometimes when you want to do a big deep cut, and have it sutured, you kind of want someone else to do it. Regardless, picture me sitting in one of those archaic university chairs with the flip-up pad for writing on, in the beautifully ancient MATH building at UBC, while I’m supposed to be engaged in a seminar on positivist historical approaches. I’m nervous, uneasy, excited, and absent-mindedly scribbling away in my notebook, a blog-post still just a twinkle in my eye (Yes that was a joke equating the origins of blogs to semen… If you don’t get it, well, you probably won’t find it funny). Anyway, here is what I wrote, and please excuse the horrendous run-on sentences…

11:38
Apprehension. My mind races. I sit here in class struggling to concentrate on the seminar of Rankean Philosophy at hand, but even now my neurosis has forced my pen to the paper to stay my churning mind. When you are knowingly two and a half hours away from some serious pain, one will usually have a hard time thinking of anything else. Ok, so maybe I’m being a bit dramatic, but this is going to be the third time I’ve had my tongue sliced into, and the fact that I have undergone this quasi-ritualistic experience before does little to quell my swelling apprehension. It hurts! Like, enough to make me uneasy right now. It’s not unhandleable, but fuck, it’s not a pleasant sensation. Now, for context’s sake, self inflected pain is nothing new to me, like, I had my scrotum tattooed a week ago… I’m fairly often causing serious intense physical sensation unto myself, and among the other times my tongue has been scalpeled, I was the one doing the cutting. Upon reflection, I remember having tears hit my cheeks in reaction to tongue trauma both times before… However, do not take this wrongly. I’m really quite excited to be doing it again! So yes, it’s going to hurt, but as I kept telling myself on the way into school, it’s only pain. But the payoff, oh yes, the payoff…

Aah… What’s the payoff, you ask? Freedom. Yes I said freedom, and I don’t mean in a freedom fries sense of the word. It’s about freedom of movement, of shape, of sensation, and of expression; with an amazing sense of exploration. The best part of this is that when I first decided to split my tongue, freedom was not even in the picture… Freedom is definitely a reward, but it wasn’t an initial reason. That said, I feel I ought to explain this… Let us turn back Time a few years. Once, like you (well, most of you), my tongue was ‘normal’, it came to a single point and was comprised of two major muscle groups paired side by side, with a thin layer of fibrous tissue separating them…

On the first day, no veins or arteries ran across this divider, nor did any muscle cross it either… But it had a hole in it’s centre, and in this hole was a barbell, and the Boy looked down upon it and saw that it was good.

On the second day, the Boy looked down upon his creation (the hole), and spake, “let it be split!” And fishing line was tied through the hole that was many years healed, around the front, and it was knotted tight. Though painful, the Boy looked down and saw that it was good.
On the third day, the Boy woke, and his tongue really fucking hurt. It was swollen and sore, and the fishing line was deeply embedded into his angry flesh. He tried to cut it out with regular little scissors, but the line just slid off the tips, and refused to cut. Eventually, with the aid of cuticle scissors, he managed to remove the line. Pressure was alleviated, and instantly the sharpest of the pains subsided. A couple hours pass, then the boy ties it off again. He has made up his mind, he is persistent. Like a whiney and bitchy Odysseus, he embarks on a long and arduous journey rife with pain. He is unsure at times, but still tenacious. Months pass… He switches to using dental floss. It flexes more and cuts in less. Slower, but a bit more comfortable, and though he slurs less, his tongue is more often than not still swollen and sore… After months and months, when the slow splitting process is about halfway complete, the boy loses all patience, and one day decides to take a scalpel to his tongue…Sorry, lost my train of thought; something interesting was actually said in class, though were I to relate the anecdote to you, I fear t’would be far too droll. So I return to the tale…Chronically and constantly the boy is asked and challenged as to why he would do such a thing. Why he would submit himself to such a barbaric and debase experience. And he would give answers, though looking back, it seems that he rarely gave his original reason. Mainly he would give reasons about the suspected payoffs, he spoke of exploration and of new sensation. There was a sense of moving into an unexplored region. He said he wanted to know what it would be like to lick both sides of his teeth at the same time. He spoke of physiology, and the fact that separating the muscle groups causes no real damage to the tongue, and that the muscles can be trained to move independently… That in theory, he was working in line with human physiology to free himself from the unnecessary constraints placed upon him during conception, to free him from normality. Surprisingly, he had not even considered the aesthetics of the mod until the third day of tying it off, when explaining his slur, someone remarked, “you mean, like a lizard?” Instantly a new layer of appeal sprung up

However, all of this is somewhat after the fact… Most of these reasons were born after the initial decision to start splitting. To be brutally honest, the boy would not have been able to give you the true reason why he chose to do it. He just wanted to, from a primal desire deep down inside. And that’s the beauty about a lot of mod’s. Most people will give you good reasons for getting the mod’s they have, aesthetics, commemoratives, even ritual (which there needs to be more of these days, and keeping in mind that almost every mod done properly is a ritual in and of itself), but I’m pretty sure that underneath it all is a base primal desire to just do it. Someone sees or gets a concept of how they want their body modified, and they act on it. Reasons will come when most will logically look at what they are planning on doing for personal reassurance. And more often than not, those will be good and valid reasons. I suppose my point here is that a lot of mod’s come from that primal desire to modify, and when satiated, the subject has undergone personal growth and more often than not feels better about themselves, their place in the grander schemes, and they will hold a great sense of accomplishment. There’s nothing like that feeling you have after healing up a big-ass tongue wound that you cut yourself… That’s a feeling most people will never know. I mean…..

So there you have it… I had to end it there because class was wrapping up, but I figured it’d be worth sharing, as I’m often asked why the hell I’d do something like that. Now you know. I also get asked a lot if I could put it back together again. And if I wanted to, it wouldn’t be too hard, just scalpel the centre out, and suture the tongue back together, but for the life of me I couldn’t imagine why I’d want to. I don’t think anyone has ever put it back by choice. As far as I know, the only people who had their splits put back were forced to, and that’s because the American Navy is kind of ridiculous. To me, that would be like stitching my arm down to my torso. I’d go positively mad and psychotic from lack of the ability to move!

Oh, and I may as well finish that story a bit. It wound up being a bit of a day from Hades, as I blew a radiator hose on my way to In2it, my jewelry supplier in Kits… Luckily, and with the aid of In2it’s owner Rod, I was able to track down a new hose in a timely fashion, and repair it all with tools I keep in my truck (former Boy Scout… “Be Prepared [or be fucked!]” ). Turns out it was the wrong hose, but I managed to MacGyver it into working. In any case, I managed to make it to Elwood’s a couple hours late, and we proceeded with the cutting and suturing. And yeah, it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but my God, as soon as the cuts were finished, I could move it so much further in every direction! My muscles could now move in the ways they were straining to before. Then came the suturing… I don’t know if you’ve ever had your tongue stitched, but I’m sure you can imagine what it is like. Go on, just take a second and think about having it done… Awesome, isn’t it? Like, seriously, it was almost as bad as the cutting, and lasted much longer. The worst part though, is that I popped all four stitches that night, and had to heal it up open anyway, making the suturing completely pointless. Oh well. Then came the grow-back.

Grow-back is when the base of the cut heals back together a bit. Sometimes it’s a little, sometimes it’s a lot, but it’s always anticipated when you have an open wound. Suturing helps to minimize grow-back, so does continually scraping away the pulpy scab tissue in the centre of the wound, but this time I decided to do things a little differently. After about four or five days of healing, I went down to work one night, and scalpeled through the scab further into the tongue, to ensure that everything that had been cut before stayed, and maybe a bit more. It made for a fairly fun video, nothing exciting, but I’ll post it here for those of you who want to watch a boy slice his tongue with a scalpel…

I always get a kick out of hearing myself struggle to annunciate at the end of that video with a swollen and bloody tongue. I might even find it more amusing than a man copulating with a pony... But we’ll see about that…

So anyway, there’s a bit of a peep -show of my recent mod explosion for you, and I’m sure I’ll have more to write about soon, as I’ve still got so much more work that I plan on having done before I leave for Europe. When you’re a body mod artist mod’s are pretty much a way of life, and you usually have a decent grasp on their significance to personal and social well-being. So on that note, I leave you this time, and I think I’ll toss in another picture of one of my recent mod’s (sorry, pics of the scrotal tattoo are by request only). It’s a little shot of Bryce, Krusty and I on ridiculous tattoo day…

P.S. 30 days ‘till I’m in Europe and with my girlfriend again!