I think my favorite part of my interview with Kim Saigh was the bit where she challenged the idea that every tattoo must have a deep, philosophical meaning, and the prevailing notion that important moments in one’s life must be commemorated with a tattoo. “It should have significance,” she said, “but I always tell people that you should get tattooed because you like tattoos. You do not have to memorialize someone by getting a tattoo — it doesn’t mean you love them less if you don’t.”

With that said, hats are off to Dan, the subject of the above video, and a huge fan of the NFL’s Detroit Lions, who just put on the most abjectly terrible, historically bad season, probably in sports history, going a soul-crushing 0-16. To celebrate, Dan had the following monument to mediocrity etched into his chest:

At least he seems to be in good humor about it. But the money quote comes from his wife:

“I’m super embarrassed right now, but what am I gonna do? I love him. He’s my husband. Go Lions.”

That is some seriously touching commitment. But what does the sports blogosphere think of this? Let’s check in with Matt Ufford, editor of With Leather and a co-founder of Kissing Suzy Kolber:

The report card for your life just came in. Wanna know what you got?

F - -

Thanks, Matt! Go Lions!

New rule: When you’ve got quotes from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Little Shop of Horrors tattooed on the same limb, you get to be on ModBlog. Executive decision.

Elad doesn’t like to sleep alone, he says. Well, he’s in luck! We’ve installed a small, imperceptible hidden camera in the ceiling of his bedroom. He’ll never be alone again! Sleep tight, Elad.

[Esquire] I like Clint Eastwood. He’s starred in some of truly excellent movies, and has directed some legitimate classics. With that said, he is a crotchety old man who pines for a culture that no longer exists and as such he sometimes says things that make him sound totally out of touch. Take, for example, this recent Esquire interview:

Kids piercing themselves, piercing their tongues — what kind of masochism is that? Is it to show you can just take it?

[...]

We live in more of a pussy generation now, where everybody’s become used to saying, “Well, how do we handle it psychologically?” In those days, you just punched the bully back and duked it out. Even if the guy was older and could push you around, at least you were respected for fighting back, and you’d be left alone from then on.

And back in my day, you could give a kid a stick and a tire and an old car battery, and he’d have a grand old time! I prefer FilmDrunk’s take on the situation, imagining this same interview occurring 50 years from now:

“Lemme tell you something, you kids, you’re all a bunch a goddamned sissies. Back in my day, a bully pushed you around, ya dint go to no psychologist. Ya just dyed your hair black, started wearin’ a trenchcoat, maybe got a couple a piercings. Then one day, you showed up with a couple a pipe bombs, and daddy’s Tec-9, and you shot the bully, plus a bunch a other kids, maybe a couple teachers, just for shits and giggles. Then you put the gun in your mouth, make sure the cops couldn’t take you alive, and leave ‘em a note written entirely in Marilyn Manson lyrics. Those were the days.”

[Australian News] Get ready, Australian body piercers, because there are some serious new regulations to follow.

Under new Victorian laws, minors will be barred from getting their nipples and genitals pierced and kids under 16 will need parental consent for any other body piercing.

The laws will come in effect from January 1, which will see piercers fined with 6600 dollars if they give a person aged under 18 an intimate body piercing.

Those who give minors a tattoo or perform scarification, tongue splitting, branding or beading on someone aged under 18 will be slapped with the same penalty.

And piercers will have to pay 2200-dollar fine if they give kids under 16 a non-intimate body piercing without parental consent.

Piercers and modification artists can, however, escape these charges if they can compellingly prove that the teens in question were using fake IDs, such as driver’s licenses, or were wearing clothing that made it seem like they were “asking for it.”

[IBN Live] So, a film named Ghajini was recently released in India, in which the lead character is trying to avenge the death of his wife, but is suffering from a sort of amnesia, and as such, tattoos his body with reminders and clues so he knows who to kill. (It is by all accounts a Bollywood remake of Memento.) Anyway, one of these tattoos was a phone number that unluckily belongs to a Bangalore resident, Sarah Varghese, who is none too pleased!

It was Sarah’s number that was tattooed on Aamir’s body which splashed on all posters across the city. Needless to say Sarah is as irritated with Ghajini as Aamir is in the movie.

“I thought somebody was playing a prank but when I saw the poster I was really shocked. I was wondering how could my number feature in that and I was really shocked,” said Sarah.

So as Ghajini hit the screens on the December 25 and as Aamir bashed up all the baddies he could get in the movie, life for Sarah became even more difficult.

Her phone kept ringing continuously sometimes to even 50 times a day. Sarah — who usually doesn’t watch movies on the big screen — decided that enough is enough and went and watched the movie on New Year’s eve.

When asked if she is planning to lodge a complaint against the producers of the movie, Sarah said,”We’ll see as things come and how far it goes. The calls are now reducing, so if it stops completely now, I will not file a complaint”.

Jesus Christ. Who did these people imagine was going to answer when they called that number? Did they think they were going to help solve the mystery? Yet another example of how tattoos, every day, are ruining the lives of innocents.

[News Journal Online] And not just innocents, but convicts, too! Lempira Norman, who was incarcerated at the Volusia Country Branch Jail near Daytona, Florida, was jumped by two other inmates after refusing to join what the article calls a “club” (which is prison lingo for “rape gang”), who held him down and tattooed a penis on him, on Christmas.

Harris and Collina showed up with a blanket and ordered Norman to get on the floor, the report shows. They threw the blanket on his head and began pummeling him.

The men threatened Norman, saying he would get a worse beating unless he allowed them to apply a tattoo, the report shows. Harris told Norman the tattoo would be of a capital and lowercase B, the report said.

But instead, as Collina held Norman down, Harris — equipped with a makeshift tattoo kit — applied a drawing of a penis on the back of the victim’s right shoulder, the report shows.

I spent the holidays alone in my apartment drinking barley wine that tasted like alcoholic soy sauce, but I have to say, this guy probably had the worst Christmas I’ve heard of this season.

[YouTube] At lastly, let’s come full circle with another old man talking about piercings. Except George Carlin is funnier than Clint Eastwood, and this was 20 years ago (so George wasn’t so old), and this video is full of hilarious cursing. Tally ho, ModBlog.

Welcome to the BME Shop Spotlight, in which we’ll feature candid shots of you lovely people sporting the latest in BME shirts, jewelry, and, well, anything else that found its way out of BME Shop.

Today’s model is Fionarse, who is decked out in the BME Girl #3 T-shirt. Hey, everybody loves a shirt with a naked lady, right? If you say you don’t, you’re lying. Lying to us, lying to yourself, and lying to the omniscient owl god that watches over all of us.

Shortly after this photo was taken, Bruce Campbell killed this tree, with an axe, as retribution for it sexually assaulting a friend of his, before being sucked into a vortex to fight hell demons. True story. I read it on the Internet.

Two points of interest:

BME SCHOLARSHIP. Mark has taken the reins of the BME Scholarship this year, and has prepared this release about the project:

For the fifth year in a row, the IAM community has come together to offer a $1,000 USD College scholarship to one member of our international community. Many of you already know about the scholarship, but for those who don’t, the IAM college scholarship is member-funded and available to active IAM members who are full-time, undergraduate college students anywhere in the world. Past winners have been in the US and Mexico.

Now that the new year is here, it’s time to award another scholarship!

Rules and application material for the 2009/2010 IAM College Scholarship are now available at BMEscholarship.com. All members of the IAM community who will be full-time college or university students in the fall of 2009 are encouraged to apply.

Any questions or comments about the scholarship can be posted in the official IAM College Scholarship forum, or sent to me via IM. Applications are due May 1, and the winner will be announced sometime around July 1.

This scholarship, open to all IAM members internationally, is funded entirely through contributions from your fellow IAM members. Contributions have ranged from $5 USD to $500 USD. Donating is easy - we accept checks through the mail (ask me for details), and we can also accept credit card donations via PayPal through the BMEscholarship.com Web site. Without continuing support from IAM members, we can’t continue to offer this scholarship. Please consider making a contribution, even if you can only spare a few dollars.

Thank you, and good luck!

It may go without saying, but this is a really wonderful project, and we strongly encourage anyone who is able to participate. Thanks, Mark!

CASTING CALL. This one’s for the fellas. Every once in a while, as you’re likely aware, television producers and networks come to BME seeking out people to be featured on various shows and whatnot. Here’s one from Tom Wilde, who is currently working on a new show for Channel 4 in the UK. Details follow:

Male beauty is a mysterious, controversial and potentially explosive subject matter that demands to be explored. Male vanity is a genuine taboo – but one that’s about to be smashed apart.

I am currently working on a brand new high profile programme for Channel 4 in the Uk. The programme look at all aspects of male beauty and body perception.

[...]

Ideally we are interested in speaking to men who have modified there genital area in some way. We are interested in talking to people who are both satisfied and dissatisfied with the results of their modifications, perhaps the results are different to what was expected. We are interested in showcasing the world of body modification in all its extremes.

The programme is exploring all aspects of male beauty and the lengths that men go to in order to satisfy their desires and how these comply with or differ to the pressures and expectations of society.

Expenses and a fee can be discussed. One slightly tricky condition is that we need to hear from these men in the next three days. The men need to be based in the UK or Europe.

Interested applicants should get in touch with Tom Wilde here.

If there’s one thing you learn by reading BME every day, it’s that the human body is incredibly, impossibly resilient. We feature body rites and experiments with pain that some people find cringe-worthy, but the lesson, more often than not? Our bodies work very hard to take care of us, and even things that, by all accounts, seem dangerous or ill-advised, can heal perfectly well.

This is not to pass judgment on the skin removal we’re seeing here, but it’s an example of a procedure that, probably more than a lot of body modification procedures, would seem unnecessary and dangerous to the average the person. To hear the young man who had it done tell it, even the practitioner, Shawn O’Hare of Fillmore Tattoo and Piercing, was apprehensive at first:

I wanted both of my eyebrows removed for quite a while. Shawn kept refusing. Eventually after talking to Steve Haworth, he decided he would do it. We decided to do one now and one after this one has completely healed. We discussed all of the possible scenarios and risks and then went ahead with the procedure. It was pretty cut and dry. He peeled my eyebrow off and we bandaged it up.

At the very least, it’ll be very interesting to see the healing process on this piece. More shots, after the jump.