On Caitlin’s blog you may have read about the gingerbread they made, but the best part was that because of the lack of eyeballs, Nefarious made one of them a one-eyed demon with candy cane horns, and all the others have screaming mouths on account their fear of the demon. Too funny.

Today we were at Canadian Tire getting me a balaclava and looking for a basketball hoop to put up here in the studio, and Caitlin discovered that they were selling one-man tents for the crazy low price of $14.99, a deal too good to resist!!! It was just big enough to fit her old child-size mattress, and we filled the rest of the innards with pillows, blankets, and favorite stuffed animals, so Nefarious has quite the exciting camp out this evening. And “thank god” says the tooth fairy that they did not have to search for an under-the-pillow tooth inside an all-too-tiny-for-adults tent!!!

Anyway, UFC time.

ModBlog earlier today mentioned what they called “Howie’s innovative procedure” for eyeball tattooing in regards to the clip below, and for now my comment on it remains censored (hopefully they change that, because it seems a little lame to change history out of contempt — and even if it does eventually get through moderation, it sits there so long as to effectively scrub it from the conversation… sad that this still goes on).

Howie is the artist that’s done a majority of the procedures out there, including mine, and has surely improved on the technique through doing many, but the procedure itself (that of injecting the ink between the layers) was invented and innovated by me, and it’s something that I’m quite proud of so it was a little annoying to see my name get scrubbed out of its history. I’d wanted an eyeball tattoo for years before we eventually did it, and the idea for the procedure actually came from the procedure that was used to implant the “JewelEye”, in which saline is injected between the layers to form an elevated bubble for the implant. I figured that if you’re not looking for hard edged lines, that a similar injection of ink would be the most effective way to do it.

All things considered these guys did a remarkable job. I wonder if they got the idea from the Internet or one of the magazines that wrote about our procedures, or if they got the idea from watching the episode of CSI that was obviously based on Lane’s photos of my eye being done?

That’s a bit of a loaded question, because as I understand it, the main problem with American healthcare is not so much the quality of the healthcare but the issues of class inequality and the fact that a significant percentage of people do not have proper access to healthcare. So as a reasonably well-off individual, I’d assume that under the US system I’d be well insured, and thus get excellent health care, the best in the world by some accounts, and quite likely better than I’m getting now. However, I don’t think that fact necessarily means that it’s a better system. Also, I do know wealthy Americans, self-employed folks in general, who skimp on paying for medical insurance and as a result find themselves in very unpleasant circumstances when things go wrong — so even the well off can be failed by the US system.

Here in Canada I’ve always had easy and completely free access to my family doctor, often many times a month. If I want an appointment, I usually have it the next day or at most two or three days off, and I can always go to any number of walk-in clinics as well who provide similar service with only a few hours wait (also covered by government healthcare). Emergency room service is acceptably fast, although if you go in for something that’s not emergency, you can find yourself waiting for a few hours or sometimes more, but that’s not really an issue of who’s paying, that’s more of a procedural decision at the hospital that’s difficult to find objective fault with. Most things — all the doctors visits and all the testing — are free, but I do have to pay for prescriptions (which can add up), eye care, and dental. These things are covered by employers for the majority of people with regular jobs, but I’m not in that category and never have been.

The problem that you have in Canada, that I’ve experienced to some extent, is that when you find yourself in a position where something less normal is going on, and you need to see experts, that you can at times have significant wait times — a few months or more — to see a specialist. This is more because we just don’t have enough qualified experts — the system itself does its best to get you in as quickly as possible — than because of some sort of “rationing” conspiracy that’s keeping you from seeing doctors. That said, I’m sure that the amount of specialists is influenced by there being less money in the system in general than there is in the US. Because the conditions that I’m personally dealing with are often excruciatingly physically painful, these wait times are very difficult to cope with, and I have sometimes wondered whether I’d be better off in a country where money can give you unfair treatment. Objectively I don’t like the idea that a wealthier person gets preferential healthcare, because I really feel that healthcare must be egalitarian, but on a subjective level it’s harder to believe in those ideals when you’re personally affected.

I’d love to see more money in Canada invested in healthcare — more technology, and more doctors — but in terms of the system itself, I’ve been happy with my experiences with it, all things considered. As to whether I think the US should switch to a universal system, of course I feel that it’s the duty of all nations to ensure the health of their citizens, but I think it’s important that the US not sacrifice the significant lead that it has in many categories to achieve this.

I don’t know anything yet about the results of my most recent surgery, which was done to try and figure out why my muscles are breaking down seemingly without explanation, but the incision that was left by the surgeon was beautifully closed and I expect I will have little to no scar — unlike the brutal gash left from the last two surgeries, that healed to about a half an inch wide scar with many stitch-marks from the staples that held it closed. Of course that’s a photo of it above, at one week old. I’m going with the assumption that the clean work and attention to detail on the incision is a sign that the work that was done internally is of similar quality.

Other than that, we’ve been having fun until school starts — last night we strapped flashlights to the RC cars and took them to the park for night races, and this week I should have most of the parts I need to get the Sterling on the road (the new exhaust went on today), so hopefully that actually happens before the snow falls this year. All-in-all though during this period where there’s no school or summer camp I’m pretty wiped out by day’s end so I haven’t been too motivated to write here. Nefarious is off at the CNE today with her grandmother, her second time this week, having just seen the amazing two-plus minute underwater escape act by Kristen Johnson (one of the most intense escape artists in the world) with an old friend. Might do another road trip next week, at least a short one, in part to get away from the night time noise, as my neighbor’s band has a big concert coming up so they’ve been putting a lot of work into practicing lately. Since I’m here alone, I finally watched Suicide Club (Jisatsu sâkuru), which I really enjoyed and recommend you check out, if you can find a torrent site that isn’t getting pushed offline…

*RING*

Interrupted by the doorbell, I just got a great surprise delivery of some homemade preserves and a conversation with a friend, which is a nice piece of synchronicity, as just an hour or two earlier there was another ring at the doorbell which contained a box of books, many of which were books on how to make such preserves that I’d ordered for Caitlin as a present.

I also got some sailing books in that shipment, so I think I’ll now read them in the bath and pretend I’ve achieved that dream. I continue to more and more seriously eyeball a nice big live-aboard catamaran on which I can spend a few years sailing around the world…

I put up another nice interview for the book at bodmodsex — I really would appreciate feedback so they’re in perfect form for print (email is fine if it’s more convenient). And no, even though there’s ranting and raving on BME that I’m “stealing” their material, that’s total BS and the text is all new and any photos are used with permission of the owners (some are new, and some have been posted on a myriad of sites). Sheesh. Focus on building a good site instead of whining about me.

In much more exciting and ego-satisfying news, I discovered that I am the #1 image result for the term “eyeball” on Google Images. Any attention is good attention, right???

Speaking of my eye, I went in for a consultation for laser eye surgery. I haven’t decided yet whether it’s something I want to do, but I wanted to know if I was even eligible. It was the first time they’d ever seen a tattooed eye of course, but after various tests (curvature, pressure, and so on), it again showed no abnormalities or damage that they could find, and they assured me that it should make no difference on the surgery. That said, they felt they’d err on the side of caution and recommend PRK over LASIK because PRK puts less stress on the eye.

So anyway, more good news. I consider what happened with my eye (and I believe the same happened to a woman in New Zealand with UV eye tattoos) is the “worse reasonable case scenario”, and while occasionally nerve-wracking in its initial uncertainty, it’s really gone remarkably well.

[Side note: Nefarious is having a bath after we're swimming which is why I've got a chance to post. She just excitedly called me in -- "I can explain the faucet to you. The 'C' stands for 'cold', and the 'H' stands for 'hot'. That's why they have those letters but not the words!". Watching her learn to read, and discover the world through the eyes of a reader, has really been wonderful.]

This is all hand drawn by the way and about 300 frames.

Translation:

1. “frog and tod / bi ari”
(Frog and Toad / By Ari)

2. “frog and tod gow to the prc”
(Frog and Toad go to the park.)

3. “tod goz to the prc and plaz”
(Toad goes to the park and plays.)

4. “frog wz wochin tod”
(Frog was watching Toad.)

We took the pages she made and I reprinted them at 1/4 size and bound them into a little book, which she then read to her dolls (cutest scene ever). The calendar by the way is a daily x-off until Halloween.

I did a little work on my Uilenspiegel painting as well. This is the base colour. It’ll be touched up of course, but the big change is that it’ll all be lined in the final stage which is what really brings it out. I have high hopes for this particular painting and think it’s going quite well so far.

We’re all prepped for tomorrow’s zombie walk (watch out)… click the flier below to visit the official site. Caitlin (who will be the primary makeup artist) I think is going as a walking autopsied corpse, Nefarious is a princess party zombie with an extra eyeball, and I’m going with gouged out eyes and a wide stitched up wound. I’ll post photos tomorrow evening.

I made a new video of my eye… I don’t have any editing software on this computer (I’m still using Caitlin‘s) so I just posted it as it came off the camera…

My eyeball tattoo (done by Howie/LunaCobra) remains one of my favorite body modifications, along with the magnetic implant (by Steve Haworth) and my split tongue and others. Admittedly it just looks like a growth/deformity and some strange spots, but I just love it… It’s approaching one year old, making it, along with Josh’s blue eye, the oldest injection-style eye tattoo out there, and the oldest one with a complication. The “cyst” type structure still has a bit of a dull ache from time to time, although I admit that it might just be a matter of feeling paranoid about a headache! It’s certainly not enough to stop me from wanting to add more.

It’s crazy how popular this has gotten… As well as being featured on CSI, I think Howie and a couple others have done around two dozen by now. When I was still with BME, only a small percentage of the people I knew chose to submit their pictures, so I suspect there could be even more people than I’m guessing. For example, here’s Stevve, one of Howie’s other victims customers:

Photos: LunaCobra

They’re doing a “demon eye” on him; this is the first stage of the work. Next they’re going to be doing a layer of black ink which should blend nicely. You can see some great pictures of Josh’s eyeball (a mix of blues), as well as other eyeball tattoos in my previous ModBlog posts. Definitely I’m very jealous every time I see one, and I hope Howie comes up to Toronto this summer again.

Anyway, it looks like what happened is that when I rubbed my eye too hard about a week ago (I knew at the time I'd damaged it), I broke a bunch of blood vessels in the tissue (which was weakened by the tattooing) above where the muscle injects on the outer edge of my eye and a hematoma has formed over the muscle, which is also slightly inflamed. This should break down over the next few weeks without issue, although I have another appointment in a week to have it checked out.

The doctors were nice and gave me a printout of one of the ultrasound shots. Assuming I'm remembering what I was explained to me correctly, there's a legend underneath this shot.

Note: I may have C and D shifted up slightly; this wasn't the clearest of the shots so I'm not totally sure, but it's the one that was on the screen at the end so it was the one I was about to get a printout of…
]]> http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/19/ocular-ultrasound/feed/ 0 http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/14/ol-one-eye/ http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/14/ol-one-eye/#comments Sat, 14 Jul 2007 22:52:00 +0000 Shannon http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/14/ol-one-eye/ An eyeball tattooing update…

So even though I've had a doctor check my eye repeatedly and they tell me that it looks fine (not that they think it looks good or anything, but at least my vision is perfect), I really think there's about a 35% chance that there's a serious problem about to “erupt”. The redness and general soreness from it is definitely gone, but there is sort of a throbbing feeling, and because I'm in so much constant pain anyway that it's so hard to gauge it in terms of “rate the pain from 1 to 10″.

Here's a kind of gross picture:

I want to state again for the record that if something goes wrong I don't have any malice or regrets about it, and to be honest, I'm surprisingly not particularly stressed out over it. Damaged vision in one eye? It's the least of my problems, really!
]]> http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/14/ol-one-eye/feed/ 0 http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/11/i-love-warren-ellis/ http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/11/i-love-warren-ellis/#comments Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:01:00 +0000 Shannon http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/11/i-love-warren-ellis/ And I love his commentary on eyeball tattoos. Way too funny (and completely good natured — and I have to admit that I do get a kick out of reading Wil Wheaton calling the three of us stupid while I'm simultaneously watching him as Wesley Crusher on TV, haha! — I mean that in a fanboy way to be clear, not in a mean way):

“Now, apparently corneal tattooing has been around for ages, covering up scars and leucomas and other disgusting shit. But it took Shannon Larratt, of the indispensable ModBlog and the BME online community of body-modification fanciers, to ask the question what about scleral tattooing? Well, a specialist told him that tattooing your eyeball is basically dangerous and stupid. Shannon, being Shannon, decided that this was Condition Win and set out along with two friends to get stabbed in the eyemeat.”

Here's a photo I took a few minutes ago. It's healing nicely, no problems at all, although I'm so jealous of how Josh's turned out and can't wait to get more done. I am over-the-top into this modification and am so thrilled we finally did it.

First of all, in terms of “want”, I've wanted to do this for years. It's not a whim. I've photoshopped staff pictures of myself to include it in the past, and have collected every bit of medical research and newspaper article (mostly old, but some new) on the subject, and have talked to ophthalmologists about it as well. The groundwork was as done as it was going to get, and some time ago. While I hope that it eventually leads to a tinted eye, if it just leaves a permanent blue “bruise” splotch and we don't take it further, I can live with that as well.

In terms of risks (because while less risky than, say, driving my car around town, or getting mods like transscrotals or subclavicals, it's still risky), to be 100% blunt, I really don't care if the worst case scenario happens — i.e. loss or partial loss of vision in one eye. I simply do not care (not that I want it to happen of course). Every moment of my life is spent in extreme agony. Right now it feels like I have a large hobby knife jammed about an inch and a half into my shin, and every few minutes it gets dragged six inches through the flesh. Every moment. And being realistic, that's quite possibly what I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. C'est la vie.

In any case, doing painful and sometimes dangerous things to my body — tattoos, going to the gym, modifying my eyes, whatever — help a lot to keep me going because they give me some small amount of control over this particular hell, and they make my body something that I enjoy and find interesting, rather than something that brings me nothing but pain. Also, I think, when you're put — against your consent — into a place where a lot of damage is done to your body, or huge amounts of pain attack it (the pain is worse), even if things go wrong, the damage you do yourself is just so wonderful because at least it's yours, rather than something forced on you. Whether it has an objectively positive outcome or not.

So anyway, I don't really care if people think I'm crossing a line.

Arrrr!
]]> http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/02/cest-la-vie/feed/ 0 http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/02/bmefest-modprom-eyeball-tattoos/ http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/02/bmefest-modprom-eyeball-tattoos/#comments Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:11:00 +0000 Shannon http://www.zentastic.com/blog/2007/07/02/bmefest-modprom-eyeball-tattoos/ First of all, big congratulations and thanks to Phil who almost single-handedly organized this year's BMEFEST! Great work, and ModProm was amazing! Thanks also to my friends Saira and Michael who stepped in absolute last minute to DJ the event. Thanks to many more as well I'm sure, and thank you to everyone who came of course.

Other than that, we did the first three tattoos on sighted eyes (that I know of) in the last hundred years or so. Click through to ModBlog if you'd like to see the gory pictures and hear a bit more about that.

Click through if you're interested; it's a short segment that begins about at about two thirds in.

I've just posted a bit over a thousand pictures to BME/extreme and BME/HARD. Thanks to everyone who's been patient and helped out, and to Dexie for the cover shot of her “strange person” kanji skin removal. More tomorrow!

I've got insane quantities of work to do over the next few days… genuinely unpleasant quantities… so I'll be brief, but while I was in Toronto I picked up the new Goat Horn CD… for fans of eighties basement metal I can't recommend it highly enough. One of the tattoo artists at Shane's shop did the cover art for the CD (they're a local Toronto band). His band also has a space next to them and he was saying they're 100% serious as well — there's no tongue-in-cheek humor when in the liner notes they write:

MESSAGE TO OUR FANS:
As soon as you get home from work or school on Fridays, even before you grab a beer, make sure you crank this record up. Then call your friends, figure out the pardy plan and make sure you bring Goat Horn with you to crank again... And remember: No synths, no pedals, no wimps, no nothing, Just Metal! Die!!

Even before I grab a beer???

I picked up some other great CDs that I may mention later but that's the funnest one.

Anyway, for those of you who are stopping by my talk at APP, I hope it's enjoyable — I'll be showing some things that haven't even been on BME by the way — because I suspect it will be my only public speaking appearance. Given how little I like being around people and how far behind on work I am, I have no idea why I volunteered!

Ok, so this header on your iam page has intrigued me, but I just cant figure it out. It looks like Latin to me, but when translated, it doesnt make a while lot of sense.

Eadem would be the same things, as the direct object of the verb. Then resurgo would be I rise again or I revive Then theres mutato this looks like a variation on muto, mutare, which would be to change or to alter in the first person singular, but that wouldnt make sense because you have two verbs in the first person singular without and or anything like that to link them. And thats really the only word mutato resemble so this is all confusing.

So fess up, what is this supposed to say?

I don't care if someone asks me what something means, but starting off by telling me that “it doesn't make a whole lot of sense” and smarmy stuff like “so fess up, what is this supposed to say” implying I don't know my Latin is just rude.

It's not as if it's that hard to type Eadem Mutato Resurgo into Google.