Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

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.

So largely people have been supportive (or at least “non-negatively curious”) about the eyeball tattooing — so far, more so than I expected — but I thought I ought to talk about some of the things that have been raised because I don't feel like debating it on ModBlog.

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!