Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I don't know what they're talking about as far as parking or a party on the 4th… Plus the letter is not signed and has no contact information whatsoever except one word, “Management”, so it's far from any sort of legal warning. In addition, it is addressed to “Mr. Shane”.

That said, it leaves us with no choice but to take down the tower. However, that's not all bad — I'm already drawing out sketches on how to convert it into a free-standing structure. All we have to do is move it about ten feet closer to my house and it becomes legal.

This does mean a few important things though for this weekend:

• This weekend will be the last time this rig, as it is located now, will be used for suspension.
• When you come this weekend, stay out of the lot and don't park on it.
• When you're at the BBQ, stay in the BACK laneway to avoid getting the police called on us. If it overflows, let's overflow into the PARK next to my house, not the empty lot.
• We'll have a donation bucket — these donations will be paying to build a new base for the rig so we can keep having these events. It's a good cause, and help is appreciated.

Ack! I was just browsing one of the other piercing zines online and read the interview with their piercer of the month. I'm not going to mention names (there's no point), but MY GOD. It always amazes me when people who've been in this business for five or more years have no real concept of what they're involved with. I don't know if they were trained by idiots and then never learned on their own, or what the reasons are, but I hear a never-ending stream of insanity coming out of professionals mouths all the time — a reading of many of the experiences on BME illustrates this. Anyway, here's a sample quote, in response to a “what's your favorite kind of jewelry” question:

Let me point out a few things:

• There's no such thing as surgical stainless steel. “Surgical” is a marketing term. I'm going to assume that they're attempting to refer to “implant” grade (aka “ASTM F138″, or “ISO standard 5832-1″ and “ISO standard 6892″).
• Stainless contains nickel. Lots of people react to that. It's a simple fact — most people with nickel issues can still heal with stainless, it just takes longer. There are a very small number of stainless alloys like Elgiloy that don't contain nickel, but when you buy stainless jewelry, this isn't what you're getting.
• Saying gold and silver being “magnets for dirt” is lunacy. I don't even know how to respond to this. It's insane. Low grade gold is problematic BECAUSE it has nickel in it. Silver and silver alloys leech into the body as well… Just like nickel leeches out of Stainless Steel. ALL materials will attract bacteria when placed in a wound. None will draw DIRT. I sure hope this piercer understands the difference.
• The comment about titanium having “less nickel” is also insane. Titanium in pure form has NO nickel — it's not an alloy; it's an elemental metal. Titanium alloys include aluminum and/or niobium — no nickel there either.

In any case, you can argue back and forth all you want about how sensitive the average person is to nickel, but ANY piercer who tries to tell you that nickel allergies are virtually unheard of or tells you that stainless is a superior material for piercing is either a dimwit or trying to scam you by selling you cheap jewelry with a higher profit margin — it's no mistake that the medical implant industry has all-but phased out stainless steel in favor of titanium alloys.

Ask your piercer these about things — if they don't know, they have no right to be piercing you. There's no excuse for a piercer not having at least a basic comprehension of materials science… It's unethical and dangerous for them to be putting things under your skin that they don't understand.