The year is almost over and the BMEshop is going to have its final sale of the year.  So from now until midnight on New Year’s Eve the code holiday20off will get you 20% off your entire purchase.  But that’s not all!

Rachel was sending out some orders yesterday and discovered that the BMEShop is close to sending out its 5000th shipment.   So here’s the contest:  If your order shipping number is #5000, then you’ll win a $100 gift certificate for the shop.  Keep in mind that this only applies to orders being shipped out.  The system tracks individual orders coming in, as well as going out, and we’re only looking at the shipping number.  This means you can’t just make order after order to bump up your order number before actually making a purchase, we’re only counting completed orders.

So with the 20% off discount, and the chance to win $100 gift certificate, now is the perfect time to do some shopping for yourself.

Also, don’t forget about the BME New Year’s Eve Party!!!  Head on over to the event page and sign up so we know how much food to pick up!

So while I was carving my pumpkin the other night, I was thinking to myself, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a BME/Modification related pumpkin.  So I’m throwing the gauntlet down, I want to see the best of the best when it comes to pumpkin carving.  There are lots of talented people out there, so lets see what you can do to make a modified pumpkin (bonus points if you include a BME logo).  Once you’ve carved your pumpkin, simply upload it to the BME Culture gallery.  Myself and Jen (she doesn’t know this yet) will go over all the entries and the winner(s) will be featured next week.  So get out there and start carving!  Oh, and here’s a little inspiration in the form of Miss Gisella_Rose.

The BMEShop is having a sale right now!

30% EVERYTHING!!

Just use the code 30offbme when you check out!

The gang over at Hooklife have thrown down the gauntlet to suspension teams around the world.  Today they announced a guerrilla suspension challenge.  Here’s some of the details:

We are challenging the suspension community to dream up, create, produce and photograph the most amazing Guerrilla Suspension.  Before anyone goes crazy we need to make one thing very clear.  Hook Life, suspension.org and our affiliates DO NOT condone any illegal or dangerous activities! Now with that said here’s how it will work.

Please submit ONE photo.  You can submit as many different entries as you like, but please only one per suspension/location.  By submitting a photo you are giving suspension.org and Hook Life permission to use the photo on this site and possibly on other sites to promote this competition.

Photos will be judged and scored accordingly:

• 20% – Location – Based on visual appeal, complexity and higher public visibility
• 20% – Suspension – More complex suspensions gain higher marks
• 20% – Photography – Image quality and getting the perfect shot is part of the challenge
• 40% – Creativity – Overall score based on judges opinions
• Safety – Unsafe rigging and/or dangerous suspension practices will have points deducted

Grand Prize – A one of a kind “trophy” rig designed and donated by Skin Mechanics Steelworks.  The grand prize will be awarded at the 2012 Dallas Suscon.
Other Prizes – As the competition progresses we may adding more prizes.  Companies/Individuals interesting in donating prizes please contact Hook Life.

Judges:

• Allen Falkner – Administrator of suspension.org
• Misty “Southtownbaby” Forsberg – Head Writer for Hook Life
• Mark “nakedlens.org” Kaplan – Official Dallas Suscon Photographer
• Stewart “S2B” Stephens – Certified Entertainment Production Rigger
• Erik “Lizardman” Sprague – International Performer

Submissions will be accepted until December 31st, 2011.  After that date the judges top picks will be posted.  Good luck everyone.  We are looking forward to seeing your entries.

The full details as well as the contest entry form can be found at this link.

Now remember, only entries submitted to HookLife will be counted.  That said, knowing some of the fantastic suspension teams that are out there, there are going to be more than one photo of each suspension.  BME is inviting those teams that participate to submit any additional photos to the suspension galleries.  I’m going to be keeping my eye out for these submissions over the next couple of months, and I’m hoping to feature as many as possible.  So if you plan on entering the challenge, remember to send your extra photos to BME, and send me an e-mail with the story behind them (don’t e-mail me your photos).

While we’re on the subject of suspension, here’s my counterpart at HookLife, Misty, doing a tandem 6pt resurrection, 4pt rebirth suspension.  Misty is the one on top.

This has been a really hard month for me. First I get crazy in the middle of the night in a hotel in Austin. I haven’t slept in days, I’m alone, it’s 30 degrees out, I’m starving and I’m out of change for the vending machines. I started to think about how I haven’t been traveling at all over the past year. I’ve noted that falling in love has this affect on me. I stop being the person that’s only home one weekend out of the month because I’m at conventions, BBQ’s, suspension events, learning/teaching conferences and I focus on being home so that I can be a supportive, attentive and caring partner at home.

I was suddenly back on the road and realizing how much I miss it and how BME suffers when I can’t be out on the road. I decided though after a lot of thought that my passport is full because I’ve traveled around the globe but that for one reason or another all of my travels were alone. The last time I went on any kind of extended trip was in 2008 when I went to the Oslo Suscon, then to BMXnet and finally to a tattoo convention in England (which I ended bailing out on!). That was 3 weeks in Europe SOLO. I submitted around 1000 photos from that trip alone and had a great time meeting people in person.

Now I’m doing it a little differently and I’m extending the amount of time that I’ll be on the road and bringing 4 people with me. I’m sure that you want to know who they are but you HAVE to understand how difficult the selection process was. First it started out with watching hundreds of videos, browsing portolios, reading blogs and writing samples and with Jen’s help, I narrowed it down to 17 finalists. Everyone has so much to offer and all of the finalists are multi-talented. While some people shine at one particular talent more than others, they are still fully capable of doing everything else that will be required on the road.

The hardest part about choosing the 4 winners is that there are some people who aren’t getting chosen that have been helping out a ton behind the scenes. When they volunteered to help out, I told them it wouldn’t be scoring them any extra points and I had to go with my gut. The other thing that was really hard is that one of my closest friends applied for the video. Thad is an awesome photographer and a great friend but ultimately I feel like I would lean on him too much during this tour. Plus he’d let me get away with being like “I’m too tired to cope today” and I can’t have that.

Click through to find out who won!

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If you managed to miss the world tour, the first round of finalists or the final round of finalists, then consider yourself lucky that you don’t have to read the thousands of words that have been written about the project. In short, I decided to have a contest to select 4-5 people to tour the world researching, writing, photographing and making videos of body modification around the world. I got it narrowed down to the last 10 folks and I needed help to decide who would take the final positions. I asked people to make videos our of “a day in their life”. The assignment was to make a video, write a blog post and take some photographs to recreate what we’ll be doing on the trip.

As you know, I posted about the final 10 the other day when I had decided it was too hard to make my choice without giving the potential team members one final assignment. Ferg and I had been chatting about how to get around Australia when he suggested the train ride out to Perth, which I would love to do. His worry was that it would take two days of our valuable time and I told him 2 days over the course of 3 months wouldn’t be a big deal for an amazing train ride. Have I mentioned I love trains? It suddenly dawned on him that the trip was actually 3 months and not 6 weeks like he’d thought. He emailed me a few days later to withdraw from the competition. I’m sad to see him go but I know that he has an amazing tour of his own (not to mention what he’s been doing for years!) so I know he won’t be missing out. People have asked that I consider adding someone else in to take his place but I don’t want to do that because it only makes my own decisions that much harder.

Here are the assignments from the final 9. In some cases the finalists included their photos in the video and in others they’re separate. Both are okay but they’re all in this post grouped by the finalists. This post is automatically scheduled to go up at Midnight Friday morning on the 5th so if you see a finalists name and a blank space, then they didn’t get their submission to me on time and they’ve been officially disqualified.

Hopefully this helps me to narrow it down to the final four (or five if I can’t make up my mind, everyone is superb!). Cast your vote at the end for your FAVORITE application. Base your thoughts on everything you’ve seen so far and pick your favorite finalist. I’m only allowing one vote this time around. Good luck to everyone! The winners will be announced around Midnight Friday night. Don’t forget to help support the tour by using the coupon code worldtour and getting 30% off on almost everything in BMEshop!

P.S. Sorry for the weird formatting with the photos in some of the posts below. That’s entirely my fault and I’m not sure why wordpress kept eating up and barfing out the changes that I made to photos to try to fix the layout.

Click through to check out their videos and blog entries!

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I feel like a teacher handing out extra credit assignments but I need help to pick the winners for the BME World Tour. I’ve just narrowed it down to 10 finalists who will all need to complete an assignment.  If you want to know who the finalists have been narrowed down to, you’ll have to watch the video!

More information on the assignement after the jump!

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First, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has sent in applications throughout February for theBME World Tour Intern Contest. I appreciate the effort that all of the applicants put into their videos and for taking the time to help me get to know each and every one of them as best as I could through their videos! Some were really fun to watch and others were a bit painful!

With Jen’s help, I’ve compiled a list of the finalists. I’d like you to watch their videos and then vote at the bottom of the videos. Vote for your FAVORITE 4 applicants! You’re only allowed to vote once. This will help me to figure out who the readers of BME want to see out there on the road with me. The winners of the poll won’t automatically be the winners of the contest but it will definitely help to show who the BME community wants as well as who can get the most people over to BME and voting for them!

I have been working on the logistics and may possibly end up choosing two teams to go out with me because it’s been too hard to narrow down just to four interns! These are the cream of the crop. They’ve either got great talents as writers, photographers or video editors or they just have some supremely awesome quality about them that came through in their applications or video. I really wish I could take them all! Help me to narrow it down because lord knows I can’t fit 18 of us in one suitcase!

Voting closes March 1st at 12:01am PST. I’m hoping to announce the winners on March 1st so we’ve only got a couple days to get those votes in! This will get reposted daily until then!

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Yeaaaaaaaah! MissMeg knows how to make me laugh. I’m still trying to catch up on watching all of the video applications. We haven’t even been able to post them all because there are just too many but I’m very very excited and I think this tour is going to be awesome, thanks to all of you!

Rachel asked me to post some more audition videos while she’s busy recuperating.  I don’t know when she plans to announce the winners or how she plans on notifying them so we’ll all just have to be patient a bit longer.  I’ve only been back in town a few hours and have tons to do and it’s shaping up to be a busy week (in my spare time, in addition to working for BME, I’m a full time graduate student and substitute teacher)!  So with no further ado and in no order, rhyme nor reason, here are some videos!

BME Internship Audition Video by Ari Oh from Ari Oh on Vimeo.

More after the jump!

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Ok folks, here are some more audition videos.  I can’t believe the amount that poured in, it’s truly awesome.  I’m currently “away”, staying with some friends and can’t even get proper cell phone reception here.  Thankfully they’re geeks too so being online wasn’t an issue!  This is just a random selection of videos I’ve pulled from the pile of hopefuls.  I wanted to thank all of the people who have taken the effort to send in applications and videos, you’ve definitely made this hard for us.  Enjoy!

More videos after the jump!

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