Ian Fortey
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Nothing feels better than pulling off a do-it-yourself project and saving a few bucks -- changing your own tire, replacing your own light bulb, pulling the pickles off your own double cheeseburger, etc. Ah, but a success like that can make you cocky, convince you that you can do anything. After all, this is the age of the internet! Just order the parts and watch a YouTube video about it, right? Hell, what do we even need professionals for?
Well ...
I have several tattoos, and even had one covered up when I realized it looked less like a totally awesome piece of badass art and more like a totally ass piece of bad art. If that cover-up hadn't worked, I could have gone with the removal option, and I'm 65 percent confident I would have paid someone to do it for me. Because even though it can cost a few hundred dollars, it's way safer than making a chemical cocktail for your skin at home ... which is what too many people are doing these days.
Want proof that letting a wolf gnaw off your flesh is probably safer than DIY tattoo removal? Look at what Jess Hardy did when she wanted to get rid of her ex-boyfriend's name. There are various tattoo-away creams you can buy online, and the stuff Hardy bought contained something called TCA (trichloracetic acid), which doesn't have "acid" in its name for no reason. It's readily available on Amazon and is generally considered kind of awful. She put this stuff on her arm and it proceeded to burn the hell out of it, alien-blood style:
BBC
As you may or may not be aware, the difference between getting a tattoo and, say, drawing a dick on your arm with a Sharpie is all about depth. So you need something that can penetrate skin without destroying it utterly, and that's how professional tattoo removal works. But Hardy was left with a wound that looked like she was growing a tiny terrarium for scabs ... and the fucking tattoo was still there. Go to a professional, people.
In the world of high fashion, the sexiest thing a person can do is turn their lips into engorged face slugs, plump to bursting with juicy, swollen redness. But of course, not all of us were born with full, somewhat terrifying lips, so what's the alternative? You can go see someone who will inject a host of chemicals into your craw to make it less skeletal and more of a 4D madhouse of lusciousness, but that sounds like a big hassle. Why not do it yourself?
There are various products like Sculptra, an injectable cosmetic filler, that can be bought online and plugged into your mug with minimal skill or effort. And how hard can it be to inject chemicals into your own face? There are plenty of people on YouTube showing you how to do it. This isn't new, either. They sold Botox online with no prescription necessary, because how could filling the cavities in your face with botulism ever turn out badly?
Unsurprisingly, it's been pointed out that at-home filler kits run the risk of disfigurement, infection, blindness, and potentially even death. Because what are you doing? Why are you putting a needle of a chemical you bought on the internet into your face? Have you never been on the internet before? Look at everything here, why would you want any of this inside you?
One woman went to a "poke me in the face till I swell like a grapefruit" gathering and got so badly messed up that surgeons said she could have lost her lips, nose, and vision if she hadn't gone to the hospital. Of course, the Tupperware Party setup is rarely used for facial augmentation, so that may seem like an isolated incident ... except a quick Google search proves that the first half of this sentence is a lie. Watch at your own risk:
How many people do you think are skilled enough to cut off some dick skin? Whether you have a dick, have dealt with dicks, or have only seen them on TV, you know those pesky things are pretty knife-shy at the best of times. But some people want it done (to themselves or others) for whatever reason, so there's definitely a market for it. And for a time, Amazon was actually selling circumcision kits for anyone who'd ever thought, "I can probably remove a foreskin, can't I?"
The kit included a tiny dummy dong so you could practice lopping that little sucker off, and presumably a pamphlet that explained when to stop cutting. Under some intense public scrutiny, Amazon stopped selling this, but if you look around a bit, you can still find them. They just claim to be out of stock. The one I found has 56 reviews, nearly every single one a joke, though there was at least one criticizing the joke ones for being examples of moral bankruptcy. So that's fun.
Interestingly (and I use that word loosely and tentatively), there's also a device on the market called Prepex, which is meant for simple, easy circumcisions. Finally, hassle-free jimmy trims! If you've never heard of this, it's likely because it's marketed heavily in countries like Rwanda, where there's a pervasive belief that being circumcised can help prevent HIV. Did you guess that it's gonna start to get weird now? Because it's gonna start to get weird now.
I watched an entire video demonstration of the Prepex from start to finish -- I'm not linking it here -- and when I say that it was a demonstration, I really mean it. I stared at a strange man's dick while some gloved hands wiped it down, then fitted what looked like plastic plumbing over the top of it. The ghostly hands jammed another ring inside the foreskin, then lifted the fitting until things were snugly clamped together, forcing some kind of little band around it in a way that immediately cut off the circulation. Then a week passed. Then the foreskin fell the fuck off because it was purple and dead! Like a goddamn zombie's limp, floppy arm!
As terrifying as Prepex sounds, if it's done properly, it actually works. Problem is, despite the site clearly stating in many places that it needs to be done by a professional, it's not being done by professionals. Dicks are falling off or getting tetanus left and right because people are using this thing with no clue about how to do it properly. A safer thing is to not cut your dick up, at home or in a field or in a shed at all, but I feel like if you're dead set on performing a self-service circumcision, you won't listen to me anyway.
I don't think I've ever told anyone out loud that they shouldn't use homemade fireworks, much in the same way I've never told anyone to not tongue-kiss a table saw. Some things seem obvious. But then you read a news story about the guy who injured himself with homemade fireworks. Or another guy who did the same thing. Or several guys who also did that same thing. Or the guy who just blew up his own business. So maybe it's not so obvious. And if it's not so obvious, then maybe I'm some sort of genius. Yes, I like this conclusion.
Now, maybe you're thinking, "Ian, I like blowing shit up, and fuck you for trying to deny me my right as stated by Jesus in the Book of Explosions!" Well, listen, there's no disputing how awesome explosions are. Ask Sir Michael Bay. But I will submit that you should only explode what you know how to explode. You need a background in explodery before you go blowing things up. Surely we can all agree on that. And yet, look what the internet has wrought.
That's a literal firework kit you can buy to mix your own fireworks. So even if you know nothing about chemistry or explosives, you can make your own fireworks in your garage or your driveway or your kitchen. So that's a win for freedom, but a loss for, well, probably most of your fingers. And if reading isn't your thing, you can just look on YouTube, which is the library of knowledge that no one needs to have.
The whole fun of owning your own home is that you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Paint a mural of dicks in your kitchen? Brick over your closet because you found a spider in there? You're only limited by your imagination! Well, that and your skill, and your willingness to put the safety of yourself and your loved ones at risk.
For example, nothing prevents one from installing their own elevator. Think of the time it will save! But then you hear about a guy in Kansas who made his own elevator to get to the second story of what appears to be the aluminum warehouse he lived in. When he held the button too long, the cables snapped, bypassing the first floor and sending him to the hospital instead. This, incredibly, was not an isolated incident. Another man in Oklahoma was injured so badly in his DIY elevator that he had to be airlifted to a hospital.
People tend to get super litigious about falling to their near dooms in homemade elevators, too. They're all like, "You put me in a box suspended above the ground and then dropped it in a way that nearly turned me into loose meat sandwich filling." Imagine that? You go through all the trouble of making sure that your friend never has to use the stairs again, and then they have THE GALL to complain about it just because it almost killed them.
Of course, there is a serious side to homemade elevator bumblefuckery. One woman died when someone thought they could make an elevator by affixing some wood and metal to a forklift. I couldn't find a good picture of the contraption, so I don't know exactly how it worked. And apparently neither did this poor lady, who got crushed underneath it. Or the guy who built it, who pointed out, after it crushed his friend to death, that it was "solidly built," but still needed to be "more foolproof." Hey, I have a suggestion: Maybe don't use a forklift parked outside your house as an elevator. I apologize if I'm the one who's out of line here.
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