Let me first apologize for the terrible layout and style of this piece... I thought it was more important to get it online than to waste time prettying it up.

Thanks again to everyone for a year full of wonderful pictures, articles, and experiences. I think we (everyone from the person who helped financially, to the person who submitted a single navel piercing, to the megacontributors) did a great job bringing BME into it's thirteenth year online, and continue to stay true to the reasons it was started in the first place... Essentially, to let people know that the way they feel is not just normal, but valuable.

For the second year in a row, our over top contributor was KitanoKaryuudo (who is pictured to the right) with a truly staggering 6,526 images submitted in 2006. What's even more amazing is that Kokomi (another BME/HARD ultracontributor, and last year's second place contributor) was only twelve images shy! Even outside of the BME/HARD realm, the top contributors submitted just amazing numbers of images. It blows my mind how generous everyone continues to be with their time. I can not thank you enough.

Anyway, I try to do these things a little differently every year. This year I decided it might be fun to do a regional breakdown, so I split the contributions into regions that roughly represented the number of contributions they generated... On the lists below you can see those winners along with their local and overall ranking. Links go to their IAM pages.

Admittedly, the race for the top few spots is daunting, but depending on where you live, submitting enough to win a placement is definitely doable... It's also interesting looking at the breakdown to note that different types of pictures are dominant in different areas.

As all years, there are prizes as well as recognition. This year there are three different prizes. First of all, everyone who places (on any of the lists here) gets either a staff shirt or a container (more about that below), or both if they place more than once. The staff shirts (which you may have already seen on my IAM page) are based on a sectional view of a head containing various body modifications, and their explanations in Latin. And of course he's got BME on the brain...

TOP IMAGE SUBMITTORS, BY SECTION

As well as splitting up the results by geographic region, we generated them by section of the site again. Those lists follow:

TATTOOS
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	910	Big Rick
2	479	babakhin
3	285	j_scarab
3	285	Joao_Caldara
5	278	Zebra Tattoo

PIERCING
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	1,097	alienboy
2	724	KIVAKA
3	654	Lexci Million
4	529	holierthanthou
5	385	Valnei

SCARIFICATION
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	641	Valnei
2	527	Lucas Takano
3	513	madmax
4	324	Lexci Million
5	318	Joao_Caldara

RITUAL
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	2,614	RussFoxx
2	2,073	stainless
3	1,228	SteveBennett
4	1,092	cutuvi
5	964	bena

BME/EXTREME
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	523	madmax
2	267	SLS-Frank
3	247	Valnei
4	181	old soldier
5	173	SteveBennett
6	169	RussFoxx
7	156	Stretcher
8	146	holierthanthou
9	126	Shawn O'Hare
10	122	Anonymous

BME/HARD
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	6,517	KitanoKaryuudo
2	6,514	kokomi.3k
3	1,447	Urban Soul
4	832	jasonvandervee
5	609	Stretcher
6	592	Crazy Glamour
7	543	AvantGarde
8	526	Holy Flesh
9	507	Sui Otoko
9	507	Anonymous

As I mentioned earlier, as well as printing shirts, I'm also printing containers (sort of like a sharps or first aid container) with the same logo (although single color). Maybe a place to keep your jewelry, maybe a place to keep your play piercing needles... The exact style of container isn't confirmed yet so I can't show you a picture but it'll be printed with the logo in one of these two ways:

THE SCRIBES OF OUR COMMUNITY

As well as pictures, personal stories and articles are the other core part of BME's mission to inform and share experiences. The top writers wrote huge numbers of articles, with the top dozen all writing at least a full-length article a month.

EXPERIENCES AND ARTICLES
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	50	Silhouettes
2	26	strawberry
3	24	broken_wings
4	19	Fuzzybeast
5	16	Caroline June
6	14	Ribibe
7	13	delusionalfairy
7	13	sweetcheeks
7	13	aniorange
10	12	MilllieB
10	12	deadly pale
10	12	kyo
10	12	rwethereyet
14	11	Bondage-Kit
14	11	Flutterfly
14	11	GucciGurl
17	10	Blackvampyremage
17	10	Kyrenna
17	10	ubergeekgawdess

SPECIAL RECOGNITION!

As well as the obvious submissions, there are many other parts of BME that are generated by the volunteer work of people who go largely unthanked (including quite a few that I haven't even mentioned in this article!). For example, there's BME's newsfeed, which has been tirelessly maintained by volunteers even though updates have been sometimes sporadic (my fault).

NEWSFEED SUBMISSIONS
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	909	deadly pale
2	758	rebekah
3	261	Ebowlotus1960

As well as obvious and "official" parts of BME, there are large parts of the BME community which are run wholly independently and autonomously that deserve recognition as well. I'm sure there are many more important ones that I don't know about... I asked at the end of the year who had made contributions to this community (that isn't otherwise mentioned here), and a few names stood out with regularity... These included:

• Shawn Porter for organizing both fun events and the Scar Wars series of conventions, and his work in creating a cohesive scarification community both online and offline.
• Monica for maintaining the series of IAM.Pregnant forums which have been invaluable resources to the many new parents on IAM/BME as this community ages.
• Warren for his IAM.Learning forum for people learning to pierce.
• Rebekah for her tireless work promoting IAM/BME members and for her hard work with Modified-News.
• Anaesthetise's Postcard Exchange Forum on IAM is enormous fun for the many participants.
• Wlfdrgn has undertaken the important task of managing the IAM/BME Scholarship Fund (see BME's guest articles for more information, or visit his IAM page), now in its third year.
• Havve and Christiane for their suspension work in Norway and elsewhere.
• Allen Falkner for — among many other things — suspenion.org.
• Vampy and Dispel for their many suspension events in the UK and their excellent documentation.
• Perk900 for a series of great parties and a ton of photos.

I could really go on and on, and in a way I feel guilty stopping... There are so many other places people have contributed — reviewing experiences, helping me on technical issues, writing for and editing the encyclopedia, and more.

The core staff of BME's QOD (Question of the Day — book coming soon!) continues to provide wonderful educational resource. They're made up of Ryan Ouellette, John Joyce, Shawn Porter, Lori St. Leone, Sean Phillips, and Lassi.

Clockwise starting at top-left: Shawn Porter, Sean Phillips, Ryan Ouellette, John Joyce, Lassi, Lori St. Leone.

Finally, let me mention BME's core staff, some of whom you probably already know, and some of whom you may not be aware of... Without these people, it would be much more difficult to keep BME going. Rachel runs the business end of things. Phil processes pretty much every picture that's added to the site. Rooraaah does the same, but for naughty videos. Jon keeps our UNIX servers going and develops new toys for BME's users, and Mike helps me keep our Windows boxes alive and uncompromised. Jen handles the customer support, and finally, there's me, Shannon. Mostly I just put out articles long behind schedule.

Clockwise starting at top-left: Jen, Roo (and me in the background), Phil, Mike, Jon, Rachel.

And that doesn't even include the staff of BMEshop (primarily Ryan and Corrie).

You'll receive an email and/or IM on IAM from me in the next week with a form where you'll need to fill in your address and shirt size and all that. I haven't sent those out yet, but if you don't hear from me within the week make sure that you contact either me or Ryan and Corrie so nothing gets missed... Other than that, I wanted to mention that there is one very special prize, sort of a secret talisman that will be going out to the very top contributors. Whether they reveal what that item is or not is up to them.

I won't reveal it here, and probably won't on my IAM page either, but let me say that (1) it's very, very cool, and (2) it was created by an award winning butter sculptor.

Thank you everyone for another wonderful year. BME would be nothing without the community that surrounds it and creates it. If you're reading this, there is a very good chance that you took part in creating this all... If so, thank you. You've helped me, and you've helped a lot of other people, and I hope you've helped yourself as well.

   
     Shannon Larratt
     BMEzine.com

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Shannon Larratt is the editor and publisher of BMEZINE.COM, the largest and oldest full-spectrum body modification publication on the planet. He also is known for his promotion of radical individualistic politics, spirituality, and on a more base level, his main vice: exotic cars. Copyright © 2007 BMEZINE.COM. Permission is granted to reprint this article in its entirety as long as credit is retained and usage is non-commercial. Requests to publish edited or shortened versions must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published January 1st, 2007 by BMEZINE.COM in Toronto, Canada.