Body modifications are no longer purely about their aesthetic appeal. It’s becoming more and more common to see mods that have a functional aspect as well. Here are a couple of our favourite examples from last month.

First up is Mikey’s ruler tattoo. He had it done in Mexico about ten months ago. He works in construction and printed circuit design and found that he often needed a ruler. He no longer has to look very far for one now that he has an eight-inch ruler tattooed on his forearm. He says that he uses it not quite every day but “quite often” mostly to “get some rough sizing numbers down”.

He went for 8 inches because that was all that would fit. The design is his own, made up from various stencils that he liked. There is one slight problem with it though. “While the tattooist was doing the first inch of near my wrist I was fidgeting and holding my arm in a bizarre position,” he explains. “Now to get the ruler close to full accuracy I need to put my arm in a ridiculous position and the ruler is about 1/4" off no matter what position.”

Equally original but slightly less practical is this laser etching that Bre Pettis and friend Martin Bauer got done on their thumbnails.

“We were hanging out and making things and got it in our head to etch our fingernails,” explains Bre.

They decided on getting a working calendar. Now, should they get stranded somewhere without a diary, daily newspapers, a watch, mobile phone or any other means of telling what the month is they will be able to work out more or less to with a week or so sort of what the date is. All because they calculated how fast their fingernails grow and lasered their thumbnails accordingly.

“Our fingernails are growing it 3mm a month and on the first of February, we'll be able to cut it and mark the month with that fingernail,” says Bre.

Next month, someone gets a protractor tattooed on to their inner thigh. (Hopefully.)

You can find Mikey’s blog here: http://greenacre-hotsprings.blogspot.com.