The cutting didn’t hurt. Rubbing salt into the cuts didn’t hurt. What hurts is this constant desire to pick the scabs, it’s just itching to get picked off! I’m a scabaholic. The only thing that’s stopping me is lazyness. Because if I started doing it, I’d have to make sure to get everything off in order to get the scarification even. Not that it really is from before, but why make it worse?

I was fairly happy about the progress of the first cutting, and although I was initially going to wait it out and see how the scar would turn out, I decided to go ahead with an attempt to make two more stars last night. A smaller one to the “left” of the first one, and a slightly smaller than that again on the right side. It went OK I guess, just messed up one line a little bit, not sure if I’ll even bother to try and fix it. It’s not supposed to be perfect after all. I’m unsure if these second ones will have the same visibility as the first one, as I had to make a bit smaller cuts in order to make it not look like shit.

First star has been cut. I used a thinner green marker this time, worked much better.

Second star done. Argh, if only I had done this a day later, then I could have made the caption Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

Salt rubbing.

Hm, how about another song title. Blood on the Dance Floor?

A shower later. You can see the slight error on the right star at one of its points.

Roughly 12 hours has elapsed, and just came out of the shower. I could finally see a bit more closely how the cuts really turned out, and as I guessed, far from perfect. But that was somehow a bit of the charm about it all, the do it yourself feeling. Joining the cuts at the points of the star was what seemed to be the biggest issue. I’m not sure if I’ll go over it again, I’d rather see what kind of results this will give.

Slightly fucked lighting in this (time to get a new camera), but actually it was rather glowing red right when I came out of the shower, as I rubbed the marker off a bit and irritated the wound slightly.

Here you can see the not-so-perfect joining of the lines.

Today when I woke up, I got a sudden idea that I wanted to try doing a scarification on myself. I have absolutely no idea why or where this came from. Either way, I kept thinking about it throughout the day, and the thought grew on me hour by hour. So I decided I’d give it a try later on in the night. I had no idea whether or not it would hurt, if it would be hard to do, or anything really. I don’t know if this is going to leave much of a scar (I highly doubt it), but doing it was really fun, as well as a new experience. I wasn’t really looking for a very noticeable scar either, just wanted to see how it would turn out. If it leaves a light or faint scar that can be seen, then I’ll definitely try doing more and make some sort of pattern out of it or something.

Seeing as I wasn’t sure about how hard this would be, I just tried a very simple shape, and a bit of a clichè one at that - a star.

I first used a (too thick) marker pen to outline the star. I bought this light-in-the-dark star set a while ago that had a few pieces in the right size which I finally put to a good use.

First ~4 cuts. I used one of those scalpel knives that has re-usable blades that slides out. I was surprised at how easily it cut through the skin, and how the skin “parts” itself once you cut it deep enough.

nMain cuts are done. It takes a while for the blood to rise to the surface after you cut it, the incision fills up rather slowly.

Putting on salt and rubbing it in to irritate the wound. The point of this is to suppress the healing process, hopefully creating a more visible scar. I’m not sure if I’ll keep this up as I’m not really looking for that type of result, though I don’t want it completely invisible either.

Ah, blood and salt, what a mix. Notice the pro glove. Not that it’s going to help much since it’s not very sterile conditions I’m working under either way. Just wanted to show off.

Aftermath

More aftermath. It looks more “impressive” than it really is, as the marker is showing through a lot. Once it washes off it will probably be less noticeable.

On Thursday night I finally bothered to get my bike out of the basement and take a ride. Jogging just kills my knees and ankles, I don’t think I can continue with that too much. I think I must have some severely weak and bristle bones or something. The optimal would of course be to take up swimming, if I only knew how. So, bike it is. Did a small one hour trip, and I really felt the pain in my lower thighs, sick. I remember when I didn’t have any trouble at all to cycle to and from work every day without feeling anything, I guess my body has deteriorated a whole lot since then. Time to get it back.

Finished The Amulet of Samarkand (The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book 1) yesterday, read through this quite quickly after I got my replacement copy from Amazon. I really wish I could brag about having a intellectual taste in books, but I have to admit that I keep falling for these kind of fantasy books instead. It’s very reminiscent of Harry Potter, although not quite up to its par. Still, very enjoyable.

Today’s guilty pleasure: vanilla ice cream with crushed caramel and almonds mix. The only thing that can top this is lemon ice cream, but they don’t sell that in normal convenience stores. Oh the pain.

I never tried Halo before, so I wanted to see what all the fuss has been about. Installed it yesterday, finished it a bit earlier today. What a huge disappointment! I at least imagined that it wouldn’t suck completely, seeing as so many people has been playing it over the last few years and how it became a hit. I found it utterly boring, why people like this game is beyond me. It feels like you’re playing the same 2-3 maps, with the same 5-6 enemies over and over. I think even the first Doom had more diversity than this. Yawn.

My legs are killing me right now, they feel like iron weights. Yesterday I helped my cousin move to a new apartment, something which involved carrying heaps of boxes and other stuff 5 stories down, then up 2 stories at the new place. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten that out of breath and sweaty, it felt like a nice workout. I just love the taste of salt on your skin after really sweating it out.