I built two pumps back in the early 1990s when I invented this stunt. One was stolen in Copenhagen, and the other remains with me. Both were essentially the same size. I started off with a clear acrylic cylinder 10” in length, 4.485” OD, and 3.975” ID. Clearly this is a 4” ID nominal tube. From there I used a drill press to machine an end cap, again out of clear acrylic, to seal one end. This was the most labor-intensive part of the fabrication, as I had to machine it to a few thousandths of an inch over the ID of the barrel. If you plan to do this yourself, you will need a reliable dial or digital caliper. The end cap on my unit was .675” thick, again made of clear acrylic. When your end cap almost fits into the barrel, use a heat gun to soften the end of the barrel. I chose not to use adhesives to secure the end cap into the barrel, but perhaps one could; I honestly don’t know what would work best. Both of my pumps held liquid under pressure for years with no leakage or malfunctions. You will notice the presence of “crazing” on the end of my barrel; this is a common phenomenon with all many plastics under stress. I suppose one could further secure the end cap with a metal band, or drill screws or pins into the plastic, but I didn’t need to.

From there a brass plumbing fitting was installed in the end cap. This was threaded with pipe thread, so you will need a pipe tap that corresponds to the threads on the fitting you are are using. The fitting needs to dimensionally match the tubing you will be using. Since I used tubing whose ID was 3/16” you will need to choose a metal fitting that will allow that size of tubing to slide over the hose barb. The tubing is elastic, and will expand a bit to fit over a hose barb. I sealed the junction of the threaded hose barb and the acrylic end cap with plumber’s epoxy on the outside of the unit. Black vinyl tape was wrapped around the junction of the hose barb and tubing to provide strain relief. If I were doing this today I would probably use silicone tape instead.

The plunger of the pump is a series of acrylic disks which hold the O-rings in place on a stainless steel rod. The opposite end of the rod is a plastic T-handle. There are two sizes of disks, which are sized to allow just a portion of the O-ring to be exposed to the inner surface of the pump. Again, the dimensions I’m providing are for a barrel whose nominal ID is 4”. The inner disk is 3.550” across and .229” thick. The thickness is nominally ¼”. The larger disk is 3.917” across and the same thickness. I started out using 4 O-rings, but later on found I could get by with just 3. For a 3 O-ring stack you will need 4 large disks and 3 small disks. I chose to tap the centers of these disks to match the threads on the stainless steel rod, which in this case was 3/8” coarse threads.

Believe it or not I was initially unable to find O-rings that fit this application! I fabricated my own using over-sized O-rings and Loctite Prism cyanoacrylate (superglue) #11. The ends must be diagonally tapered at the butt joint. I’m quite confident that anyone building a gavage pump in the 21st century should be able to find 4” OD O-rings commercially. Obviously the thickness of the O-rings needs to match the thickness of the plunger spacer disks. The ones I used were .240” thick.

The stainless steel rod I used was 14” by 3/8”. Both ends were tapped for 3/8” coarse threads. The plunger disk end was tapped 3” and the T-handle end was tapped 2 & ¼” or just a tad longer than the T-handle is thick. I ground a couple of flat spots on the rod to allow the rod to be chucked into a vice while I tapped the rod. This will also allow the use of a crescent wrench to hold the rod while assembling and disassembling the plunger handle. While I used galvanized washers, I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone building one today. I would stick with all stainless steel washers and nuts. On the plunger disk end I used an ordinary stainless steel nut in the middle, with nylon locking nuts at the end. If I was building this today, I would use nylon locking nuts at all four points; two on the plunger end and two on the T-handle end. Use a washer under all four nuts. Besides a crescent wrench, you will need a socket wrench to access and rotate the nut on the outside end of the T-handle.

The T-handle I used was also plastic, in this case a section of polyethylene whose dimensions are 6” by 1& ¾”. The center hole was counter sunk to allow the nuts and washers to fit inside elegantly and to prevent the center rod from biting into the flesh of the gavage assistant. In my case the countersink was a 1” wide bore.

The tubing I used was Tygon R-1000, 5/16” OD and 3/16” ID. The part number I used was AAU00012. As of this writing, this part number is still current. The tubing length I used was 7’. The end was tapered, and a series of cuts were made into the sides near the end to facilitate fluid flow. These cuts were made with a diagonal wire cutter.

I used PAM brand non-stick spray to lubricate the plunger when performing my act.

I had booked this tour about two months previously. Leatherman offered it only on Wednesdays, and the available openings closed up fast. Looking at this trip in another way, I’d been waiting for this moment for more than 20 years…

I discovered the Leatherman tool sometime in the late 1980’s. Back then I didn’t read any hype or promotion about the tool, I just bought it because it looked worthwhile. I quickly realized that this tool was a game changer, a tool so incredibly useful that I’ve carried incarnations daily on my belt ever since. The robust elegance of the tool was immediately obvious; it didn’t have twee little thingies like toothpicks that the Swiss Army knife did. I found myself using the needle nosed pliers much more than the knife. The way that the pliers folded into the handle was remarkable, it was robust as a tool yet it folded neatly and compactly into its own handle.

The first incarnation of the Leatherman tool was about 90% perfect. I can think of only three drawbacks. The most important was that the folding tools, especially the knife blade, did not lock into place. The second was that the edges of the handles were not rounded. Gripping the tool was a bit uncomfortable when the pliers were unfolded. The last issue was that the tool was just a tad too small. Over the years Leatherman corrected all these issues, and the current model I carry on my belt is the “Core.” The Core is a full-sized tool, slightly bigger than the original model. Its folding blades lock out, and the handle channel edges are rounded.

As Gregor and I drove towards Portland, I sipped coffee from his Thermos. I tried to mask the anxiety I was developing about being late. The e-mail from Leatherman said that if we weren’t there by 9:55 we were out of luck. Jan tried to reassure me; “this clock is 10 minutes fast, we should be there in plenty of time.” What if a semi truck jackknifed in the road? What if it was transporting watermelons that splattered everywhere? There were too many things that could go wrong; we should have left a half-hour earlier…

We dutifully followed the Google directions, and lo and behold we found the Leatherman plant on time! We actually arrived early, and decided to enjoy a couple of egg McMuffins at the nearby McDonalds. While most corporate tours end in the gift shop, this one started there as well. We looked at all the snazzy new models on display, as well as prototypes that Tim Leatherman created back in the 1970’s. Our tour guide Meei arrived, and we all put on wireless headsets in order to hear her voice over the din of the plant. We all put on protective eyeglasses as well. We entered the floor of the huge plant, which employs several hundred workers. The first stop was a large blanking machine, which punched out tool components from a strip of steel wound on a large roll. We were handed a rough blank and we passed it around. Not surprisingly, every blank that is punched out has a significant burr on one edge, which much be removed.

Then we were led to a polishing-deburring machine. This was a large vibratory tub that contained small ceramic cylinders. A gritty paste was added which we were told was silica. Hundreds of tool components were added, and a large cover was dropped over the vat so that blobs of paste wouldn’t escape. A magnet was later used to separate the blanks from the abrasive. Another station used glass impact bead to create a matte finish on some components.

Other stations along the tour featured both automated and hand-fed punches that folded the flat steel into channeled handles. Random pieces were pulled from the line to visually inspect for cracks that might result. Other blanks were cut by a high power laser beam. Surprising, we were able to watch the laser beam cutting the metal without needing darkened welding goggles. A laser beam was also used in another station to cut through the anodizing on tool handles to create custom engraving.

One station included workers that loaded rough pliers into a conveyer belt. The belt fed a robotic arm that quickly passed the pliers over a rotating abrasive belt. Watching the robot was mesmerizing.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the tools had to be assembled by hand. This was done in U-shaped work stations that allowed 4 or 5 workers at a time. Some handles were held in customized jigs while the fold-out tools and washers were aligned by a drift pin. Most Leatherman tools are held together by rivets, but some are joined by threaded fasteners. Thankfully Loctite is applied to the fastener threads during assembly! Years ago I had purchased various non-Leatherman multitools for comparison. One was a unit that used proprietary threaded fasteners. I happened to be in Europe when one of the threaded fasteners came apart, thus leaving me dead in the water. That episode put the kibosh on my celebration of multitool diversity…

About an hour after we started, our tour came to an end, back in the gift shop were we started. It was by far the most impressive corporate tour I’ve ever been on! I ended up buying a t-shirt and a small “Squirt ES4” which included useful wire stippers. No photographs were allowed of the shop floor, so I’m afraid I wasn’t able to illustrate this blog entry. Later on Jan took me to an excellent pie shop in Portland, and wondered aloud if Leatherman workers might assemble “Frankenstein” tools of their own design…

If you like machines, power tools, robots, steel, and live in the Pacific Northwest, I highly recommend taking this tour!

I decided to wage war on the boulders. I reasoned that I would need to address the most fundamental problem first before trying to get my lawn in order. My front lawn is bisected by a concrete stairway. The east section is smaller than the west section. All in all, I figured there must have been about twenty(!) boulders in my front lawn. I decided to break up the boulders in the east section first. Using just a sledge hammer, I would blast away at the big rocks, cracking off chunks until they were small enough to carry away. Here’s a photo of one of the boulders, with the sledge hammer included to provide a sense of scale:

This was much harder work than I expected, as I simply underestimated how hard the rock was. I don’t know a great deal about geology, but I was told that the big rocks commonly found in Seattle were basalt. One factor that began to concern me was that tiny chunks would blast off, and I was worried that a chip might scratch the paint from someone’s car. Eventually I managed to clear the boulders from the first section. It was terribly strenuous labor, and often made my back ache. I basically put this project on hold for about 8 years.

Eventually, I decided to attack the boulders on the other side of my yard, this time using a rented electric jackhammer. You would think this would work like a charm, but it did little or nothing. I began to take notice that I was certainly not the only homeowner that had big “ornamental” boulders in my front lawn. I began to wonder why. Eventually I found the answer in a somewhat surprising place, a book on Washington architecture.

Authored by Sally B. Woodbridge and Roger Montgomery and published by the University of Washington Press, it’s an excellent introduction to a large subject.

An amazing photo is found on page 100:

It’s a bit hard to see in this photo, but there is a pile of boulders at the base of this huge mound of soil. The explanatory text is brief, but answered the question I harbored all these years.

Regarding the Denny regrade, in which high pressure water jets were used to move huge masses of soil, the text on pages 100 and 101 reads:

“Denny Hill, one of the most important topographical features of early Seattle, comprised sixty-two city blocks. The top featured a famous hotel and the first city park. Under the direction of Seattle’s most renowned city engineer, R. H. Thomson, the hill was leveled in several places beginning in 1891. Sluiced down by the method of hydraulicking that Thomson observed in the California goldfields, the hill produced enough earth to fill the rest of the tidal flats and, at the same time, to furnish garden designers and nurseries with a long-lasting supply of boulders for retaining walls and rockeries.”

At some point I learned that the ancient Romans had excavated tunnels by heating rock faces with fires, then dousing the hot rock with cold water. This would cause the rock to shatter, and the rubble could be removed. I bought a propane tank and one of those “50,000 BTU” fire wands. Working with a partner, I would blast the rock with fire, then my partner would spray water from a hose onto the rock. Sometimes it would work, but mostly it didn’t. I would then resort to the sledge hammer, but even then I concluded that the “Roman method” didn’t work on these rocks.

I finally came upon a solution that worked. I had a DeWalt roto hammer, with a 5/8″ diameter bit that was quite long. I would drill three holes in a line as close together as I could. It just so happened that a wood-splitting wedge would just fit within that width. The wedge would have to knock out the walls between the bore holes, but that was no biggie when struck by the sledge hammer. Furthermore, this process didn’t create any tiny high velocity projectiles that might upset the neighbors. As hard as it was, the rock was no match for the simple power of the wedge. I remember one day in particular, I believe I broke either two or maybe even three boulders using this technique!

Of course, this generated a huge amount of waste rock. In fact it took two full sized pickup loads to transport it all away. I found a rock pile down in Skyway, south of Seattle, near some railroad tracks. I assume it was owned and used by the railroad for rail bed ballast. So I didn’t feel morally wrong about “dumping” my rocks there, and in fact I like to think I was actually helping add to the railroad’s supply!

With the boulders totally gone, it was an easy matter to get rid of the noxious weeds and vegetation, especially the Himalayan blackberry. My front lawn is still not finished, but at some point I think I’d like to terrace it, so I don’t have to mow a harshly curved surface.

Deep in my mind, I hold the thought that long after I’m gone, someone will decide to decorate the front lawn with beautiful basalt boulders…

I remember going down there to obtain the paperwork for Jen to fill out. I arrived first thing in the morning, and even then there was a huge line. Detainees would yell obscene comments through their barred windows at the women below. When I got inside the door, I could see I had to go past a guard and through a metal detector. I knew better than to have brought my Leatherman tool, or any kind of “weapon” at all. There was a fascinating display on the entryway wall of confiscated weapons. Eventually I was inside, and obtained a huge packet of papers that Jen had to fill out. Now the burden was on her.

She dutifully filled out the paperwork, but we had to make a return visit to the INS building for an in-person interview as a couple. I assume this was done to assess whether ours was a “sham marriage” in order to get a non-American into the country. We were interviewed together by a very nice Asian gentleman. This was all pre 9-11, so there was no hard-ass vibe about the process.

The questions were prosaic, and so bland I barely remember them. I think they were very open ended, like “how did you two meet” and “how long have you known each other.” “Who are your mutual friends?” The mere fact that we were interviewed together shows that it was a low-key affair, as in criminal investigations suspects are NEVER interviewed together, despite what you might have seen on TV.

But then things took a strange and surreal turn. I could tell this kindly man didn’t enjoy broaching this subject, and in fact prefaced his question with the statement “I know this is a strange question, but legally I have to ask it.” This one was directed specifically at Jen.

I suspect, but do not know, that it had to do with the fact that when another country is trying to extradite someone, the easiest legal way for the US to allow the extradition is if the immigrant lied about themselves to the INS. So the interviewer asks Jen, the beautiful, mild-mannered red haired gal, if she’s ever committed genocide…

It was hard for me to suppress laughter at this moment, and Jen answered honestly, that no, she had never committed genocide. Afterwards, the incident became a running joke between us as we would think up potential alternative responses. “What’s the cut-off number between mass murder and genocide?” “Oh, that business in Bosnia? No, we didn’t call it genocide.” “Are you talking about those Vancouver prostitutes?”

Years later Jen became involved in roller derby, and I was slightly disappointed that her roller derby name wasn’t “Jen-o-cide.” Unfortunately that name was already taken…

A few years ago, the INS moved out of the building, and it’s now being used for artist’s workspaces. Last night I went there to attend Bill Beaty’s Weird Science meeting, held at the new location of the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries. A group of us took a tour of the building. We walked out onto a tiled rooftop which functioned as an outdoor “yard” for the INS detainees. On hot days, some detainees would take blobs of roofing tar and write on the brick walls of the building. Some of the graffiti is still there:

An anti INS sentiment:

As I illuminated his foot, he was startled by the sound of some woman calling to him. He said he had to leave immediately or else his girlfriend would abandon him there. He got up and ran toward her and her car, evidently with a glass shard still embedded in his foot. Thoughtfully, he suggested I carefully clean off my knife…

It’s presently drying after an extended bath in 35% hydrogen peroxide.

Sometime in the summer of 1976 or 1977 I went to the county fair and encountered a Christian booth that was giving away Jack T. Chick tracts. I was immediately taken by what I was seeing. I hadn’t really read comic books as a child, with the exception of MAD magazine, which is not really a comic book anyway. I probably read Archie or Richie Rich a handful of times.

Chick’s version of Christianity was vastly more hardcore than the mild-mannered Lutheran religion that I had been exposed to. Yet it was so much more emotionally compelling than what I was exposed to in Sunday school that I read every Jack T. Chick tract I could get my hands on! At one point I think I mail ordered a huge compilation pack that included most or all of the issues that were in print at the time.

One tract in particular stuck out: Big Daddy. This was a rather infamous creationist manifesto, a direct and ruthless attack on the theory of evolution by natural selection. My religious thinking was beginning to come to a head with me sometime in about my junior year of high school. I remember taking a biology class that included a section on evolution, and the instructor had to spend the first part of the class simply addressing the negative creationist feedback he had received over the years.

But several things were in my favor, as far as the search for the truth goes. One was that the biology class set things out in an orderly progression, where one piece of evidence logically flowed to another piece of evidence. In contrast, Chick’s manifesto was a scattershot hodge-podge of criticisms, not a logically coherent theory.

I remember having a sort of teenage epiphany walking home to lunch one day with my friend John. I was talking about evolution and the biology class. John had known me since early grade school and was rather shocked to hear me express doubts about evolution.

“Matt, you’re a scientific kind of guy, what are you doing believing in all this creationist nonsense?’

Indeed, one of the saving graces of this period was that I had discovered the non-fiction books of Isaac Asimov. I don’t know what essay it was, but I had a genuine epiphany when I discovered Asimov’s treatment of the second law of thermodynamics. Asimov pointed out the great flaw in the creationist’s argument regarding the second law; the earth is not a closed system, and the second law only applies to closed systems. At this point I knew that Chick was full of shit, but the implications were deeper still, and this is why this episode rose to the level of epiphany for me.

The family I grew up in never “joshed” each other, or “told stories” or even “pulled your leg.” If this sounds rather emotionally rigid, you would be right. Obviously my friends didn’t adhere to this same kind of standard, and I believe the development of my “bullshit detector” was rather stunted. Even as an adult, I look back with sadness at how many times people have lied to me and gotten away with it, at least for a time. Again, I’m talking about the intuitive level, not the above board critical thinking level. I believe that critical thinking is like typing, it’s not a skill that one is naturally born with, it’s something you have to work at and develop.

So believe it or not, having a huge emotional infatuation with the tracts of Jack T. Chick then realizing that he was totally full of shit about evolution, made a huge impact on me. How could there be people in this world who spent their entire lives spouting nonsense and lies? How could there be people in this world who wouldn’t change their beliefs when exposed to strong evidence or logical argument?

Obviously the older I got, the more I realized that the world is absolutely chock full of liars, con men, frauds, and bullshiters of every kind!

I became a complete atheist by reading a rather odd pair of books. The first was the Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Bierce’s book was an anthology of biting aphorisms, often quite blasphemous. But one theme that was constant in his book was that there are, and have been, many religions in the history of humankind, each of them believing itself to be the One True Religion. Simple logic dictates that they can’t all be right, and in fact most of them must be wrong because they all contradict each other. This is a simple concept, but it made a big impact on me.

Eventually I read Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell. This was the first time I learned that various logical arguments had been proposed for the existence of God. The argument from first cause, the argument from design, etc. Russell systematically demonstrated that all of these arguments are fallacious. Russell’s book was also a valuable exposure to the nature of logic expressed in a linguistic fashion as opposed to the mathematical proofs of geometry that I was familiar with.

So by the time I started college in 1980, Jack T. Chick was an embarrassing episode in my mental development, kind of like admitting you liked some really bad music for a certain time period…

Only recently did I even start thinking about Chick again as a result of becoming interested in “underground” comics in general. I became a fan quite late in the game, largely as a result of Denny Eichhorn giving me a whole set of his Real Stuff comics, and seeing the documentary Crumb. Just a few years ago, Fantagraphics opened a retail store in Georgetown, which is literally just over the hill from where I live. Through Fantagraphics I was reacquainted with Jim Blanchard, an amazing cartoonist and graphic artist in his own right. I had actually met Blanchard in the late 1980’s when I came into a Kinko’s that he was working at. I allowed him to keep some copies of some photographic portraits I brought in. He eventually re-drew and incorporated some of them into his graphic compilations.

During Super Bowl Sunday, 2010, Jim was kind enough to loan me a rare parody-documentary tract called “The Imp” which was a rather scathing criticism of Chick. Unknown to me, during the 1980’s Chick had become associated with other individuals with beliefs just as far-out as his, and he integrated their stories into his own tracts. Blanchard also gave me a copy of a fantastic video documentary on Chick that included interviews with at least two people I was familiar with.

Chick is an enigma; obviously he’s not in the same aesthetic niche as Crumb, Daniel Clowes, Peter Bagge, or any other “underground” comic artist. You won’t find his tracts for sale at Fantagraphics, nor even many Christian bookstores. According to the documentary, Canada considers Chick’s comics “Hate Literature!”

I’m sure I’m not alone in being one of those people who was affected in some weird and possibly profound way by Jack T. Chick. I think I’ll start asking people for their own stories…

Unlike Ashleigh, I didn’t have the presence of mind to take photographs or retain other kinds of ephemera about SCUD. So I’m running strictly on memory here, which can be fallible.

First off, I moved to Seattle from Montana in 1987. It was immediately obvious to me that just being a pharmacist was not emotionally satisfying in and of itself. At the time, I was deeply inspired by the books published by RE/Search, which suggested that intensive investigation into unusual topics was intrinsically cool. I had already accumulated a large database of forensic literature regarding autoerotic asphyxia, and I began to buy books on forensic science, which were often rather expensive. So at the time, I thought of myself as a researcher and not a creator. I was also fascinated with counterfeit currency, and began to buy books on the topic. This was a result of my obsession with the movie To Live and Die in LA.

Soon after arriving in Seattle, I discovered COCA, the Center on Contemporary Arts. Almost all of the content appealed to me, and even as a pharmacist, I felt very much at ease with what was obviously the best of Seattle’s underground artistic counterculture.

Not long after I arrived in Seattle I began to hang out at a long-gone bar on Capitol Hill called Squid Row. One night a long haired man about my age came in the bar with a metallic suitcase, much like the one seen in To Live and Die in LA. I immediately figured this guy must be cool, based on this characteristic alone. Soon enough he opened his briefcase, and inside were copies of his fanzine, hot off the Kinko’s presses. This was Tim “Zamora” Cridland, and his ‘zine was called Off the Deep End. Although I had done a great deal of photocopying before coming to Seattle, I had never seen a true fanzine before. I remember thumbing through it, and coming upon a morbid cartoon; an illustration of the JFK assassination with the caption “The three ballots that elected Lyndon Johnson.” This really knocked my socks off, and thus began a long term friendship with Tim Cridland.

Cridland knew Mike Hoy of Loompanics. At the time, I was totally unfamiliar with Loompanics, though I was familiar with one of its rivals, Paladin Press, having ordered Get Even several years before. I think I was at a COCA event, possibly “Weapons of WWIV” when I was approached by Tim who told me that Mike Hoy was interested in having me write an essay about autoerotic asphyxia for Loompanics. Hoy learned of my interest in this arcane subject through Tim. At the time, I was hugely flattered. I was going to be paid $100 for this essay! I would be a published author!
I set about writing the article, and eventually submitted it to Hoy. It ran in the 1989 main catalog and was later included in a compilation of essays published as a book entitled Loompanics Greatest Hits. Included in the essay were two illustrations by an artist I was unfamiliar with. At the time the only “signature” of the artist was an equilateral triangle roughly bisected by a line.

I think I was at the Rebar when I finally met the artist, Ashleigh Talbot. I think she approached me and introduced herself. Being that her illustrations were so graphically morbid, I think I expected her to be dour and negative; perhaps she sacrificed chickens in her spare time… But she was nothing like that at all, being ebullient and positive. She seemed to genuinely understand the fascination with atypical death and sexual paraphilia.

I remember being at the SCUD party for the Modern Primitives show. I think as a COCA member I received an official invitation. Honestly I don’t remember too much about the party, except the entrance of ManWoman, whom I had read about in the RE/Search books.

I felt like a groupie as I called out to him as he entered… I remember going ga-ga over meeting Andrea Juno, whom I respected as a co-creator of the RE/Search books, and because she was very good looking. I corresponded with her a bit afterwards, but nothing really came of it. I got this vibe that over time she became something of a man-hater, but I could be wrong about this.

Years later, when I was on the sideshow, I had the pleasure of visiting V. Vale at the RE/Search offices. Andrea was still in San Francisco at the time, and still with RE/Search, but I gathered that things were beginning to break down. V. Vale was the perfect host with me, however, and he called Andrea on the telephone. Evidently she was upstairs at the time. V. Vale told her I was in the office, and invited her to come down and say hello. Apparently she couldn’t be bothered, and refused to leave her post. Awkward… I remember V. Vale casually opening an office drawer which revealed a large caliber short barreled revolver. I thought that was pretty cool; better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it…

I attended the COCA opening of the Modern Primitives show and took photographs. I could tell that the Modern Primitives “scene” was going to be big, and indeed it became so. But I also noticed that most of the participants were young, white, and mostly middle class. It occurred to me that there was a whole other set of tattooed people who had not received the kind of lavish artistic attention that the “Modern Primitives” had; convicts. I formulated a fantasy of creating a book documenting prisoners and their tattoos. The state prison at Monroe wasn’t too far away, and even Walla Walla wasn’t very far either. I knew that good photography was critical to the project. When I was in college, I had been in a band called Sports and Science. We enlisted an amateur photographer’s help in taking promo shots of our band for posters. It turned into an absolute nightmare, as he was developing his own photos, and time was quickly running out. At the VERY last minute, he delivered his still-wet enlargements, literally floating in a bucket of water…

I didn’t want to farm out the photography, so I purchased a Canon AV-1 camera and a macro lens. I began to take close up photos. I also got very lucky, as I found a tattoo artist named Roni Falgout who had made her own tattoo gun! I invited her to a party at my apartment and took photos of her equipment, and of her tattooing a lime. I could tell that macro photography was challenging, and at the time I didn’t even have a tripod.

But as it happened by 1991 I had joined the sideshow, and my entire life began to change in huge ways. I was no longer a spectator or fan of the underground Seattle scene, but an actual participant! Our sword swallower Paul Lawrence, or “Slug” as he was known at the time, had but one tattoo on his body. He decided that he wanted to be completely tattooed, in the tradition of the great Omi, but he knew that he didn’t have the money to pay a professional to completely tattoo his whole body. Being that we were on the road at the time, it occurred to him that if he had the equipment, he could probably work on his project during his off-hours on the road. Who would do the actual tattooing? I’m not sure what his plan was…

At the time, there was no World Wide Web as we know it today, and my understanding is that professional tattoo equipment was only being sold to “established” tattoo artists. I suggested to Slug that perhaps I could build an improvised gun, much like Roni Falgout’s machine. I remember going to a Goodwill store in Burien and buying about 8 small motorized appliances, in hopes of finding a suitable motor that could power a tattoo gun.

But yet again, it was another project that never quite got finished, as thankfully Ashleigh stepped in to help out Slug. This is why I’m included in the photograph posted on her site; I wanted to follow up on Slug’s crazy project, and was more than happy to see someone competent like Ashleigh doing the tattooing, and with professional equipment.

Ashleigh was a huge supporter of the sideshow, and created one of the more enduring illustrations of the original group. I remember being in her studio and seeing the artwork for the very first time. It was about 95% completed, with some crosshatching missing in a corner. It was a VERY well done illustration, and I was gonzo over the fact that it would be used as promotional material for posters and t-shirts.

As it happened, Jim Rose was also in attendance, and was also smitten with the image. He was a chronic pothead, but this evening he seemed to be more than several tokes over the line. At one point he dreamily remarked “I just want to gaaaaazze at it….” This became a catch phrase for us for a while there. Again, Ashleigh had to remind Jim that the illustration wasn’t finished. But somehow, Jim either didn’t listen, didn’t care, or was just too stoned to remember, and he took the artwork before Ashleigh had a chance to finish it.

The artwork began to show up on posters and t-shirts. At first it was kind of funny; a testament to Jim’s stoned fuck-up in not listening to Ashleigh. But over time it became less funny, and eventually it really illustrated how Rose treated other human beings. The missing crosshatching reflected on the artist, not on Jim Rose, so Rose could care less. The design came to be reproduced again and again, with Rose never stepping in to allow the final and correct design to be reproduced. Rose was a great promoter, but was a total shit as a human being.

Ashleigh included a great illustrated story in her SCUD history about the man who wanted to get inside the building, but was thwarted by the mail man. During the time I was on the sideshow, I began to spend more time at SCUD, specifically hanging out with Ashleigh. She was completely nocturnal, so it would always be a nighttime visit. SCUD didn’t have an apartment style buzzer system, and cell phones weren’t in widespread use back then. You either yelled at the building, or threw rocks or pennies at the window. I took a careful look at the door, and decided that I could simply slim Jim the thing. I got permission from Ashleigh to enter the building this way, and kept the slim Jim in my car. I can’t remember clearly, but I may have ended up hiding the slim Jim near the door of the building.

I met Jim Hogshire through Tim Cridland, and discovered that Hogshire spent a great deal of time at SCUD, hanging out with Ashleigh. I remember seeing Hogshire at SCUD one night with a small briefcase full of tablets and capsules. I seem to remember seeing Dilantin capsules. This confused me, as Dilantin was not something that would get you high, nor did Hogshire have epilepsy, as I recall. He just had an overwhelming fetish for pharmaceuticals…

In 1992 I purchased an oxy-acetylene torch set-up, but had no shop with which to work in. Thankfully I was introduced to Louie Raffloer, who had his own blacksmith shop not far away from SCUD. I would drop by there from time to time, to socialize with Louie and learn about metal work. I remember trading Louie a Mossberg shotgun for a Milwaukee angle grinder. Below Louie’s shop was a band practice room, and from time to time, you would see members of Pearl Jam or Soundgarden coming out of the dingy basement and into the equally grungy alleyway…

I remember attending a big target shooting party with Louie, Jim Hogshire, and a number of other folks back in about 1996. Louie brought a bunch of spray paint cans which he had bought on sale for a buck apiece at one of the big chain hardware stores. We would have a campfire burning beside the paint can, and when hit with a bullet, the can would explode like something you see on MythBusters. I seem to remember posing for a photograph with Louie and Jim Hogshire. I think Hogshire had his notorious M-1 carbine and I held a Ruger Mini-14 with a black synthetic folding stock. I never did see that developed photo….

Weirdly, Hogshire and I had been to one of the periodic gun shows held in Puyallup previous to this adventure. Someone was selling home-made thermite incendiary devices for $20! This was the only time I saw anything like this for sale there. Hogshire and I each bought one. I took mine to Louie’s target shooting party and lit the fuse. It was a dud! What a rip-off!

Later, when Hogshire was busted for poppy possession at his apartment, the cops found HIS thermite device, and the SPD had to call in an additional bomb squad!

I think I met Clark Humphrey at SCUD, at one of Ashleigh’s late-night get-togethers. Over time, I would read his essays on Seattle, popular culture, and many other topics, but it took me a long time to really realize how much attention and research went into his work. His books Loser and Vanishing Seattle are superb histories of the transient nature of Seattle culture.

Although Steve Fisk was a SCUD participant, I really only got to know him through our mutual friend Kim Thayil, whom I had met on Lollapalooza in the summer of 1992. Honestly, I didn’t really understand or appreciate Fisk’s contribution to the Seattle music scene at the time. I remember speaking to him about Negativland and their album U2. Steve was kind enough to give me a cassette of that recording. Again, at the time I had little appreciation of exactly how rare or exotic such a recording was. I’m pretty sure I still have that tape!

All the time I spent at SCUD I was completely oblivious to Ben McMillan and Gruntruck! As lame as this sounds, I was introduced to Gruntruck by watching Beavis and Butthead! It was only after SCUD was all gone that I happened to run into Ben in a magazine store on Broadway on Capitol Hill. He was most polite, and I had no idea at the time that he had significant health problems. I ran into him once or twice more on Broadway, then I learned that he had died!

The mummified cat brought back memories too… At the time, I knew enough about forensic science in general and taphonomy in particular to know that mummification takes place only when a body is in a warm and dry place for a long time. I had read enough about the Green River Killer case and the work of Donald Reay and Clyde Snow to know that mummification is highly unlikely in an environment like the Pacific Northwest. Thus I was always a tad skeptical that the “mummy” wasn’t a gaff, and that Ashleigh and the SCUD people weren’t Rickrolling the marks with the “mummy” story.

But I believe Ashleigh, and I believe the feline mummy was the real deal. I suspect it died indoors, perhaps in a furnace room, or during a hot and dry Seattle summer.

All in all, SCUD was a trip, even though I was there mostly just as fan or hanger-on. For me it was one of those things in life that you take for granted, and don’t realize its value until it’s gone.