Just got back from doing laundry. For some reason, laundry is this incredibly productive and incredibly creative time in my life. I stayed up until about 4AM last night assembling a prototype of the ModCon book as it stands now, and spent my laundry time this morning going through the first forty or so pages massaging the layout and editing the text.
Seriously, I'm incredibly proud of this book. Not just because of my own egotistical horn-tooting, but because it's an amazing collection of people who I think do a wonderful job as ambassadors to the rest of the world — and that is in effect what this book is. It's not like the first one where we sold 750 copies to an already converted audience via the website. Here we're talking TEN THOUSAND copies — and hopefully more — in “normal” bookstores, hitting “normal” customers.
I was flipping through “Rack Rope And Red-Hot Pinchers: A History of Torture and It's Instruments” by Geoffrey Abbott (Headline Book Publishing, 1993) and came across the following reference to what is, I suppose, an incredibly early reference to a Madison piercing:
“Chain through the Neck
In the more exotic parts of the world, more exotic punishments were administered. In China, monks who broke their sacred vows were punished by hacing a hole burned through their necks with a red-hot iron. A long chain was then passed through the hole and, stark naked, he would be led along the streets, any attempt to relieve the pain caused by the weight of the chain on the open wound being thwarted by the application of a whip carried by another monk bringing up the rear.”
In about an hour the troops will start arriving, and about two hours after that, they'll go to battle. I think a dozen or so suspensions are scheduled. Plus Phil is bringing his 4×5 camera (no shitty digitals or 35mm's for iWasCured!) to document….
Thanks ARTIK for doing a rush order for us — 20 or so black iWasCured shirts will be ready tomorrow, so if you're coming to the suspension party this weekend, Phil can hook you up.
OK, things did get a little silly last night. First my “scientific curiosity” got the best of me. TSD rates an “expert level” suspension as anything that puts between 40 and 80 pounds of weight per hook. I decided that I'd try and see what would happen if you put 250 pounds on ONE hook in an ARM. The bet was will it:
A. Hurt but work fine.
B. Straighten the hook and drop me.
C. Tear a big chunk out of my arm and drop me.
Well, they hoisted me up, and the hook did bend a little, but then with a huge POP, the entire length of the hook tore out of my arm, spraying blood and chunks of fat everywhere — there were fat cells all over my shirt, and some hit Marty in the face. Luckily Blair was there and eight stitches later I'm good as new.
Then to top it off, Marty, Monstar, and Orbax decided to play a game of suspension one-upmanship. (Yeah, I know it's deeply irresponsible, and probably a little sacreligious, but hey, sometimes you've got to have some fun). I'd say the top moment of that game was Monstar climbing to the top of the tower with four suicide hooks in his back and JUMPING off the top of the tower to get caught by his hooks!
