More Sopping Products

By David Macpherson

Diver Doug is a zinester. He makes home-made magazines. He plays his mandolin. He creates clay figurines. He works in pet shops and sleeps on the couches of friends or acquaintances. He is a free spirit and he wants you to buy stuff. It is the mid-nineties and DIY is a way of life.

 

More Sopping Products is his adzine where he talks about his books, music cassettes, clay figures and other things. He is a chatty cat and has a lot to say about how he wrote his zines and the people who support him and the others who try to keep him down. This isn't just a catalog, this is a history of making things and trying to be a successful artist.

 

More Sopping Products is a satirical novel about the way artists see themselves and the world around them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Macpherson
• Release date: May 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393940616

Book preview

More Sopping Products

The Amazing Adzine You’ve Been Waiting for!

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Hey. hey Mr. Octopus and all you many tentacled readers out there. This is the product page. Yeah. The product page that was always in the back of the zine. Well, for the first seven issues, it was the back cover, and I didn’t have enough product to fill the damned page. That’s why there were the pictures of the detachable monkeys. Not only cute, but they covered up the blank spaces.  Then I got busy and there was two pages of product. Onto four pages and I was tight with all the close handwriting. My wrist was killing me for a week after that last issue’s product page(s). Page after page of awesome books and records and posters and hash pipes and all the other waterlogged items you come here for.

Now what happened? Why does the new issue of Drowned Garden come wrapped in plastic and when it is released from its cocoon, you have two books: the new ish of the zine and this booklet, the More Sopping Products Page. I have done so much work in the past year, the page got bigger and bigger. It was half the ish by the time I realized, the hell with it, I better just make the page it’s own zine. I can’t believe it, but I created an adzine. I was always against those when I saw those mentioned in Fact Sheet Five, That’s why it’s wrapped in plastic with the real ish. For the same price, you get the twelfth number of Drowned Garden and you get this catalog of all things Diver Doug.

And before you write in just for this one thought, Dan from Perth Amboy, I am well aware that Wrapped in Plastic is a Twin Peaks zine. I wasn’t being ironic. It’s just that the two books are wrapped in fucking plastic. And I have never seen a second of that show. I’m sure the zine is good, it’s a zine after all.

Wait, I don’t want to have anyone not write me. I ‘m just kidding with Dan from Perth Amboy. I like his letters, but man is he nuts about David Lynch. That’s a big thing for him, and everyone who corresponds with him knows this. He wrote me that he has an Eraserhead tattoo on his right thigh (or on his back, I can’t remember) and that the Dune movie is better than the book it was based on. Like I said, David Lynch can do nothing wrong in the ever expanding mind of Dan from Perth Amboy.

I love your letters. Hell, I even got one of those email accounts from Prodigy, though that’s not really anyway to communicate. How can we really say our feeling by typing on a flashing computer screen and pressing send? That’s not sending mail. Where is the scratch of pen on paper? The taste of the envelope glue?  The mostly fruitless quest of finding a stamp in the house? Prodigy isn’t bad, but it’s just a silly fad. Give me letters and zines.

I will reply to everyone who writes, but don’t be waiting for my reply the very next week. I will get my mail, but the Rhode Island address is my goto, but I don’t live in New England anymore. I think I mentioned that in Number 11 and Number 12. How can I not be talking about living in Maryland? But you want to write me at the Rhode Island PO Box 12128 Pawtucket RI. Scuba Girl Number One checks the box every week and sends me all the letters and checks and what-nots. She’s a great girl, even with us broken up (see Number 8, that was a rough one) But here’s the thing you got to remember. Scuba Girl Number One doesn’t get any money from this. She is not a paid employee of Drowned Garden Incorporated. She is not getting any pay or benefits from helping me out. She’s just cool and wants to be a plus on the karmic scale. She will bundle all of the mail together and get it to me But I am in Maryland now, and sometimes I am not. There was that summer on the Texas Coast or I decide hell with all this Old Bay Spice bullshit on everything I order at a restaurant and am gone for good from Baltimore. That might happen before I finish putting this ad booklet together. I love Maryland, I am not sure about Marylanders, but I wrote about that in this Ish, #12. If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, go take out the ish and find the article Pounding Soft Shells with Mallets Like All the Bullies I’ve known, and then you can make bet on where I will be sleeping when you reach the end of this booklet.

I have more to say about Scube Girl Number One, but hold on for a second. But what the fuck is this thing you have in your hand anyway. Is it a product page gone gargantuan? Is it its own zine? Is this all just shameless commerce? I haven’t tried selling a thing yet, so maybe it is a zine and not a catalog. But I want you to buy things in here. There is a lot of fine shit that I have spread out on my metaphorical blanket at the edge of the non-existent flea market and who doesn’t need a little extra scratch? Just so you know, the answer is everyone!

But I was talking about the old lady who is no longer an old lady but the only ex-girlfriend I know with a permanent address and no wanderlust and who is cool with me enough to send me my mail, She’s a great person, and I can’t imagine what a pain it is to assemble all the mail and whatnots and get it to me, what with me living hither and yon. I drop her a line that I live here and