Somehow I missed this conversation. Anyway, a few years back there was a homebrewing "how to" website that showed a bunch of young brewers introducing the world to their particular (and in some cases extremely peculiar) practice of brewing. It was passed around on a couple of forums, mostly for the laughs, particularly for one practice that they used to remove the "braun hefe" - they sucked it out with a shop vac!!
Now, I was probably the only one on the forums who actually thought this was a clever idea and I kind of contemplated doing it myself (with a new shop vac, not the one I use to suck the gunk out of my keggerator). Technically, if that was all you used it for and you kept it clean it should be fairly sanitary.