Stopped Attempts in Kalamazoo

Number of hours my computer has been connected to my brother's cable modem in Kalamazoo, MI: 9
Number of blocked outside access attempts: 3113

Best Crunksgiving Ever
And we do mean ever

Preparations began two days before the big event.



The Vicar of Ham played his machine.



The placemats were placed.



In our back alley kitchen, thirty gallons of peanut oil met the flames and browned our birds.



All gathered 'round the pornocopia, or "horn of plenty."



The mayor said grace.



The guests carried on the Crunksgiving tradition.



Torsos were exposed.



And rats dined on leftovers the morning after.

Sham Soulmates Smeared and Shamed for Suspected Shill Sell Off
"Letty didn't know any better," Claims Defense Attorney Spartacus Hitchings

Doctors Ooter and Martha McHaggis , seen right eBaying their childhoods away, were served with what could be their final eBay message until their scheduled auction court appearance next week. "A Backpack and a Keyboard" got a copy of the notice from an undisclosed source:

SB NOTICE: eBay Registration Suspension - Shill Bidding

"This email is to notify you that your account has been suspended for a minimum of 7 days due to violation of our Shill Bidding Policy.

Shill Bidding is bidding that artificially increases an item's price or apparent desirability. Shill Bidding is prohibited on eBay. Information on eBay's Shill Bidding Policy can be found at:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/seller-shill-bidding.html

Your account has been found to be involved in Shill Bidding with the following associated accounts:

lettydied

Lettydied, the sham couple's mother (and sham mother-in-law) claims she "didn't know [she] couldn't bid on the items" her sham son-in-law had uploaded from the same computer only moments before.

"I just saw that my Beanie Babies--the Beanie Babies I gave those kids--weren't selling. I paid top dollar for those things back in 1993. It's criminal the way the market has saturated. I don't want to see those kids starve in South America. I think what I did is what any mother would do."

Doctors McHaggis could not be reached for comment, but their attorney Spartacus Hitchings allayed fears that the couple had already fled the country.

The aged barister claimed that Doctor Martha is in Big Rapids Michigan and that "Doctor Ooter is tending to his Pokeweed tinctures in his Ann Arbor laboratories."

eBay officials were unavailable for comment. eBay stipulates that all appeals can only begin after a one week waiting period.

Adds Lettydied, "I just didn't want to see my Beanie Babies go."

FBI's sham marriage sting snags 6

Eek!

With Doctors Ooter and Martha McHaggis



These platonic loverrs are currently on a tour of the United States promoting their tome: "Latin for Lovers." They could be passing through a city near you! (See their tour schedule below).


You could win:
--a pun-filled evening with Dhaktors Ooter and Martha McHaggis of St. Andrews, Scotland.
--the bill for a pair of round-trip tickets for the scholars.
--pointers on perfecting your rough Scottish brogue
--the dinner tab

I just posted a story about things I learned at the NASCO eco-sustainability caucus to the Earth News section on Matrixmasters.

This is the message I had to give the resident of the White House

May Bush attain enlightenment in this or another lifetime.

Living Blood Bank:
How Thai Buddhist Monks are Helping Their Communities Prevent HIV

(Your Narrator's Note: This is a from the e-group "SEA-AIDS," a group focused on HIV/AIDS and other health and development issues in Asia and the Pacific, and coordinated by HDnet.org)
Laurie Maund
Sangha Metta Project

Buddhist monks and novices teaching and studying at a temple school in Chiang Mai, Thailand, have set up a "living blood bank" which they plan to use as a model in HIV/AIDS prevention.

The monks and novices symbolically donate their blood at a local hospital or blood bank. The blood is not physically taken from their body, but their names, addresses, phone number and blood group are taken and kept at the hospital or blood bank so that they can be called upon for donations or in case of emergency. For the donors, their body is the blood bank.

Before a statue of the Buddha, they vow to respect their blood as "community blood" and look after it on behalf of the community or anyone who may need it in the future. As monks and novices, they already practise celibacy so there is little or virtually no risk of infection. Back in their communities, they plan to recruit members of the "living blood bank" from among community youth and other community members. Members will make a vow not to do anything that could put this "community blood" at risk.

In this way, they are not only assuring a supply of untainted blood, but are also applying traditional values and culture, and indirectly encouraging youth and community members to abstain from any behaviour that could put the "community blood" at risk of infection. And, in accordance with their tradition, they are accumulating merit that could help them in this or future lives.

In Washington, D.C., Getting Face Time with an Incarnation of Avalokitesvara is Harder Than You'd Think

It was a week ago today that I flew into our blind empire's capitol. I promptly discovered that I was the only one on that flight who had checked a bag. Waiting by the luggage claim for a bag that never came, I decided that U.S. Airway would not get a link on my blog, even if it was Detroit International's fault that I had to wear the same clothes for three days).

Even with this delay, I had four hours until my train left Union Station, so I got off the Metro in Chinatown when I was switching from the Yellow to Red Line.

Nothing much caught my eye in D.C.'s sorry excuse for a Chinatown, except the GuanYin Chang or "Temple of (the bodhisattva) Guanyin"--sometimes spelled with Cantonese phonetics, Kuanyin, Kuan Yin, Kwan Yin, etc. The best translation of this name is "the one who looks upon the voices of the suffering." And since this narrator was suffering, what better solace than lighting a few incense sticks and stepping out of this suffering existence for a few moments? Especially when tickets to see what Tibetans consider to be the modern incarnation of Avalokitesvara, the Dalai Lama, in D.C. are going for $100 a pop.

I opted for the less expensive option of crossing the street and stopping by the temple. The bodhisattva of Compassion would be within my sight, except for one old man.

There he was on the steps of the temple, with his carved wooden dragon cane and trucker's baseball cap.

"Where you going?" he asked.

"I'm going to Union Station," I replied.

"This place not Union Station. This is house of the Buddha. You can't go in. Do you know what a temple is? Do you know what the Buddha is?"

I told him about the Ann Arbor Zen Temple and gave some answer about being in the now.

"You don't know Buddha! You believe Jesus Christ!"

"Well, I do consider myself Buddhist in some sense. I am a practicing meditator."

"You don't know Buddha. You know how many Buddha there are?"

"Infinite number in infinite universes is what I've been told."

He paused. I asked him in Mandarin if he spoke Mandarin. No response. Then he said, "You just don't know Buddha."

"OK, since you know Buddha, can you tell me about Buddha nature?"

He looked flustered and got a "you can't ask me that" sort of look on his face. He obviously didn't know Buddha either, but like half of China assumes some sort of cultural monopoly on all things Buddhist.

"May I enter now?"

"Go in," he said with an air of disgust.

I went in, smiled at the old woman inside, and lit my incense. As I took refuge in the three jewels, she left. After a brief respite from the bustle of the immoderate hubbub of incarnation, I walked out. They were chatting in Cantonese. The man didn't ask me if I found Buddha, but he did tell me that I'd find Union Station if I took a left at the next cross street.

Here's a fun site, Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog Check out this post on how the Defense Department wants to develop synthetic gills.

First 250 View Winner!
My Most Popular Flickr Pic


Susan and I inserted this pic (and this one) in all our eBay auctions (still going strong. Bid on this if you want something of limited use and high appeal) so people could learn about whose attics are roomier and pockets are fatter. Guess people wanted a better view of all the commotion.

Graduate School Applications...

Make me want to cry.

But I'm almost done.

Now I'm off to the post office with a thick stack of papers. And then maybe to the White House. I have a message for the Resident-in-Chief.

Better Train Service in China and Bangladesh
But Still a Nice Stretch of Rail from DC to Charlottesville

"We're going 10 miles an hour over this stretch because Amtrak sold this track and the contractor won't maintain it."

That's what I overheard a conductor say to passengers on the way from DC to Charlottesville, Virginia to visit my Dad. No money for the trains. What a shame. I took the bus between DC and VA last year and the train was incomparably better. (Granted, I did luck out this year because I arrived at the weekend of peak color in Virginia). But what remains unchanging about this course is that I didn't see more than a dozen cars and hardly any roads. Most of the view was of farmhouses, woods, pasture, and mountains.

Last night, after visiting the University of Virginia, Monticello, and my Dad, I rode the train back to DC. Not only was it 2 and a half hours late--"here, son, take this card and call next time. He always gets held up in Chicago freight traffic"--the train had engine problems. So we sat in the dark for half an hour in the Charlottesville station.

The very same day, it was reported that Amtrak's president had been fired. Apparently he was not listening to the Bush administration. According to Railway Age, "Congress in 1997 instructed Amtrak to eliminate its need for operating subsidies before Oct. 1, 2002, even though it is rare in this world for a passenger railroad to cover operating expenses from the farebox alone without accounting tricks."

This from the Boston Globe:

In the past year Amtrak served a record number of passengers, 25.5 million, with a much reduced payroll. Admittedly, the system runs in the red each year and has a backlog of needed infrastructure improvements. But those problems could be solved if Congress decided to underpin its operations with a guaranteed revenue source, such as the gasoline tax that funds interstate highways.

What a good idea!

Again from the Boston Globe:

Just last week the Senate approved by a 93-6 vote a six-year, $12 billion authorization bill for Amtrak. Instead of jeopardizing Amtrak operations by firing a competent manager like Gunn, the administration should meet with members of Congress to devise a plan for the system that ensures reliable financing and a chance to bring high-quality, high-speed passenger rail service to all the nation's densely populated corridors.

What we need is real leadership on trains and public transport. We need high-speed rails running from coast to coast. Coasting...like they do in Shanghai...that would be the better way to travel. Not using copious amounts of fossil fuel to island hop.

And here's what else we need: metal detectors at railway stations. As one attendant said, "You know, I was talking to a colleague about this. We have metal detectors at schools, but not in our places of business, not in our transportation centers. Where are our priorities as a society? It's almost like they're waiting for terrorists to strike the trains."

The Condom Gentleman: Clinton's New China Legacy?
News: The condom wagon lands in China to cash in on safe sex
China Daily, (Cityweekend), 2 November2005
**********

It all started with Durex. This condom manufacture released a survey in 2003 that found that Chinese are the world's most likely to agree to unprotected sex with a new partner, and later it was discovered by UNAIDS that 30 percent of Chinese who get HIV do so through unsafe sex.

All this alarming news started a buzz in China about sex, condoms and spreading the gospel of protected intercourse.

"Condom news" has become a regular fixture in the Chinese media and everyone is talking about sex (which does not have anything to do with TLC).

Recently, administrators at Beijing's top universities have announced new rules to curb promiscuity in dorms, which has in turn backfired as couples are taking their business outside.

Under bushes, in parks and next to lakes around university campuses it is not uncommon to stumble upon couples in the act. One university student acknowledged that most of these spontaneous love acts were unprotected, as it is not too sexy to get up from the park, walk back to the dorms and then return a half hour later with
a condom.

In the face of unflattering unprotected sex statistics, the Chinese government has taken the problem by the horns and will distribute more than 300 million condoms to the general population.

"If people could get a condom as conveniently and naturally as buying a Chinese cabbage, the AIDS prevention function carried out by condoms could finally imbue people's lives and change their bias (against condoms)," Tao Ran, of the China Youth HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Fund, told Xinhua.

Health experts have called for "100 percent" condom use programs throughout China, a campaign that will use "no condom, no sex" as its slogan.

And smart entrepreneurs everywhere have jumped on the China condom bandwagon. The most intriguing of late are no doubt the Clinton/Lewinsky condoms put on sale in China this October.

A box of 12 Clinton condoms, named after former US President Bill Clinton, cost about US$3.70 and that of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the Lewinsky condoms, cost a mere US$2.25. Jabs abounded on the Net about the cheaper Lewinsky condoms, but in the end everyone was asking why Clinton and Lewinsky?

"We chose the name because we think Clinton is a symbol of success and a man of responsibility. And Lewinsky is a woman who dares to love and dares to hate," said Liu Wenhua, the general manager of Haojian Bioscience Co. as reported by the LA Times.

"We haven't told Clinton about this yet, but maybe you could help us find him," Liu added. "We'd like to tell him how respected he is in China, so we can boost his confidence and help his career."

Whatever the reason, let's hope China's youth get the message and get on the wagon.

Online at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-11/02/content_490048.htm

Narrator's note: Clinton, like Nixon, will be forever venerated in the Chinese mind. The reasons are obscure, but can be summed up like this: Nixon bettered China-US relations. Clinton isn't Bush. Both were gentlemen. Both were great leaders. Of course, most Chinese say the same about Hitler.

I found it!


Now if I could only figure out how it works.

Boyds Bears and 4 lbs of Assorted Kitschy Friends
And Other Disappointing eBay Non-Sales
eBay news from Virginia

When we started ebaying our childhoods away, the sham wife and I knew there would be disappointments. But how could we have known that the market for Beanie Babies and Boyds Bears would be so abysmally saturated? I figured no one would have bid on my Sea Quest DSV collector's cards, but how would I have known that our Classic 1995 Twin "Pinky" Flamingo Beanie Babies
would just go back to the attic? Or that our Monster with Headless Little Girl lot would go the way of last year's stale Halloween candy? Or that my 7 MIB X-Files figures and mint movie cards would (as of posting) be selling for $1.25?

Some surprises that made me happy and more than mildly amused: My friends bid on the Beanie Babies only to request they not be shipped. My 30 Mint Bongo Comics: Simpsons, Lisa, and more # 1s!! are so far the highest bid getters: $66.

Goodbye, old friends. Hopefully you're on your way to someone as dorky as this narrator. And this narrator is off to someplace where $66 is more than 2.5 inches of comic books.

Click on pic to go to my flickr page. Then click on the adjacent pics to find out what they do next! (for mature audiences only)

Happy Halloween! Be sure to check out our auctions!
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZjwickerhQQhtZ-1