sex warehouse

Every Tuesday night, Chaos, a DC gay bar, features Drag Bingo hosted by drag queens and transsexuals. When it started several years ago, the people playing were mostly gay men. Now, most of the bingo players are straight women and a few of their straight male friends.

The owner of Chaos is quite a character. He is militant about who gets bingo cards. God forbid you walk up to him to ask for a card, because you will be dismissed. He only passes them out if you buy a drink and you must continue to drink or order food to continue playing, or he walks over with his thick Latin accent to confiscate the card. You can see him in the above picture, clutching on to the cards like they mean everything to him. He takes the whole evening way too seriously, which I love to watch.

In between the games of bingo, the host drag queens will perform a number to make some extra cash tips. This one has had breast implants, which I consider to be a form of cheating, because you are basically a woman, not a man pretending to be a woman. But regardless, the performances are usually fun to watch.

Initially, I thought this person was a drag queen, but on closer inspection, it was a straight woman celebrating her birthday by dressing up like a drag queen. And to top it off, she won a game of bingo and took home a giant dildo, or was it the gay porn video, or the trip to Florida, or the spice rack? I really don't remember as I was a bit loaded by this point. It is all a bit crazy, but always a fun night.

Marc dropped me off at Hotel Rouge in DC where I am staying while my house is being renovated. I looked up and standing outside the door was what looked like a receiving line after a wedding and a tall, attractive blonde guy was standing in the middle of the action. I turned to Marc and said, "Hey, that's that Blake guy from American Idol. Wait, no, it's that gay NSync guy, Lance Bass. Crap, its not him either. Who is he?" Marc was not buying that it was someone famousish so I got out of the car for a closer look. As he was walking away with his posse, it finally hit me that it was Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys." I wonder what brings him to DC?

Wanna know where to buy crack in Washington, DC? If so, you need to check out this posting from Gridskipper, that details the top 6 places to score crack in DC. The alley in back of my house came in at #1. I am so proud! My favorite location, however, is the Westin Hotel, formerly known as the Vista Hotel where Mayor Marion Barry's "bitch set me up" in 1990. For a detailed map of all 6 locations in DC, click here.

Can you see Jesus?

Source: The New York Nerd via Will Gartshore

I guess not so many readers of this page are into Godzilla movies. Your loss. Anyhow, the book about Eiji Tsuburaya consumed most of my working hours for the past five years and it's not right to exclude it from my work as a writer. It really is a groovy book.

ANYWAY, I've been thinking some about silence lately. I started to say this at my last talk at the Hill Street Center. But I wasn't in the mood that day to get too deep and "spiritual" so I don't think I conveyed the idea very well.

Simply put, my feeling is that the silence that underlies zazen practice is always available. In fact, this profound and mighty silence underlies all of our experiences -- from a long day of zen practice in a noble temple, to a KISS concert at Cobo Hall in Detroit circa 1977 (Love Gun tour, my favorite era), to a torrid night on the windswept dunes with the object of your affection bathed in silver-blue moonlight, to an afternoon cleaning up shit off the bathroom floor when the toilet has overflowed. Every experience rides atop an ocean of deep, deep silence. So deep and so silent you could never touch bottom. It makes the little bubbles and flotsam floating on its surface seem so insignificant they hardly matter at all. And yet though they (we) are just temporary shapes thrown up out of that endless silence, they (we) are made of nothing but silence. As silence we are endless, without boundaries, without names.

A lot of times people approach Zazen practice as if they have to forcibly generate silence into being. I've followed that rewardless path a hundred thousand times. But there is no need to try and create silence. It's always there, always flowing through you, creating you and creating the world that surrounds you. All you have to do is to allow it to be what it is.

Silence is never apart from you. It supports you through every experience. It carries you like a mother carries her child, protecting you from all harm. Silence is the strongest thing there is.

When you sit, don't worry if inner thoughts intrude or if outer disturbances interrupt your futile attempts to overcome them. Just allow the silence that manifests as every distraction to be what it is. Including your distraction at being distracted. It's all nothing but silence forming itself into temporary shapes. No matter what comes up, just return your attention to the silence that underlies everything.

I gotta go stop being a pretentious fuck. Later, dudes.

I keep forgetting to mention this. But my second and a half book came out in November. It's called Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters: Defending the Earth with Ultraman and Godzilla. Even though the author credit is August Ragone, and even though August is a real guy and he wrote the text, and even though my name only appears buried deep within the acknowledgments section (thanks), it's really my book as much as it is his.

Here's why. I sold the idea of a book about the life and work of Eiji Tsuburaya -- the man who did the special effects for the classic Godzilla films of the 50s and 60s -- to Chronicle Books a number of years ago. That was the easy part. Then I had to sell the idea of the book to Tsuburaya Productions. That was like pulling teeth. But eventually I pushed it through the layers of corporate bureaucratic dumbness and got things rolling. Then I had to get the book itself together. As with most books Chronicle publishes (like The Beatles Anthology or Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd or even What's Your Poo Telling You?) the focus was going to be more on photos than text. So I had to run all over Japan and America rounding up cool photos of Eiji Tsuburaya at work on Godzilla movies and Ultraman TV shows, paying special attention to pictures that hadn't been published a million times over already. I then had to figure out who owned the rights to these shots and secure permission for their use as well as arrange proper payment to the rights holders. Then I had to write captions for all the pictures and tell the book designers which chapters they went with.

On the writing side, I had to commission August to write it and see that he got paid. After he turned in a manuscript nearly three times as long as we could use, I had to work with Chronicle to decide where to cut it. Then I had to go through the entire text, with August's MS on one side of the desk and a pile of Japanese books about Eiji Tsuburaya on the other, and fact check everything, making corrections where needed. August very definitely wrote the text of the book. No question about that. I don't make any claims to having written anything but the photo captions and my own sidebar, as well as ghost-writing Akira Tsuburaya's sidebar based on interviews with him I conducted for the book. But there wouldn't have been a book to write without the stuff I did. So I feel like it's my baby, and maybe August is my (gulp) boyfriend... (to extend the baby metaphor to a highly uncomfortable degree)

I'm really happy with the way the book turned out. I think it's one of the best books on the subject of Eiji Tsuburaya's life and work ever done, even including some of the terrific ones available in Japanese. August turned in a fine piece of writing and the designers did an amazing job of taking what we gave them and turning it into a very classy book.

Aside from being a cool book about guys dressing in rubber dinosaur costumes and knocking down miniature recreations of Tokyo (which is enough right there if you ask me), it's an incredible piece of social anthropology. The very first Godzilla film (available on DVD as Gojira / Godzilla Deluxe Collector's Edition (Gojira/Godzilla [1954] / Godzilla, King of the Monsters [1956])) was probably the very first film about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Watch the Japanese version sometime. It's a fairly grim and serious movie, with the monster as such an obvious stand-in for the bomb you can't possibly miss it. Eiji had done special effects for Japanese propaganda pictures during the war, and it was those techniques he put to use on his monster movies. But his work on propaganda films got him blacklisted by the US occupation forces, which is why he didn't do much work under his own name for the first few years after the war. Godzilla was a movie that could not have been made under US occupation censorship rules. It's significant that it was made just a couple years after the Yanks left.

So there ya go. All you folks who are saying you want to read another book by me, there's your chance. Makes a great Buddha's Enlightenment Day (Dec. 8) gift!

There is a lot of speculation about why Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) resigned abruptly from the US Senate this week. His official reason was to get out of the Senate before the stricter lobbying rules take place in 2008. The gossip, originally posted on Big Head DC contends that Trent Lott had "relations" with Benjamin Nicholas, a gay escort, and the news was about to break.

I always thought the Trent Lott might swing both ways because he has a bit of the gay face and he was one of those "Singing Senators." I also have two other personal experiences with Trent Lott to add to all of the speculation. First, when I interned for Senator Ted Kennedy's health policy office in 1989, Trent was serving his first term as a Senator. I used to help a friend that interned for Senator Bob Dole walk the Senator's dog, Leader over lunch. Once, while returning the dog to Senator Dole, Senator Lott was in the office. He told me that I had, "striking green eyes," which I thought was a little gay at the time.

The second experience happened a few years later when I moved back to DC after graduating from college. I went to see the musical, "Crazy for You" at the National Theater on its pre-Broadway run. I sat directly behind Senator Lott and a very cute guy that I assumed at the time was his son. Now, I wonder. Plus, he was watching and enjoying a musical, which is also a little gay.

Now, as we all wait to see if this most recent story is true, I thought we could all enjoy Benjamin's "personal companion" website, his blog, and some of his pictures.

HOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW?!?!?!?!

I think I've suddenly lost my ability to bloggggggggggg!!!

I don't have anything interesting happening to me recently that doesn't involve the privacy of other people (which means I can't blog about it), and my life has settled into a flat boring plateau of comfort.

OKOK I know...

I shall blog about my (closer) girlfriends!!


Here's their birthdays:


MARCH

Kaykay: March 11th

Eileen: March 8th



APRIL

Qing qing: April 2nd

Shuyin: April 19th

Huifen: April 23rd

Gillian: April something (it's not stated on her facebook -_-)


JUNE

June: June 1st

Rosalyn: June 20th

Wanyi: June 21st

Eekean: June 21st



FUNNY HOR?! It appears I can like my girls to be either from the star signs Pisces, Aries, Taurus or Gemini!

Of course I have other female friends who didn't fall in these signs but I guess I'm not that close to them as those mentioned here.

My female friends are all mostly born in the first half of the year, and almost all my closer guy friends are born in the second half (with the exception of maybe Ming)...

I wonder if the astrology horoscope shit works, or maybe it's just a coincidence? Do people who have their birthdays close to each other tend to have similar traits?

Do your friends have birthdays all close to each other?

Food for thought.

Speaking of food, I'm now fucking fat! I'm like 45kg, which is a 2 or 3 kg disparity from my usual of 42/43, and I'm telling you that 45kg is fucking fat for my height!!

CCB.

I saw Shuyin yesterday and she is DAMN skinny lor! I can see her ribcage all! She went to Shanghai and thought she'd binge there so she asked the doctor for appetite suppressant pills, and in the end she didn't binge in Shanghai so she now looks like a chopstick lor...

I told Mike my intentions to go get those pills too, and to my surprise he told me he also has those pills and he got them for his first trip to Singapore when he was super scared that I would think he is fat!

So just now, I ate a pill, and kuku bird! It doesn't work lor!

According to both Shuyin and Mike, the pills are supposed to:


- Increase your heartbeat rates (coz metabolism increases)

- Give you insommia (very unfortunate side-effect)

- Obviously make you not crave for food



Not only did I fall asleep on my bed 2 hours later (took a short nap) with an indifferently beating heart, I woke up to raving hunger pangs (at 2 am when I ate a full dinner at 8pm) and ate 8 egg tofus and 4 deep-fried spring rolls (which I cleverly ta bao-ed from Kelvin's bdae catering).

WHY DOESN'T IT WORK FOR ME!??

I'm super upset lor!

Am I destined to use photoshop to lose weight for the rest of my life??






I know what else I can blog about!

I shall blog about typical reader comments which pissed me off recently...

I'm not quoting them word for word but these are the essential meanings to what they said:

1) You can lie about staying in a condo but I know you are not! Your room's layout is exactly the same as mine, and I stay in a HDB flat! And your princess room is so small, it can't be a condo.

.........

Excuse me, but why would I lie about staying in a dumbass condo? It's just a two-room condo in the very end of Singapore - it's not bloody Beverly Hills, so the puny bit of prestige is not even worth my effort to lie.

I've openly told everybody before that I used to stay in a 3-room flat in Teban Gardens, the armpit of Singapore, so why would I have a change of character and decide to lie about my lodgings?

It really pisses me off when people accuse me of things due to their own stupid ridiculous presumptions. Pisses me off even more when other stupid people believe these stupid people!

I'm sorry that your room is the size of my Princess Room, but I'd like to inform you that the "Princess Room" is only one-half of the rather large master bedroom...

Ok this is going nowhere.


2) I can't believe we are paying you but you are still not blogging after so long!


PAYING?

You mean like giving me MONEY?

SHUT THE FUCK UP, BITCH.

When did you ever pay me ANY money at all?

All you did was to read this site due to your own boredom/kpo-ness, and I DON'T OWE YOU ANY-FUCKING-THING.

If you don't like my tardiness in blogging, just fuck off, will ya?

I hope you get herpes.



3) Mike hasn't left you yet?

Nope... If he ever does I'll be sure to write about it, so you all can gloat and be marginally happier than what you usually are... because your own life is so miserable and sad. Sucks to be you, huh?


4) You (and Qihua) totally look like prostitutes blah blah blah.

Oh wow, you are SUCH AN INSULT GENIUS! I said I was mistaken for a hooker, and therefore, the insult you should say is that I do look like a hooker!

*roll eyes* Oh my, I am so hurt!

I don't care if you think I look like a hooker.

Girls would say that because they are incapable of dressing up like Qihua and I did, or even if they did, it would look shitty coz they are butt-plug ugly.

Guys would say that because they know that hooker-resembling or not, girls like Qihua and I would never fuck them, and it makes them bitter to see self-confident, vain girls.

That's why I always say, ugly people with self-esteem issues are the most annoying.


5) You are so ugly next to Qihua. You are so fat and fake and she is so pretty and natural.

When I told Qihua about this comment, she laughed and said she'd like to tell you guys that she has on eyelash extensions, hair extensions and of course make-up, so what's there to be so "natural" about?

I think it is very ludicrous that these unknown netizens have the nerve and audacity to comment on famous people's looks, because you are probably a sad, timid low-life in real life who would never even dare to speak to me.

Am I right? Would you tell me in my face that I am ugly, and not have me not have the immediate ready retort that you are hideous yourself?


I also don't care that you think Qihua is prettier than me, which she is... and there is nothing much I can do about that, unless I splash some concentrated acid on her face, which I won't because if she turns ugly she'd stop being so vain and I'd like her less.

What's your point in making an obvious comment like that? Are you trying to hurt me? Ruin friendships, perhaps?

It won't work, coz I only care that Mike thinks I'm hot and that I think I'm hot, so those two are satisfied and thus, nothing else really matters! :)

I understand the pleasure of insulting me though, because let's face it, if tomorrow Britney Spears has a blog too, I'd love to insult her and know that I am important enough to make someone as famous as Britney feel hurt.

Me, insignificant Wendy, managed to evoke emotions in the famous Britney Spears!

Complimenting someone is uncool and probably won't get you any attention; insults on the other hand might get you a reaction and not only seems outspoken and brave, but also sort of praises yourself at the same time (ie saying someone is stupid is also saying you are cleverer than that person)!

Insults are the no-brainer choice.

Whatever, dudes.




Some photos I edited sorta for facebook.

Kaykay and I dressed up as Fafi!!

You won't believe how vain we are lor... We were du lan that we missed Halloween (and a chance to dress up), so one day, I just decided to jio Qihua to come over and take photos and she did... bringing with her an entourage of wigs, socks, and even a box of candy canes and a purple puff for what she called "props".


Lookit! My crazily thick eyelash extensions that have lasted for more than 2 weeks now! Never drop at all!! Call Carragheen at 68849924 if you wanna do too. There are different types of lashes (from $62 to $130) so if you want mine make sure you let them know you want Xiaxue's lashes.



I'm not including Kaykay's individual shots coz I want more attention on me, thanks! (at least I admit it lor...)




With Mike... in the second pic he took me out for fine(ish) dining! Which is very uncharacteristic of him... I love you bb!!


Please don't ask me where I bought my colour contacts hor! You'd be horrified (and rather impressed) to know that I DID NOT WEAR CONTACTS AT ALL.

The light brown colour is purely done by photoshop. :D

Li hai or not! Just goes to show you can't trust any photo online at all!

For those who've asked, the part of the song "She Evil Carries Roses" about the dream is the verse that starts off, "Rushing past the mirror on the door." That pretty much recounts the dream casting the protagonist as the "she" of the title, rather than me. There was a mirror on the door of the room I slept in whenever I visited. In the dream, I woke up (though I wasn't actually awake, that was part of the dream) and walked toward that mirror. I noticed my own image inside was crying. So I reached into the mirror and grasped myself by the shoulders to calm myself. At that moment a very serene me peered in from behind the crying me, just quietly observing the scene without any emotion.

There's probably some deep psychological meaning behind that. But who cares? I don't know how old I was when I had the dream. But I would guess between 14 and 18.

I put a new article on Suicide Girls today, that I kind of like. You don't need to be a member to see the articles and you won't accidentally see any naked boobies unless you pay to see them. I know some people can't access SG from various places. I wish I had a solution for you. But I don't. I'm not supposed to re-post the SG articles anywhere else according to my contract with them. It's pretty stupid anyone would block the non-pay portion of their site since there's no "porn" in that part. Such is puritanism, I suppose.

My first teacher Tim wants me to write him an article about the creeping threat of standardization in American Buddhism. Gotta get to work on that. On the one hand, I understand the desire for standards to keep it from being a case where just anybody can say, "Yup, I'm a Zen Master" and get away with it. That's happened before and will probably happen again. But I figure the Sixties and Seventies are over, no matter how much everybody keeps trying to revive them. People in general aren't quite as naive about Eastern religions as they once were. Once we're more acclimated to Zen teachers and other Buddhist types in our midst, we'll be less likely to be so awe struck by anyone who uses words like "karma" and "dharma." Less likely to drop our panties for anyone in a set of robes. Which I admit is a bummer for me, but a boon for the philosophy.

Still, we do have crap like Big Mind® (whose funding comes from Zen Master Rama, referenced above -- big surprise!) and all that still making cash. So there is need for some kind of general knowledge. But I don't think making sure everybody wears the same robes and chants the same chants is gonna help very much. Anyway, I'll give this whole thing some more thought and get down to cases writing the article.

Yesterday I went out and bought the Nirvana: Unplugged In New York DVD. As I'm sure I've bragged before, 0DFx played with the Meat Puppets in 1983. They were without a doubt the band I was most impressed with of all the bands we opened for. The Misfits were close. But the Meat Puppets were better. When their second album came out it just blew my brains out. It's the only record I ever literally wore out by playing it too many times. After several weeks it just sounded like complete shit because the grooves had been worn down. I had to buy another copy.

I liked Nirvana from the start. But when they invited the Meat Puppets on their MTV unplugged show and played three of the songs from Meat Puppets II that clinched them as a truly hip group in my mind. It's so sad Kurt Cobain couldn't get his shit together in the end.

Pretty spiffy DVD. But I agree with the review on Suicide Girls about the extras. The interviews with people who were there pretty much tell you all you need to know about how fucked up things were towards the end. Seeing a buncha fuckin' clueless executive types in the front row all nervous because Kurt invited the Meat Puppets as guests instead of Eddie Vedder or whoever could hardly have been inspiring.

I gotta go. Have a nice one!

Last election, gay marriage was the wedge issue conservatives used to get out the vote in the Republican base. This time around, I have a feeling we are going to be hearing about "illegal immigration." I am on my cousin from Indiana's email distribution list. Nearly everyday I get forwarded an email about some horrible thing happening to threaten Christianity and the way life ought to be. Recently, nearly all of the emails deal with illegal immigration. I have seen dozens and dozens of emails like the one I copied below in the past few weeks. This issue is really getting them worked up, just like gay marriage did last time around.

THIS IS MY COUNTRY!

And, because I make this statement DOES NOT mean I'm against immigration!!! YOU ARE WELCOME HERE IN MY COUNTRY. Welcome to come through like everyone else has.

And the following is the law of this country!

Get a sponsor!
Get a place to lay your head!
Get a job!
Live by OUR rules!
Pay YOUR taxes!

And

LEARN THE LANGUAGE LIKE ALL OTHER IMMIGRANTS HAVE IN THE PAST!!! AND PLEASE DON'T DEMAND THAT WE HAND OVER OUR LIFETIME SAVINGS OF SOCIAL SECURITY FUNDS TO YOU TO MAKE UP FOR ''YOUR'' LOSSES.

If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone, then YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!

When will AMERICAN'S STOP giving away THEIR RIGHTS??? We've gone so far the other way ... bent over backwards not to offend anyone. But it seems no one cares about the AMERICAN that's being offended! Send this on to as many people you know who aren't offended to take an AMERICAN stand for EQUALITY and FREEDOM.

OUR TROOPS AREN'T FIGHTING THE TERRORISTS IN IRAQ SO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS CAN STEAL OUR JOBS!!!! TAKE A STAND BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!

Here's an old song of mine I've been listening to:

She Evil Carries Roses

This concerns a dark-haired girl in Chicago who, at the time, I was painfully enamored with. It seems to be a put down because I say she "evil" carries roses. But the song was meant affectionately. I think. I was in a weird frame of mind at the time. She was "evil" in the sense of being mysterious and impenetrable. But not in the sense of being bad. Her name was Monica. We worked together at a Woolworths where we often had to carry plastic fake roses up and down the stairs to the stock room in the basement. These fake roses were bought by people who put them on graves. Or I assumed that's what they did with them. Years later I tried to call Monica and she refused to speak to me.

It also concerns a dream I had while staying at my recently deceased grandmother's house while I was a child or maybe a teenager. The dream has stuck with me all these years. I must have had the dream about 10 years before I wrote the song, if not more and I wrote the song some time in the 80s, yet I still remember the dream.

It's a sort of creepy song. Don't get creeped out by it.

Tom and I walked along 14th Street today to shop our local merchants and tour the art galleries. One of my favorite things to see this time of year are the Christmas displays. Not because I enjoy them for their beauty or what they symbolize, but because I love to see gays gone gonzo for garland. The roulette wheel, although you can't tell from this picture, is actually spinning. I am really not sure what gambling has to do with Christmas, but the display is quite memorable.

Now this one is a bit more tasteful, and an obvious tribute to Audrey Hepburn's Breakfast at Tiffany's, but still I don't get the Christmas connection. Maybe this gay worships Audrey and therefore she represents what is holy about this time of year for him.

And this. We ran into this little gem hanging in the hallway of a second hand furniture store. The woman is painted on black velvet and is for sale for $125. I was floored when I saw the picture, but then saw that the owner of the store was black. Is it racist or art or both?

Here’s the second case in Dogen’s book of koans, Shinji Shobogenzo:

Master Obaku Ki-un on Mt. Obaku in the Ko district ask Master Hyakujo Ekao, “When I want to share with others the teachings which you have given us, how should I preach them?”

Master Hyakujo just remained sitting on his cushion without saying anything.

Obaku Ki-un said, “How can I teach sons and grandsons of disciples in the future?”

Master Hyakujo said, “What you have said shows that you are a real person.”

This is one of the questions I get so often I’m thinking of putting it into my F.A.Q., which I haven’t updated since the Bronze Age, by the way. People always want to know, “How can I teach Buddhism to others?”

The short answer is, don’t.

Of course I don’t mean totally “don’t.” But in most cases you don’t really need to teach anybody anything. Leave it alone, give it a rest, as Brian’s mom says in Life of Brian. If your friends and family want to know about Buddhism they’ll ask. Otherwise the Buddhist policy is: (If they) Don’t ask, don’t tell.

This was brought home to me recently when a certain Buddhist Master started to try and kindly bestow his teachings upon me. Jesus God Almighty if there is anything more annoying than that I really don’t want to know what it is. I finally figured out how to set my Spam filter to direct his e-mails right into my trash, so at least I don’t have to read that shit anymore.

But I imagine anyone who reads my stuff shares my disdain for teachers who try and push their teachings on you. Gawd, I hope no one out there is trying to push the stuff I say on anyone. Still, maybe you have some feeling that this or that friend of yours could benefit from the practice and you’d like to give them the chance. That’s nice. But, unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot you can do.

Trying to teach Buddhism to someone you know is like trying to get someone you know to sleep with you. You can’t push the issue or you’ll just scare them off. Or worse, they’ll feel like you’ve raped them with your religion. It just doesn’t do any good at all.

Even in my position these days I don’t really tell people I meet about Zen unless they ask. Even then I usually throw out facetious jokey answers the first few times in order to see if they seriously want to know. If someone isn’t really very sincerely desirous of the teachings there is no point at all in trying to bestow them upon them. They’re not going to listen with the necessary intention anyhow, so you’re just wasting your breath and making yourself look silly.

Anyway, that’s my little sermon for the day. Have a good one.

Happy Thanksgiving Day everybody. At least all you Americans. The Canadians have it on a different day and those of you outside North America don't have it at all. Count yourselves lucky! I was never big on this particular holiday. Tomorrow is Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, as everyone scrambles to get X-mas presents at bargain prices. And here I am, as a truly compassionate Buddhist Master, giving you the chance to get a jump on the day.

I've put some items of mine up for sale on eBay. Here's the scoop.

This is my Peavey bass guitar as seen in the film Cleveland's Screaming! A piece of my history, up for grabs because I don't wanna move the sucker. It is a truly great bass.

This is the toy bug I wrote about in a long-ago piece on my webpage. I have no idea if the piece is still up there. But lots of people seem to remember that one and write me about it still. I gotta give up the little guy, though. So here's your chance to own him for yourself! Beware. He's an expensive sucker.

Here's a boxed set of the TV show SPECTREMAN. Everybody remembers Spectreman from the 70's and 80's, one of the coolest Ultraman imitators of all. In fact, I like it better than Ultraman myself.

Megalon and Jet Jaguar figures by Microman. Nuff said.

Gamera from the film Gamera 3: The Advent of Irys. This figure is too rare to even believe I'd sell it. But there ya go.

DVD boxed set of War of the Colossal Beast and a bunch of other movies with a limited edition Colossal Beast figure! God I hate to give this one up.

DVD boxed set of the film Valley of Gwangi also with a limited edition figure. I so love this one. The figure is sooooo fuckin' cool. Give it a good home (sniff).

Godzilla 1998 figure. Also super duper cool. Please give him a good home, too.

Figure of the giant walrus monster Todora, from Ultra Q who also appeared in the movie Gorath, in which he was named Magma. The Americans cut him out of the US prints of the film! Bastards.

I had two amazing Thanksgiving meals with friends this year. I did not go home to Wakarusa, as my parents were not going to cook, but told me that if I decided to come home, they would "treat" me to the "Country Buffet." I don't know if you have ever been to a Country Buffet, but believe me, it is no treat.

And I am sure that no one at the Country Buffet makes as good as turkey as Daren did. He soaked the turkey in salt water overnight which made it incredibly moist and tender. Just look at Daren, and you can see how good that turkey leg tasted. Yummy!

But, it was nice to see that no matter where I celebrate Thanksgiving, everyone ends up on the couch, watching television or playing board games. We watched the "Rock of Love" Marathon on VH1 for about 4 hours, to see who rocker Bret Michaels of Poison fame selected to "rock his world." It was like "The Bachelor" with strippers and a perfect way to celebrate Thanksgiving.

When I landed at the airport in Chattanooga I was met by this sign. Normally, I would be all excited to see shirtless men, but the message of this advertisement was lost on me. Does this sign really make a business professional think, "Maybe I should move MY business to Chattanooga, where business is #1." And what is up with the tagline, "Chattanooga Can Do." Are you kidding me?

Then, walking out of the airport I noticed this sign. Was there a problem with people bringing guns into the Chattanooga airport that required this sign as a friendly reminder? It made me a little uneasy and made me think that everybody I ran into was packing heat.

I finally came around to liking Chattanooga, after using a gas station bathroom near the airport. Directly over the toilet was a condom machine, where someone wrote, "This gum tastes like rubber!!" It made my day and my trip.