I cannot condone what the six lions did. If it is crime to bite the hand that feeds you, it is certainly a crime to bite the hand that brings you water. And sometime shortly after eleven am on Tuesday, May 27 a 49 year old unnamed keeper had gone alone into the enclosure where the lions were kept (so the tourists could stare at them) to deliver fresh water. He was familiar with the lions. He had worked at the Utispan African Trophy Hunting Ranch, in the wild northwest desert of South Africa, for two years. But, as somebody once said, familiarity breeds contempt: I think it was either Sigfried or Roy who said that. But we can be certain that the lions did bite his hand because if you are going to leave the fingers scattered on the ground, you have to swallow the hand. And before you can swallow it, you have to bite it.
And that was all that was left of the poor guy, a few fingers – that and a couple of feet of lower intestine, but that was all. Which makes the ad copy for the Ranch that much more than ironic. “We know these animals and their qualities and customs by heart… ” (Did I mention that they also ate the guy’s heart? Well, they did.) “…All of our family have been born and grown up in the Kalahari. We have learned to understand the animals and their special skills.” And now these family folks are meeting with folks from the South African Department of Environmental Affairs to “…discuss the fate of the lions.” What fate? The six lions are already living in a cage, probably getting used to free food from humans, so they could then be released on the property so some wealthy Arab, European or American could be driven to their feeding station in the brush, pointed in the right direction, and then proudly display a photo of him or herself kneeling next to their dead fellow carnivore.
Whereas, if the lions were free to do the hunting on their own they would live happily for a couple years, chasing, catching and killing until they got gored or stomped on or got mauled by another lion and then they would slowly starve until they were weak enough or sick enough to be eaten alive by hyenas or dogs or ants or everything else. It’s the nasty reality of “Born Free”. Almost nobody in the wild dies a peaceful death. Peaceful deaths are not natural: Eat or be eaten is in fact, eat and eventually be eaten.
Perhaps we should just treat animals like humans. You know we want to. We dress them in human attire, and feed them tasty human food, and we used to go even further. In 1386, in a market day in the French village of Falaise a young child had her face ripped open by a pig about to be sold for hammocks. In retribution the guilty swine was then dressed for court in a waistcoat, breeches and gloves and brought before a jury. They sentenced the sow to be mangled and maimed like the child and then garroted and hanged, which would have been the same punishment meted out to a human. With the slight difference that after execution this guilty party was roasted and basted. And if you were thinking that people in the Middle Ages were just nuts then you need to here about the little town of Erin, Tennessee, where, on September 13, 1916, the townsfolk were so offended when a 30 year old circus elephant named Mary trampled her handler, that they lynched her. It took a crane and two separate attempts but it was a sufficiently slow and agonizing death that post mortem the locals felt satisfied justice had been done.
At about four-thirty on an afternoon at the end of February this year (high summer in South Africa) 29 year old Samuel Booysen, entered an enclosure at the Aloe Ridge Lodge, Mulders’ Drift, S.A. which contained “eight or nine” lions. And then, while two other caretakers watched, Samuel was disemboweled and eaten by a pair of the lions. This time the lions left behind the spine and skull. The South African Department of Labor was moved to respond to the twin tragedies of Utspan and Mulder’s Drift by reminding workers that “occupational health and safety …remain the responsibility of everyone, including workers …”, which is a short way of saying, “Stuff happens.” These guys could be working for George Bush’s OSHA.
And from news reports it appears that attitude is still warmly appreciated in South Africa, as when investigators determined with visible relief that 58 year old Dirk Brink (love the name) was not killed this year by the lions on his “game farm”, even though his friends had to fire guns to drive off the lions who were feasting on his corpse. Luckily the lions had not eaten Dirk’s head (?) and doctors were able to determine he had actually died of a massive stroke before the lions showed up. To quote a friend, "Everything there indicates that the lions dragged him off under the trees after he had died." Well, that’s a relief.
But what should happen now to the lions, now that they have stumbled on the realization that people are at least as tasty as wart hogs, and we don’t have any tusks. That is not information we want lions sharing with each other. So it has been suggested that the lions on the Krugersdorp be moved, and replaced by another pride, ignorant of human frailty. But Coert Steynberg, described as an expert from South Africa's game industry, has pointed out that lions are not congenial to sharing or swapping territories with other lions. Warns Mr. Coert, "The dominant male (will) kill the less-dominant one, and his offspring, to ensure the propagation of his own pride's gene pool." In other words moving the lions would just mean they would be killed off camera.
It seems the morality of lions is difficult for South Africans to define, even on June 17, 2007 when nine-year-old Tshepo Gaerupe, made the mistake of putting his hand through a gap in an enclosure gate. The lion grabbed the boy’s arm and dragged him inside, where two of the ten lions feasted on the child. Adults, racing to the screams, found only a small piece of the boy’s skull. Upon investigation it was discovered that the owner of the farm, Tommy Van Vuren, who was away on vacation at the time of the attack,(how very George Bush of him) had allowed his permit to keep the lions to lapse. The lions were darted and removed from the farm and. it was decided that all ten lions would then be put down. But Van Vuren filed suit stopping the euthanasia. He also installed stronger fencing and added an electrified fence, and then he applied for a new permit, which was quickly granted. And the courts backed his argument that the seizure of his lions had been unconstitutional. Magnanimously Van Vuren offered to pay the cost of transporting the lions back to his farm, if the authorities would pay the cost of darting them with tranquilizers. He also offered to sell a pair of the lions and give the proceeds to Tshepo Gaerupe’s bereaved mother. There was no word on whether she took the money or threw it back in Van Vuren’s face.
Yup, it is very hard to define justice when mixing men and man eaters. I guess it all goes back to the work of Charles Darwin, so succinctly encapsulated by the Disney Company as “The Circle of Life”: From the day we arrive on the planet, And blinking step into the sun, There’s more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than ever be done,…On the path unwinding, In the Circle, the Circle of Life.” I just think Disney should have included that one verse they left on the cutting room floor. “There’s so much to be savored, before you are eaten too, there’s so much to be consumed, from Zebras on the run to your competitors’ baby, too. In the Circle, the circle of Soylent Green.”
And that was all that was left of the poor guy, a few fingers – that and a couple of feet of lower intestine, but that was all. Which makes the ad copy for the Ranch that much more than ironic. “We know these animals and their qualities and customs by heart… ” (Did I mention that they also ate the guy’s heart? Well, they did.) “…All of our family have been born and grown up in the Kalahari. We have learned to understand the animals and their special skills.” And now these family folks are meeting with folks from the South African Department of Environmental Affairs to “…discuss the fate of the lions.” What fate? The six lions are already living in a cage, probably getting used to free food from humans, so they could then be released on the property so some wealthy Arab, European or American could be driven to their feeding station in the brush, pointed in the right direction, and then proudly display a photo of him or herself kneeling next to their dead fellow carnivore.Whereas, if the lions were free to do the hunting on their own they would live happily for a couple years, chasing, catching and killing until they got gored or stomped on or got mauled by another lion and then they would slowly starve until they were weak enough or sick enough to be eaten alive by hyenas or dogs or ants or everything else. It’s the nasty reality of “Born Free”. Almost nobody in the wild dies a peaceful death. Peaceful deaths are not natural: Eat or be eaten is in fact, eat and eventually be eaten.Perhaps we should just treat animals like humans. You know we want to. We dress them in human attire, and feed them tasty human food, and we used to go even further. In 1386, in a market day in the French village of Falaise a young child had her face ripped open by a pig about to be sold for hammocks. In retribution the guilty swine was then dressed for court in a waistcoat, breeches and gloves and brought before a jury. They sentenced the sow to be mangled and maimed like the child and then garroted and hanged, which would have been the same punishment meted out to a human. With the slight difference that after execution this guilty party was roasted and basted. And if you were thinking that people in the Middle Ages were just nuts then you need to here about the little town of Erin, Tennessee, where, on September 13, 1916, the townsfolk were so offended when a 30 year old circus elephant named Mary trampled her handler, that they lynched her. It took a crane and two separate attempts but it was a sufficiently slow and agonizing death that post mortem the locals felt satisfied justice had been done.At about four-thirty on an afternoon at the end of February this year (high summer in South Africa) 29 year old Samuel Booysen, entered an enclosure at the Aloe Ridge Lodge, Mulders’ Drift, S.A. which contained “eight or nine” lions. And then, while two other caretakers watched, Samuel was disemboweled and eaten by a pair of the lions. This time the lions left behind the spine and skull. The South African Department of Labor was moved to respond to the twin tragedies of Utspan and Mulder’s Drift by reminding workers that “occupational health and safety …remain the responsibility of everyone, including workers …”, which is a short way of saying, “Stuff happens.” These guys could be working for George Bush’s OSHA.And from news reports it appears that attitude is still warmly appreciated in South Africa, as when investigators determined with visible relief that 58 year old Dirk Brink (love the name) was not killed this year by the lions on his “game farm”, even though his friends had to fire guns to drive off the lions who were feasting on his corpse. Luckily the lions had not eaten Dirk’s head (?) and doctors were able to determine he had actually died of a massive stroke before the lions showed up. To quote a friend, "Everything there indicates that the lions dragged him off under the trees after he had died." Well, that’s a relief.But what should happen now to the lions, now that they have stumbled on the realization that people are at least as tasty as wart hogs, and we don’t have any tusks. That is not information we want lions sharing with each other. So it has been suggested that the lions on the Krugersdorp be moved, and replaced by another pride, ignorant of human frailty. But Coert Steynberg, described as an expert from South Africa's game industry, has pointed out that lions are not congenial to sharing or swapping territories with other lions. Warns Mr. Coert, "The dominant male (will) kill the less-dominant one, and his offspring, to ensure the propagation of his own pride's gene pool." In other words moving the lions would just mean they would be killed off camera.It seems the morality of lions is difficult for South Africans to define, even on June 17, 2007 when nine-year-old Tshepo Gaerupe, made the mistake of putting his hand through a gap in an enclosure gate. The lion grabbed the boy’s arm and dragged him inside, where two of the ten lions feasted on the child. Adults, racing to the screams, found only a small piece of the boy’s skull. Upon investigation it was discovered that the owner of the farm, Tommy Van Vuren, who was away on vacation at the time of the attack,(how very George Bush of him) had allowed his permit to keep the lions to lapse. The lions were darted and removed from the farm and. it was decided that all ten lions would then be put down. But Van Vuren filed suit stopping the euthanasia. He also installed stronger fencing and added an electrified fence, and then he applied for a new permit, which was quickly granted. And the courts backed his argument that the seizure of his lions had been unconstitutional. Magnanimously Van Vuren offered to pay the cost of transporting the lions back to his farm, if the authorities would pay the cost of darting them with tranquilizers. He also offered to sell a pair of the lions and give the proceeds to Tshepo Gaerupe’s bereaved mother. There was no word on whether she took the money or threw it back in Van Vuren’s face.Yup, it is very hard to define justice when mixing men and man eaters. I guess it all goes back to the work of Charles Darwin, so succinctly encapsulated by the Disney Company as “The Circle of Life”: From the day we arrive on the planet, And blinking step into the sun, There’s more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than ever be done,…On the path unwinding, In the Circle, the Circle of Life.” I just think Disney should have included that one verse they left on the cutting room floor. “There’s so much to be savored, before you are eaten too, there’s so much to be consumed, from Zebras on the run to your competitors’ baby, too. In the Circle, the circle of Soylent Green.” - 30 -
So in desperation I just went to the census page. Google the U.S. Census and I guarantee you will find enough numbers to prove damn near anything. 49.2% of all Americans are male and 50.8% are female and yet 61.3% admit to having worn a dress at lest once in the last two years. 
But then a new problem arose: out of those 76 million Americans nearly 10% were annoying, and that was up from just 8.3% in 1860. By 1950 our population had topped 152 million, and over 20% were annoying, with 6% qualifying as “Very Annoying”. The trend has continued to worsen. In 1990, out of 250 million people total, “Very Annoying” had reached 6% and “Simply Annoying” was approaching 16%, and, in a truly disturbing sign, 3.1% had achieved the new level of “if she doesn’t shut up I’m going to shoot myself!”
In 1900 only 3% of American homes had electricity, and only one third had running water. So the chances of being electrocuted in the shower in 1900 were very low. Today the average American spends ten minutes every day in the shower. Not only was the denizen of 1900 less likely to be electrocuted, but they had an extra 70 minutes every week to waste at the computer. 
According to one new book the average American lives within twenty minutes of a WalMart. For some reason I find that factoid really depressing.
The average American buys 800 gallons of gasoline a year, or did we did when we were complaining about $1.80 a gallon gasoline. At $4.00 a gallon we are putting less gas in our tanks but complaining more. The United States has 116,855 gas stations, or about one gas station for every 2,500 people. Almost a million people work at gas stations, but the average income of a gas station employee is just $16,449.00 a year, or about $12,000 a year less than the “average” American makes. This helps explain why Exxon Mobil made $40 billion in profit last year, and Chevron made $19 Billion. Clearly, when dealing with addictive substances like heroin or oil, the higher up the chain of distribution you are the more money you get to keep and the less often you get arrested.
So, after all of this research, I can now say two things about the average American. First, anybody who plays state lotteries knows nothing about mathematics. And the average American knows nothing about mathematics. Or Chemistry. Or Sociology. Or spelling. And the second thing was said by H.L. Menken almost a century ago: "The truth, to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache. After trying a few shots of it on his customers, the larval statesman concludes sadly that it must hurt them, and after that he taps a more humane keg, and in a little while the whole audience is singing ‘Glory, glory, hallelujah,’ and when the returns come in the candidate is on his way to the White House." 
In fact, according to a letter from the C.P.D.’s Organized Crime Division, over the past five years the total number of prostitution cases connected to ads in CityBeat is twenty – or an average of five per year. But it is not the facts of the case against CityBeat that make this letter significant, it is the undersigned. Beyond the eleven openly avowed pastors, bishops and other religious and pseudo-religious figures, and various community activists and professional guardians of public morality who endorsed the letter there is also the Hamilton County Ohio Sheriff Simon Leis Jr., the attorney for Campbell County, Kentucky, Justin Verst, the attorney for Kenton County, Kentucky, Garry Edmondson, the attorney for Dearborn County, Indiana, Aaron Negangard, the Cincinnati Chief of Police, Thomas H. Streigher, Jr., and Cincinnati city councilman Chris Monze. And the press conference at which the letter was released was held right in the middle of City Hall in Cincinnati.
Now, there are a couple of interesting things about the CCV letter. First, no where in the letter does it claim that any of the editorial content of CityBeat encourages or endorses prostitution. The content of CityBeat has been pretty merciless in attacking several of the signers of the letter (in particular Simon Leis, the Hamilton County Sheriff, Thomas Streicher, the Police Chief of Cincinnati and Garry Edmondson, the Kenton County Attorney) for their alleged political shenanigans, but that is what any good newspapers would be expected to do. And although the letter alleges that “many” of the phone numbers listed in advertisements in CityBeat do promote and encourage prostitution, the letter fails to identify so much as a single one, or even to define how many constitute “many”. Also none of the politicians who signed the letter hold statewide offices. That’s important because the letter specifically accuses CityBeat ads of violating “state criminal law”. But if the Chief of Police of Cincinnati thinks CityBeat is encouraging or promoting prostitution, why doesn’t he just arrest the publisher and editor and charge them with pimping? Their offices are at 23 East Seventh Street, Suite 617, in Cincinnati, and their telephone number is 513-665-4700. I’m sure if the Chief called they would be happy to give him directions. But the signers of the letter did not do that, either.
And that is the second interesting element to the story. It appears the much ballyhooed letter was never actually sent. When the editor of CityBeat, John Fox, mentioned this at his own press conference the CCV dismissed the charge out of hand and then announced they had sent CitiBeat an e-mail copy. But that still begs the question: where is the original letter? Perhaps they should have sent it via registered mail. But what are the details of how this letter was allegedly sent? Who actually addressed the envelope? Did they take it to the Post Office or just drop it in a mail box? Did they check to make sure the letter was inside? Did they check to make certain they had the correct address? I have a suggestion; why don’t we simply address a letter to “CityBeat, Cincinnati” and see if the Post Office delivers it. It may take them a couple of extra days, but I’ll bet they do. People who work in the Post Office know how to do their jobs. I wonder if the Chief Streigher does.
There is a third element to this situation that CityBeat lays out in its lawsuit. “,City Beat’s printed classified advertisements have included a section for adult services for more than ten years…None of the advertisements…either explicitly or implicitly offer sexual activity for consideration,…Over the past ten years, City Beat has carried approximately 15,000 such classified ads in print, largely without incident or complaint.” And yet now these 39 community figures feel the need to declare economic warfare against CityBeat in a way they have never done against cigarettes or racism or beer companies that advertise their products specifically toward that market group that is involved in the most traffic fatalities involving alcohol, young male adults.
The problem is you can not get elected or reelected running on a platform of doing something effective to save either lives or souls if it is non-photogenic.
Okay, a sewage treatment plant lacks the gravitas of a highway, but you have to start somewhere. Bush the elder has a toll road named after him in Dallas, but so far Shub doesn’t have even have a dead-end street that carries his name. But the sewage treatment plant name change suggested will be on the November ballot in San Francisco after supporters turned in 10,000 signatures in favor of the idea. I would have signed it. One Republican spokesperson called it a “horrible idea” and “stupid”, but the director of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has a different objection. He says naming the sewage treatment plant after President Shrub would be an insult to the plant and the people who work there, not to mention denigrating to the stuff that goes through its pipes. And who would ever vote funds for improvements for the George W. Bush anything? Still, allow me to point out that nobody has even suggested naming a sewer grate after you or me.
But I’ll bet you could get some creative suggestions on how to memorialize Andrew T. Fox the third. Thirty-one year old Andrew lives in Hartland, Maine, a tiny mill town of 1,800 people straddling the Sebasticook River where it runs out of Great Moose Lake. Andrew is a thirty-two year old man, and his pugnacious pride was on display during a family game of croquet on the Sunday evening of the long 4th of July weekend. According to several dozen witnesses, Andrew was playing a lively game of wickets with his wife Lisa and her sixteen year old son. But Andrew lost to his stepson and he was not magnanimous in defeat. There was shouting. There was yelling. And then Andrew punched his stepson in the head. The boy and his mother fled, calling the sheriff’s office from the safety of a neighbor’s trailer.
While officer Logiodice waited for reinforcements the neighbors heard smoke alarms going off inside the trailer. After State Trooper Peter Michaud and Somerset County Detective Mathew Cunningham arrived on scene all three officers advanced on the now smoking trailer with guns drawn. Andrew immediately came out and surrendered peacefully. He was handcuffed, placed under arrest, and briefly interviewed by Detective Cunningham at the scene. Once he was in custody firefighters from Hartland and nearby St. Albans extinguished the fire, but not before half the home was badly damaged and several pet cats, fish, hamsters and rabbits were killed. One cat and her kittens were rescued. According to a friend of Mrs. Fox, the damaged trailer was in her name and she had no insurance. I assume Andrew will not be receiving a present from his stepson come next Fathers’ Day.
However, it is difficult to think of any name with a lower moral cache then that of the little Austrian paper-hanging anti-Semite dope fiend, Adolf Hitler. But half a century after World War Two der Fuehrer has turned over a new leaf. As portrayed in the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum which just opened on Berlin’s Unter den Linden, a couple of hundred yards from the site of the Fuehrer Bunker where the original Hitler killed himself, this Hitler is not merely a mass murderer and war monger, but also a tourist attraction. Berlin’s mayor, Klaus Wowereit, played along, urging the so-called museum not to display Adolf as “cult figure”, thus ensuring one more news story about the museum opening. The museum even assigned two security guards to the exhibit. Their primary duty was to stand around as publicity props and to prevent any Neo-Nazi’s from posing for a quick snap shot with their beloved Schicklegrubber. The “museum” could afford the guards because this tour of fake people surrounded by fake artifacts costs $30.00 a ticket. Evidently it never occurred to the museum staff that someone might actually be offended by including Hitler along side Ringo Star, Sophia Loren and Winston Churchill.
Then, last Saturday, when the new museum officially opened for business, the second customer through the door was a forty-one year old ex-policeman known publicly only as Frank L. Frank immediately shoved an actual tourist out of the way, ran to the Hitler exhibit, climbed over the huge desk which was supposed to keep the public at bay, grabbed Adolf by the head and twisted violently, popping der Fuehrer’s head right off der Fuehrer’s shoulders. According to an eyewitness, “The security men closed in to pull him apart from Hitler. When they fell to the floor Frank shouted, "Never again, war!”- which is the most curious part of the entire story. What does that mean? What about the war against Hitler?
One German politician noted, “At last, a successful assassination attempt – sadly 75 years overdue.” Frank L’s girlfriend, Yvonne, said, “I’m really proud of him. I’ve been furious about Hitler for days.” Really? Think how angry the British blitz victims must have been. But maybe my favorite comment on the whole affair came from the German Social Democratic politician Frank Zimmermann. He said, “It’s more of an artwork to rip off Hitler’s head than to put it on display.” The same could probably be said for Andrew Fox III and George Bush II as well.
Since September 9, 1945, when a moth was crushed by a relay in the Mark II Computer at Harvard University, and became the first documented computer bug, these computing machines have shrunk in size while multiplying in function and have been the bane of pseudo-intellectuals and porn net addicts like my self world wide. And, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crime Complaint Center (known to geeks as the F.B.I.C. Skully), in 2007 there were 200,000 on-line frauds that cheated the naively connected out of $239 million. And yet, in the face of such rampant fraud and selfishness my only reaction is to be impressed that somebody has actually found a way to make this coordinated anarchy function to their benefit; because I sure haven’t.
We invented the internet -and by “we” I don’t so much as mean myself as members of my grandfalloon; Americans. Except some Americans actually understand how and why these machines work. I used to but I don’t anymore. I understood Fortran. Today nobody even remembers Fortran. The young geeks of my middle age are now old rich geeks. They invented the home computer and the Inter and the Ether nets. They built empires out of Microsoft and Apple and Comcast and trashed IBM almost to death, right here in America. And yet the United States ranks a distant 15th in broadband performance, according to the Technology and Innovation Foundation. South Korea ranks first with an average download speed of 49 Million Bytes Per Second, while the average US rate is a blazing 4.9 – 1/10th of the Korean speed. The Japanese pay an average of just $0.13 per megabyte, while we pay an average of $2.83, proving once again that capitalism is really good at producing more capitalists but not necessarily more wealth. The average computer in Sweden downloads four times as fast as the average American Computer, the average Australian pays half of what we do for service (and this was figured in 2007, before the Bush devaluation of the U.S. dollar.)
While we were patting our selves on the back for winning World War Two, the rest of the world was working their behinds off to get around us. Now, being behind, it is not going to be easy for us to catch up. And by “us” I don’t so much mean me as that grandfaloon again: Americans. It took 27 years for the world to produce one billion personal computers. It is expected the world will reach two billion PC’s in the next seven years, by 2015. In fact, today, the U.S. is home to just 24% of the world’s PC’s, and just 238 million out of the 1.3 billion people browsing the World Wide Web every time you try to log on. It is no longer a question of our dominating the world, but just struggling to find space at the feeding trough, an open tit on the sow’s belly, any portal in the information storm. How we fit into the New World Order is the current NO-Complete problem we face.
NO-complete problems, or Big Oh problems, are infinitely complex, meaning they are like the message displayed on one users’ screen: “Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue”. In short, you can’t get there from here. So when you got’ta go, how do you go? Where do you go? And where do stay while you’re there? What we need is a Web travel agent, to guide us into the next generation of computers. And I’m your boy. As the saying goes, on fourth down those who can’t do, pundit. So what do we know about the next generation of computers? First we know that computers will always be referred to as she, because a computer always remembers your mistakes and is always ready to remind you of them. Second, we know that computers will always be plagued with viruses because computer viruses are written by bright young geeks who have brains but no sense of social responsibility, which also perfectly describes the creators of the next edition of Grand Theft Auto, which is why having designed the world’s next great computer virus that brings the internet to a screeching halt is a real plus on your average geek resume.
We know that the next generation of computers will probably be designed by somebody other than an American; a Russian, maybe or a Hindu. And given the male social supremacy in those two cultures, the next generation of computers will probably be designed by men. This means that the next generation of computers will have access to much larger data storage systems then today, but will still be largely clueless, and that they will only be able to handle one big problem per night. But on a more practical level, the future computer may very well operate via nano-magnets and quantum tunneling, as developed in Professor Enrique del Barco’s lab at the University of Central Florida. In short the future of computer Geek-dom will be seeking to make faster and smaller the new bigger. And the biggest thing in the future will be virtually invisible, a virtual computer doing your virtual bidding in a virtual world, in which you can enjoy the sensation of being virtually broke.
