Show them your panties

I’m back, and I’m cleaning. Bears moved into our house whilst I was away. Apparently. And they trashed the joint.

Tonia and I have a new agreement. If I leave the house for more than five days, I will engage a cleaning service to come in the day before I return. Tonia is allowed to cancel the appointment if she cleans everything I’ve told them to clean, and she does this before they arrive. And now we will never have to repeat the conversation we had when, after traveling for sixteen hours, I discovered that bears had been living in my house for a week.

As luck would have it I arrived home with, in addition to great wool bargains, this week’s airport bug in tow. Kathryn got the lurgi on the flight from DC, and I got from her before I left Italy. It’s making the rounds, and I lost count of how many people I heard in airports with this same dry, hacking cough. Were it not for the low hum of jet engines on the flight from Milan, you’d have thought we were on a tuberculosis ward. If you have this bug, and happen to be in the dry hacking phase, rest assured that your cough will soon become “productive”. In the last two days, I am fairly certain, I have hacked up my own weight in phlegm.

While I’m not coughing as hard today, I have talked too much (blame Pam, who wanted to hear everything) and my voice is gone. I can’t record the next podcast, however I can edit audio, and there is a LOT of that. So I’m busy, and the next podcast is shaping up, but we’re not there yet.

One thing I did notice while traveling was the importance of comfortable underwear. Not to put too fine a point on it, some of my knickers let me down in Italy. Life’s too short for sucky underwear and now, as luck would have it, I know just what to do with the smalls that travel to places I’d rather they didn’t while I’m wearing them.

MYANMAR DEMOCRACY ADVOCATES PIN HOPES ON PANTY POWER
Thu Oct 25, 5:48 AM
BANGKOK (AFP) – A campaign is underway to chastise Myanmar’s military regime, not through dialogue or sanctions, but by flooding the country’s foreign embassies with women’s underwear, an activist said Thursday.

A pro-democracy group based in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai is urging people all over the world to “post, deliver or fling” their undergarments to Myanmar’s international embassies.

“The Burma military regime is not only brutal but very superstitious. They believe that contact with a woman’s panties or sarong can rob them of their power,” the Lanna Action for Burma group said on its website.

The generals who rule Myanmar, previously known as Burma, provoked international outcry in September when they violently cracked down on peaceful protesters, killing at least 13 people.

Europe and the United States led the chorus of disapproval, announcing new sanctions against the regime.

Despite the outcry and a United Nations statement deploring the crackdown and urging dialogue, the junta has shown little sign of moving any closer towards democracy or freeing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Those behind the so-called “Panty Power” campaign hope that lingerie can succeed where international diplomacy has so far failed.

“We want to raise awareness first, and we want to target the Burmese government officials, letting them know we are against them abusing their power,” said Tomoko, an activist with Lanna Action for Burma.

Tomoko, who goes by one name only, said she had heard that Myanmar embassies in Thailand, Australia and the United States had been targeted by the Panty Power campaign, which began last week.

“We are sending (the generals) panties as a symbol of putting their power down,” she told AFP.

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I haven’t yet decided whether my panties will all go in the same package (the shock and awe strategy) or if many smaller parcels would be best (the gift that keeps on giving). But whichever I choose, I’ll be mailing my clean (Please. Anything less would just be tacky.) albeit well-worn, slightly faded, black cotton panties (with saggy elastic) to the address below, and you are invited to do the same.

Embassy of the Union of Myanmar
2300 S Street NW, Washington D.C. 20008