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Website of the Week: Conor’s Mildly Thrilling Tales

CONOR’S MILDLY THRILLING TALES

Conor’s website was once named, “How Conor is spending his money.” At that time he was spending it traveling the world for a year and a half, which is by all means is a respectable way to lower one’s bank account.

But then Conor settled down and now he considers his tales to be only mildly thrilling, if you consider settling in Kathmandu, Nepal, founding a home for trafficked children, and searching for the children’s parents in remote mountain villages mildly thrilling.

Not only is Conor’s blog interesting, it is written well. His writing style is funny and conversational. It’s not easy to write about serious subjects and maintain a great sense of humor. But Conor does.

His blog postings have slowed as of…

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I have an agent!

No longer am I alone in this world to sell and promote the writings of Kelsey Timmerman. I have help. Her name is Caren.

I have officially signed with the Caren Johnson Literary Agency. I met her at a writing conference in my hometown, Muncie, Indiana. I sat at a table with agent-hungry writers and asked Caren, “I have a couple of agents interested in my book and I’m not sure what to do. Any thoughts?” To which the agent-hungry writers rolled their eyes and said a version of “oh, you poor thing.”

Yes, it was a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. Caren asked me what my book was and she said something like, “There aren’t that many original ideas out…

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An excerpt on my underwear

If I was a OneDerWear wearer, I would have never created such a strong bond with my favorite pair of underwear. Here is a passage on them in my sample chapter on Bangladesh:

Jingle These

Multi-colored Christmas ornaments are printed on the boxers and the phrase “Jingle These” runs around the waist band. Eighty-three percent of people in Bangladesh are Muslim so Christmas isn’t celebrated, but its products are exported.

If you look closely, MADE IN BANGLADESH can still be read on the faded tag. I got the underwear as a gift years ago and, ever since, they’ve maintained a regular place in my underwear rotation regardless of the time of year or holiday season.

I wore them my freshman year of college when I…

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My piece "Explaining Baseball" on the World Vision Report

World Vision Report

The piece aired this past week on the nationally syndicated program. Hear what it’s like to be a non-baseball playing American who becomes an international ambassador of baseball for a day.

Listen to it now.

The theme of this particular show was “Helping Out.” You can listen to the full show here.

I highly recommend listening to this piece on Scott Neeson, a Hollywood big wig that turned his back on living the high life and is now giving hope to the children of Phnom Penh’s city dump in Cambodia. I featured the dump in Sundays “a thousand words” photo….

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What I’m reading: Nobodies

Nobodies by John Bowe landed on my front porch this morning. It’s about modern American slave labor and highlights migrant laborers in Florida picking fruit, Indian welders in Oklahoma, and garment workers in Saipan.

I’m especially interested in reading the chapter on the garment workers. Saipan is a US Commonwealth and, being such, can label the clothes they produce as MADE IN AMERICA, despite workers’ wages around three dollars per hour.

Kinda makes you feel less sunny inside when you wear clothes MADE IN AMERICA, doesn’t it?

Three dollars per hour doesn’t seem like a fortune, but it would to many of the workers I met in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and China. Even with paying their workers less than half of the national minimum wage, I’m surprised that the…

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OneDerWear disposable underwear

OneDerWearSome people just don’t have any sentimental attachment to their underwear. These are the sort of people that would actually wear OneDerWear disposable underwear.

Google ads are often ridiculous. If I could choose, I would disable them, but the BootsnAll gang has gotta make some money some how and I’m cool with that. Anyhow, I was checking the site yesterday and glanced at the auto-generated ads. That’s where I first heard about OneDerWear.

Here’s some marketing mumbo jumbo:

OneDerWear is an ultra-light disposable underwear created for traveling. Designed to provide the utmost comfort and convenience, OneDerWear disposable underwear is 100% cotton and ideally packaged for maximum space efficiency. Each package contains five compact pairs of individually wrapped disposable underwear that can…

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A check is nice, but…

…comments like this are nicer:

Oh yes, I do tune in during “worktime”, it’s just I don’t get paid for changing diapers, cooking meals, hanging up washing blah-de-blah. At least not in money. In fact tuning into WAIW *is* work for me = on more than one occasion I’ve gathered the kids (that’s the work bit) round and we’ve had a look at what you’ve said, and on good days had a chat about it as well. So much more interesting than teaching them from textbooks;-) Thanks.

The first piece of writing I received a check for was THIS. I got paid twenty dollars. It was the best twenty dollar check ever. Over the past three years my paydays have grown in size and frequency, thankfully.

I started…

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A proclamation

In an effort to reclaim my weekends, from now on Saturdays will be “Website of the Week” day. I’ll simply post a link and a short blurb about a site that has caught my eye. Feel free to email me suggestions about sites to feature.

This week’s website:

Go and tell this guy where to go.

Readership is always down on the weekends, anyhow. I might as well save my precious words for peak time. It seems that most of you tune in to WAIW? when you’re at work getting paid. Shame on you. I’ll still probably do some regular posting on Saturdays, when so inspired.

With this proclamation we now have two scheduled days here at WAIW?:

Saturdays – Website of the Week

Sundays – A…

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