NEIGHBORS : Taste Test : Gypsy Boots admits that his recent adventure was hard to swallow.

Now, where were we?

Oh yes, two weeks ago, Camarillo health-food fanatic Gypsy Boots was at a function broadcast live bA. radio station KLOS.

And he had just shoved a clump of cow droppings into his mouth. Or did he?

Well, it depends on whom you ask.

“He put the cow dung in his mouth and he ate it,” KLOS spokesman Steve Smith said. “It was not a big piece, but. . . . Then he tried to kiss one of the listeners.”

Boots tells a couple of different stories.

On first recollection, he admitted putting it in his mouth, but added: “Of course I didn’t swallow it. I’m not that dumb.” On second thought, he changed his tune a bit. “I kind of faked it. I put it to my lips and didn’t put it in my mouth, actually.”

Whatever really happened, it was too close for comfort.

Now, Boots said, he is a bit worried about his forthcoming birthday bash.

“I am going to make sure I open my gifts very carefully. I am afraid of what somebody might send me in a shoe box.”

At newsstands now: the July issue of Sports Car International, featuring an article on Venturan Scott Miller.

The 24-year-old Miller is making a name for himself these days building model race cars.

Sure, kids all over the world make model race cars, but Miller has turned the hobby into a profitable business, pulling in about $175 per finely detailed auto.

He said he sells them to car manufacturers and individuals involved with or interested in the race car business.

Among his clients: racing star Danny Sullivan (who bought three cars), a Mercedes dealership and a Jaguar dealership.

“Anyone can really do this; it’s just a matter of having the patience,” Miller said. “When most people open a box, they just see a bunch of parts, not painted. But when I open it up, I see potential” for a finished product.

Congratulations to Melanie Markley, manager of the collections unit of Ventura County’s Corrections Services Agency. She just received one of 10 distinguished service awards issued by the chief probation officers of California.

What distinguished her?

“It was basically for collections of money,” she said. “In 1988, at the end of the fiscal year, we had collected $2.5 million. Two years later, we collected over $7 million.”

The increase was the result of a new automated system for collecting fines, which is overseen by Markley.

It meant increased funds for victim restitution and more money going to the state and county.

Whew. Almost forgot.

Wednesday is the silver anniversary of the first Disobedience Day, an idea originated by Robert Bakhaus of Santa Barbara.

Bakhaus explained what the day is all about.

“It would be a day for the identification of bad laws and the publicizing of the need to repeal bad laws,” he said.

Bakhaus used the term “would be” because, for the most part, the first 24 Disobedience Days have gone unnoticed, and Bakhaus has just about given up hope that it would ever catch on.

Among the laws Bakhaus considers worthy of disobeying: prohibiting the private distribution of water and forbidding people from selling home-grown avocados on the open market.

“It’s just not something whose time has come for a mass movement,” he said. “I read somewhere that Mother’s Day took 33 or 34 years to catch on. If Mother’s Day had such a hard time, how will Disobedience Day fare?”