Hey Lump & Steven,
Regarding question 2, unfortunately wildcard searches with the * are no longer supported by eBay. Their algorithms have gotten progressively more crazy.
What I can highly recommend is this: http://www.auctionsieve.com/
You're going to love it! Essentially it gives you an unlimited minus list and you can build it up on the fly - after you retrieve all the search results, you highlight a word you never want to see again, hit a button and all the items containing that word are instantly hidden. And it also hides all that "related" search junk. And if you run the search the next day, it also hides all the stuff you saw yesterday.
Disclaimer: It's my app but it's totally free. Mostly built it for myself back in 2003 and have just kept adding to it. Let me know if you have any questions.