Happy birthday to…me! Cazz.org is three years old today!

I like grape juice. No, that’s not quite right. I love grape juice. When it’s ice-cold it just goes down perfect. It’s got the right blend of tart and sweet. Man, it’s good stuff!

Last night my wife and I were at the grocery and I headed down the juice isle. There I noticed for the first time (yes, I can be very unobservant) diet grape juice.

“Whoa…” I thought to myself, “How can they make grape juice diet?”

I suspected an infiltration of Splenda or Equal or some other non-sugar type evil. I grabbed the package and flipped it over, scanning the label for signs of Aspartame. I didn’t see any.

I flipped it back over and looked at the front of it. It thought, “Huh, maybe I should get this. Juice has a lot of calories per ounce.”

It was about this time that a little voice in my head said, “Hey dummy, they can’t take calories out without putting something else in. Look again!”

So I checked the label a second time. This time I noticed the first ingredient in the list; “filtered water.” Turning the bottle around again I spied - in tiny print - the words “40% juice”.

This “diet” grape juice was just regular grape juice that had been cut with water! And it was about $0.10 more expensive to boot!

I cried out, “Nuts to you Mr. “Diet” Grape juice!” and bought the regular, 100%-juice, juice.

When I got home I poured about half a glass and topped it off with water. It tasted okay - a little diluted - but passable. I have to wonder how many people buy it thinking that it’s a miracle of our modern world they can get “diet” juice?

I still can’t decide if this is an example of brilliant marketing or deceptive packaging.

P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute. Actually I think there are a few thousand suckers born every minute thanks to modern technology and the Internet.

A few days ago I received a slick mailer for a MLM program called “MoneywayZ” and it intrigued me because it said absolutely nothing about how you could make money with their program, only that you could make a lot of money doing it.

So I decided to search about on the Internet to see if I could find anything out about this program; much to my surprise I wasn’t able to easily find anything out about this MLM scheme. I found a lot of links to other people who were promoting it, and I found a lot of very similarly written come-ons posted to various newsgroups, but I didn’t find one person saying it was the “real deal” or calling it out as a scam. I thought that was very odd.

In searching for this particular program I ran across a myriad of other MLM program web sites out on the Internet. The thing that struck me most about almost every MLM program out there is that it promotes itself as requiring no selling whatsoever. Almost each and every program I looked at insisted that once I enrolled in their program the system would just start working for me and start generating income while I slept!

And no program I looked at save one mentioned anything about how exactly all of this money (with no selling required) was to be generated. The one lone MLM program I saw was upfront about it’s scheme; as a prospect you buy in for almost $4,000 and then you are in their system. When (or if) someone else signs up using your code and pays their almost-four-thousand-dollar fee to join the MLM program you receive a huge commission.

Sounds great, except I couldn’t actually find any other products or services being sold. So it sounded like a very elaborate pyramid scheme to me. I’m sure the program does just enough to be legitimate and keeps itself just the right side of legal.

I think it’s for this very reason I’m so turned off by the concept of multi-level-marketing programs. They have all abandoned the idea of requiring you to have (or learn) some sales and marketing skills, and they all scream, “NO SELLING REQUIRED” in a huge, bold font on their web sites. The focus is now so much on recruiting and driving your “lines” that all pretense of selling and marketing has been swept under the rug.

I know most people are intimidated by the thought of “selling” but I think that this is a disservice to people because they will otherwise have to “sell” at some point when they join a MLM program. If they never sell they’ll end up getting out what they put in to the program – which is just about nothing – and they’ll wonder why they failed.

Where is the market for an honest MLM program? There has to be a large audience willing to join a program that is upfront and says, “Yeah, you have to sell and market yourself and this program to be successful.”

Maybe such a program is out there, but it’s being masked by all of the MLM programs that leave me feeling dirty when I read their come-on pitch.

I had the TV on and Geraldo’s show “Geraldo At Large” was on. He reeks of being an alarmist, ready to do anything for a rating, and he still has that slimy daytime-talk-show-host feel about him in general. I just felt intellectually dirty watching his show. He obviously panders to the lowest common denominator and it just insults my intelligence. I can’t imagine how people can enjoy watching his brand of “entertainment” (I can’t bring myself to call it news, not even putting it in double-quotes).

As I yawned and stretched awake this morning it dawned on me that it was August first. July had slipped through my fingers and suddenly summer was feeling a little thin and faded. Sure, the weather is still hot and muggly, but in the early morning the very first hints - as faint and delicate as a gentle breeze - of the coming autumn are starting to be felt.

I remember being a child and dreading the coming forced death-march trips for the dreaded and feared back-to-school shopping. Such a trip holds no fun when the prospect of school is on the line. The days of doing nothing, but spending all day doing it were marked.

When I was a child I remember summers being a lot longer. We must have been out of school for five, maybe 6 months it seemed (it also felt like we must have been in school for fourteen, maybe fifteen months too)! Time was different. Summer lasted forever, stretching out before us with unlimited possibilities, the end never in sight.

Sometime between being a kid and becoming an adult time changed. Now every time I blink another month has ticked by. Every time I turn around a season has come and gone. Years tick by with increasing (and alarming) speed. Just last week it feels I was shoveling snow, yesterday I was cutting grass and tomorrow it feels as if I’ll need to rake leaves.

The worst part is there isn’t any break to just…be. Summer vacation is a long gone memory for me, and now school children are being integrated into “year-round” schools. Americans take so little time off and work more than almost any other country. We are productive, but at what expense?

We’re here on this mortal coil for so little time; why do we spend so much time focused only to look up now and then and marvel at how quickly time has passed us by?

We should remember our child within and strive to recapture that feeling of ultimate freedom and possibility that only a hot summer day with no responsibilities can create!

Everyone has language pet peeves. It drives me nuts when people pronounce the “T” in often and the “noise” in Illinois. Sure, these are minor grievances and I can usually look the other way (in the verbal sense).

I have, however, noticed a creeping trend of adding “or whatever” as a verbal crutch. I first noticed it in a person I work with, then I caught myself doing it. Now my reticular activator swings wildly around, spotting instances of “or whatever” everywhere it turns!

It’s a weak way to express an idea and it makes the speaker sound dumb, dumb, dumb. For example, “So I was talking to Carl, or whatever…” Well, either you were or you were not speaking to Carl. There is no need whatsoever to add “or whatever.”

And woe, the worst part is I’ve caught myself saying it! My brain consciously notices it about the moment the “..ver” slips out of my mouth. Inwardly I cringe, hating that I’ve let slip this most useless of verbal tripe. I’ve been working hard to banish it from my vocabulary, but I cannot seem to escape it in my life. All around me people reinforce the meme by saying it over and over.

We all must work to banish this saying from our lives! It does nothing to enhance the conversation. It does nothing to clarify the subject. It simply makes the speaker appear simple.

Stop saying it! Stop saying it! Stop saying it! This is the battle cry to myself and a league of people who feel their skin crawl when those two words are uttered.

I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not to purchase a Fisher Space Pen. Yeah, it’s only $20, but as a rule I hate writing with ballpoint pens! They seem to stick and glob and generally upset my delicate sensibilities!

But the Space Pen has received rave reviews and I’ve been tempted to purchase one, “just to see.”

Today we had an all-hands “company coffee” to discuss the general state-of-affairs of the company. During this meeting I spied someone using what looked to be a Bullet. After the meeting I ambled over and asked if it was indeed a Space pen.

He said it was, and it was one of the best pens he’s ever used. He said he started carrying it about 2 years ago because it was small enough to put in his pocket and forget about. I asked to borrow it to see how it wrote and - for a ballpoint pen - it wrote beautifully!

Now I’m on a mission to get one for myself! I may become a born-again-ballpoint-believer after all.