Halloween = homeless kids

Crappy Halloween Give-away ideas:

The other day I was sitting around and thinking of the absolute absurdity of Halloween. Think about it for a second. A bunch of little kids dress up in cheap plastic outfits and expect me to give them free candy. Well, guess what kids, nothing is ever free. Life does not reward people who dress funny and go around begging people for handouts. 364 days out of the year we call that being homeless. This has to stop. That’s why I think that everyone should discourage such detrimental behavior by giving children negative rewards for going trick-or-treating.

Dentists and old women have had the right idea for years by giving out dental hygiene products and pennies. Even though if you were a business minded dentist you would give away the best, most sugar-filled candy you could find with your business card attached to it. I could be wrong, but dentists who hand out dental hygiene items are either really dumb or ultimate masters of the art of no-fun because they are destroying children’s fun and ruining their business in the process. And what’s the deal with old people handing out pennies. That’s nothing but pure economic mockery. That’s telling people that you would rather throw away money on the world’s most useless piece of currency rather than buy them something decent.

Even though people have been giving out horrible Halloween candy/treats for years what I am calling for is more than just inadvertent fun-stoppage. I am talking about cool, calculated meanness. I am advocating giving children an impetus for stopping this foolish tradition. So anyway, here are some ideas. Let me know if you can think of anything better.

1. Pennies
2. Dental Hygiene Products
3. Kevin Federline cd’s
4. Pictures of Britney Spears post Kevin Federline (that would scare me out of trick or treating)
5. Take them into your home and make them sing a song to get their treat, then give them some lame piece of candy like salt-water taffy or candy corns and tell them you would have given them better candy if they would have been a little more talented.
6. Give them religious tracts…it’s been scientifically proven that kids lose interest in holidays once they are attached to church in any way.
7. Spider rings…who invented those and why do they suck so much
8. Wax lips…when I was a kid I spent a lot of time wondering how anyone could give away such horrible tasting candy.
9. Carry a bowl of 1 lb. Hershey’s candy bars and have chocolate all over your face and then come to the door and lecture them about how they are a little to old (regardless of their age) to be out trick or treating. Then tell them they should be ashamed of themselves and walk back into your house.

So yeah, that’s all I got for now. Merry Halloween.

Myspace: How to get on the national registry of convicted Sex offenders

Internet marketing is huge. I think one of the newest advances in internet marketing is the advance in social networking sites. These things are going crazy. Myspace was sold last year for somewhere around $600 million, and Yahoo is now flirting around with buying Facebook for somewhere around $1 billion. This is absolutely nuts. I am a little bit behind the times, but I do have a Facebook account. I am not the most active Facebooker, but I think I am becoming a bigger fan. Myspace, however, is a whole different story.

I have been thinking a lot about different slogans that could be used for Myspace. Here are a few that I have been working with:
• Myspace: The biggest place for wierdos on the web
• Myspace: The easiest way to get on the national registry of convicted sex offenders.
• Myspace: Thousands of crappy bands that are bent on shameless self promotion.
• Myspace: The largest online catalogue of creepy dudes and girls who think they can pull off trashy clothing.
• Myspace: forcing people to call into question the sexual orientation many shirtless morons.

I got these slogans from some of the trends that I am noticing with Myspace.
Desperate Men go onto Myspace to meet attractive new girls. This is evident by the number of dudes who get their best guy friend to take shirtless pictures of them so that they can post it on the web. Mix this with the fact that the average girl with anything going for her does not want to meet new people on Myspace. In order to fill the rift between the desperate men who want to meet people on Myspace, and the women who do not want to “hook up” with guys on Myspace, unappealing girls and the dudes who seek to exploit them fill up myspace with trashy profile content seeking to drive traffic to their “adult-oriented” sites. Myspace does not have effective ways to control who they let on their site, thus shaking the confidence of anyone who would want to meet legitimate people on their social networking site. As a result, Myspace is turning from a social networking site to a gathering point for the undercurrent of society, and marketers for any product with any sort of brand equity do not want to associate themselves with such content. Therefore, I am predicting that the “Myspace bubble” will shortly burst.

So, what are the lessons we learn from the whole situation.
1. If you are a guy, the best way to meet new women is to walk up a girl and say hello, not send her a friend request.
2. If you do meet a new girl on the internet, chances are she just wants you to go to her adult webcam site
3. Social networking sites may be a great way to keep in contact with friends that you otherwise would lose contact with, but If you think you will change your social status with online buddies, you will be greatly disappointed. This is because most of the people that want to meet you online just want to sell you something.
4. Myspace needs to find a way to filter its content or it will end up being one of the biggest busts in internet history.

Multilevel Marketing Blows

Amway, Quickstar, Herbal Life, and a host of other great American institutions have one thing in common. What is that? They are all well-devised schemes to steal money from stupid people. Under that premise, nobody can say that there is a victim in such schemes. If people are dumb enough to fall for somebody’s “exciting business opportunity” pitch, then by all means, they didn’t deserve to have their money in the first place. Likewise, the proprietors of such pyramid schemes are just taking advantage of one of the fundamental principles of business, and how can they be held accountable for that?

That principle is as follows: The more stupid people that you have generating revenue for you, the more money you can make. Usually, you get people to generate revenue for you by performing some sort of viable business good or service like washing dishes, selling video games, or spraying for insects. However, legitimate business ideas take some hard work determining what consumers actually want and finding a way to give it to them in such a way that your revenues exceed your costs. But what if you could just get people to pay you money for no apparent reason? That would be perfect. That is where multilevel marketing comes into play. You can create some B.S. product or service, and then have people pay you for the right to tap into their marketing network and sell your B.S. product. The problem is that no matter how dumb people are, sooner or later they figure out that the product you are selling sucks so hard that they will never be profitable by selling it.

Here comes the problem and the solution to multilevel marketing. Once the people at the base of the pyramid get tricked by the people at the top, it is as if the people at the top say, “Ha ha, we tricked you sucker. But don’t stop paying us money just because our product sucks. We make $5000 a week from the comfort of our own home just by tricking stupid people like you into buying into our organization. And being as how there are plenty of stupid people in the world you could totally trick someone else into paying you to be a part of the organization, and you, too can make $(insert some ridiculously stupid amount of money that gives people false hope) from the comfort of your own home.”

So what exactly are multilevel marketing firms selling? They are selling the right to trick people into paying them money for no apparent reason, so that they can trick people into paying them money and so on and so on. This really is a beautiful scheme because it plays on a few great economic principles.
1. In our modern society, people are rewarded for stupidity, therefore, there is an excess in the supply of stupid people
2. The economic assumptions of having too many stupid people are as follows:
• They are unaware of the fact that in order to get money, you must provide an equally valuable good or service to people. In other words, the market will always pay you what you are worth and any attempt to make any more is pretty much futile.
• When stupid people fall for schemes which are contrary to the above statement, they are not smart enough to cut their losses and run. Instead, they will keep trying harder to contradict the laws of economics to break even on their dumb decisions.
3. When there is an excess of stupid people in the market, there must be organizations constructed with the sole purpose of separating these stupid people from any and all money that they may come across.

When you look at this economic model you can’t necessarily be angry with multilevel marketing companies. They have a role to play in the American economy. If they didn’t exist then the revenue they generate would just fall into the hands of NASCAR, Wal-Mart, and any local barber shops that specialize in mullets, rat-tails, and shaving lines into the side of people’s heads. So if multilevel marketing means I have to pick between more mullet-having dudes racing off to Wal-Mart to buy Dale Earnheardt Jr. Decals for their El Camino or a couple more rich guys who have made their money by exploiting stupid people, then I welcome more multilevel marketing.

Ultimately, you shouldn’t get angry that multilevel marketing exists. You should only be angry if somebody thinks you are dumb enough jump into the bottom level of a pyramid scheme. And if you are a multilevel marketer here are a few pieces of advice.

1. Just because you are dumb enough to get on the bottom of the pyramid scheme does not mean that I am willing to join you.
2. If you really want to convince me that your business proposition is a good idea, then you should probably move out from your parents’ house or buy a nicer car than your 1989 Honda Civic hatchback.
3. You aren’t fooling anyone, I can see the financial desperation in your eyes.

BYU Dating

Sometimes people like to refer to Provo as the “BYU bubble”. I don’t understand it. Provo is normal, right? Provo is full of college students that are pretty much the same as college students everywhere, isn’t it? Well, that’s what I thought until I saw this blog posting.

Let me preface this link. It is to a link written by an actual BYU student about an actual BYU romance. This account is not fabricated at all; I personally know these people and they are 100% serious. I will warn you that the account is a little long and there is a good possibility that you might throw up a little in your mouth. But this is also one of the funniest things that I have ever read and it is well worth your time to click on the link and check it out.

Have fun and enjoy.

www.markandamarisfletcher.blogspot.com

P.S. I don't feel bad about making light of an otherwise serious situation. I figure that if you post stuff like this in a public forum it is fair game.