date : 3:57 pm - Monday,January 27, 2003

from : mrp

subject : PANTSMAIL 024: Pull It Over

message:
Hello, hello again.

This one's going to be short and sweet because I am super busy.

Here are 3 more things that I wanted to tell you since the last pantsmail.

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- 1 -

If there was a police officer who stopped babies for having dirty diapers, I hope that he would drive up next to cars, put on his siren and flash his lights, and say, "pull it over, poopie pants."

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- 2 -

If in 2003 I still had a web page that I updated with links to other web pages, then I would have updated it with a link to this page that I'm about to tell you about. But since I don't, I will tell you about it in this email.

http://swappingtons.com/

It's a free site for bartering CDs, books and movies. You give away a CD. You get points. You use those points to get another thing, like say a DVD. And the circle of life continues.

No money changes hands, so there's a sort of purity to the enterprise in that respect. Plus, it was built by Andrew of diaryland/pitas/notifylist fame, and not some big dumb company. So that's nice.

It's been going for a little over a week. People have posted over 10,000 items to swap so far, and the site has already been applauded in a bunch of other places, so my apologies if I'm telling you about something with which you are already familiar.

Anyway, I encourage you to go and sign up. If you do, then please tell the swappingtons computer that I sent you. My username is "crawfish" because for some dumb reason I always choose a totally new username and password for everything and then forget all of them. Anyway, if you do that, I will get a point to be used towards a swap. And every time I get a point, an angel gets its wings.

The referral aspect kind of makes it sound like a pyramid scheme, which it's not really because no money is involved. But if it was, it would be the best, funnest pyramid scheme since the tech bubble popped.

So make a note of it in your Newton: let's get swapping.

And tell 'em crawfish sent ya.

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- 3 -

Oh look, a third thing.

Speaking of Ponzi schemes, I was in the Salt Lake City airport and there were all sorts of people milling about with lapel buttons that said "Noni" on them. They had just been at a Noni conference. And I can't quite put my finger on what it was about them (the cheap suits? the hypnotized look in their eyes?), but the whole group definitely gave off a strong multi-level-marketing vibe even before I saw the Noni buttons.

And I looked it up; Noni is a health drink that supposedly cures a wide range of ailments. So it's almost cute how it's a classic money-making scam harkening back to the days of the traveling medicine shows and their miraculous health elixirs.

Anyway, here is an overheard conversation between some Noni-ites.

woman: "You were great up there."

man: "Thank you. You're here for Noni too?"

woman: "Yes, I'm a jade and she's a pearl. How long have you been in it?"

man: "Four months."

woman: "Well, we've been doing it for 3 years. We put a second mortgage on our house to buy into the franchise and it's the best thing we ever did."

policeman: "Pull it over, poopie pants."

-mrp!