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Earlier this week, Jamey Kirby, founder and senior partner of Cocaine Energy Drink, emailed me inviting me to attend a party in southern California (read more about that) after listening to my first audio blog, Legalize Cocaine. I was able to get myself there, with help from a friend Justin Littlewood, aka BigTree, and I am oh-so-glad that I did.

As soon as they knew my name, all the partners who were there treated me like a good friend. They were some of the warmest, nicest people I have met in a very long time. As it turns out, I’m the first Cocaine fan to actually meet the Redux (that’s ree - dux; I made the mistake of calling it red - dux once at the party) staff in person…what an honor!

So it is that Cocaine Energy Drink is poised to bring down the house in Europe, and will soon hit Australia market, although it was previously illegal in the land down under. As a matter of fact, it’s doing pretty well in all the countries that, you know, actually offer freedom of speech instead of just talking about it. I was informed that the online store would be back up and distributing the new stuff shortly. It’s also hitting a few American shelves again within the next week (hopefully) under a new name, or rather, under no name at all. I got a glimpse of the new can, and while resembling the old one in many ways, it no longer sports the catchy phrase, “The Legal Alternative,” and worst of all it is missing that oh-so-welcomed “Cocaine” label. The drink inside is just as brilliant as ever, though.

While I was there, Jamey Kirby and his partners shared with me a little bit about how Cocaine got started. Jamey is an engineer/software designer at heart. In fact, he owned a software company (I didn’t find out the name of that company) which he sold his interests in, providing much of the initial funding for Cocaine. As I understand it, he had written a very marketable piece of software, but wanted to go big with it. In order to raise funds for that end, he started an energy drink. Lying in bed one night, he brainstormed possible names for his new drink. He stopped at Cocaine, thinking about not only how controversial (and therefore marketable) it was, but about how powerful it could be as an anti-drug campaign.

You see, there are two methods commonly used in attempt to prevent kids from reaching drugs. The first, and most classic method is to completely ignore their existence. The theory goes: if you don’t talk about it, they won’t find out about it. WRONG. If you don’t talk to them about it, they’ll still be curious, and they’re going to seek their information from someone else. Calling a popular energy drink ‘Cocaine’ confronts this issue by forcing people to talk about the issue! This alone is brilliant!

The second commonly used method to preventing drug use among young people is what the FDA and our government has done in attempt to remedy the first counter-productive method. That is to hammer lies down peoples’ throats: make the drug sound so absolutely over-the-top god-awful that NO ONE will want to go near it! I must admit, this was more effective than the first method for a while. But now people are starting to realize: The FDA and the government are LYING to us! This begs a few questions. If they are willing to lye about that, what else will they lye about? What is the truth about the drug? Is the drug even bad for you at all?

Jamie told me a little about his tv/radio advertisement campaign which was being put together when the FDA decided to crash the party. For those of you who were not aware, the Cocaine name was banned by the man (the role of the man being played by the FDA in this instance). I was able to find this letter publicly available (although well-hidden) on the FDA’s website, which in my opinion demonstrates their extreme hypocrisy in and of itself. If that’s not enough for you, be sure to check out my previous blogs on said topic.

I won’t disclose anything detailed about Jamie’s anti-drug campaign, but I will say that he is very smart about this sort of thing. Kids and people in general aren’t going to have any respect for an energy drink called Cocaine that comes out immediately with anti-drug campaigns. Anti-drug campaigns are LAME!!! Jamie knows this, and he wasn’t about to spoil his drink by coming right out with a bunch of his own anti-drug campaigns! Nobody would take it seriously anyway. No, his plan was much more subtle than that, and from what I know of it, it was brilliant.

It is sad indeed that the FDA was temporarily successful in stripping Cocaine of its name, costing them an immediate $3 million in pre-labeled cans and countless millions in lost sales during the time it is taking to get back on their feet. However, the FDA has failed its mission. The energy drink, which I will personally continue to refer to as Cocaine, is rebounding. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and Redux Beverages will prove this in the coming months and years. Jamey assured me of one thing in particular: “Oh, we’ll get our name back. We’ll get it back.”

Seriously. Why in the hell would you make poster putty that doesn’t work? What’s the frickin point? You get a glob of white stuff that sticks to nothing for $1.99. What the hell? What am I missing here? Is it really THAT difficult or expensive to make stuff that actually works? Come ON!

Faulty poster putty is infinitely frustrating to me. I simply can’t put my posters on the wall. It shouldn’t really be too difficult a task. I mean, all I want to do is put a large piece of paper onto my bedroom wall. But can I? NO! Not in America, the land of SHIT products!

This is bull. Someone make me some REAL poster putty.

The United States incarcerates more people and at a higher rate than any other peacetime nation in the world. According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics the number of US residents behind bars has now reached more than 2.3 million.

We must increase the use of special drug courts in which addicted offenders are given the opportunity to complete court supervised substance abuse treatment instead of being sentenced to prison. We must eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing laws. We must increase the use of alternative penalties for nonviolent drug offenders. Drug defendants convicted of nonviolent offenses should not be given mandatory prison sentences. We should emphasize the criminalization of the importers, manufacturers, and major distributors, rather than just the street venders. Prisons in this country should be a legitimate criminal sanction — but it should be an extension of a fair, just and wise society.

These words are not my own. These are the words of Senator Mike Gravel, who is running for president in 2008. They display wisdom. I advise you to read up on this candidate. I would absolutely love to see a non-republican, non-democratic president win who has some common sense. I’m sick of the red-blue divide.

Click here to read up on Mike Gravel, and of course do some Googling. SPREAD THE WORD!

Not sure if I ever let you guys in on a little project I was working on last year called Blood Bath. Just shy of 400 man-hours went into it, and the end result was…well, not very good.

But anyway, there were 3 of us working on it, and we were forced to do things that we weren’t necessarily the best at. We’re doing a sequel (well, sort of…) and this time we’re doing it right by getting experts for every task. You can check out the details here: luminousnerd.com/bb/

BloodBath II will be a standalone movie, so you certainly won’t need to have seen the first to get it. In fact, the first is pretty unclear, and hard to get…this one will have a much better screenplay. Also, BloodBath II will be feature-length! That’s a long cartoon, especially independent. It’s going to be a lot of work and it’s going to take a long time, but the more people we have helping out the better it will be! Here’s a synopsis (taken from the home page at luminousnerd.com/bb/)

BloodBath II takes place in the aftermath of BloodBath I (see it here), in which two alien species invade Earth simultaneously. The Liquisects and the Humans make a pact when they see the might of the terrifying Savaa. The United Government, or UG, is a coalition of humans from every military and liquisects, and is the only hope against the Savaa. Unfortunately, there is also an extremist group of humans infiltrating the UG unexpectedly. This group, the Organization for Mother Earth (OME), believes that the Savaa are messengers of God and have come to cleanse the Earth.

Lief Torv, a famous reporter with information on the detailes of a new technology being developed at a Savaa Hive in Australia, is taken hostage by the OME. It is up to the UG, lead by Admiril Chance Vor, to get to that information as quickly as possible and infiltrate the Australian Savaa Hive in order to preserve any hope of what had very temporarily been peace on Earth. To make matters worse, the Savaa have sent Drones deep into Earth’s mantle which emit EMP waves, disabling much of the human technology and forcing them to redevelop technology using led, which blocks the EMP pulses.

Again, here’s the details: luminousnerd.com/bb/ If anyone reading this has an interest in the project, and has a skill that would benefit the project (professional level, please) then I’d love to hear from you!

Click here to listen to Audio Blog

Hey guys,
This Audio Blog (I could call it a podcast, I guess, but everyone does that…) is about — you guessed it — legalization of marijuana! Seriously though, it has some really interesting statistics about death rates in America.

I actually recorded this like a week ago, and just haven’t gotten around to putting it up yet. I’ve been procrastinating it because I’ve moved my office to the basement, and I’m using the crappy wireless Internet, and things take ages to upload (or download for that matter).

But something motivated me to post this as soon as possible. My last audio blog (a rant about Cocaine Energy Drink being made illegal) got listened to by the creator of Cocaine, Jamey Kirby, and evidently the entire Redux team! He personally sent me an email! I asked for his permission to post the email on my blog, so if it’s okay by him I’ll have it up soon.

Well, it’s 4:00 AM yet again (I was up til 4 last night, and until 7 the night before…) so I best be off now.

I haven’t really said this before, but to everyone who reads my blog, thank you so much. Tonight’s email from Jamey Kirby made me realize that while I don’t get a lot of traffic here, and sometimes that gets frustrating, I do have a few loyal readers. Many thanks to those, and also to readers who just pop in for certain blogs. I appreciate you guys!

And, yes, I plan on blogging more often now. Truth be told, I was pondering giving up on this thing completely, but not after tonight’s email!! I’m here to stay.

Peace out, guys!

Oh, I almost forgot, here’s the audio file! It’s a WAV…sorry about that, I would like to do it as an MP3 but was having a rough time with it. Next time, hopefully. Enjai.

Click here to listen to Audio Blog

Update: Here’s the email I got from Jamey Kirby, founder and inventor of Cocaine Energy Drink!!!

On Jun 17, 2007, at 1:51 AM, Jamey Kirby wrote:

Dude,

I have been following your blogs on my drink and I appreciate your
effort very much. Tonight we found your latest audio blog. It made us
all (the whole management staff at Redux) very happy. We have sent it
off to various media outlets, the Jay Thomas Show, and several other
radio shows we sometimes work with; I even sent it off to the Daily
Show. I have no idea if any of them will use it, but it was so good I
had to give it a shot.

Other partners have sent your message to their congressmen and all of
their friends and contacts. We all want to thank you very much.

Oh, I am Jamey, the founder and inventor of the brand. I too was a nerd.
A year and a half ago I sold my interest in a software company I started
7 years ago and chose to use the funds to make this energy drink (along
with the funds of some of my friends). I developed device drivers for
the Windows platform mostly; file systems, filters, backup, and other
storage related system level components.

I am having a party at my home in San Diego on Saturday June 23rd. If
you are interested in coming I can send you the details. It will be a
hodge-podge of nerds, rock stars, and business people. You are very
welcome to come.

Regards,

Jamey Kirby
Senior Partner/Founder
Redux beverages, LLC
www.drinkcocaine.com

Click here to listen to Audio Blog