.. bump ...

Gene Kaplin likes to hang out in the park at Fourth Avenue and E Street. He’s in his late 50s and has a blond, graying beard that grazes the top buttons of his shirt. Kaplin favors soiled flannel layered over a T-shirt and ripped 501s. If you saw him on the street you might think he was one of Anchorage’s homeless, a chronic inebriate – and you’d be right. But there’s a twist. "Listerine Gene" likes to get high on mouthwash.

Kaplin seems embarrassed by the "Listerine Gene" moniker. He prides himself on being a beer man, he says, with Natural Ice his brew of choice. But when the liquor stores and bars close or he’s short on cash, mouthwash gets him through the night.

Why mouthwash? Consider this: Beer is typically between 3 and 6 percent alcohol by volume. Hard liquor contains around 40 percent. And amber-hued, antiseptic Listerine? It’s 26.9 percent alcohol, or 54 proof. The mint variety is 21.6 percent alcohol.

At the Midtown Wal-Mart, a liter of Listerine’s generic cousin, antiseptic Equate, sells for $1.57. The 1.5 liter jug is $2.17. The cheapest bottle of vodka at the Gambell Street Oaken Keg is $10.

Mouthwash "gets you just as drunk," said a friend of Kaplin’s who wouldn’t give his name. "You just get what you can afford."

It doesn’t seem a likely problem. Anyone who’s ever accidentally swallowed Scope in a morning gargle can attest to the throat burn, the gag reflex, the stomach churn. But if you’re homeless and feeding a habit, it’s almost logical: you get five times the alcohol for less than half the price of what a liquor store dispenses, with less hassle. And when you’re done, you’re not just blotto – you also have less chance of gingivitis. If you live.

For public inebriates, Anchorage Police officers run a code three – which means they must break traffic laws to reach a citizen in distress – four to eight times a day, says Captain Audie Holloway. He estimates that 40 percent of those calls are related to alcohol substitutes like mouthwash.

It’s easy to tell when someone’s been drinking mouthwash, said Patrol Sergeant Gary Apperson – the stench, especially if the person vomits, is horrendous, he said. "You can usually tell from 20 or 30 feet away what you’re dealing with."

Last month, during a weekday lunch rush at the Midtown Wal-Mart, it was business as usual. Mothers bought Huggies, teenage girls tried on tank tops and clerks stocked shelves. But some shelves still looked neglected – in the mouthwash section. There was plenty of Scope there. Cepacol was in stock. But nearly all of the 1.5-liter antiseptic Equate bottles were missing.

On a return visit last Sunday, August 18, all of the 1.5 liter bottles of antiseptic Equate and Listerine were gone.

Asked if there were any more bottles in the back, a Wal-Mart employee said, "If we had any more in the back they would have been put out last night. They must go fast."

Indeed they do, and it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Antiseptic Equate contains the highest concentration of alcohol and is the least expensive mouthwash of its type.

Mouthwash isn’t just strong and cheap, however. It’s also widely available around the clock at gas stations, grocery stores and discounters such as Wal-Mart. Its sale isn’t regulated like its beer and Bacardi cousins: There’s no identification required to buy it and no TAM alcohol management certificate needed to sell it.

Beverage-grade alcohol in products like mouthwash, cough syrup and vanilla extract escapes the regulations intended for distilled sprits, beer and wine because "no reasonable person" would consume those products, said Martha Tebbenkamp of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Because these products are not intended as a substitute for vodka and gin, they’re not regulated as such.

But on the rocks with a splash of club soda, antiseptic Equate and Wild Turkey are pretty much created equal. Mouthwash is no different than any other form of alcohol, said Ken Bizovi, a toxicologist with the Northwest branch of Poison Control. It has the same ethanol as beer, wine or hard liquor, and the health effects are the same, he said.

That’s news to Jennifer, who works the Pfizer group help line. That’s the number on the back of a Listerine bottle. "I’ve never heard of anyone becoming intoxicated on Listerine," she said. "The most I’ve ever heard of is people getting a tummy-ache."

Besides, Jennifer said, the alcohol in Listerine is denatured. In other words, chemicals are added to make it poisonous and undrinkable.

Tell that to Listerine Gene.

When Joseph Lawrence and Jordan Wheat Lambert developed the original, amber-colored Listerine in 1879, it was designed as a disinfectant for surgical procedures. By 1895 the duo had discovered that Listerine also killed germs in the mouth. That same year, they began selling it to dentists, paving the way for a flood of other brands.

Listerine’s maker, Warner-Lambert, merged with Pfizer in June of 2000. In 2001, the Pfizer Consumer Healthcare division – its mouthwash division – saw a 4 percent increase in sales, to $2.4 billion. Listerine is its largest product line.

Many people who abuse mouthwash "really have a taste for it," said Piper Warren, the head detox nurse at the Clitheroe Center/Substance Abuse Treatment Facility, in Anchorage. It’s a tough detox, she said. "Most people who we’ve seen who have been on it have died."

The problem isn’t new. In the early 1990s, alcoholics on an Indian reservation in Gallup, New Mexico turned to mouthwash on Sundays, when the sale of alcohol was prohibited. Mouthwash abuse spiraled out of control – merchants had to drag out black tarps and garbage bags to cover their supplies each weekend. The general manager of TG&Y Coast to Coast, a general merchandise store, eliminated large displays of mouthwash after someone was found dead near his store with a bottle of TG&Y brand mouthwash next to the body. That manager also trained clerks to refuse to sell any alcohol-containing products to people who seemed intoxicated.

In 1999, a man in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin was arrested for abandoning his son in a restaurant after drinking a quart of Listerine. Police found him passed out in the back seat of his car and took him to jail. Three hours after his arrest, he registered a blood alcohol level of .264. That’s more than three times the legal limit for driving in Alaska.

Kitty Dukakis, wife of Michael Dukakis, wrote in her book "Now You Know" that she drank aftershave, vanilla extract, nail polish remover and mouthwash before she finally sought help for her alcoholism.

At Homeward Bound, a long-term drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in Anchorage, workers see mouthwash intoxication every day, said counselor Jennifer Nieves. "If I see someone on the street with it and I am familiar with them, I take it away and pour it out," she said.

Holloway, of APD, said he’d like to see stores such as the Midtown Wal-Mart and Northway Kmart put mouthwash in places that are not easily accessible, as the store manager in New Mexico did. But the stores "are afraid of racial or social implications," he said.

The manager of the Midtown Wal-Mart could not be reached for comment. A woman who identified herself as the assistant manager, but refused to give her name, said she would not comment on the sale of mouthwash to inebriates. But, she said, "We don’t discriminate against any of our customers."

Northway Kmart manager Bob Newbry was more forthcoming. He said cashiers at his store have been told not to sell mouthwash to inebriates. Lately the store has also taken steps to stem the problem by issuing trespass orders to nuisance customers and calling police if the person returns, he said. "We don’t lock (mouthwash) up or anything, it’s over by the pharmacy," he said, but employees now keep their eyes open for any unusual activity.

The Northway Kmart has sold 84 1.5-liter bottles of antiseptic Listerine and 274 bottles of the generic brand, American Fare, so far this year. That doesn’t include product that’s been stolen, a common method of procurement for mouthwash abusers, Newbry said. Those are unusually high sales figures when you consider that the liter bottle is the more common choice for non-guzzling mouthwash users, he said.

In the early evening of August 8, in a trash can across the street from the Gambell Street Carrs, small "shooter" sized bottles of Monarch Vodka and Bacardi Rum shared space with crushed, empty cans of Natural Ice. Underneath a potato chip bag was a lone, empty bottle of Listerine.

"The people out here live to eat, drink and pass out," said APD Officer Pablo Paiz. "It’s like pushing a boulder up the hill one day and having it roll back down the next – it’s frustrating."

Paiz has dealt with countless chronic inebriates in his 12 years with APD. For the last eight years he’s been a patrol officer, and before that he was in dispatch. He’s seen people drink vanilla, hairspray and mouthwash – virtually anything containing alcohol to feed an addiction, he said.

"Usually by the time I get to them they will have discarded whatever they are drinking. But sometimes they’ll have a bottle of mouthwash or Monarch tucked up their sleeve. I found one guy walking down the street with six bottles of vanilla in his pocket… I said, ‘What are you doing, baking a cake?’"

Statistics for mouthwash abuse in Anchorage are elusive because police say they can’t isolate them from other instances of public inebriation. But Paiz says it’s been "an ongoing, steady thing" for at least eight years. And, he said, recent alcohol restrictions in Fairview – at stores like Brown Jug and the Gambell Street Oaken Keg – have likely spurred consumption of alcohol substitutes.

So is mouthwash to vodka what bathtub gin was to booze during prohibition? What crack is to cocaine?

"I don’t believe so," said Ruth Moulton, a Fairview Community Council member and an active player in Fairview’s recent alcohol regulations. "People have been drinking mouthwash for years. I remember years ago people asking stores to move it because it was being shoplifted, and that was before the restrictions."

Mouthwash is thymol, eucalyptol, methyl salicylate, menthol and alcohol. It’s 22 cents an ounce, and easier to drink than Final Net, Sterno or nail polish remover. It’s been shown to help prevent plaque accumulation and get people like Listerine Gene blotto and minty. And on Anchorage streets, it’s vividly colored proof of an ancient maxim: where there’s a will, there’s a way.

I would agree that a good lawsuit is about the only thing that would put Zango down. They are probably well hidden and offshore tho.

FUCKING HILARIOUS

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y21...ald-walken.gif

Nope they right here in the states :thumbsup

But what if the Zango owner is a cool guy too?
Ohh the dilemma?!

Registrant:
180solutions, Inc.
3600 136th Place SE
Bellevue, WA 98006
US

Domain Name: METRICSDIRECT.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Solutions, 180 [email protected]
3600 136th Place SE
Bellevue, WA 98006
US
425-279-1200

:1orglaugh

I think Sean is a cool guy and I have a beer with him at every show.
still, Fuck you Lars!

We should lawyer up then. I know the perfect guy, he's a total dick...trouble is...its going to cost...who wants to pony up?

I think that is the best solution.

I didn't ever say I had any love for those fools.

Well if there was a class action suit files most lawyers will do it on a contingecy bases. But first i would suggest going after the sponsors who are violating there own TOS. I also would suggest talking with the states attorney as well and filing charges . :2 cents:

First, your sig is to big, read the faq page, second, weird remark.

Spend about $xx,xxx with Adult.com per month and then talk to me about how big my sig is you cocksmoker.

Nope. It would take a lot of big money up front to get a good lawyer to handle it. Then you also have to consider if Zango does not settle there will be a retardedly long trails which will include giving the jury and the judge a crash course in affiliate marketing.

Probably the people in the best position to sue are the people with trademarks or pattents.

You are correct about the trademark and patent comment. I am pretty sure aff has there stuff trademarked. I will check into this. If they do this should be a open and shut case.

Jay when you get a moment check out this guys site . you will find alot of good information. http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/180-affiliates/

Also there was a case won over gator for poping up popups over anonther website. I think it was budget.com who filed against them. I will find the link for you to the docs


here is a link to zangos blog as well. they settled with the FTC for 3 million not to long ago http://www.zango.com/destination/corporate/blog.aspx

We need to get as much attention on this as possible while this in the spotlight:2 cents:

Well in 2003 they had 4000 affiliates...that is a ton...I wonder how many they have now.

http://www.zango.com/Destination/Cor...aspx?year=2003

This thread is almost surreal. Someone who runs a sponsor program and a big traffic source, the latter (at least) targeted by scumware, isn't sufficiently concerned by that to get up speed on the issue. But weeks after it first aired - and (out of his own mouth) based solely on the personalities involved - he starts a thread in which he takes sides and dishes out personal insults.

Over the past couple of days, there have been a few attempts to reduce an industry-wide problem to the level of a Will vs Lars drama. I sincerely hope they are unsuccessful.

I'm not fan of Will's. I sent someone over to join "Team Clickcash" in summer 2005 and it was a harmless (since it didn't cost anything) but disappointing experience for the person concerned. Two weeks into the "Zango" issue, I made a couple of fruitless appeals to try to put some direction into the opposition to scumware and get away from the repetitive mud-slinging. But Will could be an alcoholic wife-beater (or whatever it takes to make you contemptuous of someone) and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to the issue at hand.

On the day this issue surfaced, I made a note that Lars would respond the following Saturday. I was wrong, he actually replied at 11:45pm (by the board-time I see) on Friday. The content of his response was as predictable as its timing, because his company had been caught fair and square playing in the dirt and based on his handling of previous issues, spin was all we could expect. And spin we got. There was barely an attempt to provide justification, let alone credible justification.

I have written that I couldn't care less about Lars or about Zango, because both will be gone in a few years. Their importance right now is solely that they are symptoms of an immature industry which still has a lot of growing up to do.

Huge amounts of time and therefore money are wasted when an industry preys on itself and everyone in it is forced to be constantly looking over their shoulders instead of getting on with the job of expanding their market. That is what online porn has primarily been doing for the past 5 years. That is why a single company like Zango can generate turnover equivalent to 40% of what the whole of online porn produces. That is why online porn, after a decade, is still estimated at a mere 5% of the "adult entertainment" industry.

I retired into this business because of ill-health. I hadn't so much as looked at a copy of Playb*y since the barber who cut my hair as a teenager, left them out for his customers. I built my first website while reading "HTML in 21 Days". And I was earning 6 figures within 18 months. That's how easy it was to make money between 1996 and 2000.

Competition has increased dramatically since then and unfortunately the most prevalent response has been to start feeding off each other: the symptoms are everything from selling worthless traffic through to the use of scumware. Somewhere along the line the majority seem to have forgotten we are selling a product second only to sex itself in its appeal and that we have as close to a global reach as our payment processors will allow.

Charles Darwin wrote about the survival of the fittest. As is often the case with complex ideas, they become simplified and distorted when they enter the public arena. Darwin actually judged the ability to cooperate as a more powerful force for survival than individual strength and he credited the success of the human race to that ability. Business is the same: true professionals understand the difference between competition and activities which ultimately damage everyone. They will cooperate to rid their industry of the latter.

The scumware issue isn't a battle, much less a war. It's just part of an industry going through growing pains and that is a process which will take another 5-10 years to complete. The outcome is inevitable: the cowboys of the industry, however they qualify for that sobriquet, will end up as insignificant figures on the sidelines.

Unless you believe that online porn will be the first industry ever to resist that transition, there are two things to think about. The first is that those who focus on building their businesses will emerge in a much stronger position than those who try to make time stand still, grabbing an extra dollar for themselves here, a few cents there, from their existing sales.

The second thing is that the people who matter in the long-term tend to have long memories. Only a fool would try to claim that scumware is not ultimately damaging to us all or that the use of it doesn't go far beyond anything which could reasonably be defined as competition. Before taking a public position, it might be wise to think about whether that position is something you will want people remembering in a few years time.

Yeap im sure there is a hell of alot more now. A few months back like 20 million myspace users got zango installed on there cpu. This article doesnt say how many but others articles do, It estimated something like 30 million user have this on there cpu now .


http://blogs.zdnet.com/Spyware/?p=845

I did not know this. :Oh crap

Yeap yeap and there is alot more too. Like i said i want a platform to get to speak to lars one on one were everyone can hear this. I got all the videos and screen caps to back up every thing i said.

I have caught many visitors using Zango coming to my site using MY KEYWORDS to get there. Potentially strong customers, I may say, the sign up ratio is high, 200/1.

First shaving and now Zango to rub it in. I'm tired of it. We affiliates have marketing costs, must pay hosting and bandwidth, buy domains and to make matters worse, we have to buy some food as well. Sorry to mention it, but there are to many spineless affiliates out there, specially those accepting shaving, saying " I make good money with them anyway" But now with Zango, we must fight back. You must reply to any promotion post people like Lars, Sagi_AFF, etc write on the boards asking them about Zango.

I repeat: add lines to add to .htaccess redirecting Zango traffic to your honest sponsor.

And because the thief is a nice guy it is all right to be stolen from? Can't believe such a statement!

I don't understand why there's so much support for AFF.

Stolen image, supporting crack/warez/torrent/stolen content websites...

Now supporting adware!

It's barmy for anybody to consider using a program after that... No matter what the payout may be...

And for those supporting the program just because they've had a few drinks with folk from the paysite is just bizarre!

No wonder the adult industry is looked down upon, clowns, cowboys and cheaters everywhere...

i don't give a fuck about will or lars. i don't know them, don't care about them. i just care about other peoples ads being popped on MY websites.

the thread will made was not about you promoting zango, it was about your site being targeted (any site that promotes dating/cams is targeted) by these types of companies.

Typical, spending xxxxxx and thinking the rules do not apply for you anymore. hmmm.
and i still dont get the role model / george bush remark.

Listen guys, if you keep bashing these guys for supporting Zango, you'll never truly achieve "bro" status on the board.

what the fuck does 'hes a cool cat' have to do with this whole zango issue? see the big picture here please.

How do you do that? I'll do it.

That´s exactly the problem: money. Most can´t afford it to fight Zango.

Seems to me that Jay owes Will an apology. This thread started as a Lars dick suck from someone that doesn't have a clue what they're talking about and has evolved to his 'lawyering up'? :1orglaugh

And you cant be a top notch guy either.
And forget those drinks , drugs and hookers in Vegas!

But he is right, if you advertise on the board, you can have a bigger sig.

I hate to say it but I think you're buying Lar's shit "hook line and sinker" if you think he regrets it. Lars came right out and said he has no intention to stop using Zango.

That is the reason everyone is bashing him, not that they want to be drama queens.. well ok maybe some of them are drama queens.. lol.. However the reality of it is, what AFF, Cams and the others are doing is stealing joins from your very own pages.

That is the root of the Lars bashing.. it's not that he used Zango and is now sorry.. It's because he used Zango and was shown what it does and how it steals (if he didn't already know) Then he publicly stated he would continue to keep using it. Which means he dosn't give a shit if he steals from affiliates.

So you can have your own opinion and personally I can respect that, but if you think Lars regrets this I honestly don't think you know whats really going on. Simply because Lars has publicly said he dosn't regret it by continuing to use Zango.

Thanks, i dint know that.

you see how simple it is to give a normal answer??

See signature for a way to help take a small bite out of zango.

:thumbsup

Dont be stupid, we all know everyone that posts on GFY is a millionaire by the time they hit 17.

Regards,

Lee

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh !!

With 6,507 posts here I do think you know how to do it.

I wrote a math expression about Zango:

<Amount of noise made about evil zango> ~ (1 / revenues from adult)

It simple terms, as the denominator of the right hand side decreases towards zero, the left hand side approaches infinity.....

Hey when you see this shoot me a icq i would like to speak with your guy.

I havnt been around lately so I'm not exactly sure waht this is about. but Lars and Sean are straight shooters and business men even if they do look like hippies. LOL

I've know them both for years so without even reading everything I trust what XXjay said and agree :)

Ok so I decided to read it all now.
If Zango is Redirecting traffic and changing affliliate codes they will get there ass handed to them.
If they are doing pop overs using Intelectual marketing/Spyware it sucks big time but I dont think its illegal.

Either way they are way to aggresive and it should stop.

As far as Lars goes if he doesnt buy it someone else just will. that is the nature of this fucked up beast

Rubbish.

This "f*cked up beast" exists because of the constant stream of people willing to step up and make excuses for the people who f*ck it up...

This thread made me smoke crack, SHAME on ALL of you :Oh crap


I swear when I move to Montreal I am buying a kitty cat and calling it Zango :1orglaugh

best way to shut down zango is to get microsoft to send out an update that makes their program useless

i don't understand why microsoft isn't doing this either

YOU HAD DINNER WITH HIM? HE MUST BE COOL AND TOTALLY LEGIT BECAUSE YOU HAD DINNER WITH HIM! !!!!!!!!! SERIOUSLY, YOU MEAN U HUNG OUT WITH HIM?? WELL THAT MAKES IT ALL FINE AND DANDY THEN.



lol bloody hell, some people, just because a webmaster is "cool" doesnt mean hes doing the right thing :)

lars responce to will76 in another thread.


"hahahahahahahahahahhaaha"

"real cool"

You should have read through the threads thoroughly and did some investigation, then you could have called Lars and "get to the bottom of this" as if your position matters one flying fuck to those losing sales. And you should have done all this before calling Will an idiot and a drama queen; you understand very little about what is going on.

FYI, I've never met Will which he can attest to. I don't even promote clickcash as there are some issues with them that I'm not 100% comfortable with. Be that as it may, the issue with Zango is nothing short of theft of sales from affiliates.

how did that phone call go Jay?