On the advice of my critics, I sought out the opinions of two former/current ACN salespersons/recruiters/investers/representatives (I still don’t know what to call them).

After reading their POVs, I’m starting to ACN is not as evil as I thought it was, but I still don’t like it. I think the proper way to lead a sales team, or company division, is with one or so managers managing, and several sellers selling. Not both at the same time.

Here’s what they said.

Marc:

Recruiting is your first income. It’ll take a while before it gets with sales. The most important thing you want to know is to find motivated people to get under you for them to be doing the same thing. And after a while it should work for itself and the sales will get higher than the recruitment.

Patrick:

What people dont understand is that what realy matters in ACN is the residual income one will be receiving in the long run after putting the time and effort of building an effective team. But since this takes time to build, a way of encouraging and rewarding those who actually do recruit. Bonuses are given out in a specific manner. The compensation plan is well explained before one joins ACN. I dont understand why people fuss about it and complain.

All this is a half-assed reminder that Hip Hop in the Park is this Saturday, May 23 at Louise McKinney Park. Myself and others will be on Breakfast Television tomorrow morning on Citytv.

go to www.hiphopinthepark.ca for more info

Almost two years ago, I was visiting my cousin in Montreal. I met his friends and they were all very nice. I happened to meet them at a very interesting point in some of their lives. A few of them — and one especially — were all the rage about this company, ACN.

ACN is the American Communications Network. It offers ‘quality’ communications service that can make you rich. In order to join their sales team, it costs $500.

Now any company that makes you pay to join them (as opposed to paying you) should raise a red, blue, yellow, green and every other coloured flag. Moreover, once joining ACN, as I learned with this unfortunately blinded fellows, you are pushed to recruit. Recruit, recruit, recruit! And why not, there’s a money incentive for it.

In fact, so much time is spent recruiting, that hardly any telecommunications goods and services get sold. Every recruitment is another $500 for ACN, minus off the top some money to the person who recruited the newbie, and the person who recruited the recruiter, and the one who recruited the person who recruited the recruiter.

And that’s how pyramid schemes (more professionally known as ‘multi-level marketing’) are born. Sadly, these nice men would hear none of it and continued on. I often wonder if they ever got out of the trap, or if they have become one of the success stories, hoarding in thousands of dollars each month at the expense of the people who trusted them.

And now, for some videos about ACN.

More Instant Bookery here. I contributed my second Instant Book to Instant Bookers Are Your Future. In this episode, LARPers Everywhere (written under a pseudonym), I explore the wacky world of “rational” conspiracy theorists.

Enjoy.

It’s back suckas!

Last year you and almost hundreds of others danced, rapped, tanned, enjoyed a free BBQ and maybe even threw around a frisbee. Well, let’s do it again, shall we?

In celebration of Hip-Hop culture, get ready for an entire day of rappers rapping, break dancers breaking, DJs spinning, graffiti artists tagging, and hip-hoppers being hip-hoppers. The second annual Hip-Hop in the Park event is back and bigger than before, now with tons of family games, hip-hop workshops and more.

Hip-Hop in the Park is a music and culture festival in Edmonton, Alberta held during the third week of every May, which celebrates Hip-Hop Appreciation Week. (This year’s event is at Louise McKinney Riverfront Park on Saturday, May 23, 2009.) Hip-Hop Appreciation Week was founded by KRS-One’s Temple of Hip-Hop, and it marks the anniversary of when Hip-Hop became an official culture sanctioned by the United Nations. The Hip-Hop Declaration of Peace, an official UN document that clearly states the pillars and principles of Hip-Hop culture.

HTTP://WWW.HIPHOPINTHEPARK.CA

If you’ve seen me perform in the last 1.5 years, you’ve heard this song before — “Stab City”, the Edmonton anthem. Only the song was never complete. There was something missing.There was a character missing, the character of the alpha-I’m- gonna-knife-you- for-looking-at -me-funny-male character. Thankfully one of E-Town’s finest, Touch, filled that role. You can expect this on my sophomore album — no time soon — but in the meantime, you can hear it here. Don’t get stabbed. (Big ups to Josh Klassen, the non-weatherman producer/rapper who slaved over this beat.)

As some of you may remember, I noticed a spike in hits when I mentioned Campbell Brown last year. The hits keep coming from people searching “campbell brown nude”, “campbell brown naked”, “nude campbell brown” and “naked campbell brown”.

So I named a new post “Campbell Brown Nude!” and made all the appropriate tags to see if it would increase my web traffic. And it did. Not as much as I predicted. But it did. See below.

Hip-Hop in the Park, the wildly successful hip-hop festival that had its inaugural event in Edmonton last year, is back! But in order for it to be as good — no, better than last year’s, we need volunteers.

Run a workshop, pick-up some props, represent the community. If there’s something you can do on the day of or before, we’d love to hear from you.

Send all volunteer submissions to luda_baybee@hotmail.com.

And if you’re looking to perform: Apply here.

I am going to be on CJSR’s Q Transmissions, possibly the world’s only skeptical call-in radio show, to discuss skeptical music. We’ll probably be discussing the two songs off my album. The songs, of course, being You Are a God and Unintelligent Redesign.

Yesterday on Q Transmissions, they discussed the military and religiosity, interviewing Paul Welke, a an atheist soldier who fought in Bosnia. You can subscribe to it on iTunes.