The thing about playing the high horse game with these folks is that everyone is doing it from the bottom of a barrel. In a ditch. In Death Valley. After a mudslide.

Foremost, the whole Blueprint Cleanse operation just looks and sounds evil (http://www.nypress.com/article-19547-the-dirty-world-of-clea...). The owners look unhealthy and anorexic: http://meghan.nonsociety.com/lifecast/146239919-0-28, they're the two on the right doing their impression of Somalian refugees.

Why did Arrington okay on publishing a post about expensive, marketing-gimmicky, FedEx-ed, fruit and vegetable juices on TechCrunch anyways? That's a weird lapse in editorial judgment. Oh, wait, I have to be careful, I don't want to get brandished as an unter-troll. That would be bad since some British uber-troll will yell at me (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/25/nsfw-bringing-nothing-t...).

Meghan Asha and Arrington don't even speak to each other. Tying them together, and a sibling to boot, to draw up a conspiracy point is tenuous and grasping at straws.

And, really, the cleanse stuff is just a shitty--heh--distraction. What's the deal with all these trips that bloggers are going on these days?

If you want to follow the money you should see this Register article (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/03/traveling_geeks). Turns out that UK Traveling Geeks Tour Sarah Lacy went to was partially funded by public money--and those Brits HATE having public money squandered!

So what did a partially public funded "tour" get in return? Well, a "sponsored" post on TechCrunch is a plus (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/17/uk-entrepreneurs-get-yo...) but the "leaked" debauchery is a minus (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/my-god-scoble-did-you-t...).

Sidenote: the "friendship" Arrington and Scoble have is so awkward; Arrington picks on and embarrasses Scoble more times than my little nephew does to kids that still play Pokemon at school. Here they are (http://www.flickr.com/photos/loiclemeur/2842387358/in/photos...) before they started sexually harassing Scoble by grabbing and lifting up his shirt in a crowded TechCrunch50 show room to point out how fat he is. Grown men. I wish Scoble would just stand up for himself instead of passive-aggressively have the both of them "spar" on Twitter--now the late night playground of clashing "titans".

TechCrunch's Paul Carr and Sarah Lacy are in Los Angeles now for something called Geeks At The Beach, put up by Lunch.com--I think it's a Yelp clone, or maybe a Waiter.com clone, or maybe it's like a recipes site, or maybe it's Food Network?--in fancy hotels (http://rebloggingns.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/julia-continuin...). I'm sure the disclosure for that will come at the end of the trip when they have space at the end of a post to publish. Though, I wouldn't put it past Julia Allison, yet another lovely blogger lady that partakes in these awkward trip deals (http://gawker.com/5266330/julia-allisons-shill+erific-sea-wo...) but doesn't talk about it, to bother with publishing content.

But what's Michael Gray disclosing? Does he have an axe to grind? He's IZEA-sponsored so he takes these "sponsored" trips too, although he's more careful at "transparency". Michael Arrington, on the other hand, hates IZEA (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/16/brands-beware-you-may-b...). Hmm... Just an old pro trying to keep everyone honest at the poker table?

I guess when you play the game long enough everyone gets a bit dirty.