Poll: America Fucking with Pollsters

olls conducted by mortal agencies across America are beginning to unravel startling information about polls: They are not always correct, and information is not always given with the most honorable intentions.

This information comes as a shock to pollsters and politicians alike, as some questions have returned information demonstrating the lack of sincerity in responses. A recent Gallup poll on the presidential election found that over 70 percent of respondents described themselves as the head of a their household and reported an annual income of over ten gabillion. According to the latest census information and annual salary figures reported by corporations, determined to be more accurate, less than one percent of the nation actually earns over ten gabillion dollars annually, causing analysts to speculate incorrect information was reported. Backing up this hypothesis is the response to inquiries about the speaker's sex, to which over 97 percent responded "Yes."

Inaccurate polling information leaves some with the feeling that none of the conclusions drawn by polls can be trusted, a disturbing notion for politicians relying on polling information, and an even more troublesome proposition for companies making their money from polling. However, it would explain how polls conducted by different companies can draw different conclusions, such as recent presidential election polls that show the race led by President George W. Bush, candidate John Kerry, or show both tied neck and neck.

"Clearly, someone is fucking with us," said Gallup poll analyst Stephen Herschel. "I guess they think it's funny."

The quandary brings up questions about the similar circumstances of the 2000 election, when Al Gore won a much larger number of votes than predicted in some earlier polls, and less than accorded him by others. Exit polls in Florida also played a significant role in decisions by major news networks to predict Gore the winner of the state, key in the 2000 presidential election, even though the frail polls failed to predict the battle for the state ahead. Herschel, a longtime developer of polling questions for political campaigns, paints a bleak picture of an election with untrustworthy polls.

"A lot of Americans like to vote for the guy who is going to win," Herschel informs. "If they don't have polls to tell them who is going to win, then there is no way for them to make an informed decision about who to vote for. Then there's the nightmare of actually being a candidate running for office and having no polls to rely on. How do you know what to stand for then? How can you reach the voters if you don't have any idea what they want you to say? All you have to fall back on in such a case is personal experience, knowledge of the issues themselves, and leadership qualities. Without polls, you can't preach to the converted."

The concerns about polls beg the question, why in the world would someone not report accurate information to a faceless corporation? Winston-Salem University of North Dakota's Professor Big Jim Dean, of the Department of Psychology, postulates a theory:

"As strange as it seems, we theorize that some people don't realize the value of an accurate poll, or even stranger, could care less about the questions themselves. These people may give inaccurate information on a lark, or to make themselves feel more important than they might by reporting accurately. Others may have their own political agenda, and try to shape the outcome of the poll by giving information that they think will further their own cause, whatever it may be. Alas, these may be the dangers of asking random people their thoughts and feelings on issues. At least, this is the research I've accumulated by talking to my students. And I don't see any reason why they'd make up something like that."

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Long has the world grown fat like a diabetic tick off the fruits of my invention. Strike that, "fruit" sounds a pinch too gay. The meats of my invention. And make that plural, as "inventions," because they have been legion.

In retrospect, part of my problem was likely never patenting any of my skylarks, under the mistaken assumption that nobody would buy anything that I myself wouldn't pay for. Cell phones, gossip magazines, and underarm deodorant have all proven me wrong on that count. Let this be my Achilles heel no more, however. My next vacation is going to be enjoyed from a pup tent right outside the doors of the U.S. patent office.

"What the hell," you're likely cursing to yourself, unless reading this column from the holy confines of a sacred church or daycare center, "are you talking about, VanSlyke?" A fair question, rudely put. So I'll cut, slowly mind you, like wet cardboard was my tool rather than a razor blade, to the chase. If you've enjoyed anything in the last thirty years, chances are I invented it. There. Put that in your pipe and blow bubbles.

The original Game Boy? VanSlykeBoy is more like it, though that sounds a bit like a mascot for pickles. But when the original Nintendo was so popular back in the 1980's, I was the one who spoke up at the barber shop and said they should make a portable one of those, with a screen on the front and a hatch on back to slip the game inside, so that children could play their electrified games while working in the salt mines, rather than wasting valuable labor resources at home in front of the TV. To which my fellow barbershop patrons enthusiastically replied: "What's Nintendo?"

Nevermind, they made one without me. Even if my mental version was better, with a color screen and a hatch for snacks. Shame on me for not developing a massive Japanese consumer electronics company to market my product back when I had the idea.

Tablet PCs? Those, too, should bear the mark of the "V." This one I admit I invented by mistake, after taking home a flat-screen monitor from my doctor's office and realizing to my keen disappointment that it didn't do anything when not connected to a computer box of some sort. Bah to that. A truly useful screen would recognize my handwriting, connect wirelessly to the Internet, and show me the results of the Florida State beauty pageant. Like a pad of paper. Only without me having to draw the beauty pageant contestants or guess what might be on the Internet. Again, industry beat me to the punch on this one, but I did still earn the distinction of selling the world's first "tablet PC," to a half-retarded kid down the street. Thankfully he never asked what the cable trailing off the back was for. Grounding, son. Grounding.

These are just two examples among the thousands I could site, if this column were a thousand times longer and instantly downloadable by neural cortex. So, I'm sure you're wondering, what can we expect next from Sony and JVC, after they steal the idea from Homer VanSlyke? Glad you asked: it's Movie theater goggles. That's right Baxter, an opportunity to enjoy the movies and cop a cool futuristic look without leaving the money-saving safety of your own home. You simply strap on the goggles and the attached ear-implants, set the virtual screen size, toggle on or off the know-it-all loudmouth sitting behind you, set the cell phone ringer volume and frequency, and kick back to enjoy the latest Hollywood DVD. Or, if movies are distributed in crystal-gel modules like they should be by then, just pop a mod and prepare to have your eyes blown off.

Thankfully I don't think any consumer electronics giants read the commune, because I've got my prototype almost finished. It's just a beta model, mind you, in real-world application the big-screen TV welded to the goggles would likely cause serious neck trauma to the wearer. But once I get rid of all these stupid tubes and wires, the whole thing should really come together beautifully.

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Everyone loves seeing movies in the theater, because the screen is so freakin' huge. Plus when you throw shit at the screen at home, usually you're the one who has to clean it up later, unless you're smart enough to throw something the dog's not too proud to eat off the floor, like steak. But regardless, Omar Bricks has always had one major problem with seeing movies in the theater, and it's not the rule about discharging firearms during the exciting parts or the mandatory frisking for fireworks. No, the real pain in my remarkably-tolerant ass is the way they keep the movie playing like fascists even when you've really got to piss but don't want to miss the best part of the movie, which filmmakers strategically place right at the optimal time for a piss break to ensure repeat business.

Normally I just end up pissing in a trash can in the back of the theater, where I can still see the screen, but that's not a perfect solution either. Sometimes the trash is really full and you get splashback like from a cheap Korean urinal, and other times some 90-year old woman chooses that moment to pop into the theater to check and see if this movie has that delightful Kevin Costner in it, only to grab a stroke-inducing eyeful of your man-monster. So this was clearly a national problem worthy of serious scientific inquiry.

That put me at a slight disadvantage, since the only thing I know about science is that you can't freeze gasoline. But God never slams a door without kicking out a window, and my lack of technical know-how has always been made up for with ingenuity, which is another word for balls. And that's about as good an explanation as any for how I came up with the Movie Theater Remote Control®.

Because when I started thinking about it, not being able to pause a movie in the theater was only one of a number of problems with our antiquated movie-projecting systems. You also couldn't rewind to see cool parts of movies again, or fast-forward through the lame parts to get to something good. And the lack of a volume control was a ridiculous oversight. Only an idiot would try to sell you a TV without a volume knob, but we've been buying that same bullshit from the theaters for years. It was time to wise up and kick the man in the pants.

Most of the tech for the MTRC® came from plans I found in a dumpster outside of NASA. Did you know NASA locks their dumpsters? True as shit. And did you know you can pick a dumpster lock with a Bic pen and a Zippo lighter? That's one to grow on, kids.

The early prototypes didn't work exactly as planned, in fact the first one ended up blacking out most of Flatbush during a screening of The Country Bears. Not that you heard anyone complaining. Version 2.0 was far more effective, only too much so, if such a thing is possible. The problem was that while I was fast-forwarding through one of the many lame parts of Hidalgo, the MTRC® was actually controlling all the projectors in the multiplex at once, so although at least half the people there were being saved from lame bullshit, the other half were missing the best part of Starsky & Hutch, or at least seeing it at twice its intended speed. That's when I learned that as cool as a car battery can be for ultimate juice, sometimes AAs get the job done more appropriately. Plus you don't have to design a special harness to sneak a couple of AA batteries into a movie theater under your jacket.

Version 3.0 was actually a step backward, but for some reason it ran the Icee machine in the lobby just fine, so I kept that one for future experimentation. Version 4.01 was the real winner, and came in a sweet lime-green finish as well. I was set.

And for a few months, I was in movie-going heaven. Even with the rewinding for cool parts, and pausing for a couple of piss breaks, most movies only ended up taking about 45 minutes, since you didn't have to sit through any of the trailers or bullshit "character development" parts of movies. Sure, there were always a couple of whiners in the audience who wanted to see Barbara Streisand crying in her soup, but those knobs were in the minority and they didn't know who to whine to anyway since it wasn't like I was advertising my role as the dude with the remote. But eventually, I have to admit I got a little cocky and people started to catch on since I was the guy yelling "Bo-ring!" whenever Michelle Pfeiffer came on the screen and suddenly the movie would zap forward to a ninja fight or whatever.

I guess word got out, since things really came to a head last year when I paused The Bourne Supremacy so I could take a leak and when I came back, those fuckers were looking at me like I just ate the baby Jesus with Vidalia onions. I swear, these pious motherfuckers don't piss? Am I watching a movie with the cast of Waterworld again? Well excuse me, you inconsiderate dicks, but not everyone here can recycle their whiz and drink it again. Some of us have to pay eight bucks for a Mr. Pibb that's at least three times the size of our own bladder, and some of us are too modest to piss it down the aisle like Southern royalty. Next thing you know they're going to tell me these egomaniacs have never intentionally thrown up in the sink of the men's room at a fast food restaurant to make room for seconds.

Even getting banned for life from that theater wasn't a huge deal, since disguises are half the fun of going to the movies anyway. But what really sunk my battleship was that after the word got out, everybody wanted me to make them a MTRC®. First my neighbor Mitch, then Red Bagel, and then Roland McShyster. I don't even know what that guy wanted with one; I don't think he's ever been in a movie theater in his life. I asked him if he wanted to go see Star Wars last week and he thought I was talking about a reality show cross between Star Search and The Running Man.

At first things were going great, and I was making some nice coin to dick around in my garage, which has always been a dream of mine. But before I knew it, everybody had a MTRC® (or Griswald Dreck's knock-off version, the JapZapper®) and going to the theater, even in a fun disguise, became a total nightmare. Nobody could agree on what were the cool or lame parts of movies, and with 300 people in the theater there were so many piss breaks that watching a movie was like trying to play Quake on a Commodore 64.

Hence the sad but valuable lesson I've lived and learned to pass on to you, commune flock: If you ever find yourself in a position of absolute power, don't fuck it up by assuming that everybody's got good taste in movies. Bricks out.

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