Introducing FCN's Reader Survey

With growth and expansion come growth pains and dangerous collapses. While we sincerely hope to avoid the latter, our recent growth brings with it the need for a census. Wait, we never informed you all about our latest reader, did we?

Reader number ten is an exceptionally overweight individual named Chip. Chip's main reason for coming to our page was to find solidarity. That's right, our tenth reader came to FCN because he wanted to find dumb people with whom to associate. Chip has, according to his G-Talk picture, an affinity for tight white undershirts and the style he chooses does little to hide his bulky middle or hairy back. He sent us a long email full of lovingly misspelled words in which he poured out his life's wish to work as a corporate executive at a Fortune 500 company. We assured him in our reply that white collar work isn't all it's cracked up to be and that he would be much happier working graveyard at Taco Bell while supporting eight kids and his own beer belly. We also advised that one major prerequisite to the Chief Executive's chair is teeth brushing and that he might want to consider other personal hygiene innovations as well.

Yeah, we really hit it off.

Anyway, we were remiss in not informing you of the growth in readership immediately. After all, ten is a huge milestone (three more than the perfect number, two less than a dozen and eight away from legal) and the advance is something we should all share in.

Speaking of sharing, it recently came to our attention that we don't know that much about many of FCN's faithful readers. Actually it didn't come to our attention; it was never there to begin, but you get my drift. We know your IP addresses, what kinds of websites you visit and all your computer's stats, but we don't know meaningful things like the stuff the U.S. Census Bureau asks.

In an effort to remedy the situation, FCN has enlisted the support on an online Blog Reader Survey tool, which asks an arduous number of difficult and pointed questions to ascertain your true feelings about FCN. The survey is so complete and, well, long that you shouldn't attempt to answer all of them, at least not on one meal. Fill out as much as you like and then send it in.

Speaking of which, here is the link to the survey.

Which, for those of you who don't click on things, is:

http://www.blogreaderproject.com/survey/b0dcc72b74f8ce1d0a43b7bc85f444a1

Or you can find the link cleverly hidden in our sidebar.

We won't fib and say the information requested by the survey is essential, but we are curious; the more data you can provide the better. At the end of the survey (whenever we decide to close it), we will cull through the online results and post some information we find particularly juicy. Empirical data taken out of context can be riotously funny, so you will want to come back to read our misinterpretation of the results.

So what are you doing? Go take the survey!

Homies, Day 1: Night of the Living Dead Pooh-Bears

I don't pretend to understand why a household of women* asked two derelict college students to house-sit for them while they were vacationing in Zimbabwe. But I do understand perfectly why the derelict college students agreed in a heartbeat. Big house, minimal schedule, two big TVs, and, perhaps best of all, a pink-walled room loaded for bear (literally) with stuffed animals. We were asked to spend a week looking after various flora and fauna around the house. We agreed.

We arrived around eight yesterday evening and moved in. It took about seven trips from the car to the living room to cart in all our essential junk, but we managed. Then, after a short and very masculine celebration that everyone is glad wasn't filmed, we got down to the serious business: movie watching.

We took a quick break to deal with the animals (two succulent bunnies and an over-friendly dog), then plopped our lazy selves back in front of the ol' tube and soaked up some more cinematic goodness. We could tell this was going to be a good week.

Around two in the morning, we stumbled off to bed. I was lucky enough to sleep in the pink-walled, bear-loaded room. The lights went down and I pulled the blankies up to my chin, fiercely hugging an adorable head-sized panda named Panda.

A half-hour later, I was still wide awake, and sweating like a dog. Actually, that's not a good analogy. Dogs don't sweat. In any case, I was upset. There were about a dozen different pooh-bears scattered around the room, and they were all watching me. It was freaky. I couldn't sleep.

At four in the morning it was beyond freaky. I was standing in the middle of the bed, turning in sudden jumps to make sure one of the other pooh-bears wasn't sneaking up on me, waving poor Panda like a weapon. The pooh-bears all just leered back at me in quiet contempt, waiting for me to drop off to sleep.

That's when I heard it; a quiet thump-thump like something out of Poe's Tell Tale Heart. I could hear the bears' hearts beating!

One of the stuffed creatures had a most hideous eye. It had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it and whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold.

I couldn't take it any longer. Screaming at the top of my lungs, I flung myself down the hall to my homie and fellow FCN contributor's room. I found him sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed. There was mosquito netting pulled tightly all around him. The scene was strange enough to make me stop short. When I opened my mouth to ask what was going on, he slowly raised his finger to his lips, eyes still closed.

"Shhhhh ..."

Two minutes later, we both poured, screaming incoherently, into the dinky yellow car we use to get around, and spent the rest of the night reclining in the front seats, eyes wide open. The pooh-bears watched us sorrowfully from the second story windows until we drove away to school. Freaks.

* There's a guy in the household, too.