Counting in the U.S.A.

In my ongoing efforts to prove I am a model citizen, I followed instructions for once and filled out my Census form yesterday. Of course, the government will probably never get it, because the forms have disappeared in the random pile of junk mail and useless fliers that is our dining table. It’s not like it really matters though, because I have a suspicion that the box that we thought was for outgoing mail is actually a bird feeder.

Regardless of my example, the rest of you should really mail in those forms. The Census takes place only once every ten years, so it is entirely possible that you will be dead before you ever take another one. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you (yes I did), but I think it is really important that you fill out this form. This really is the only way we have of determining how many people we have living in this country. Or if you believe the unstable guy in my journalism class, it’s how the government tracks us so they can send nuclear weapons to kill us. Now, I always figured that if you are using nuclear weapons, you don’t really need to know where exactly a person is. You just sort of need to know which general hemisphere they are in. Anyway, keeping track of the millions of people in the country is a lot harder today than back in the days of cavemen Wog and Oog.

Wog: So with me, let’s see… that’s 40 people.

Oog: Actually, I think you counted illegal immigrants.

Wog: We don’t even have countries; how do we have illegal immigrants?

Oog: I don’t know, but those guys over there sure are good at picking berries.

But why is it so important that we know how many people live here? Mainly so they know what population to put on those stupid signs in little hick towns that say something like "Silver Hills: Home of the First DUI, Population 324." But knowing where people are is also very important for democracy and representation. The U.S government allots a state a certain amount of representatives based on how many people live there, so not filling out your form could cost you on Capitol Hill. For instance, since most of the people living in North Dakota don’t know how to read, a lot of them didn’t fill out their forms. As a result, the U.S government thinks that only seven people live in the entire state, even though everyone knows that number is closer to about 15. This of course means that North Dakota only has one representative in the House, and that representative is actually a moose.

So unless you want your state to miss out on useless million dollar failed projects and National Mothball Museums, you need to fill out those forms. And of course, as with all official forms, I highly encourage you to cheat. For instance, on my form I’ve established that 300,000 people currently live in our two-bedroom apartment. This means that I expect that our apartment will shortly be declared its own Congressional district, and since only my roommate and I actually live here, I’m pretty sure we have a pretty good chance of getting elected.

Of course, we don’t want all of you to do this. Because then we will have some ridiculous population and we’ll have to start drowning baby girls just like the Chinese, and we don’t want that. Besides, being a Congress person is overrated. You have to wear suits all the time and you have to pretend you give a damn about the people who elected you and you have sit through long meetings and everyone keeps track of the hookers you hire. It can be very stressful; do you think all these legislators sex text their aides because they are old perverts? No, they do it because they are so stressed out going about the very democratic process of getting re-elected.

Also, the Census report affects how many electoral votes that a state gets, which is very important if for some reason you care who becomes the president of the United States. I’m especially bitter about this, because I come from Hawaii, a state that doesn’t get many electoral votes. In the 2008 election, CNN declared the election over before the polls in Hawaii even closed. Of course, maybe this is for the better, since a lot of the people I knew back in Hawaii didn’t vote, and in some cases were unaware that an election was going on. For instance, my friend Chris. This is the conversation we had over the phone when CNN called the race.

Me: So did you see the news?

Chris: I’m on the beach right now.

Me: You didn’t vote in the election?

Chris: Was that today?

What killed me was that I was mad at him not because he was taking for granted one of the most basic liberties that our ancestors fought for, but because I wanted to be on the beach too. Instead, I was stuck in the snow where I am now forced to care about things like elections and Census forms because I have nothing better to do. You know what? I’m tired of this. Forget about everything I just said about being patriotic. You should just follow the example set by Boulder and use your Census forms to roll joints. Those stoners probably solve more problems than Congressmen anyway.