I elbowed Andy in the ribs; “How many old people did you get?”

“Listen,” he said, “You wouldn’t help me pass out flyers for this stupid thing so I did what I could do.”

“So you only invite people who have never even heard of the internet to come critique us on what we’re doing wrong?”

“Well YOU were supposed to help me pass out the flyers! Excuse me if I got lazy and just left a stack in their evening drop box!”

“I TOLD YOU that I was busy watching the Oxygen Network.”

While Andy and I silently bickered back and forth the remaining “First Annual Stolensoap Focus Group” members filed in to the skating rink that we had reserved for the half hour.

See, we had noticed that only our Mom’s had been reading our web site lately so we wanted to hold a meeting of sorts where we could pick the brains of some folks to see what we could do to up our web traffic. Unfortunately due to my negligence and Andy’s lame ass-ness we got a crowd of geriatrics from the local moose lodge.

As one of the focus group members complained about the half eaten bag of trail mix that we were passing off as a “refreshment”, I took my chance and elbowed Andy again-this time harder.

“Douche bag,” I sneered.

“Lazy F!#$,” he said, clearly stepping over the line by bringing curse words into the fray.

It was then that one of the members got our attention by clearing his throat…or choking…one of the two.

“Are you boys gonna jive ass over there or are you going to ask us about soap?” He said. I kind of snickered at him because his glasses were really thick and everyone knows that mean’s that a person is a nerd.

Oh, that and because he said, “ass”.

Andy stood up; “Thank you everyone for coming to United Skate land to talk to us today about our website. Are any of you familiar with Stolensoap?”

Lots of blank stares followed. Blank stares behind thick glasses. C’mon people, how can you NOT laugh at thick glasses?

“Okay,” Andy said, “Stolensoap is a humor web site that Ray and I write together. We do our best to post a funny column each week detailing our feelings on life and other topics.”

It was then that we took a bathroom break.

“Listen,” I said to Andy, “this isn’t working. They don’t even know who we are.”

“That’s exactly the way we want it!” Andy beamed. “We can get their honest opinions this way!”

It was at this moment that we noticed our focus group members were starting to leave.

“Hey!” I yelled, “get back here!”

“All you two boys do is fight,” said a woman who’s name tag identified as Gladys. “We can watch that at home. We don’t like this play anymore.”

Thus went our first and last attempt at doing a focus group for everyone’s favorite web site (we’re up to 25 visits a week that tells us so!). Since it lasted a whopping four minutes and got us no where please be a dear and fill out the following simple questionnaire. When you’re done, enclose a $20 check and drop it in the mail to us so we can see what you the reader thinks about our site. From all of our responses we’ll randomly select one reader who will win a Nintendo entertainment system. Don’t be surprised when the winner looks like me in a wig.

Why do you read Stolensoap?

a) ‘Cause it’s funny, yo
b) Friend suggested it
c) It came up first in the results list when I Googled “Daddy’s Little Girl Gone Wild”

What do you tell people who ask you about Stolensoap?

a) It’s hilarious, yo
b) I suggest it to you if you like stuff that will make you pee your pants
c) I don’t read that crap. Stop looking in my web history

What could we do to improve Stolensoap?

a) Nothing! It’s da bomb, yo
b) Stop using the word, “Douche bag” so much
c) Stop using Andy

Thank you so much for helping us help you. Now don’t forget to mail this in to us. Oh, and don’t forget to include the twenty bucks. That’s the most important part of this whole scam…I mean…very important exercise to help us improve.

Copyright © 2007 Ray Tice
Please do not remove the copyright from this work.

Send by Email! | Contact Us! | Permanent Link