Most of our victims had to be captured before they could be polled, and wriggled like little fishies until we were done and allowed them to escape. However, some decided to take some initiative. One fellow, a young vendor, took aside the female Gamma Team, all the while grinning and gesturing towards the display table, and told us that he would be happy to take the survey - if we would buy some underwear. Eh heh. Holding back our instinctive desire to shout "Ecchi!" and slam him against the back wall with one mighty bitchslap, we tried to look flattered, blushed, and polled him ... forcibly (after we introduced him to Evan the Abnormally Large). No underwear was purchased.

After viewing the results of the New York poll, we notice that nobody made it past level 2, but almost everyone made it past level 1. In other words, when these people hear the word "anime," visions of Pikachu dance in their heads. Thus reinforcing our belief that God is against us and wants us to have that third yellow Valium.*

Next on the list of places to poll was the park in our hometown of Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Emphysema Jen was dropped from the Team (for obvious reasons) and replaced with Leyan the Annoyingly Smart. I was still so doped up from all that Valium* I had to take in New York that polling was kind of tricky. And the people we might have attracted were all scared off by the sight of me dancing on a picnic table, singing along with Steely Dan - "How about a kiss from your Cousin Dupree?" I had a great time, but the rest of Team Gamma despaired of finding anyone willing to talk to us, and decided that an inebriated game of Frisbee would be more fun anyway. Then we realized as it began to rain that we'd spent the whole day playing Frisbee and hadn't polled a single person. This, of course, led to more Valium* consumption (we'd upgraded to the blue pills by this time). We no longer questioned God's crusade to ensure our eminent failure but rather accepted it as an innate circumstance of living.

The following day, after a couple pots of coffee and a few trips to the bathroom to remove the last of the keg and those elephant-sized Valium* from our system, we headed off to the Bridgewater Mall, at the crossroads of three New Jersey highways. Here, armed with shopping bags filled with Alka-seltzer, Pepto-Bismol, Ammodium AD and of course our old friends Samuel Adams and Valium,* we hoped to poll people from a variety of places in one fell swoop of deft census. To our surprise, the results were heartening, so heartening that it took only a few white Valium* to keep us afloat. Of the people we polled, many were more knowledgeable about anime than we dreamed possible after our run-in with the bland New Yorkers. About 43% of the people we talked to made it through level 2. But by far the most impressive results were from a clerk we polled at "Wizards of the Coast." He passed all four levels on the first try with ease. Then he made a comment about "Cardcaptors" vs. "Card Captor Sakura," and we knew we had found one of our own. In the course of our conversation, we learned that not only is he an anime fan, but also fluent in Japanese. He majors in this language and will be traveling overseas to study in Japan soon, after which he hopes to become a teacher **applause**. It was worth polling all those people and going on all those Valium benders if Team Gamma has found another person to share our insane hobby … and maybe a couple shots of my new favorite cocktail: gin and Valium.*

* A Guide To Valium, courtesy of Team Gamma: 5 white pills = 2 yellow pills = 1 blue pill. Watch out for the purple pills - they use those on elephants.