Minions fighting. DT writes in:

Your Magnificence,

I write to you in outrage at the Island Dweller’s latest missive to Your Furriness, specifically, he refers to you as, “Your August Majesty”. I have airborne ballet-trained Myrmidons on the way to level his island even as we speak. When they’re done, they’ll raise his head on a pike, with a sign reading, “He’s majestic every month of the year, not just August!”.

Your Obedient Lackey,

D.T.

You expect us to sort this out; perhaps we would, but the Czar is itching to see a good whomping. The only problem is that Island Dweller spends a lot of his time in a desert at our behest, and DT will need to figure out where to send the Myrmidons.

But thanks. And MC writes in with a brilliant question-cum-suggestion:

Dreaded, awful, not particularly merciful Czar,

Read over your recent communiques on polling. I wonder if polling organizations might do better if they used Caller ID properly. I am pretty sure that many of the calls I’ve gotten in the past month that are only identified as “Toll Free” were polling outfits. At certain times (maybe not many, but certain times) I might be willing to answer a national or local political poll. However, I’m not interested in risking a telemarketer or other undesired character on the other end. I know, I could always hang up on (or hunt down) the undesirables, but still….

It’d be nice if the Caller ID would tell me “Hi, I’m a pollster” rather than telling me “There’s a 90% chance you don’t want to answer”. Maybe they think the caller knowing it’s a pollster biases the responses, but would they rather live with the bias a 9% response rate causes?

Um, yeah. The Czar just saw some people commenting today that they would love to participate in a political poll, but they never get called.

Often, though, this is because when you register for a particular political party, you are suddenly less desirable. They already know your affiliation and simply chalk you up accordingly. It is when you are undecided or independent that you get targeted. A lot.

That said, the Czar participated in numerous calls this year, especially around Republican-primary time. Here, our party affiliation attracted attention from pollsters. The other two were clearly Rasmussen calls based on the slick touch-tone interface and intelligent questions.

What say you, pollsters? Ready to leap into the next century? By the way, pollsters, it is the 21st.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.