You Have an App for That?

Recently after school one day I came upon a student unrolling a roll of toilet paper. Fortunately, the toilet paper was not real. He was actually unrolling a pretend roll of toilet paper on his IPod while other students watched. Curious, I opted to investigate.

“What are you doing?” I asked, uncertain if I actually wanted to know.

“Unrolling toilet paper,” he muttered, his voice full of that precious adolescent inflection that reminded me I was very stupid.

“Hmmm,” I continued, deciding it was time to bring out a bit of my trademark hipness. “Does your IPhone come with that app?”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not an IPhone. It’s an IPod. You think my parents would let me have an IPhone?”

“Do they know what you’re doing with your IPod?”

He shrugged and another student, a member of his audience, chimed in. “You download it for free. My best time is five seconds.”

“Is that good?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

“No, it’s not. That sucks. I’ve done three seconds before.”

“Yeah, right!”

“Watch me!”

Leaving them to their intense fake toilet paper debate, I retreated to collect my own thoughts. What is worse, I considered. That such a download exists; that an actual person was probably paid actual money to design this application? That a fourteen-year-old would use valuable time to unroll pretend toilet paper? Or that his peers would waste their own time to watch the fake toilet paper be unrolled?

Who knows? Life is full of such questions, and a junior high school, which is where I spend about forty-five hours a week, is full of a disproportionate amount. What I do know, believe it or not, is that this experience may have saved Illinois from certain financial ruin. Reflecting on this lad’s intense devotion to his fake toilet paper amusement, an idea hijacked my brain in the form of these four words: Fantasy Farming Online Gaming.

I propose that we use technology, along with two of Illinois’ most precious vices—farming and gambling—to save our terrible, terrible economy. Fantasy Farming will operate like this: At the beginning of each farming season, participants will “purchase” an Illinois farmer for a reasonable sum of money, via a lottery system. Once the gamers know what farmer they have acquired for the year, they will have exactly two weeks to research their hero online, either from their personal computer or their overly expensive hand-held device. They will uncover vital statistics about their farmer, such as his total acres planted, his seed and pesticide and herbicide choices, along with his preferred brand of smokeless tobacco. With this information, coupled with the gamer’s knowledge of weather predictions and soil quality, the fantasy farmer will predict how many total bushels—soybeans, corn, whatever—the real farmer will harvest by the end of November. The closest three fantasy farmers will win a considerable monetary prize based on their accuracy, with the remaining money going into the state’s dismal coffers.

Now, some may ask, “What if there are more fantasy farmers than real farmers?” Well, for financial reasons, hopefully there will be, but no matter. Fantasy farmers can share real farmers. Providing the two gamers have different bushel predictions, it would not be a big deal.

“What if a real farmer goes into cahoots with the fantasy farmer and ‘cooks the books’ so to speak, manipulating the numbers or even modifying their actual harvest to help a particular gamer win?” This, again, would be a non-issue and would actually reinforce another great Illinois pastime: nauseating graft.

“What if disaster strikes?” Some may wonder. “What if we have a stormy spring, for example, that messes up everyone’s predictions? A Kansas Scenario, if you will, named after that state’s reputation as a tornado magnet and also on account of their recent NCAA tournament performance.” Again, who cares? Farming is a risky business, and Fantasy Farming will be, too. We’re 14 billions dollars in debt, so, you know, we’re kind of running out of options. If you have a better idea, by all means, write to Springfield and see what happens. I’m sticking with this. The goal, folks, is to generate revenue, not provide citizens with a fun, harmless diversion. That's what river boats are for.

Granted, it’s probably too late in the season to enact my idea for this farming season. As they say in Chicago, though, there’s always next year, which gives our lawmakers plenty of time to get together with the folks over at Apple. Surely they can work out the details for this great new app Illinois residents can purchase and download before Christmas. Imagine a world where the average citizen pays attention to things such as crop rotation and weather patterns, instead of, for example, how fast they can unroll pretend toilet paper.