It’s the POCA Annual Survey!

It’s the POCA Annual Survey!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2015POCAsurveyGC296KY

This blog post is gonna be a little bit different. You know those Choose Your Own Adventure books? Those books that after reading a few pages it asks you to make a decision and depending on the decision you go to a certain page and continue reading from there? Yeah, well this blog post is like that except you skip or go back to specific paragraphs. Ha ha! Honestly I don’t know why these kinds of books don’t win the Nobel prize for literature on an annual basis! But let’s begin.

If you want to cut to the chase and just do the damn survey go here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2015POCAsurveyGC296KY

1
Who is supposed to fill out this survey? Community Acupuncture clinic owners and/or trusted employees, that’s who. Every year since 2008 we have surveyed Community Acupuncture clinics to see how they are doing and what they are doing. It gives us a good idea how we are collectively doing. Are people making a living doing CA? How big are the clinics? Is there an optimal size for a CA clinic? How many employees are there, both punks and non-punks? And collectively how many treatments did we give in 2014? (We had over 900,000 treatments last year from the clinics that did respond; it would be very cool to cross the 1 million treatments mark this year.)

To find out if non-POCA members can fill out the survey go to paragraph 10.
To read math jokes supplied by my son Lucas, go to paragraph 8.

2
Survey closes on May 1st so get your results in ASAP!

To find out what the first person to fill out the survey wins plus what everyone who fills out the survey gets, go to paragraph 10.
To find out what a major national women’s health magazine has to do with the survey, go to paragraph 3.

3
Here is another incentive! There is a major national women’s health magazine that is planning to run an article about POCA in its June issue. We are not allowed to say which magazine, let’s just say it was a surprise to us! However, they really would like to get a figure for the 2014 total estimated POCA treatments to put in the article so that they have the most recent statistics. The magazine goes to the printers in mid-April and will be on newsstands by mid-May. Which means we need to get our estimate to them by early April.

Come on people! We all know we really did 1 million treatments in 2013, it’s just that not everybody reported! This is our chance to cross the 1 million line in a national magazine, so let’s take it! This is the kind of press that money can’t buy — well, OK, it can buy it, but none of us could ever afford it! Get your numbers in ASAP!

To help out with POCA Tech (don’t worry, we’re not asking for $$), go to paragraph 7.
To read a story, go to paragraph 9.

4
What do you call it when a banana eats another banana? Canabananalism.
Jumping off a Paris bridge makes you in Seine.
If you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen the mall.
How about when a child TV star is shading herself at the beach under a handkerchief as a banana eats another banana? HannaMontanaBandanaCabanaCanabananalism.

If you missed the math jokes, go to paragraph 8.
More jokes, go to paragraph 5.

5
If you gained the ability to be aware of the smell of pennies ever since your friend Sen mailed you some then you can….
Sense cents’ scents since Sen sent cents.

The miniature leopard swings back and forth while an IBM-compatible OS embedded in a Spanish motorcycle assists compliant millenials….
Ocelots oscillate; also, late ossa-laid Dos’ll aid docile aughts.

When a Greek ninja organizes a specific event for a particular fetish.
The discreet Crete’s discreet meet and greet for feet.

If you just LOVE word-valanches, go to paragraph 5 and read it again.
To read me threatening you if you do not fill out the survey, go to paragraph 11.

6
First clinic that answers the survey gets free registration at the POCAfest of your choice.
Everyone who fills out the survey gets a one free patient membership.

Who is supposed to fill out the survey again? Go to paragraph 1.
To find out what a major national women’s health magazine has to do with the survey, go to paragraph 3.

7
This is not really about the survey, but we’re slipping it in because we think you might actually read this email. It’s about POCA Tech. But this time we are not going to ask you for money! Or library books! We’re going to ask you for something entirely different: help in finding foundations. You might have seen on the POCA blog that POCA Tech recently got a $10,000 donation (https://www.pocacoop.com/prick-prod-provoke/post/we-are-so-lucky-post-3). The only reason that this happened was because of POCA relationships. Apparently, about 90% (seriously, 90%) of foundations are under the radar and the only way to find them is by knowing somebody. The odds are very, very high that with all the people who come through our clinics, we are connected without knowing it to some other foundations that would want to help POCA Tech. So we’re asking you to check your connections. Do you know anybody who is connected to a foundation? Would you like to put up a sign in your clinic that says, “hey, are you connected to a foundation? POCA Tech would like to apply!” We have a template Letter of Inquiry all ready to go if you find somebody (let us know if you want to see it). That’s it! Thanks for reading!

To read about a mean cowboy, go to paragraph 9.
To find out when the survey closes, go to paragraph 2.

8
Why did the polynomial plant wilt? Because all of its roots were imaginary.
What do you call a male geometer who spends a lot of time at the beech? A tan gent.
Why aren't there any Calculus teachers in Little Rock, Arkansas? Because everyone there hates integration.

To read stories about bananas, go to paragraph 4.
To find out when the survey closes, go to paragraph 3.

9
A mean lookin' cowboy was sitting by himself in a Saloon. He was a pretty intimidating sight, so no one bothered him as he downed a few whiskey and beers. After chugging his last drink he slammed some coins on the tabletop and got up to leave. Right after he left though he came storming back in and said,
“Listen up you mangey bastards” and everyone, terrified, immediately fell silent.
“Someone done took my horse. Now here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna order me another drink, finish it, and when I walk back outside this time my horse BETTER be there or else I'm gonna do what I did in Texas… and believe me, I don't want to do what I did in Texas!”
Like he said, after he finished his drink he walked outside and sure enough, someone had returned his horse. He was getting on it when one of the bar patrons ran up to him and sheepishly asked,
“Sir I don't mean to bother you but I just have to know, what did you do in Texas?”
The cowboy looked at him square in the eyes and replied,
“I walked home”.

Want a prize? Go to paragraph 6.
To find out if we want non-POCA CA clinics to fill out the survey, go to paragraph 10.

10
Note that we are talking about all CA clinics here, not just POCA clinics. We are aiming for a census of all the CA clinics in the world to get as good an idea of how we are doing as possible. Most CA clinics are POCA clinics and while we’d love to have all CA clinics be POCA clinics we understand that some don’t want to.  When we report our final total number, we’re only going to count POCA-qualified clinics, but because we are data geeks we’re curious about what non-POCA-qualified clinics do too. So we still want you to respond, even if you aren’t currently on Locate A Clinic. (Also, we have learned from past years that plenty of you are going to fill out the survey regardless, so we’re just making it official.)

When does the survey close? Go to paragraph 2.
To find out happens to you if you do not fill out the survey toot sweet, go to paragraph 11.

11
I keep sending you emails like this and the jokes will get worse and worse and worse and worse… (Note: if you are truly twisted and want to keep receiving these emails, let me know.)

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2015POCAsurveyGC296KY

Author: Skip Van Meter

Skip is Lead Acupuncturist and Co-Founder of <a href="https://www.workingclassacupuncture.org/" target="_blank">Working Class Acupuncture</a> in Portland, Oregon. With the earlier part of his life spent acquiring knowledge about geology, urban planning and teaching high school, he has now been an acupuncturist for 19 years, using about a 1,750,000 needles poking his patients. He likes all things soccer, has three fabulous sons, the best wife in the world, and a great dog and two cool cats.