The FAKE CRISWELL


Biography

Who is the Fake Criswell? Where did he come from? What will he be doing in the future?

The story of the Fake Criswell begins in a small Midwest town in the 1960s. A young boy is born to unassuming parents, who immediately recognize that the child is quite an unusual boy. His first word, spoken at a mere 18 months: "GREETINGS!"

As the young lad grew, he developed a piercing stare that could stop pedestrians on the street at 50 paces. An Indiana newspaper from the time has a report on a pumpkin-eating contest that was interrupted by "...a local boy who wordlessly stared at all participants, un-nerving them to such a degree that, to a man, they all immediately vomited up the contents of their stomachs, so scared were they."

We have reason to believe that the boy mentioned in this article was our man, the Fake Criswell!

At the tender age of 18, the young man entered a reputable two-year college near his home town. His major: Predicting Science. (Communications minor.) Finishing his course work early in the day after household chores, he then took his daily bike ride over to the office of the local newspaper, where his piercing stare cut through the newsroom windows and often caught the linotype workers unawares. Yes, they too often threw up the contents of their stomachs within hours.

After two years of this rather disturbing routine, the boy was asked to leave town. He hopped a boxcar and headed to the West Coast. So fantastic was the lad's predicting power that his reputation proceeded him, even without prior experience, and by the time he reached Los Angeles, he already had a contract to write a newspaper column!

This column, "Fake Criswell Predicts," was apparently published in a newspaper, although no known copies of this column have survived. It was within the hellish confines of this seldom-read paper that the Fake Criswell honed his technique of making predictions of the future. "Keep it vague," he often told his co-workers (when they weren't busy vomiting up their lunches at the sight of the man), "and the readers will fill in the rest of the details."

This technique of making hazy predictions that are close enough to the readers' personal details carried the Fake Criswell through at least a year of desperate living. Then, at the age of 21, the Fake Criswell had a fantastic vision!

He suddenly realized that he was the alter ego of The Amazing Criswell, a psychic that had his heyday in the 1950s making incredibly specific, but wildly inaccurate, predictions. With this realization, the Fake Criswell knew what he had to do. He abandoned the safe tidal pool of vague yet meaningful predictions, and swam for the deep and choppy waters of the specific yet wildly inaccurate predictions.

As his style changed, so to his accuracy rate began to plunge. Where he once had a solid 100% accuracy rate, the Fake Criswell suddenly saw his numbers plunge to a paltry 87%. A desperate Fake Criswell considered several options, including quitting the predicting business, creating a new identity, and murdering the subjects of all his inaccurate predictions.

After a long soul search, however, the Fake Criswell decided to make lemonade out of these futuristic lemons, and cheerfully adopted the slogan that he uses to this day: "87% accuracy guaranteed, or your future cheerfully refunded."

Today the Fake Criswell divides his time between his adopted home of Los Angeles and his Midwest office space. He is currently at work on several collections of his predictions, which he dearly hopes to get published before the United States reaches an illiteracy rate of over 50% (currently predicted to happen in the year 2079).

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