SOME CONVERSATIONAL TEXT This file combines all the text we have into one file, which you can search. If your search fails and you think it's our error, kindly advise. You can also get to Conversational text through the Master Contest List. ====================================================================== WEEK 1008, published February 10, 2013 February 7, 2013 Week 1008: Yeow, did the bills come in! Now let’s go to the movies. by The E — Pat Myers If your idea of an addictive time-suck is getting into political arguments on Facebook, or clicking on link after digressive link to even more Merrie Melodies cartoons on YouTube, think what it’s like to leaf through binders full of ... more than 500 Style Invitational columns in a search of a varied sampling of the best, most representative entries, cartoons, prizes and more from the past 10 years. Especially if another human is in the same room, enabling you to read entry after entry out loud. But at least I can say it’s for my job. And not only will we inevitably end up with slew of great stuff in the March 3 20th-anniversary retrospective (in print March 3, online, I hope, by Feb. 28), but I got to be reminded of some classic contests that clearly need another airing. This is one. Here are the original results from Week 524, https:**www.scribd.com*document*124383661*Results-of-Style-Invitational-Week-524 which were published a couple of months before I officially became Empress. But I think I had a hand in judging this contest; in the months leading up to when I overthrew the Czar, we had started to work together a bit. Note that while the original contest allowed both books and movies, this is just for film. If all goes as hoped, this new format of the Conversational has let me share with you Bob Staake’s two sketches for this week’s contest — he shared them himself this morning on Facebook, to demonstrate to his thousands of FB friends the silly demands he has to put up with from his various clients. I asked Bob on Tuesday morning which of two sample entries he’d like to illustrate: “The Brief Pelican” or “You Are 54 — Where Car?” He chose the latter, and in short order sent me the top drawing. See, I happen to be exactly 54. To me, this lady looked about 75. And “54” was the point of the joke — that your mind tends to start with the senior moments before the body actually turns senior.. It was the suggestion of my son, the Scion of the Style Invitational, who suggested that it’s easier to illustrate the concept of middle age with a man than a woman, because you can show a man as balding, paunchy, etc., but not elderly. With women, you pretty much have to go with a subtle amount of facial wrinkling to establish “in her fifties.” And it’s the beauty of Bob that a day later, he sent today’s sex-changed final, which I love. The contest: You can change the punctuation; capitalization shouldn’t be an issue. Don’t break up the words in the original into two or more words; the point is to rejigger the words in the title, not the letters. Yes, you have to use all the words in the title. As you can see from the results of the preceding contest, entries are generally funnier when it’s clear what the original movie was; if the movie is obscure, or if the words are rearranged beyond recognition, some of the humor will be lost, though perhaps not fatally. The Riotous Acts: The ‘joint legislation’ results of Week 1005 By my count, I’ve now judged the joint-legislation contest six times — for the freshmen (and sometimes exiting members) of the 109th through 113th Congresses, plus the 2010 off-year edition, in which we used only those legislators who were still in office since before the Invite did its first freshman contest in 1994. And , much as with the horse-“breeding” contests, they’re always a slog to judge, but a fun slog. Because it always yields so much funny stuff. By “slog,” I mean that many of the entries have to be puzzled out, said out loud; I can’t just move my eyes down the list. And of course because there are just so many entries from so many people (probably because it’s so easy to come up with some amusing combinations of two out of almost 100 names). But I’m always excited to see a lot of new names among the entrants, especially when they end up getting ink: I’ve been keeping track of new entrants (as opposed to people who actually get ink) only for a couple of years, as I update the e-mail list each week. But the 105 new names for Week 1005 were by far the biggest deluge; by comparison, I got 13 new people for Week 1007 (though many entrants were among those who started in 1005). Thanks to those Losers who took pains to include the “translations” of their entries but let me hide them while I gave the first read; putting them on a separate line, or listing them in a block below the group of entries, both worked well. It did prove useful a number of times when I wouldn’t have figured it out otherwise. I don't think I had to look up any entries that eventually got ink, but on the other hand, I’m reading hundreds of these entries at a time; after I see Esty used over and over to mean “is the,” I tend to forget that another reader might have to puzzle over it. As I did two years ago, I’m including the “answer key” for readers who can’t figure out the sound of the entry, or don’t get the reference. While some of them here can be hard to figure out, I still think they’re valid, especially if you have a sense of humor. As I warned the Style Invitational Devotees on Facebook earlier today: “Please try to turn down your griping dial this week about who’s getting credited for what combination of congressional names. There are going to be a lot of instances where someone had that combination, but with extra or fewer names attached, or with a very slightly different description. I have great faith that you will not let this wreck your day, and mine.” In fact, our winner today, Rick Haynes’s Heck-Pocan-Cook-Rice wasn’t unique in its entirety; some other entries had Pocan-Cook-Rice. But to me (and also to the Czar, whom I discussed this with) it was that starting “Heck” that turned the bill perfectly into a Marie Antoinette-style show of ignorant , contemptuous lack of compassion. It’s the fourth win for Rick (very misleading stats anagram: “He Is Cranky”), who recently retired to Florida from the D.C. area, and his 109th blot of ink. (These ink figures are from the last time Elden Carnahan updated the stats, so I’m sorry if the numbers are a couple short.) John Glenn (no, he’s not) of Tyler, Tex., who doesn’t enter often or with many entries but often gets ink when he does, gets Ink No. 19 (and 20) today, but his runner-up is his sixth ink “above the fold”; his “war in Yoho” was one of the few entries this week that made me laugh out loud. It’s a welcome return for longtime Loser Steve Fahey, who hadn’t been Inviting for years, it seems; Steve picks up his 165th ink, and 25th above the fold, since his debut all the way back in Week 104. And another always clever enters-now-and-again vet, David Smith, came up with the best of many takes on JFK conspiracies this week, for Ink No. 72. The HAW this week from Sunday Style Editor Lynn Medford — well, I don’t know if she actually emitted said HAW, since she’s in the newsroom and I’m home at Mount Vermin, but she liked it most — was the Horseford-Cartwright bill. Too inside, but cute was this “And Last”: The Jeffries-Payne Act to mandate that this contest be run with every new Congress. (Jeff Contompasis, who gripes about this contest every time.) Didn’t even make it to committee: The unprintable acts (DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE ANY TASTE) As I said, there were 247 entries that featured the legislative work of Rep. Peters. Holding-Peters. Pocan-Peters. Flake-King-Peters. Cook-Peters! And many, many others. I gave ink to two of them, but they won’t be in the print paper. And if I had to argue for those, you can see why these weren’t even close. (As often true in this section, I don’t necessarily consider all the entries inkworthy. But they’re funny in their tastelessness. (The “Schatz’ entries meaning feces ended up here as well.) The Gallego-LaMalfa-King-Peters Act addressing reverse sexual harassment. (Deb Dawkins) The Swalwell-Peters Act to promote the nutritional value of following through on oral sex. (Warren Standley) The Peters-Swalwell Act--Well, honey, it’s not really an “act”; it’s more of a “maneuver”. Here, let me show you... -- Divine Brown (William Verkuilen) The Peters-Flake Resolution, calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to officially retire the term ‘smegma’ and replace it with ‘organ dandruff’ (David Garratt) The Swalwell-Peters Act to regulate Your Mama. (Dixon Wragg) Brownley-Pocan Act in honor of ex-Senator Santorum (Mark Richardson) The Takano-Schatz Bill encouraging new members not to stink up the congressional washroom (Sam Ackerman) The Titus-Heck Act to allow more explicit advertising for K-Y Jelly (Neil Starkman) The Cook-Schatz bill for a fossil fuel alternative (Bill Clark) The King Schatz Brownley Act to declare that royal poop don’t stink. (Stephen Dudzik) Shatz-Titus-Heck Act - Congressional attempt to free logjams (Dave Komornik) The Yoho-Cruz-Castro-Wagner-Peters Act extending truth-in-advertising laws to prostitutes in the Tenderloin district and any other place a red-blooded American guy might reasonably expect to encounter an actual, you know, female, for crying out loud. (Paul Burnham, Gainesville) The Enyart-Titus Lubrication Research Act (Jonathan Hardis) myersp@washpost.com ====================================================================== WEEK 1078, published June 29, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1078: Broadway maladies of 1074; The fun of judging the Week 1074 parodies was tempered only by having to exclude so many. Washington Post Blogs June 26, 2014 Thursday 8:01 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1159 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I am going to be brief today (she lied as always), because I'd much rather you spend your Invite time reading the results of Week 1074, the songs about stage or movie musicals, written as parodies of songs from different musicals. This week's inkworthy entries are so well done -and so numerous -that a reader could think it wasn't all that hard to produce them. (Anyone who's written a good one will surely set you straight.) When Matt Monitto suggested this contest (along with a ready-made example), I jumped right at it. My only concern was that you did have to be familiar with musicals, which I defined for this contest as plays in which the characters do a significant amount of singing (which allowed for operas, but not movies in which songs play only as background music). This turned out to be no obstacle at all for the Loser Parodists, who sent both parodies and descriptions of everything from "La donne e mobile" to this year's overpoweringly popular Disney movie, "Frozen." I had great, great fun (perhaps my spouse less so -my parakeet, though, was in heaven) starting up the YouTube clips and singing dozens of the parodies out loud. I became better acquainted with plot points of "The Book of Mormon" and "Brigadoon" and was unfortunately infested with the earworm of "Would You Like to Build a Snowman." The only part of the process that wasn't fun was deciding which perfectly deserving parodies wouldn't make the list. In print, I fit in eight songs, two of them shortened; online, I kept adding one more and one more until I was left with my usual too many for any reasonable person to read through, let alone sing out loud or mentally in the time it takes to sing songs. It truly pains me to deny ink to work that not only required a lot of effort, but also should be read by others, because it's so good. So I hope I'll provide some comfort in posting non-inking songs once a day or so over the next couple of weeks on the Style Invitational Devotees page. I did this for non-inking parodies from last year's parody results for any movie described by a parody of any song, and I think they got more exposure and appreciation than if they'd been, say, the 27th song in the results. I chose to let a number of the songs run longer this time than I had in past years; chopping them would have weakened them, and in some cases would have rendered them unsingable. Among the great stuff not appearing today: "Anatevka" set to "Oklahoma!" and "Oklahoma!" set to "Anatevka," a pair sent by Nan Reiner, who simply outdid herself in this contest, sending nine outstanding parodies, along with clips of herself singing them. Kel Nagel also had the clever idea of setting the "Fugue for Tinhorns" trio from "Guys & Dolls" ("I've got the horse right here...") to the tune of the "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" trio from "Fiddler on tempered only by having to exclude so many. the Roof," and vice versa, stumbling only in the bridge of "Matchmaker," which I'm afraid didn't come close to matching the tune and words ("But my wife thought it worked when I sang it to her," Kel protested; as I said four weeks ago, you have to have someone else try to sing it, not just listen, since you won't be there for the reader to bend the accents of the word to your desired meter). And yes, this wasn't a week in which I could wait till the very end of the process to find out who wrote what: occasionally had to ask someone a question or ask the person to tweak something. On the other hand, I did very little editing this week; the parodies appear basically as they were sent in. This is Nan's ninth top win, and certainly not the first for parodies, and she's now up to 194 blots of ink. Plus, I guess, the point she gets from Stats Guy Elden Carnahan for having donated this week's prize. Melissa Balmain's hilarious take on "Frozen" -including the comparison of the princess's eyes to those of a lemur -brings her not only the vintage Year 2 Loser T-shirt that probably was never worn by Elden Carnahan, but also her 48th ink. Melissa, by the way, is the author of a brand-new collection of her very funny poems called "Walking In on People," and it's just a delight. Here's one called "Fed Up," which posits a different culprit in the Red Riding Hood story: Red Riding Hood's grandma had chest pains galore,cholesterol looming at two-forty-four,and blood pressure spikes. Though she kept it all quiet,her daughter found out and imposed a strict diet.No more would she bundle Red off with a pailof cookies for Granny; instead she sent kaleand casseroles ranging from foul to insipidbecause she had stripped them of every known lipid.One day Red arrived to find Granny in bed."Come closer, my dumpling," the dowager said.Forget the lame cover-up tale that came later:No wolf gobbled Red. It was Granny who ate her. Mark Raffman, who won last year's parody contest, finds himself now with 137 blots of Invite ink and yet another runner-up prize. And in fourth place is a veteran Loser but not someone whose name I connected with parodies: Kathleen DeBold, who first got ink in Week 697 but oddly chose to have an actual life, gets her seventh ink and her first "above the fold," for her nifty precis of "The Phantom of the Opera" using the wonderfully contrasting "A Spoonful of Sugar." Kathleen gets her choice of Loser Mug or Grossery Bag. The big change between this week's contest and our recent versions of it is that you actually have to find something that has a hyphen, rather than to use the first or last few letters of any word. Online, just use your search function and move down the page: Even though most Web pages don't break up words with hyphens just to make the line lengths more uniform, there are still plenty of hyphens to be found in modifying phrases, hyphenated names, compound words, etc. If your search lands you on a hyphen that was supposed to be another punctuation mark, like a long dash, don't use that. Ultimately, of course, the humor rests with the funny word and definition you come up with. Funny sample sentences are a great way to make a definition funnier; unfunny sentences somehow don't do the same trick. As you can see in the examples, the placement of the hyphen isn't all that important, but you need to include it to follow the conceit of the contest, even if it doesn't add to the humor. Loser Wrangler Pie Snelson is getting a group togther for a contingent to go to see fellow Loser Ward Kay's play "The Livonians" as part of the Capital Fringe festival in Washington on Sunday, July 13. The tickets, which usually cost $17 plus a $5 "button" that is the one-time fee to attend the festival, are $12 each if you get them in blocks of 10. (And the tickets can be used for any show.) So if you'd like to be part of the group, e-mail me at pat.myers@washpost.com ASAP and I'll forward you to Pie. I'll definitely be going. pat.myers@washpost.com ====================================================================== WEEK 1080, published July 13, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1080: Can you be so bad you're good?; The Empress of The Style Invitational blabs about the week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs July 10, 2014 Thursday 7:53 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1789 words Byline: Pat Myers Body It's been a long time since I ran a contest asking for bad writing, or "bad" anything. My predecessor, The Czar, ran many of these, the most famous being the "bad analogies" contest of Week 120, which continues to circulate under such titles as "Analogies Found in Real High School Essays," though his introduction to the results conceded that "there is a fine line between an analogy that is so bad it is good and an analogy that is so good it is bad." Exactly -and that's why I usually ask for "novel" or "humorous" or "creative" writing, and let the reader decide whether it's badness or cleverness that makes the entry funny. But the Czar persuaded me this month to give the Week 1080 contest a go. He'd been told about the delightfully terrible work of William Topaz McGonagall by our former Post colleague David Von Drehle, onetime editor of the Style section, now with Time Magazine, and one of the most elegant writers I've had the pleasure to edit; and the Czar quickly offered up a "tragedie" of his own to use as an example. You definitely want to check out the website I linked to in this week's contest; It's an attractive British site called McGonagall Online, and it features biographical nuggets, "245 of his best (?) poems," a featured "Gem of the Day" poem (such as the one I quote from in the this week's lead), and a shorter "Quote of the Day"; today's is "And for her bravery she got married to the miller's eldest son* And Hanchen on her marriage night cried Heaven's will be done." The trick for the Invite, however, is that something can't just be bad; it has to be funny bad: the images will have to be especially ridiculous; the rhymes will have to be laughable; the subject matter perhaps will be a funny idea or something comically inappropriate. So when I argued with the Czar over his suggestion -I'm famously skeptical of contest ideas -and I said, "We've had contests for terrible poetry before. I don't like them as much as for good poetry," he assured me, "Oh, i would read these and parodies of these!" So let's hope that the Invite's readers have a similar interest. More to the point than the "analogies" contest mentioned above, the Invitational has done quite a few contests over the years specifically asking for bad poetry. Here are some of them (links are to the results; scroll past the new contest on a given link): Week 47: Bad Valentine's Day poetry. Week 107: Poems featuring homonyms; the direction was to "create poems so bad they thud." blabs about the week's new contest and results Week 203: Very Bad Poetry: "Your poem should contain banalities masquerading as profundities, overstretched metaphors, etc. Special attention should be paid to dreadful syntax and painful rhyme." Week 243: "Write a rhyming poem of two to eight lines as a tribute to someone famous who died in 1997, the more awful the better. We will particularly value rhymes that thud, and extremes of emotion and sentiment." Here was one of the cases in which the Czar overruled his criterion of "bad" in favor of clever: "We were looking for overly maudlin poetry," he notes in the intro to the results, "but the best entries were more witty than woebegone. So we exercised our unchecked dictatorial powers and revised the criteria. Those readers who feel cheated, please form a line to the left and someone will be with you shortly." Week 279: "Come up with a treacly and deeply moving piece of crap. It must somehow mine joy and goopy inspiration from the vicissitudes of life. It must also rhyme. " And, in my own only previous contribution to the contest genre: Week 627: Write a limerick or other short poem with comically awful rhyming. So the angle this week is that the poem should focus on a "tragedy," as well as be comically melodramatic and bad. I think there's humor to be mined from choosing a comical "tragedy" -for one thing, that's a lot better an idea than making jokes about a truly depressing or horrific event, especially a recent one. But I'm not ruling anything out beforehand. It might even work with actual sad events. And, just as the Czar did, I might just end up being unable to resist some genuine wit. For those who haven't delved into the links above, here's the winner of Week 203, "Very Bad Poetry." The Czar says it is "one of my favorite entries of all time":The world's great mathematicians assembled for a lectureTo hear a rising star prove the Taniyama ConjectureAnd the young man astounded those who did hear himBy also casually proving Fermat's Last Theorem!And for this achievement, everlasting glory and acclaimWill forever go to, y'know, whatsizname.(Charlie Steinhice, Chattanooga, Tenn.) Only a few of which (the entries, not the results) might have qualified for Week 1080. In general, as both I and the Losercorps predicted, I received perhaps 1,000 double dactyls of which at least several dozen were inkworthy; I was able to fit 19 into the print Invite and share nine more in the online version. I erred in requiring a rhyme within the first line -that's never been a feature of double dactyls, from the start -but it didn't really matter, since it's a nonsense phrase anyway; rarely did it even factor into my choices. I did stick to the requirement that someone be mentioned in the poem, and that one line comprise a six-syllable term; this ruled out a few otherwise inkable entries ("Style Invitational," though it has lots of personality and is so conveniently double-dactylic, isn't a person). As I did in the example for this contest, I allowed such words as "nymphomanically" and "hyper-emphatically" to count as six syllables, even though the dictionary would break them into seven. I certainly pronounce them as six-syllable words. I didn't run any (I don't think) in which words were broken across two lines. Frequent subjects in Week 1080 included Benedict Cumberbatch (of course!), the Kardashian, Eric Cantor, Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg and Edward Snowden. But as you can see from the results, they ranged from Jesus of Nazareth to -it's becoming a running joke in the Invite -Your Mama. A number of verses referred to people who aren't quite historic, but have been out of the news for a long time; perhaps they weren't written specifically for this contest. (One person did venture that he was helpfully sending me one of his own, along with 24 favorites that he just stole.) I counted more than 20 entrants in Week 1080 who were new to the Invite; I think many of them heard about us after I went up and plugged the Invite last month at the West Chester Poetry Conference, and organizer Kevin Durkin -who suggested this contest -spread the word. The Loser roster now includes a dittyload of respected poets who've learned of us over the years. Today it expands by at least two First Offenders: R.S. "Sam" Gwynn, blabs about the week's new contest and results editor of the anthology Contemporary American Poetry, whom I met at the conference when we appeared on a panel about song parodies (between us, I was not the one who put on a terrycloth-towel cape and did the Elvis impression); and Susan McLean,, also a poet and professor, whom I haven't had the pleasure to meet, but probably doesn't do the cape thing. As usual, I didn't know who wrote this week's inking entries until after I'd judged them. (I had some hunches but was right only part of the time.) And it was great fun to discover that a First Offender had run off with first prize: I'll be sending out the Inkin' Memorial next week, along with his FirStink for his first ink, to Jeremy Horowitz, who zinged the failed gubernatorial campaign of UL-tra-con-SER-va-tive (he didn't use that!) Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia, who as attorney general tried to require invasive ultrasound procedures to women seeking abortions. I hope to see lots more from Jeremy. The other three bards "above the fold" this week are veterans of the Losers' Circle: Rick Haynes now has 11 wins and runners-up (with 120 blots of ink in all); Beverley Sharp is hard upon the Hall of Fame with 461 inks, including a ridiculous 43 above the fold; and Brendan Beary, well, even crazier totals than Beverley -in fact, something like double what she has. A number of people sent in entries about the Invitational, about the Empress, and about fellow Losers: I especially liked this ode to uber-wordsmith Chris Doyle, of the 1,578-ink Chris Doyle of Ponder, Tex.: Pindar-y PonderyChristopher Doyle is a Master of poetry - Limericks and such. No doubt today Chris's Lexi-dexterity'll Earn lots of ink for him.Me? Not so much. I JUST NOW looked up who wrote this and was surprised -and delighted -to discover that it's by not one of the typical poetry-ink winners, but by Tom Witte, another of the Invite's greats, but mostly through neologisms and other short-form contests. (Tom was right; he gets robbed of ink this week and holds at a mere 1,297 blots.) The audience on Facebook for the Style Invitational Ink of the Day has just shrunk by a big chunk because I can no longer post it (at least this month) on the Washington Post Style page (95,000 Likes) on Facebook. If that's where you'd been seeing it -or if you'd like to start seeing the daily little card with a classic Invite entry -go to bit.ly*inkofday and click Like, and you'll get it on your Facebook news feed. (You do need to look at it on Facebook, but accounts are free and you don't have to sign up with your own name.) Sad news from 57-time Loser Ward Kay: Ward, who's produced a number of plays in various cities, had to cancel at the last minute his production of "The Livonians," which was to have opened this weekend at D.C.'s Capital Fringe festival and to which a contingent of Losers had planned to attend. "The lead actor dropped out and we were already two actors short," Ward explained last night in a Facebook post; "The show has been cursed. The director was hospitalized last month. We've have three different leads with scheduling issues. I finally had to admit defeat." "The Livonians" is one of three Fringe plays that were canceled. Theater-stuff happens; it's very difficult to make theater work with a group of people who all have day jobs. Here's an article that quotes Ward. Some of the Losers and I will be going to other shows in the festival; we're still going Saturday evening to see "W3," a play on ecological themes featuring puppetry and, not least (okay, maybe least) the Royal Consort as the voice of a ghost whale); and Sunday at noon to see "Sage of Blackwell," a drama about a labor union official, with the Empress's daughter, Royal Scion 2, playing his longtime friend. If you'd like to join us for any of these, e-mail me at pat.myers@washpost.com or just show up. ====================================================================== WEEK 1081, published July 20, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1081: A proud tradition of utter stupidity; The Empress of The Style Invitational blabs about this week's contest and the Tom Swifty results Washington Post Blogs July 17, 2014 Thursday 7:53 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1868 words Byline: Pat Myers Body When you read stupid things on the Internet, it's hard to know if the writers (or those being written about) are being stupid or just playing at being stupid. The questions I'm quoting from the Yahoo Answers site in this week's Style Invitational struck me as authentic, and the comments responding to them as a mix of sincere and obviously snarky. (I've linked to each thread in the examples so that you can read the comments.) There really are a lot of ignorant - I mean uninformed - people out there. And, well, a lot of stupid ones too. The Invite has done several stupid-question contests over the years, in various forms. The first one, "Like, Duh" (Week 128, 1995), asked for "snappy answers to stupid questions," but that wasn't about comical ignorance; it was about questions whose answers were obvious, and the snarky response to them; Mad Magazine ran this sort of thing regularly. The results aren't so pertinent to today's contest, but they're pretty funny. Here are the top winners: Fourth Runner-Up: "Can I order a pizza?" "No, today we are delivering only gefilte fish." (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)-- Third Runner-Up: To a tall man: "Do you play basketball?" "No. Do you play miniature golf?" (Jim Jacobs, Arlington)|-- Second Runner-Up: "Are those twins?" "No, they're triplets, but I only take out two at a time. I rotate the third, like tires." (Gary Patishnock, Laurel, who has twins)-- First Runner-Up: "Do you know how fast you were going?" "I should think not, officer! At these speeds I prefer to keep my eyes on the road, not on the speedometer." (Jerrold M. Witcher, Takoma Park)-- And the winner of the stuffed and mounted turkey head: "Who do you think you are, anyway?" "I think I am Rene Descartes. Therefore, I am Rene Descartes. Who do you think you are?" (Phil Plait, Silver Spring) The contest that was most like today's was Week 217 (1997). Here are the examples the Czar offered, along with a warning that also pertains today. -If there is a God, and if He is a loving God, why does He allow bad things to happen, like, you know, when you hiccup that sour stuff and it tastes all yucky? -Why is the sky sort of greenish orange, or is that just me? -What is the sound of two hands clapping? This Week's Contest was suggested by Jonathan Paul of Garrett Park, who wins a rubber housefly that swells to the size of a baseball when you drop it in water. Jonathan says his teachers always told him there were no stupid questions, but he suspects this advice was wrong. Come up with truly stupid questions. And please spare us the ones about Grant's Tomb and why you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway, okay? We are looking for originality. The results are all one-liners, and a fair number of them actually fall into the obvious-answer category. As it sometimes happens with the Invite, the results of Week 1081 might tend toward something I hadn't had in mind, but blabs about this week's contest and the Tom Swifty r.... turned out to be much funnier --and this is why I'm so happy that the Losers are competing for a ceramic cup in the shape of a human breast, rather than, say, a diamond necklace: Report from Week 217, in which you were asked to disprove the old maxim that there are no dumb questions. Despite our warning to the contrary, many people submitted tired old jokes, and some tired new jokes, such as why people call those things "hemorrhoids" instead of "asteroids." Also, some people asked good questions that were too clever to win, such as this one by Bob Sorensen of Herndon: "Wasn't the Army looking for trouble by calling them `drill' instructors?" Here's another, from John Kammer of Herndon: "Why could the Professor build a nuclear reactor out of coconuts but not fix a hole in a boat?" These violated the fundamental precept of the contest. The questions had to be stupid. Sixth Runner-Up --Excuse me, does this pharmacy carry that "date rape" drug? (Russell Beland, Springfield)Fifth Runner-Up -- Why do people drive so close in front of me? Don't they realize it's dangerous? (Jerry Ewing, Fairfax)Fourth Runner-Up --Just where do you get off telling me what to do, Your Honor? (Elden Carnahan, Laurel)Third Runner-Up --Do I, like, have a shot at boinking you? (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)Second Runner-Up --Are you sure that's a spaceship behind the comet? Because I wouldn't want to make a mistake here. Okay, swell. Just checking. (Paul Styrene, Olney; John Kammer, Herndon)First Runner-Up --If you are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat? (Dave Ferry, Leesburg)And the winner of the demonstration-model prostate gland: If I win this week, can I have the $75 instead of the prostate gland? (Edith Eisenberg, Potomac) We also ran two contests called Caller IDiot, for stupid questions to ask customer service hotlines, as well as auto-related questions to ask the "Car Talk" guys. These actually are closer to the ignorant-questioner model than the results of Week 217. The top winners of Week 648: 4. To Pampers: "It says 'for up to 25 pounds.' Isn't that . . . kind of a lot of poop?" (Brenda Ware Jones, Jackson, Miss.; Dan Seidman, Watertown, Mass.) 3. To Blue Cross: "After a night of heavy drinking, I woke up to find an image of Muhammad tattooed on my chest. Do you think you might cover tattoo removal in this one case? It might be a pretty big health issue for me if I don't do something." (Fred Dawson, Beltsville) 2. : To The Washington Post: "I'm wondering about your name. I mean, you don't really deliver the paper by mail anymore. Wouldn't it be more accurate to call yourselves The Washington Guy Driving a Minivan?" (Russell Beland, Springfield) And the Winner of the Inker: To Unilever Corp.: "Why do your Dove Bars taste like soap?" (Kevin Dopart, Washington) From Week 736: 4. My son just got his license and wants a V-8 Mustang. I'm afraid he'll drive too fast, trying to impress girls. Should we have him neutered first? (Russ Taylor, Vienna) 3. My 1999 Ford Taurus doesn't run properly at night. See, I drive a lot for my job, and from 8:30 a.m. until 5, the car runs fine. But then I park it outside a tavern at 5:30, and when I come out a few hours later, it's dark and my car veers all over the road. Please help. (Chris Rollins, Cumberland, Md.) 2.When I drive into a parking lot and set my car on "Park," it just sits there, even if there are several empty places very close by. What am I doing wrong? (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) And the Winner of the Inker: When I get my 2004 Mustang up to about 85 miles an hour, I hear a high-pitched whining off to my right that persists until I wind down to 60. What can I do to shut her up? (Chris Rollins) blabs about this week's contest and the Tom Swifty r.... And from Week 827: The Winner of the Inker: To the White House: My 2006 Chrysler Sebring is hesitating when I step on the accelerator. When can I bring it in? (Jeff Hazle, Woodbridge) 2. To Procter & Gamble: I love your Charmin toilet paper, but I hate those rolls that dispense from the underside. Can you tell me where I can buy rolls that dispense from the top of the roll? (James Noble, Lexington Park) 3.To Whole Foods: Can I just come in to your downtown store and buy a cow? (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) 4. To Colgate: Goo goo ga ga ma ma. . . . What, you're not understanding? Then why do your instructions for your Peroxyl Antiseptic Oral Cleanser very clearly say, "Children under 2: Consult a dentist or physician"? (Les Greenblatt, Ann Arbor, Mich.) So this week, see what you can do about being stupid in some way without committing the stupidity of repeating these winners. You can see the complete results of the above contests on the Master Contest List at nrars.org. Will we have a follow-up contest with answers to these questions? We'll have to see how the entries shake out. I wasn't sure I could fill up a whole page of Invite with fresh, clever Tom Swifty jokes, ones that didn't repeat any of the results of Week 44. Not a problem: I'm running about 40 entries, and robbing a number of others. I got lots and also lots of entries; 2,000 is a conservative estimate. Not everyone seemed to understand what makes a Tom Swifty funny (at least in my book, but my book, my dears, is the book, she said patronizingly); some entries didn't really use wordplay, or used an adverb that really made no sense on any level ("It's true the world over, Tom said universally"). I received a number of entries with Tom saying something "testily," and had chosen Mark Richardson's -"One more low blow and you're disqualified!" the referee said testily -until I noticed the Week 44 runner-up "Well, at least she didn't cut off everything," John Bobbitt said testily," credited to three entrants. (A few others, making jokes about standardized tests, etc., just didn't make the cut.) Also, because I was so specific in the contest announcement that the wordplay had to involve an adverb or verb, I didn't include this clever adjective*noun play by Larry Gray: "Please reconnect my breathing tube," Tom gestured with a detached air." In general, the jokes worked best when the adverb in the Swifty applied to the sentence itself on a literal level. But occasionally, the adverb was comically opposite the point of the joke: "beatifically" for Ike Turner, "bashfully" for Muhammad Ali. It's likely that readers won't get the jokes in all the entries. I took the rare and risky move of explaining a few of the jokes in the intro, hopefully at a safe distance from them, to help turn readers in the right direction to get the rest. But there are also some references that not everyone will know; quite in-cred-ibly, the deposed Czar of The Style Invitational -a man whose Twitter avatar is a pile of dog poop -was not familiar with the term "deuce." I added a few explanatory links, but if you're stumped, feel free to ask in the comments thread where I post the Invite on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. The Devs won't mock you -really, they're very supportive. They save their snark for the Invite. Theorize as you will, but for some (i.e., no) reason, all four of today's "above the fold" ink-blotters are guys from Northern Virginia. It's the fifth win for Greg Arnold, but his first Inkin' Memorial -in fact, Greg's last first-place finish was in Week 290, in 1998. Greg is famous as the guitarist of the Dueling Loser Band, which has amused the Great Unwashed at many a Loser function. It's the 41st ink above the fold for Jeff Contompasis as he strides toward the 400-ink mark; Jeff Shirley once again finds himself in the Losers' Circle as well. But it will be the first Loser Mug or Grossery Bag for David Litman, who gets his fourth blot of ink today. However, one of those blots was a win -in Week 269 (1998): How to alleviate traffic on the 14th Street Bridge: Rename it Runway 90L. I can't make it there myself, but there will definitely be a Confirmed Loser Sighting this Sunday at 11 at the Busboys & Poets branch in close-in Hyattsville, Md. If you'd like to join the party, RSVP to Elden Carnahan here. ====================================================================== WEEK 1082, published July 27, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1082: Beyond the tweet; The Empress of The Style Invitational blabs about this week's contest and the neologism results Washington Post Blogs July 25, 2014 Friday 12:34 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 795 words Byline: Pat Myers Body We said it up front: We ripped this week's contest for altered band names right off Twitter. Here's the thread of contributions so far under the hashtag #RemoveALetterRuinABand. Most of the contributions aren't very funny or clever; a few are funny but not clever. Not because Twitter posters aren't clever (well, there is that) but because the thread - as well as, to some extent, the limit on tweet lengths - doesn't allow for creativity. Good thing we're here. We offer 19th-century turnaround time -Elizabeth Bennet could post a letter to Mr. Darcy in Derbyshire and get a snarky response, three times over, in the period I take to get around to looking at the entries and running the results -but you do get more of an opportunity to flaunt your skill at humor writing. And the chance to compete for limited-edition Bob Staake artworks: Only 100 of these sculptures were made, and only 500 of this print and this print. There are also only 100 of this Staake textile art, though we might put some more on the loom. Of course, you might be too funny and end up with a bobblehead of the Lincoln Memorial statue, or of a dayglo orange web belt embroidered with letters that sort of form Rolling Stones song names. It's a risk. In fact, I was surprised to find, from a scan of Elden Carnahan's One-Hit Wonders list on the Loser Stats page at nrars.org, that something like 87 people have won the whole contest but have never gotten another blot of ink, plus a few more who've won only the second-place gag prize. (Most shockingly, a full four hundred Losers were runners-up with their only ink, about 1 in 7 of the One-Hit Wonders.) Hey, those magnets might be getting valuable: If you saw the baseball All-Star Game last week, you might have seen this commercial for Intel in which Bob uses a "2-in-1" notebook*tablet (I think it's an HP Split) to both write and create artwork. Fortunately, the in-cred-ibly efficient Bobmeister can get his Invite work out of the way in about 3.2 seconds, because the photo shoot turned out to be an enormous production, involving the takeover of his Cape Cod home studio for several days by dozens of crew members, plus several other location shoots. Here's a piece about it by Publishers' Weekly, which notes that the commercial happens to coincide with the release of Bob's new picture book, "My Pet Book." Which is not a book about pets, but a book about a pet book. (He does sign copies you send to him, and even draws something along with his signature -see here and scroll down for directions.) Maybe it was a vacation week, or maybe there were too many restrictions and requirements (having to say what publication you got each entry from, plus which words you used?), but Week 1078 drew only about half the usual number of entrants, and very few new ones. Still, the Core Constituency produced a fine set of neologisms, though the ink wasn't spread around as much as usual -the 36 entries getting ink this week are credited to only 18 entrants, none of them a First Offender. week's contest and the neologism results Mike Gips has to find room for yet another Inkin' Memorial, his seventh win in all; his last was from the Mess With Your Heads contest of Week 1069. His winning pun -managing to create tasteful enough humor with a pointed allusion to a horrible disaster -gives him his 160th blot of ink, along with three honorable mentions to add to Mike's rapidly spreading puddle. Of course, a vacation and a visit to his wife's family in Greece isn't going to stop Kevin Dopart from sending a full complement of entries. I'm fully confident that if Kevin set to climbing K-2, I'd get weekly e-mails from a series of higher and then lower elevations. Kevin gets his 9,894th piece of junk from this contest -actually, the "We the People Are Piffed" T-shirt, donated by Nan Reiner, is a compellingly wearable prize. It's the 22nd ink above the fold for Pam Sweeney -who ended up with five inking entries this week, for a total of 237 -as did Chris Doyle, who's won even more junk than Kevin but wisely asks that we no longer send it to him. My "Conversational Only" section of my short list ended up with several colorful entries, but they all turned out to be from the same person. I can't say I was shocked. If you are likely to be, please skip the following. All from the totally out of control Thomas W. Witte: Head-adelphia: The City of Otherly Love. Faux-membering: Making use of a strap-on. Pink-Mart: A brothel. And then, in one grand effusion: Se-ment: A bonding material, sometimes for life. An adhesive you don't necessarily want to stick. Plaster of pairing. Dickum. Nutty putty. Screwcilage. An ad"he"sive. "C"lant. That is SO all. ====================================================================== WEEK 1083, published August 3, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1083: What's the use of wondering? (Just find it out.); The Empress of The Style Invitational blabs about this week's contest and the rhyme-riddle results Washington Post Blogs August 1, 2014 Friday 12:51 AM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1237 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I am one of the last people in America to have gotten a smartphone; I've had mine for less than a year. (Even later to the party was the deposed Czar of The Style Invitational, who just wrote about his this month.) Of course, I'm totally at sea now without it; I left it at home accidentally when I went to the supermarket this morning, and I found myself thinking: As long as I don't wonder about anything in the next hour ... And maybe that's why we're about eight years late with this week's contest. I am old enough, and had the right career, to be reminded continually, still today, how exciting and game-changing it is to have All The Answers literally at one's fingertips. You don't wonder in print about whether something happened that way; you don't ponder it with your companion. You find out. In two seconds. If you have a slow connection. In my pre-Empress job at The Post (I did both simultaneously for several years, actually), I was a copy editor in the Style section, starting in 1982. Along with fixing grammar and writing headlines, Style copy editors also checked the stories as best they could for accuracy. I had one of the few jobs for which being good at trivia is a relevant skill. To aid us on the copy desk each night (it was an evening job), we had a table full of big reference books: a world atlas; the two volumes of Who's Who in America; the World Almanac; the Diplomatic List of ambassadors and their spouses (Style covered more soiree-type events back then); a couple of film encyclopedias; a book of Billboard's Top 40 since 1956; and of course the giant Webster's Third to supplement our (incompatible) Webster's New World desk dictionaries. And we kept a Rolodex -remember those? -full of index cards containing facts that we might need that weren't in these books: for example, which local theaters spelled it "Theater" (Kennedy Center, Arena, Theater J) or "Theatre" (most everyone else but not all). If we were still stumped, we were to call the researchers in The Post's newsroom library on the phone. And if there was something we didn't understand from the writer, or something significant we thought we should change, we were supposed to call the writer on the phone at home. I hated making phone calls; I was borderline phobic. (I could never have been a reporter.) It took years before I stopped having palpitations when I had to call a writer; I even avoided calling the library. The Post finally converted to PCs in the 1990s from the dedicated word processors it had used since around 1980, but it wasn't until way into the 1990s when my tech-savvier fellow copy editor David Hall (now owner of the old-photo site Shorpy) showed me this thing called Alta Vista, in which you typed a bunch of keywords with various plus-signs and stuff ... and it would look things up for you! With no phone call! Invitational blabs about this week's contest and the .... The reference books did hang around on the table until we moved offices to another floor in the Post building; the giant dictionary and the increasingly outdated atlas moved with us. And now, of course, there are no longer any mistakes of fact in The Washington Post. The news of the world this past week has been beyond depressing, with so many people on so many sides acting shamefully and counterproductively, harming others, themselves, and their futures. It's enough to make you cry out: EVER-PRESENT EFFERVESCENT HEIFER PRESENT! And I hope that you, like me, will just break out laughing at the pointlessly, ridiculously funny entries like that one (by First Offender Joel Golden) and the 30 or so more rhyming answers to oddball questions in Week 1079 of the Invitational. They're even stupidfunnier when you read them out loud, even the questions. Also: In Washington, at least, the weather is freakishly nice and unjungly for the middle of the summer. The Nationals are in first place, and the local football team hasn't lost a game yet this season. This very afternoon, Royal Scion No. 1 is bringing over his girlfriend, who's visiting from Rome and would like to experience some Real Americana, and so we're going to eat steamed crabs caked with Old Bay, and corn on the cob, and baked beans, and coleslaw, and watermelon, and even apple pie, and maybe we'll read some of today's inking entries as we down our Natty Bohs. And so let's skip debating what "all the words must rhyme" should have meant. In next week's contest, you can go back to playing perfectly by the rules. For limericks. It's the first win, and just the sixth blot of ink ever, for Rachel Bernhardt of D.C.'s Maryland suburbs. Rachel has been dabbling in the Invitational -with just the tip of a pinky toe, and then with great toweling off in between -since Week 169, when she was first runner-up in a contest to point out really stupid lyrics in existing songs ("The other night I was at a party* I was dancin' with some other guy* Johnny jumped up and he hit him* 'Cause he still loved me, that's why!"). This turned out to be a fabulous contest for Loser Ace Mae Scanlan, whose four inks this week brings her to 257, including 22 "above the fold." Mae, who's noted that she went to elementary school in Connecticut with John McCain but she was in a higher grade, is a wonderfully clever wordsmith, poet and parodist, renowned in the light-verse world. But she's often at a disadvantage in the Invite because she refuses to send me any entries she wouldn't want her minister to read in the paper. Otherwise, Mae well might match the 1,300 inks of Tom Witte, who probably doesn't labor under that same restriction. You have to read John McCooey's rhyme out loud, doing your best Paula Deen imitation, to get it. It's John's 28th ink since his debut in Week 903, and his second runner-up entry. And Doug Franks's terse chronicle of Iowa's two major raisons-d'etre -farming and political primaries -might be a tad out of date, given that the 2016 presidential hopefuls already have been trampling the cornfields, but I still love it. It gives Doug 59 blots of ink, seven above the fold. But it's always fun to have the August Loser brunch up in Gettysburg, Pa., where on Aug. 17 at noon a contingent will gather at the Appalachian Brewing Co. eatery and then take a battlefield tour led by hometown Loser Roger Dalrymple, probably accompanied by fellow G'burg Loser Marty McCullen. I'm not sure that I can make it this year, but if you're interested in the Civil War or just want to get out to the countryside, it's an entertaining and enlightening way to spend a Sunday. RSVP to Elden Carnahan here; there's a good chance you can find someone to carpool with if you ask on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. (As always, please don't read the following if you don't want to read crude jokes. Because that is what they are.) What do Manassas defense attorneys suggest you use if you're sexting? Loaner boner. (Jeff Shirley) What's the nickname of the law permitting certain prescription drugs to be sold over the counter in suppository form? Poophole loophole. (Robert Schechter) Invitational blabs about this week's contest and the .... What do you call someone who is always making self-abuse jokes on Facebook? Fapper Yapper. (Elden Carnahan) What's the name of that new Brazilian wax salon? Shine a Vagina. (Rick Haynes) And: What's the only guaranteed way to get pussy in bed every night? Willow Pillow (Jacob Aldridge) ====================================================================== WEEK 1084, published August 10, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1084: Since 1993, we've been going out on a lim; The Empress of the Style Invitational ruminates all over this week's poetry contests Washington Post Blogs August 7, 2014 Thursday 8:22 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1257 words Byline: Pat Myers Body The Style Invitational ran its first limerick contest almost right at its birth. In Week 12, in 1993, here were the Czar's instructions: "Write a limerick. That's the easy part. The hard part: It must contain one of the following names: "Hillary Rodham Clinton," "Jack Kevorkian," "George Stephanopoulos" or "Bosnia-Herzegovina." The names don't have to be part of the rhyme, and their constituent words can be separated." The Czar learned immediately that "the easy part" wasn't that easy for the large majority of the contest's entrants back in Year 1. Three weeks later, he made this introduction to the results: We offered a contest poetic.The results, they were pretty pathetic.'Twas the worst of our fears -You all had tin ears! And kept trying to stick in extra clunky words and committing rhymes that gave us a headache. The Czar went on to give ink to one winner, five runners-up, a whopping two honorable mentions, and a "special award of a tin cup for the most pitiful attempt at a rhyme": "Stephanopoulos" and "rhinoceros." But even among these few limericks, the Czar could be only so stringent: "Stephanopoulos" and "topple us" -that's what we call a "perfect rhyme" "Stephanopoulos" with "lot of us." That's, uh, not what we call a perfect rhyme. While the first runner-up rhymed -the third runner-up matched The Invite has evolved. For one thing, we've learned that you can't just say "write a limerick" and assume that everyone knows exactly what you mean. This is why I've written up a big long list of guidelines called "Get Your 'Rick Rolling," which patiently and I hope not too confusingly spells out what we mean by limerick meter, and by rhyme. Some of it is lifted directly from the guidelines at OEDILF.com, the indefatigable project of Chris J. Strolin and his band to publish at least one limerick for every meaning of every word in the English language. Just months after Chris set up his site in 2004 (and just months after I started the Empress gig), I ran the first of our Limerixicons, asking for words beginning anywhere from ai- to ar-. "The OEDILF currently contains more than 600 limericks," I marveled in Week 572, It's now, as I type this, at 86,363. Note: There are at least two versions of the Invite's limerick guidelines floating around the Internet; the most current one is at bit.ly*InviteLim (or wapo.st*InviteLim) and is dated Aug. 10, 2014. It's no big deal if you come across the one at wapo.st*limrules, which is dated 2012; it's just that the dates referring to contests are Page 2 of 3 Style Conversational Week 1084: Since 1993, we've been going out on a lim; The Empress of the Style Invitational ruminates all over this week's poetry contests wrong, it lacks a few editorial tweaks, and it's missing the restatement of our ongoing rule that entries can't have been published elsewhere before we run them. The relationship between the Invite and OEDILF has benefited both institutions mightily: Once Chris put the word out to his regular contributors about the Invitational (which he persists in calling "WPSI," like some Greek radio station), we began to hear from lots of skilled and talented poets, some of who became Invite regulars, like Stephen Gold, Hugh Thirlway, Sheila Blume and I'm sure many more. (There were some ruffled feathers the first year, I recall, before the Oedilfers realized that our main criterion for a Limerixicon limerick was not that it define the word, as OEDILF emphasized at the time, but that it be clever and funny.) Not only that, but there was a secondary effect: Many of the 'Dilfers are active in the broader light-verse community, and I suspect that it was through their spreading the words on such poetry sites as Eratosphere that the Invite was enriched by such now-regulars as Robert Schechter, Frank Osen and Melissa Balmain, all of whom have shown here that they can be funny beyond just poetry-funny. But also, some of the Invitational's finest Loserbards were intrigued by OEDILF, and they started contributing. And contributing. Most notably, the Invite's all-time top scorer, Chris Doyle, has 792 limericks in the OEDILF archive, and has "workshopped" with many other authors to improve their own submissions. I hope you'll do so as well with your own limericks -just remember to wait until the Week 1084 results are published Sept. 4 to submit this year's Limerixicon entries there. I just this morning showed the Czar that first limerick contest, from Week 12, and he immediately shared with me, from memory, an entry that was rejected that week by the bow-tied Bob Kaiser, who was then The Post's managing editor. A lovely young lass from NantucketRequired help kicking the bucket."No problem, my child,"Doc Kevorkian smiled,"Wrap your lips round my tailpipe and suck it." The Czar doesn't, however, remember who wrote it. If you did, let me know - nice job! And that's another big difference between the Year 1 Invitational and the Year 22 Invitational: We now have the online version where we can share some of the more risque entries -and the under-the-radar Conversational for the really unprintable stuff. A contest that asks for bad writing runs a certain risk: Isn't it rather likely that good funny writing will be more entertaining than writing that's so bad it's funny? I do feel bad for those Losers who sent in sparkling light verse for Week 1080. And I concede the possibility that some of today's inking entries might have been funnier they been written in crisper rhyme and meter. Still, I sensed a distinct difference between them and the hundreds of unintentionally bad entries I receive for every one of the Invite's dozens of poetry contests. It's no fluke, I'm sure, that two of this week's top two winners are widely published poets. And it was definitely intentional badness -such as rhyming "pales" with "Versailles" (not Versailles, Ind., anyway) -that catapulted First Offender Thomas Blain right over the squalling mass of Loserdom into first place. So he'll be getting a FirStink for his first ink, along with his Inkin' Memorial. And I have a hunch that Thomas can be just as good as he is bad, so I hope he won't be one of those dozens of people over the years whose first-place wins turned out to be their only ink. Frank Osen probably won't be including "The Hello Kitty Disposable Travel Mug Mishap" in his next collection -his 2012 book "Virtue Big as Sin" won the Able Muse Poetry Award -but I hope that he'd treasure the pooping-gorilla key chain almost as much as the exceedingly creepy alligator-foot back scratcher he scored in June. Jeff Shirley, a retired dentist, had to pull teeth to rhyme "acreage," "rage" and "barrage" in his faux-etical old to the beleaguered Tiger Woods; and I'm sure that Mae Scanlan's own teeth hurt her when the otherwise flawless wordsmith served up a hilariously goofy lamentation on the World Cup results. Page 3 of 3 Style Conversational Week 1084: Since 1993, we've been going out on a lim; The Empress of the Style Invitational ruminates all over this week's poetry contests Meanwhile, among those too good for ink (despite its ick factor), here are all eight lines of Nan Reiner's lamentation on her clogged toilet: The morn, it breaks; my soul awakes, to revel in the maybeOf hours to spend in pleasure's end. Oh, joy, what shall this day be!The robins sing, the doves take wing; not any thing can spoil it!But all too soon 'twill plunge to ruin. Alighting from my toilet,I seek the flush, the filling rush, blue waters sanitizing;Instead I see late parts of me, inexorably rising.I turn my head and flee in dread: I know, too well, what's coming.I'd barter now three years of Law for just one course in Plumbing. ====================================================================== WEEK 1085, published August 17, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1085: We're tasteless in many ways, but not in every way; The Empress of The Style Invitational looks at this week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs August 14, 2014 Thursday 7:37 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 821 words Byline: Pat Myers Body There aren't too many people who have accused The Style Invitational of being too timid or wholesome or fuddy­duddy. (Well, Bob Staake is one; from his occasional rants at me after I rejected some cartoon or other, you'd think I was Church Lady's maiden aunt.) The Post has never even considered syndicating the Invite to other newspapers because not only is its humor often highbrow and often D.C.-centric (as in these results), but it's also often much edgier than other papers would want to risk. Here are a few examples, taken more or less as random, from past years, all printed in The Post. Week 766, awkward situations: You didn't realize you would get a screen credit as a fluffer. (Chuck Smith) Your boss tells you she saw your name Saturday in The Style Invitational. "But what does 'MILF' mean anyway?" she asks. (Drew Bennett) Week 547, bad product names: Excalibur is a good name for a security company but a bad name for a tampon. (Jeff Brechlin) Week 421, explain what everyday items "really" are (in this case one of a pair of dice): "After the tragic accident with the trash compactor, there were only 100 Dalmatians." (Jennifer Hart) Week 483, headlines for obits for people even if they haven't died yet: Hugh Hefner: Publisher Laid to Rest. (contest example) I can understand why other papers wouldn't want to go there, but I had no problems with the Invite's running any of the above. And as far as I know, none of them drew reader complaints. So why am I warning people so strongly to be tasteful in this week's contest for imagined items as various real or imagined gift shops? The difference, for me, comes down to pain. I don't want to be in the business of inflicting pain on anyone (except, of course, my blithely robbing Losers of highly deserved ink). The entries above show various elements of crudity: a fairly graphic image of a sex act, if you know what a fluffer is; the use of a highly vulgar acronym; a graphic allusion to the physical use of tampons; a joke about animal death; a crude term used as wordplay. (Of course, The Post's taste standards aren't based on pain potential alone; you can only be so graphic when it comes to sex, bodily functions and emissions, and profanity.) Style Invitational looks at this week's new contest and r.... But none of those jokes (with the possible exception of the Dalmatian one, which I decided amounted to "cartoon violence" rather than anything associated with reality) is possibly going to cause pain to anyone. On the other hand, think of someone with a personal connection to the Holocaust reading a joke about the Auschwitz E-Z Bake Oven. Just don't. If you're a member of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook (or join up), you can see the discussion thread prompted by the Ground Zero gift shop here. Just as some of Loserdom's greatest poets pretended to be metrically deficient, tin-eared tragic-odists in our most recent contest, the McGonagalls, some of the Invite Shed's sharpest tools did some pretty convincing imitations of total dolts in Week 1081, in keeping with the inquiring mindless who post on Yahoo Answers. And while I don't know them from their previous cleverness, this week's five First Offenders clearly smartly got the joke as well. (I had a hunch we'd have a lot of fresh ink this week, since I counted 27 entrants who I think were entering the Invite for the first time; at least a couple of this week's newbies are among those 27.) It's a veteran, however, who earns the Inkin' Memorial this week: Gary Crockett gets his seventh win and, with his concurrent third place, his 26th ink "above the fold" as he continues to stride past the 200-ink mark. But it's just Ink No. 8 -and the second above the fold -for runner-up Scott Poyer, who's invited intermittently since his debut in Week 937. And the very same stats apply to fourth-place finisher Frank Mann, who joined us even later, in Week 996. Scott and Frank get their choice (if they let me know) of the Loser Mug or the Whole Fools Grossery Bag. Speaking of emissions standards: Here's a funny question by newcomer Dave Bunai: "If my girlfriend eats eggs, and later swallows some of my, um, "man juice," can she get pregnant? With chickens? It's not too late to join the half dozen Losers who'll be driving up this Sunday morning on roughly the route that J.E.B. Stuart took his Confederate troops to reach Gettysburg. However, Gen. Stuart didn't get to have a nice lunch at the Appalachian Brewing Company on Buford Avenue, and then not get shot at while strolling around the battlefields while resident Losers Roger Dalrymple and Marty McCullen explained what happened where. And if you need inspiration for Week 1085, the Gettysburg Visitor Center serves up aisle after aisle of tackiness. If you'd like to go (I won't be able to attend this year), contact Elden Carnahan ASAP via this link at the Losers' website, nrars.org. ====================================================================== WEEK 1086, published August 24, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1086: Tried and, um, reliable-like; The Empress of The Style Invitational looks at this week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs August 21, 2014 Thursday 8:34 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1721 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I'll admit freely that this week's contest -to alter a 12-letter term by one letter -is not exactly imaginative. Nor is it "pegged" to any recent event or phenomenon. But! As Loser Chris Doyle -that would be Chris "I Have 1,587 Blots of Ink" Doyle - points out, our contest asking for 13-letter words worked out awfully well, and so ... It's true; Week 919 was a very fine week for neologisms. So for guidance and inspiration, here are the FORTY­SIX entries getting ink back in June 2011, happily featuring a slew of Losers whose names I expect to see this week as well. (Speaking of inspiration: Less than two weeks before that contest was announced, Osama bin Laden met his match.) 1. Doom with a view: Recent listing for penthouse in Abbottabad (David Ballard, Reston, Va., a First Offender) 2. Typochondriac: A paranoid proofreader. (Ward Kay, Vienna, Va.) 3. Sodamasochist: Someone who drinks Diet Coke after eating Mentos. (Sylvia Betts, Vancouver, B.C.) 4. Watercoorist:A brewer of tasteless, weak beer. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) Treizepassers: honorable mentions Nosama bin Laden: Better "never," but "the late" will do. (Barry Koch, Catlett, Va.) Sinfinitesimal: Hardly worth going to confession for. (Lois Douthitt, Arlington, Va.) Panticommunism: Even Marx didn't mean for the abolition of private property to go that far. (Pam Sweeney, Burlington, Mass.) Defibillator: A lie detector. (Craig Dykstra, Centreville, Va.) Total meltdow: A stock market crash. (Christopher Lamora, Guatemala City) Hoverachievers: Helicopter parents. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) Sunderachievers: Divorce lawyers. (Tom Witte) Membarrassment: An open fly. (Theresa Kowal, Silver Spring, Md., a First Offender) this week's new contest and results Childpoofing: What pageant moms do. (Kurt Stahl, Frederick, Md.) Duchess of Dork: Beatrice. (Nancy Schwalb, Washington) Let's Mike a Deal: Recruitment slogan for DEA agents. (Loris McVittie, Rockville, Md.) To bed or not to be: The worldview of a sex addict. (Submitted under a pseudonym and revealed after judging to be The Post's Gene Weingarten; he gets no prize except questionable glory) Sirendipitous: Describing a man's ability to find, without really trying, the woman who will ruin him. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) Seventh heave: The apotheosis of worshiping the porcelain god. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) Gruel, to be kind: Airline food in economy class. (John McCooey, Rehoboth Beach, Del.) Streeptococcus: The acting bug. (Susan Geariety, Menifee, Calif.) "The Naked Ruth": TV ratings plummeted after Dr. Westheimer began giving live demos. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Interrorgation: Rejected euphemism for waterboarding. (Johnny Lanham, Columbia, S.C.) Bleakfast menu: A few old danishes on the motel sideboard. (Roger Hammons, North Potomac, Md.) Freudian ships: Submarines. (Ann Martin, Bracknell, England) Bloopingdale's: For great deals on irregular fashions. (Valerie Matthews, Ashton, Md.) Goop and Plenty: Melts in the box, not in your mouth. (Frank Mullen III, Aledo, Ill.) Pen and teller: Minimal banking. (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.) Breastfeeling: What's promoted by the La Lecher League. (Kathye Hamilton, Annandale, Va., a First Offender) Sintermission: Pausing to have a cigarette and regain strength. (Tony Phelps, Washington) Big Bong theory: Cosmological theory of expan . . . hey, dude, you done with those potato chips? (Donald Carter, Wayne, N.J.) Gratifiction: Faking it. (Craig Dykstra) E pluribus anum: Out of many, we elect you-know-whats. (Matt Monitto, Bristol, Conn.) Hornithologist: Someone who studies birds AND bees. (Jonathan Hardis, Gaithersburg, Md.) Teutonic shift: A titanic gaffe. ("Ruth Frieder, Bethesda," revealed after judging to be Gene Weingarten) Foolhardness: An overdose of Viagra. (Tom Witte) WTOP Forty radio: It only plays songs by Talking Heads. (Christopher Lamora) It was God's swill: Rationalization for jumping off the wagon. (Howard Walderman, Columbia, Md.) Encephallogram: An X-ray of a man's brain - his other brain. (Theresa Kowal) Squintuplicate: The 1-point font for the fine print on car lease forms. (Brendan Beary) this week's new contest and results Aryan Zimmerman: The uberstar third baseman leaves no room for errors. (Steve Glomb, Alexandria, Va.) Bathematician: Archimedes. (Jeff Contompasis) Ragumentative: "End of discussion. Period." (Judy Blanchard, Novi, Mich.) Champ ate the bit: When Mike Tyson's hunger got the better of him. (John McCooey) A Day in the Wife: Little-known Lennon*Ono composition consisting entirely of moans and shrieks. (Dave Airozo, Silver Spring, a First Offender) Imperceptable: Describing an error that hardly anyone will notice. (Ward Kay, Vienna) And last: Lexhibitionist: Someone who sends in 120 neologism entries in a single week. (Tom Witte) Note that I didn't refuse to run entries that made it to 13 letters only because they ended in -s. Because the 12­letter parameter is just that, it doesn't violate any "spirit of the contest" to allow plurals. On the other hand, starting with a 12-letter term is the only parameter. So if your 12-letter term is a 13-letter word with a dropped letter, I can't run it. Otherwise, the general neologism guidelines apply: Your altered word tends to be a lot funnier if the reader can recognize the original term (which isn't shown). And while there've been occasional exceptions among our dozens of neologism contests over the years, you'll notice that in each of the 46 inking entries above, the definition alludes in some way to the original term as well as the neologism. How can you find a bunch of 13-letter words to work with? Well, I won't provide them myself, but I have a strong hunch -basically, I'm Richard III here -that one of the generous Losers on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook will shortly share either a whole list or a link to one. (If you haven't joined yet, you should; sign up and I'll wave you in.) If you've looked at the interminable list on Twitter of #removealetterruinaband, and possibly even if you read the e-mail group Losernet the morning after the Week 1082 entry deadline, you might not mind too much that The Washington Post has this person who reads all the Style Invitational entries and selects just a few dozen for you to read - even if there might have been one or two that you'd have liked more. In this middle of this process, I vented in this post on the Devotees page: "Estimated number of entries for the Week 1082 band name contest: 2200. Estimated number of clever jokes: few." "Few" turned out to be maybe 3 percent of the pool -my short list had about 70 entries. But that was all I needed -well more than that, in fact -for a still-lengthy list of altered names of bands or performers, along with funny notes about them. Not surprisingly, I sometimes got many entries with the same band name; in that case I chose the best wording, and occasionally combined two entries and gave double credit; I also double-credited the two Losers who gave the same description for different bands, the Violent Phlegms and Public Enema (we are just so cerebral here). While I think the jokes are easily "gettable," I linked to each of the performers' names, usually with a clip of the song that's also punned on. Frank Osen, who's just passed the 100-ink mark, grabs his fifth Inkin' Memorial with his timely and zingy "Kerry and the Peacemakers." Frank started playing the Invite so recently that none of his wins earned the Bobble-Linc's predecessor, the Inker, which we stopped giving out only two years ago. I hope Beverley Sharp has some formal dinner in Montgomery, Ala., to attend soon, now that she'll be able to wear the bright orange cotton belt decorated with grossly misspelled names of Rolling Stones songs. At least she'll this week's new contest and results be properly outfitted for her eventual Invite Hall of Fame induction -with her three blots of ink this week, Beverley is only 34 entries short of the big 500. J. Calvin "Bimp" Smith is one of our most veteran Losers, though not an obsessive one; he got his first ink in Week 60. Along the way, he's picked up 43 blots, including an impressive 12 "above the fold." But Marc Shapiro -one of a couple dozen new entrants this week -will be getting a FirStink air "freshener" for his first ink, along with his choice of Grossery Bag or Loser Mug. One new entrant, who just missed getting ink (he sent "Minivan Halen," which is listed in the intro to the results), is a familiar name to some old-time Losers: Warren Clements used to run an Invitational-like contest for the Globe & Mail newspaper in Toronto. Not only did several Losers get Globe & Mail ink back then, but a contingent even visited Warren at the paper's offices during a "Loserfest" vacation. (Where should the next Loserfest be? Any volunteers to organize it? Closer would be better, I think.) When Longtime Loser Joseph Schech joined the Style Invitational Devotees just last night, he asked if we'd be doing a contest to answer the winning and Losing stupid questions from Week 1081. While we'd done that for a past stupid-question contest, I didn't think that this year's entries would produce enough of a variety of clever answers; they just weren't constructed to allow for it. But I invited the Devotees to give it a try on the Facebook page this morning. My favorites: Q: "Is it insensitive to tell light-bulb jokes to a blind person?" (Dave Letizia)A: Not if you do it in sign language. (Mark Raffman) Q: Why do people argue about which came first: the chicken or the egg? Everyone knows you need a chicken to produce an egg! (Frank Mann)A: Wait, don't you really need two chickens? (Ken Gallant) (*Subhead by Jeff Contompasis) These aren't shocking, but still, if you don't like tasteless puerile humor, please don't read further. You'll be fine. Beatwood Mac- Many of their songs, including "Grypsy," "Handslide," and "Second Hand Ews," were originally performed single-handedly and were tried out on various members. (Jon Gearhart)Loo Reed: Singer who performed with Public Enema, Small Feces, Runs 'N Roses, Poo Fighters, the Red Hot Chili Poopers ... (Chris Doyle) Pubic Enemy: A Velvet Underground cover band. (Bill Verkuilen)Red Hot Chili Peckers: Every member of the group caught an STD on their world tour. (Doug Wadler) ====================================================================== WEEK 1087, published August 31, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1087: We're sort of poster children; The Style Invitational Empress looks at this week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs August 28, 2014 Thursday 7:05 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1999 words Byline: Pat Myers Body First off, for those who are staying in town (or coming to Washington) this Labor Day weekend: Come and heckle Style Invitational Designated Drawer Bob Staake on Saturday at the extravaganza that is the Library of Congress's annual National Book Festival, this year moved downtown to the Convention Center (which is right on top of a Metrorail station). Events at the free-admission festival run from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., but a contingent of Bobfans -one of them, Charles Young, dubbed them the Staake Pack -will be meeting at noon for lunch at the Anthem restaurant at the adjoining Marriott Marquis, and will then head over to see Bob, who'll be making a presentation about picture books from 2:40 to 3:10, and will meet people and sign books -including his newest, "My Pet Book," from 3:30 to 4:30. If you'd like to join them, for lunch or just at the festival, RSVP to this Facebook invitation or contact Janet Galope at twin061765@yahoo.com . (The Empress-analogue to the Staake Pack would be the Vengeful Mob.) As the Empress sends off the Little Princess for her senior year of college, it seemed fitting to sending you all back to school as well for Week 1983, and to revist the Invite course catalogue nine years after our first effort, in Week 626. The results below cover a fair amount of ground -the core curriculum of humor tropes -but certainly there are new areas of study. This contest was run just after Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005, and features the Style Invitational debut of (Kevin Dopart, Washington), who got a runner-up plus an honorable mention his first time out. (We hadn't started noting First Offenders yet). I'm glad that that ink seems to have inspired Kevin to pick up another 1,042 inks since then. Third runner-up: Film 007: The James Bond Canon. Students will view all of the Bond films and write their term paper on which Bond is the best. Those choosing Sean Connery will get an A, Pierce Brosnan a B, Roger Moore a C, George Lazenby a D and Timothy Dalton an F. (Joseph Romm, Washington) Second runners-up: Federal Disaster Relief 101. Students will build a decision support system using faith-based logic and a Ouija Board. Prerequisites include Getting Permission From the Mayor 101, Clearing Everything With the Lawyers 101, and Telling the FEMA Director to Turn on the %#@* Television 101. (Kevin Dopart, Washington; Steven J. Allen, Manassas) week's new contest and results First runner-up, the winner of the "prepared dry fish bone" food item: Anatomy 1 and 2, Posterior Survey: Through two semesters of intense classroom instruction and weekly labs, students will learn to locate their behinds using both hands. Textbook, flashlight and washable headbands required. (Phil Battey, Alexandria) And the winner of the Inker: LANG 238: Ancient Voices. Who were the Ink Spots? Country Joe and the Fish? What does "nanu-nanu" mean? Intense immersion into the language and culture of 15 to 50 years ago will enable the student to understand and converse with older relatives and prospective employers. Prerequisite for all INTN (Internship) classes. (Douglas Frank, Crosby, Tex.) Honorable Mentions: Mass Communications 330: The Future of Reality TV. Students will compete to participate in a reality TV show about competing to be on a reality TV show. (Bill Spencer, Exeter, N.H.) Mechanical Engineering 499: Intelligenter Design. Team project will recast the human body more sensibly, addressing ear hair, male nipples, the need to belch, things that flap when you run, lack of cup holders.(Elwood Fitzner, Valley City, N.D.) Harvardese I: Recordings of George Plimpton, William F. Buckley and President Kennedy are used to develop speech and listening skills in an obscure northern dialect. Fulfills foreign-language requirement. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Anthropology 570: Genealogy of the Daytime Serial. Documentation techniques will be utilized to trace the bloodlines in "All My Children" and "One Life to Live." Team-taught by Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick Montgomery and Victoria Lord Riley Burke Riley Buchanan Buchanan Carpenter Davidson. (Deborah Guy, Columbus, Ohio) Philosophy 000: Elementary Nihilism. Students learn the philosophy of total self-negation. Those who bother to attend classes will be failed. (Joseph Romm) Academic Communications 191: An information delivery module designed to disseminate linguistic interaction experience to assist Carbon Based Life Forms (CBLFs) in transactionalizing with other CBLFs, without utilizing affirmative*pejorative value judgments. (John Crowley, Annandale) CHEM 180: Household Chemical Reactions Lab. Students spend the semester in the home of the course instructor, testing various cleaning compounds on a variety of surfaces. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Math 420: Numerical Methods & Queuing Theory. Students learn to quantitatively assess aggregated items, compare their magnitudes to an arbitrary constant, and enter an appropriate queuing schema accordingly.Final exam held in the "12 Items or Less" checkout line. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) American History 300: The Baby Boomers. Students will learn precisely why it is that their professor is so cool now, was so cool in his youth, and will ALWAYS be cool, and is therefore forever entitled to be self-indulgent and snotty. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) Comp Sci 404: Magical Standing for Office IT Guys. Students learn how to stand behind people in such a manner that their computer suddenly works, even though it didn't work the last 10 times they did that exact thing. (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) Studio Art 327: Hotel Room Picture Painting. Curriculum covers techniques in sunsets, crashing waves and various autumn things. Prerequisite to Crying Clowns I. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Early Childhood Education 001: Students will learn all they ever really needed to know. Prof. R. Fulghum. (Kyle Hendrickson, Frederick) week's new contest and results Campus Activism: Practicum in which students earn credit through a real-life social project. This semester, the class will attempt to resolve egregiously discriminatory, arbitrary denials of tenure. Asst. Prof. Whistlebottom. (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) Literature 421: "Gilligan's Island" as a Metaphor for the Iraq War. What starts out as a three-hour tour turns into a trip to uncharted territory with no clear exit strategy. (Chuck Smith) Humanities 414: Waiting Through History. Students will investigate the social and cultural impact on society of waiting, and will actually wait for Godot, Lefty, the Robert E. Lee, Guffman, the Sun, and God. Meeting time TBA. (Andrew Hoenig, Rockville) Theatre Arts 243: Contemporary Barroom Dance. Students learn to stand and wiggle their butts while drinking beer from a long-neck bottle. (Roy Ashley, Washington) BIO 101: Comparative Anatomy. Curriculum includes determining whether eyes or stomachs are bigger and distinguishing rears from elbows. (Kevin Dopart) American Literature 411: "For Dummies" Books, 2000-2005. In this survey course, students will skim brief excerpts from this genre, and submit short reports. (Tom Witte) ANTH 100: Distinguishing Old People. Undergraduate seminar dispels the popular notion that old people all look alike. Identifying characteristics will be underscored (e.g., gender).(Martin Bancroft, Ann Arbor, Mich.) ENGL 615: Yoda I. To Yoda's grammatical structure you will be introduced. (Evan Golub, College Park) Phys Ed 349: Disaster Response Gymnastics. Coaches teach students how to put their heads up their butts in preparation for government service. Prerequisite: Arabian Horse Judging 101. Required text: "My Pet Goat." (Phyllis Reinhard, East Fallowfield, Pa.) English Comp 121: Great American Text Messages Under 250 Characters. ezy cls ne1 cn tak. Several short papers. (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) SRP 101: Basics of Sub-Aquatic Reed Plaiting. Introduction to the most maligned of college majors. (Russell Beland) WORK 1601: McJob Practicum. Prerequisite for LIFE. Perform mindless, pointless and degrading tasks all day while taking guff from perfect strangers and feckless idiots. Try to find meaning and maintain your basic human dignity, especially after you get your first paycheck. Imagine doing this the rest of your life and suddenly finals week seems like Club Med. NOW are you ready to pick a major? (Douglas Frank) Our contest to come up with either a humorously useful phone*tablet app or a humorously unproductive one drew a lot of stock peeve*observational humor along with the ones that spoofed the app industry. Some people are so bitter: One person suggested "the Hack-Shock app, which, when entered into your computer, detects hackers and sends a powerful current to the hacker's computer, destroying the hard drive and electrocuting the hacker." Handy tip: Wishing death or torture on people doesn't get ink. I'm just (un)funny that way. It's an amazing third Inkin' Memorial for Robert Falk -amazing not because Robert isn't usually all that funny, but because Robert hardly ever plays the Invite. Robert's total ink since his debut in Week 1026: Four honorable mentions. And three Inkin' Memorials. His first win, in Week 1034: "I like my girlfriends the way I like Apple customers: flush with cash, stylish and unaware they can do better." His second, just three weeks later, for taking offense to a name that most people haven't thought (yet) to be offended by: "The members of the American Association of Lobby Builders and Decorators (AALBD) create and decorate the warm, inviting, beautiful spaces that greet you as you enter many a building. But the name of our creations has been besmirched by the vile, underhanded and corrupt practice of influence peddling. We've asked our foyerist in Washington to . . ." : week's new contest and results In second place is a veteran Loser who's started entering again: John Kammer blotted up some 160 inks in the first decade of the Invite, then vanished for another decade until just a few weeks ago. With two inks this week, he seems not to have skipped a beat upon his return. By the way, this is the tag-line on all John's e-mail: "Pain is a dish best served hot. Really hot. And with jagged edges." It's a First Offender in third place this week, but his name wasn't brand-new to me, and it won't be to a number of Losers: Danny Gallagher, of the Dallas area, is a humor blogger and the moderator of the Top 5 List, now under the aegis of HumorLabs.com. Top 5 is a sort of smaller-scale, quicker-turnaround Invite contest with a regular roster of joke contributors, including, over the years, top Losers Chuck Smith and Sandra Hull. So it's great to have him on our roster as well. Danny will get the FirStink for his first ink along with his choice of Loser Mug or Grossery Bag - let me know, Mr. G. The last "above the fold" spot goes to Extremely Dedicated Loser Jeff Contompasis, who recently passed 400 blots of ink (eww -hope it cleaned up all right) and is a mortal lock for the Hall of Fame in the next couple of years. It's Jeff's 35th ink above the fold, so he might opt for one of the vintage Loser T-shirts won by Elden Carnahan before Jeff started Inviting in 2004. Another party heard from: The Invite was read this week on the multiplatform desk (formerly the copy desk) by editor Arielle Retting. I asked Arielle if she had a favorite entry, and she shocked me by saying that she liked the top four winners the most, as usual. As longtime Style Conversational readers know, the previous editors who'd weighed in with faves chose honorable mentions almost every time. Arielle added that she also especially liked the last HM, Mark Raffman's sure-fire romance preventer. Now it's time for me to buckle down with the limericks of Week 1084, which look extremely good. Many, many of you will be utterly robbed. The Vengeful Mob group will be sending you an invitation soon. ====================================================================== WEEK 1088, published September 7, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1088: Evidently not everyone knows 'Hickory Dickory Dock'; The Empress of The Style Invitational on the limerick entries of Week 1084 Washington Post Blogs September 4, 2014 Thursday 7:51 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1327 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Of course the inking limericks posted today in the results of Style Invitational Week 1084 are terrific examples of the form -the Limerixicon contest has served them up in delicious abundance for 11 years straight. But ... well, let's say that not all the entries were quite as good. I didn't expect everyone who entered Week 1084 to look up "Getting Your 'Rick Rolling," a detailed explanation of what we look for in a limerick -the meter, the rhyme, the content, the humor, the secret communications from our alien overlords. But even in the few lines I had available in the print-edition Invite, I had room for this: "in a nutshell: 'perfect' rhyme, and a strong 'hickory-dickory-dock' rhythm in Lines 1, 2 and 5; a 'dickory-dock' in Lines 3 and 4; plus 'weak' syllables on either side." This got me, among the 848 limericks I received, entries including: This one: Finagle's a term,That sure makes me squirm... And this one: Fire in your loins is good, but fire in your house is not.... And this one: I just found a limerick for each English word!I have to read all of these and not be deterred ... And this one! Five Finns Found A Fine Brand new FjordFlying? No, Driving Fine Finnish Fords Those were obviously from people who either didn't look at the nutshell directions or weren't familiar with "Hickory Dickory Dock." Most of the entries did reflect at least a basic grasp of what a limerick is. But even among those, the meter on some of them was distorted beyond anyone's comprehension, except that of the Ms. Incredible stretchability of the writer's own mind. Here's one first line: A woman's mind began to pain her ... Okay, where would the hickory-dickory-dock go in that one? The only way I could make it work was: a WOM-an's mind BE-gan to PAIN her ... If the writer had asked a friend to read that line, the friend of would have said: "a WOman's MIND beGAN to PAIN her" - ba-BUM, ba-BUM, ba-BUM, ba-BUM: That's iambic meter, and iamb hard-pressed to put it in a limerick. Style Invitational on the limerick entries of Week 1084 Or this one, which had correct meter in Lines 1, 2, 4 and 5, but this in Line 3: Tweets, Facebook, YouTube views .... "Tweets, Face-BOOK ... "? Moral: Have someone else read it out loud to you. Be open-minded about how it sounds. If your accent is on "the," it's not going to work. There's one thing I've discovered: You can be a bit more ambiguous about accents once you're well into the limerick, because your meter is already established. You still can't put ac-CENTS on the wrong sy-LAB-bles, but a reader can more easily figure out which of two valid stresses is the intended one. For instance, if you read "I jumped up like a shot," you might say "i JUMPED UP like a SHOT." Or you might say "i jumped UP like a SHOT." If a line is this ambiguous at the beginning of a limerick, it's a problem. But it didn't give me a problem at all in Line 3 of Brendan Beary's entry (which was cruelly robbed of ink today): My philosophy final todayOn the Skeptics unfolded this way:I jumped up like a shotAnd yelled, "I don't know squat!"On the spot, the prof gave me an A! I'm not even going to discuss the "rhymes" ... okay, I'll just list a few. Flamingo* Ringo* stuccoThefts* requestsAnnapolis*urinalysis* diaphanousConstant* it can't* savantPranks* strengthsMoves slowly* soccer goalie* pays a fee But let's take the positive tack. What makes this week's inking entries so good? First off all, they qualify: The rhymes are perfect rhymes; the meter does the HDD*DD thing. But even though a disturbingly large proportion of this week's entry pool didn't qualify, several hundred limericks did meet these basic requirements. But also: - They have natural, readable, lyrical syntax, with the words in normal order, and few or no dropped articles, conjunctions, etc. You don't have to struggle through them. The words aren't used incorrectly unless that's part of the joke. - They tell some sort of joke, with a strong ending. The humor might be bitter, like Chris Doyle's limerick about SWAT teams, but it's not just a definition of a word, or a political screed, in limerick form: there's clever wordplay, or funny observational humor, or a scene that creates a comical mental image. - They have an internal logic to the humor; there isn't some weird name or reference in there just because it rhymes. Why would two polar bears get married? Why would someone's name happen to be D'Shan? (I hesitated for a moment about Craig Dykstra's nonsensical mix of "Batman" and floral hedges, but his wordplay punch line was just so amazing that I used it anyway.) As usual, I judged the limericks without knowing whose were whose. I had some hunches, but those sometimes were disproved. But all four entries "above the fold" turned out to be by longtime Loser Bards, with the Limerick Smackdown Kings hitting the exacta. It's Brendan Beary's 34th Invite win, many of them for various forms of poetry. Brendan's two blots of ink today give him 939 in all, a position dangerously approaching the Abandon All Hope threshold of the Invite Double Hall of Fame. Making Brendan seem like a slacker, meanwhile, is Chris Doyle, the Losingest Loser Ever, who picks up his 190th ink above the fold. Chris's signature limerick trick of ending the lim with a clever spoonerism or similar wordplay has surely influenced many writers, both in the Invite and at OEDILF.com, where he's also a mainstay. British-born, Netherlands-based World Court honcho Hugh Thirlway, who's active on OEDILF under a pseudonym, once again drops by at the Limerixicon to pick up his ink. Hugh sent us a slew of clever limericks in this contest, of which two get ink, raising his total to 24, including a win. It's Hugh's first chance for a Loser Mug or Grossery Bag, but fourth-place finisher Frank Osen has so many of both that he uses the bags as dishcloths for his mugs; it's his 18th ink above the fold, all of them from just the past three years. Style Invitational on the limerick entries of Week 1084 As it has been since 2004, the Limerixicon is run in conjunction with OEDILF.com, the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, founded and supervised by Chris J. Strolin with the assistance of a skilled corps of volunteer contributors and editors. Every August, Chris tells me which sliver of the dictionary he's working on, and once the Limerixicon results are posted -that's now -Inviters can submit any of their entries, inking or no, to OEDILF, where they're assessed and put through a very useful "workshopping" process, in which experienced writers offer constructive criticism and suggestions. If your entry got ink today, please indicate to OEDILF that it's already been published by The Post. You may also enter limericks showcasing words beginning with anything up to fo-, starting with Aa-. While OEDILF limericks no longer are required to define the word, some Invite entries might not feature the given word prominently enough for the 'dilfers. Limericks have a long tradition of being risque -in fact, some people say that a limerick, by definition, must be risque, much as purists maintain that a haiku must reflect on nature. We obviously don't subscribe to that narrow view, but were in no ways surprised to receive numerous limericks even bluer than the Web-only entries near the bottom of today's list. Here are three of the best: A fig leaf's for covering stuffLike statues of those in the buff.One leaf hides her quim And likewise for him Unless one leaf isn't enough! (Tom Witte) The Nats made a deal oh so wise And young Fister has opened some eyes: He slips in the strikes And the hitters yell "Yikes!" As his K's seem much more like KYs (Jeff Shirley) And the Scarlet Letter goes to ...To the giant, she made a stern face:"Though you fee, fie and foe at my place,This portfolio's new,So whatever you do,You'd better not fum on my case!" (Craig Dykstra) ====================================================================== WEEK 1089, published September 14, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1089: If you can't laugh anymore, they win: Humor in the Sept. 11 era; The Empress looks back on the Style Invitational contest in the weeks after 9*11 Washington Post Blogs September 11, 2014 Thursday 7:19 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1731 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Uh, "Happy September 11" isn't quite right ... In the Sept. 18, 2001, Washington Post, on the front page of the Style section, Gene Weingarten came out as the editor of The Style Invitational (though not as the anonymous Czar) in an essay headlined "Not Funny: The Rules of Humor Changed on Sept. 11." Gene noted that it had taken more than five days for him to see any online jokes about the attacks - an interval that even back then was uncharacteristically restrained. "Last week," Gene said, "The Post decided to publish as scheduled its Sunday humor contest, the Style Invitational, which I edit. This feature is not famous for its political sensitivity, but this weekend I found myself culling from the results any entries that suggested any cognitive weaknesses in the president of the United States." The Sept. 16 Invitational had already been produced; the contest's production deadlines were earlier then. It asked for Rodney Dangerfield-style "no respect" jokes. But the next contest, Sept. 23, contained this complete set of directions: "Make us laugh." Gene offered to reflect on that Sept. 18, 2001, essay, and his sudden (if temporary) ban on George W. Bush jokes that had been submitted for contests in process: "A few things about this column, and the decision. I remember cutting at least two Bush-is-stupid jokes, for these related reasons: The first was simply a matter of way-too-soon. The second was that people were genuinely fearful about what would come next. Third, people were truly invested in hoping that this new president of ours was smarter and more competent than they suspected he was. I didn't want to publish anything, for a week at least, that might extinguish that small flicker of hope. And finally, even if I had judged that a Bush joke was okay to use, I didn't think it was fair to do that to the entrants who had composed it before 9*11 and who might well want to disavow it in light of events." . Gene turned out to be wrong, I think, in declaring that "it won't be the same," that the rules of humor had changed permanently; the Bush-critical jokes were back in the Invite well before the end of the president's first term. But I see that a full nine months after 9*11, the results of a contest for "a haiku summarizing the career of an American politician" contained none about President Bush. Here are the results of the "make us laugh" contest, which includes only the gentlest teasing of Bush's language creativity: During the least funny week in anyone's memory, Page 2 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1089: If you can't laugh anymore, they win: Humor in the Sept. 11 era; The Empress looks back on the Style Invitational contest in the.... we asked you simply to make us laugh. No further instructions. Predictably, your 175 entries constituted the smallest response in the history of this contest. We empathize with all who chose to stay silent but salute all who did not: Your entries were wildly different but shared a certain thrilling pugnacity. Thanks for the laughs. All entries below win T-shirts. Winner of the Prince George's County Police Department bell is the last entry on the page. There is one huge problem with the guarantee of 70 virgins for each martyr in Paradise. What can one do with six dozen women? The guarantors eit her don't know Paradise or don't know women. (Howard Walderman, Columbia) If wives were meant to enjoy sex, God would've made husbands good at it. (Judith Cottrill, New York) Bad choice of tough language for the Taliban to use: "Oh yeah? You and what army?" (Russell Beland, Springfield) This is a real excerpt from the news shortly after the WTC and Pentagon were attacked. The interview took place at a blood donation site: "At times like this, people come together. We have come together here to give blood. Many people didn't know they had it in them." (Judy Freedman, Rockville) A tornado tore through the Gaithersburg Home Depot yesterday, leaving in its wake 12 newly fashioned houses, three toolsheds, a gazebo, and a new deck added onto a nearby home. (Paul Kondis, Alexandria) I keep waiting for our president to say something like: "We are not at war with Islam, and we certainly don't wish to offend the many good Muslim Americans. Our enemies are the terrorists and those nations that have become a Mecca for terrorist behavior." (Hang Xia- Ti, Arlington) As I write this, I am at work and not wearing pants! A clown has just thrown a pie in my face! Also, poopy­doody! (Stephen Dudzik, Olney) Okay, here's a trick. Think of a number between 1 and 10. Now multiply it by the number of decades you have been alive. Okay? Now subtract the day of the month you were born. Okay? Now picture J. Edgar Hoover in a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader costume. (Russell Beland, Springfield) The week before Russell wrote those jokes, his close colleague Bryan Jack was on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon - into Jack's own workplace. I had hesitated to run this contest at all, because I was afraid that all the funny stuff would be unprintable. I finally relented, adding the explicit challenge that the humor couldn't be too sick. And then I realized that the results would be posted online on Sept. 11, and so I banned all 9*11 jokes as well. I wouldn't think Reader's Digest would want to share the inking humor in this week's results, but I hope the sicker entries have at least passed the "too soon" bar. Many of the entries aren't sick at all, but simply use the gift-shop construct as a vehicle for your typical Invite current-events jokes. (The one I was wavering on was Dave Airozo's Lincoln penny bank with the slot in the back of the head, but I'm hoping it's okay 149 years later.) That didn't mean, of course, that people didn't send some nohhhh-wayyyyys. A small sampling: At Monticello, a Sally Hemings inflatable doll (Thad Humphries), and and at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a Karen Carpenter de-flatable doll (Diane Wah). At the Clinton Library, a Monica Lewinsky gobblehead. (Tom Witte) From the gift shop at the maker of Thalidomide, commemorative Lego minifigures. (Kevin Dopart) But the jawest-dropper of the week was the suggestion of a new player, one Nathan Ainspan. Nathan suggested some U.S. Holocaust Museum oven mitts. This would have been just garden-variety unprintable except for Nathan's note: Page 3 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1089: If you can't laugh anymore, they win: Humor in the Sept. 11 era; The Empress looks back on the Style Invitational contest in the.... He used to work at the Holocaust Museum. Now that is sick. One entry that I'd chosen was rejected by The Post's managing editor, when it was brought to his attention, as "not in good taste." It's by Rob Huffman: "At the FedEx Field gift shop: Your choice of bobbleheads: Nappy Head, Polack, Hymie or Redskin." The thing is, we'd done essentially the same joke less than a year ago -showing equivalent slurs to make clear that the football team's name was one, too. Barry Koch's second-place bank-headline : Post headline: Metro to stay open late for Redskins Bank head: Honkies, coloreds file discrimination complaint That one received no reader complaints, even at the top of the page. But I decided not to make a big to-do; for one thing, this week's joke is pretty much the same idea as Barry's. And also, I'd just as soon not have the top editors worry over the rest of this week's ink as well. Lots of new or rarely appearing Losers this week, including at the top: Mike Duffy, who's relocated from Washington to Montana. Mike got his first Invite mention all the way back in Week 90, but is an ink-dabbler; this is his 16th blot and his first Inkin' Memorial. But! It's his fourth ink "above the fold" - a truly impressive ratio. Nancy Schwalb gets Ink No. 18 (and 19) and her third above the fold, along with the Titanic tchotchkes. And it's just the second blot of ink for Randy Arndt, who'd sent his entry as an actual picture of a didn't-vote sticker; and the fourth for Steven Steele Cawman, who's a regular on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. Randy and Steven get their choice of the Loser Mug or the Whole Fools Grossery Bag, provided they let me know by Tuesday morning. Otherwise, they get my choice. We're having two neologism contests three weeks apart why? Because I'm so jazzed about this contest idea, which was suggested by the Royal Consort here at Mount Vermin. Much like the contests we've based on ScrabbleGrams letter sets, Week 1089 should get a whole lot of entries, because it's so, so easy to find words, especially since the letters don't have to be in a straight line. (Finding interesting words, and writing clever definitions, might not be so easy.) And now that I've found out about the cool word find maker at puzzle­maker.com, I can easily make new grids for future contests. You simply feed a list of words into the entry field, one to a line, and the software instantly creates a grid with your specified number of rows and columns (if possible), filling in the rest of the spaces with random letters. Which words to use? For that, I consulted the Random Word Generator at wordgenerator.net: I clicked 15 times on "Generate random words" and fed the following into the word find maker: Amoneste. Enregister. Bunghole. Floriculture. Condensate. Itsy bitsy. Defensible. Mustachioed. Doricism. Polytechnica. Ectropium. Salic. Educability. Spreadeagle. So those should all be in there in straight lines. No prize for finding them -unless you dazzle the Empress with a hilarious definition for one or more of them, of course. (While forming the grid was delightfully easy, I was grateful for the assistance of Scion No. 2, the Little Princess, who agreeably offered, from her college dorm, to turn it into a graphic that included the number and letter coordinates and the circled neologisms.) There's a change of venue for the Sept. 21 Loser Brunch. It had been the annual outing to the Baltimore Museum of Art, but instead it will be in Montgomery County: It's at Founding Farmers, just off I-270 north of Montrose Road. See the details and RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Loser webite, nrars.org. I have another engagement that morning, but should be able to make it to the October brunch Oct. 19 at the Front Page in Arlington's Ballston area. There are a number of new Losers on whom I have not cast my personal eyeballs; I hope that this situation will be rectified. pat.myers@washpost.com Page 4 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1089: If you can't laugh anymore, they win: Humor in the Sept. 11 era; The Empress looks back on the Style Invitational contest in the.... ====================================================================== WEEK 1090, published September 21, 2014 Style Conversational: Stick your knobstick in the jerkinhead, okay? Add to list The Empress of The Style Invitational talks about this week’s contest and results By Pat MyersSeptember 18, 2014 I know, Week 1090 is sooo immature. But the part of my epidermis that is showing is blushing only a wee bit in embarrassment. I’m somewhat surprised that we got to do this contest; I did take the step of asking for approval beforehand. But “words are words,” figures Arts & Style features editor David Malitz, even though these words are “fuksheet,” “invagination” and “pershittie.” Your poem isn’t required to sound dirty to someone who doesn’t know what the word actually means (which would be virtually everyone); there are other ways to make poems funny. The only rule is that the word can’t only mean something it doesn’t really mean: When I read the poems, I’m going to keep the real meanings in mind. (By “real,” I mean what it says on this “50 Words That Sound Rude” list on Mental Floss.) Note that the Invitational’s list doesn’t include all 50 words; there are about 40. So many of the 50 redundantly contain “cock” or “dick” or “hole.” And I also omitted “kumbang,” which is a certain kind of wind in Indonesia. I’ll probably run the poems with the definition at the bottom, as in this week’s example, which was written by a man who just this week released a picture book for little children. Some real douzies: The 12-letter neologisms of Week 1086 Invite neologism contests always work. Okay, I shouldn’t be fallaciously inductive: Invite neologism contests always have worked. It’s amazing, really, that the well doesn’t run dry. Um, hasn’t run dry. But some of our contests present certain challenges. For Week 1086 it was the length of the term: a 12-letter word (or an 11- or 13- letter one) is often hard to read — I had to look at most of the entries pretty slowly — and its potential for humor decreases if readers aren’t going to get from one end of the word to the other. Two examples I noted during the judging: “hypotoniceity” and “feuhemeristic.” (Sometimes the revised word looked almost identical to the original; I had to look twice at “prostituition,” which is why I added a hyphen to Steve Langer’s entry.) “Hypotoniceity” and “feuhemeristic” also point to some advice I gave four weeks ago, and apply to all the neologism contests: If the reader doesn’t immediately sense the original term you’re playing on, he’s probably not going to find it very interesting. Which means that the reader has to be familiar with that word. Some people’s entries included the original as well, to be helpful; I tried not to look at the explanation, however, since the eventual reader wouldn’t see it. But it did come in handy when the writer of “Afroembolism: Cause a blood clot by wearing cornrows that are too tight” explained that he*she (I never looked) was playing on “aeroembolism.” Ah. (I still don’t know what “hypotoniceity” and “feuhemeristic” are referring to.) And that entry points to another problem I see all the time in neologism contests: The definition doesn’t match the part of speech of the neologism. Even though the neologism is a made-up word, our familiarity with the English language lets us see the word as a noun or verb or adjective or whatever. We know that “Afroembolism” isn’t a verb, it’s a noun; it has the noun suffix -ism and is based on the noun embolism — and so why would the definition be the definition of a verb? The definition for that one needed to begin with “A blood clot caused by . . .” Then there was “Flopcharting: Career statistician for the Chicago Cubs.” The definition needed to see the word as a verb (“keeping stats for the Cubs”) or as a gerund, a noun in verb form that involves doing something (“data analysis for the Cubs”). “Flopcharting,” whatever it is, is not a person. I’m glad that I allowed multi-word terms in both the original and the neologism; it turned out that three of the funniest entries this week comprised two or more words. I didn’t, however, accept extra words just to pad the entry to 12 letters: “A wicked witch,” “a crystallizer,” etc. I was fairly lenient toward plurals and other suffixes that brought the total to 12, though sometimes they were a bit too distracting: “volumptuously” and especially “badvertisings,” for example, because we don’t tend to use the words “voluptuously” and “advertisings.” ADVERTISING Finally, as always, I got lots of great neologisms that deserved funnier definitions than the ones they came with. When I judge word contests on printouts, I mark entries “BD” — should have a better definition — and often compile them into a list. A couple of times I’ve sent them out in a later contest to be crowdsourced by the Loser Community; I’m not sure whether I’ll do that for these words, which include “My Little Phony,” “RBI-wan Kenobi,” “rubscription,” “gymphomaniac” and “unsung zeroes.” No such problems for the 40-odd inking entries this week — every one of them, alas, written by a repeat offender to the Invitational. It’s the second Inkin’ Memorial, and the 59th ink in all, for Larry Gray since his debut in Week 923. Larry’s first win was in Week 1045, last year, when we asked to turn a line from a song into a statement, and add a question it could answer: From “Ain’t No Sunshine”: A. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know . . . Q. Didn’t I say you couldn’t stop a moving helicopter rotor by yourself? I’m not surprised that Nan Reiner, who’s carved a niche for herself in Loserdom with jokes about local politics, noticed that her recently convicted ex-governor, Bob McDonnell, conveniently has a 12-letter name. Or that she took it to the next level with both his new name (“SOB McDonnell” is so obvious — once you’ve seen Nan come up with it). Nan recently hit the 200-ink mark and now marches forward with two more, including her 21st ink above the fold. Melissa Balmain, who’ll be coming to D.C. in December with her new, utterly delightful book of poems, “Walking In on People,” had a great Invite week; her runner-up “Cream of What” topped three honorable mentions, for 53 inks in all. And Brendan Beary (see 339 previous contests). Obviously seeking the Nerd of the Week prize was Elden Carnahan, whose entry wouldn’t have been printable anyway if we’d actually been able to read it: FUCOXANTHINS [acetic acid [(1S,3R)-3-hydroxy-4-[(3E,5E,7E,9E,11E,13E,15E)-18-[(1S,4S,6R)-4-hydroxy-2,2,6-trimethyl-7-oxabicyclo[4.1.0]heptan-1-yl]-3,7,12,16-tetramethyl-17-oxooctadeca-1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15-octaenylidene]-3,5,5-trimethylcyclohexyl] ester] --> FUCOXANTHIS!: what the ill-prepared student of organic chemistry might say the night before the final exam. Maybe Elden would like to write a poem about it. (See the bottom of this column for some unprintable entries.) You can’t keep that brunch down — yet another new location for this Sunday This month’s Loser brunch — originally planned for Baltimore, then for Potomac — will now be at Clyde’s overlooking the lake in Columbia, Md., between the Washington and Baltimore beltways, this Sunday at noon. I won’t be able to make it, but I hear that a number of northwest-of-D.C. Losers and Style Invitational Devotees plan to gather there, and probably won’t even throw their food. If you’d like to join in, RSVP to Elden Carnahan on his Loser website so he can give the restaurant a head count. I do plan to make it to next month’s brunch, Oct. 19, at the Front Page in Arlington’s Ballston district. See you next week — maybe Next Thursday’s Conversational might be especially late, especially early, or nonexistent: Rosh Hashanah begins Wednesday night and continues on Thursday, and the Empress is going to be doing the New Year thing, which isn’t exactly a party but does have some cool noisemakers. Regardless, next week’s Invitational should appear as usual, sometime late Thursday afternoon. The dozen doesn’t: Unprintables from Week 1086 (Note: Crude wordplay below. Please don’t read it if you think it will bother you.) Motherpucker: Oedipus-lite. (Bruce Carlson) Skulldungery: Shitheadedness. (Christopher Lamora) Clithographic: What Georgia O’Keeffe’s art is. (Mark Richardson) Eat-her proof (as in weatherproof): Property of a chastity belt. (Sylvia Betts) Procotologism: KY Jelly; and Lickety-spilt: Badly performed oral stimulation. (Roy Ashley) Yes, you clearly are immature enough to get to work on Week 1090. ====================================================================== WEEK 1091, published September 28, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1091: The good*bad and inky; The Empress of The Style Invitational chews over the week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs September 25, 2014 Thursday 5:48 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1378 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Happy New Year, everyone. It's a Mini-Convo this week because along with doing the Empressing thing, I'm also the person at our little synagogue in Central Goyishe, Md., who's in charge of organizing the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. So I'm writing this in advance, between services, and hope the auto-publish function of the "content management system" Methode, The Post's second most snarled-at entity this week, worked better this time than it did back in April, when I went on vacation and had to make it all work from my B&B room in Oxford, England. I was surprised that the Invitational hadn't repeated the good-idea*bad-idea contest of Week 105, since the results were so memorable: When I mentioned to my predecessor, the Czar, that I was doing this contest again for Week 1091, the C immediately quoted me the winning entry from 19 years ago, about the kids' party, from memory. (At least I think it's the first time we're repeating this contest; I searched Elden Carnahan's indispensable Master Contest List for "idea"; out of 34 mentions, only Week 105 mentioned good*bad. If it slipped in sometime over the years without "idea" in the name or description, welp, we're doing the contest anyway.) How "slight" are "slight changes in wording"? Slight enough to be funny and interesting, as in the first set of results. I'm going to show the Week 105 results right here, because some coding problem caused the entries in the archived version to run togetther in a nigh-unintelligible blob. Report from Week 105, in which we asked for good idea-bad idea scenarios. But first we wish to once again protest a torrent of crude jokes from people who seem to think this contest dwells in the gutter. Please be advised that the Style Invitational will never stoop to rewarding sophomoric, adolescent humor. Fifth Runner-Up: Good idea: Shampoo. Bad idea: Shampoop. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) Fourth Runner-Up: Good idea: Wash hands after using toilet. Bad idea: Wash hands using toilet. (Jay Snyder, Chantilly) Third Runner-Up: Good idea: Taking back the streets of Washington, D.C. Bad idea: Taking the back streets of Washington, D.C. (Steve Hazelton, Reston) Second Runner-Up: Good idea: Have a documentary on the civil rights movement narrated by James Earl Jones. Bad idea: Have a documentary on the civil rights movement narrated by James Earl Ray. (Jerry A. Pohl, Rockville) the week's new contest and results First Runner-Up: Good idea: In business meetings, express yourself. Bad idea: In business meetings, express your milk. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) And the winner of "Standing Firm" autographed by Dan Quayle: Good idea: Showing pictures of your kids at a private party. Bad idea: Showing pictures of your privates at a kids' party. (Ira Moskowitz, Lanham) Honorable Mentions: Good Idea: Purchase a dog at the pound. Bad idea: Purchase dog by the pound. (Patrick G. White, Taneytown) Good idea: Saving the spotted owls. Bad idea: Saving the spotted owls in little plastic baggies in your freezer. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Good idea: Picking up a cent on the sidewalk. Bad idea: Picking up a scent on the sidewalk. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Good idea: Getting into Wharton after high school. Bad idea: Getting into Lorton after high school. (Beryl Benderly, Washington) Good idea: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Bad idea: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for Iraq. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) Good idea: Drive right, pass left. Bad idea: Drive right past cop. (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church) Good idea: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Bad idea: Let he who is without insurance pass the first stone. (Rich Milauskas, Laurel) [Oops - should have been "Let HIM who..."] Good idea: Presenting fresh, shiny faces to the teacher each morning. Bad idea: Presenting fresh, shiny feces to the teacher each morning. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Good idea: Take pride in your work. Bad idea: Take pride in your wart. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) Bad Idea: Clinton, Gore in '96. Good idea: Clinton, gone in '96. (David Clayton Carrad, Hockessin, Del.) Good idea: Shopping at Food Lion. Bad idea: Being lion food. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Good idea: Pose for Playboy while you can. Bad idea: Pose for Playboy on the can. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Good idea: Calling your mother. Bad idea: Calling "You mutha!" (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Good idea: Cultivating a staff of competent workers among your underlings. Bad idea: cultivating a staphylococcus among your under-things. (Mike Sharkey, Washington) Good idea: Acquire a foreign tongue. Bad idea: Acquire a foreign tongue in your wedding reception line. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Good idea: Getting great marks because of your class in "The Social Structure." Bad idea: Getting grate marks because of your class in the social structure. (Tom Albert, Alexandria) Good idea: Yearly mammograms over 50. Bad idea: Over 50 mammograms yearly. (Leslie Marshall and bridge buds, Bethesda) And Last: the week's new contest and results Good idea: Post humor contest winners. Bad idea: Posthumous contest winners. (J. Calvin Smith, Laurel) Wow, great week. Note that the list of Losers include four who would end up in the Hall of Fame, with more than 500 blots of ink each: Chuck Smith, Jennifer Hart, Russell Beland and Elden Carnahan. Plus there's 333-time Loser Dave Zarrow. Aah, you can top those guys. And youse guys, you can top yourselves. *Alternative-headline entry by Beverley Sharp It was something of a slog to judge this contest, which asked for novel course catalogue descriptions. I really do, as promised, read every entry I receive, but when I get to a numbered list of 25 entries, each of them pushing 100 words, and the first dozen haven't shown me anything I 'd want to give a prize to -well, I might not muse as deeply as usual on Entries 13 through 25. But as I observe most weeks, once the chaff is tossed, the wheat can make a pretty yeasty Invite loaf. Or at least a few crackers to nibble. For the second week in a row, we had no First Offenders among the inking entries, but a number of occasional (if longtime) Losers aced this week's final. One who doesn't fall into the "occasional" group is Frank Osen, whose evocation of Every Student's Nightmare (well, mine, repeatedly, for perhaps 30 years) earns him his sixth Inkin' Memorial -yes, all his wins date from the post-Inker era (since mid-2012) - as well as Ink No. 116. The bag of scarlet caterpillar fungus from the Beijing Walmart goes to John Glenn, the earthbound Texan who since Week 684 has dabbled in Loserdom with great care: In a typical week, John will send in one or two entries, then later will resubmit one of them a few days hence with small but significant improvements. The thoroughness has paid off: In his 34 blots of ink since 2006, John has placed "above the fold" eight times. Meanwhile, it's the first time above the fold -and just the second blot of ink -for Dan McMahon, who knows from students: He's the principal of DeMatha High, one of the D.C. area's premier Catholic schools. His students -all boys -will surely be so proud to see Dr. McMahon attain this high honor, along with his choice of Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag. And it's also the first ATF for Margaret Welsh, after 11 honorable mentions over the years, since Week 397, back in the Czarist era. I hope Dan and Margaret let me know before next Tuesday which runner-up prize they'd prefer. Once again, have a healthy and inky new year, and may you be inscribed in the Book of Laff. ====================================================================== WEEK 1092, published October 5, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1092: Hmm, a challenge to do stupid things ...; The Empress of The Style Invitational talks about this week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs October 2, 2014 Thursday 7:02 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1599 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Welcome, federales, to FY 2015; welcome, Jews, to 5775; and if you're reading this, then The Washington Post has finally welcomed me to the new Methode year -I found out right after midnight Wednesday*Thursday that as of Oct. 2, 2014, The Post's security certificate to remotely access its publishing system had expired, and I couldn't log on to the system no way no how. [It was finally fixed around 11 a.m., at which point some other thing went wrong.] I'm truly heartened that the ALS Association received such a huge windfall -or waterfall -from its Ice Bucket Challenge; a friend and neighbor of mine just died of this cruel disease, and a cure cannot come fast enough. $100 million surely will help in some way. Still, you just know that lots of equally worthy charities (along, no doubt, with numerous unworthies) are hatching plans of their own to get pledge money directed their way. Your challenge for Week 1092 may well be to figure out some crazy fundraising scheme that isn't actually being used already. There aren't any concrete rules this week for how the entries should read (except for the standard fabulously-funny­and-clever). But please don't write on and on; humorous essays can be wonderful, but they just don't work in The Style Invitational, especially interspersed with one-liners. For those who don't get the print Invite, here's a link to what the page looks like in its latest location, the third page from the back of the Arts & Style section. (Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List has PDFs of most of the past 1090 print pages; just click on the cartoon icon on the right side of a certain week's contest listing.) Take a look at the link above and see those blocks of type in the narrow little columns. You see a couple that are especially long -Dan McMahon's third-place ink; John Kammer's honorable mention? Each of those runs about 55 words. And even at that length, they look forbidding to the weekend-morning eye, especially before that second cup of coffee. So try to be concise, and try to make your sentences as readable -fun to read -as you can. What counts as an organization? I'm not going to be rigid, but a joke will make more sense if it's a nonprofit entity of some sort. Apple's charity foundation, yes: Apple Inc., no. For years and years, the Invite always likened the Ask Backwards contest to "Jeopardy!," since you have to answer in the form of a question. But in recent years we've acknowledged our debt to Carnac the Magnificent -Johnny Carson in bejeweled, feathered turban "divining" the questions for the answers supplied by the genially obsequious Ed McMahon: A. Sis Boom Bah; Q. Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes. Here's a video clip of that joke and a few others. The "Tonight Show" audience is very supportive. Page 2 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1092: Hmm, a challenge to do stupid things ...; The Empress of The Style Invitational talks about this week's new contest and results I offered 16 categories in Week 1088, up from the usual dozen, about half of them contributed by Losers on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page. I padded the list because I didn't have a feel for which phrases would be fruitful. And some weren't; "iPad Thai" drew a bunch of entries about using your noodle, noodling around, etc.; and com.org brought in only 24 entries, possibly an all-time low, and none of them guffawable. On the other hand, there were plenty of good jokes about a cross-country trip in a Miata, but just about all of them are, duh, about being cramped. So I wasn't going to run a dozen of them; it's better to go on to the next topic. As I mention in the results, that category was inspired by the trip by Longtime Loser J.J. Gertler last month from Arlington, Va., to Monterey, Calif.- and back -to the 25th-anniversary Miata convention at Mazda's Laguna Seca racetrack, attended by 1,800 little bitty pretty cars, including JJ's 17-year-old ragtop. He kept a Facebook blog called "JJ's Almost C2C2C Sojourn" to document what seems to be a crisis-free 6,712 miles and 16 days, starting with a video of himself backing out of the driveway. Presumably he got to put some luggage in the passenger seat. Once again, brand-new Loser Danny Gallagher fails to score a magnet. Just a few weeks ago, Danny got his first ink with a runner-up idea for a new phone app: "The Teh: An app that un-autocorrects your texts so it makes people think you're busier than you really are." Now the Dallas-based humor blogger gets to bobble the head of his own Lincoln Memorial statue courtesy of his tribute to the governor of his state. (I'm sure there's already a Rick Perry bobblehead, and even one that's a little statue with a spring in the neck.) Appropriately winning a package of tenacious little critters that you keep finding in your house no matter how you try to dislodge them, Frank Osen once again finds himself in Runner-Up Land. Well, last week he wasn't a runner-up; he won the whole contest. The three other runners-up this week are all Invite veterans -in fact, I'm sorry to say that there weren't any First Offenders this week. (As tempted as I am to encourage promising new people by giving them ink, I don't see names when I judge, and there were probably some very clever entries by newbies that just missed the cut. Just keep trying, new people -see the nice pretty new magnets?) 170-time Loser Lawrence McGuire and 170-zillion­time Loser Chris Doyle did the great-minds thing with "stir-crossed lovers," and Dave Prevar gets Ink No. 255 with one more go at Bob McDonnell, in this case, an allusion to the plea bargain that the ex-gov really, really stupidly turned down. Not surprisingly, there were several good ideas that were sent by too many people to get individual ink. Tysons Coroner had the slogan "Shop Till You Drop"; a cross-country trip in a Miata was feasible only in Liechtenstein. A factoid I learned courtesy of one entry: Zoologists say that an octopus has "arms," rather than tentacles. They reserve the latter for appendages that have suckers only on the end, rather than all the way up, as an octopus does. I learn so much in my job -including various genres of porn, but fortunately that didn't have anything to do with the octopus entry. (Unprintable entries from Week 1088 at the bottom of this column.) When I was off doing some volunteer work yesterday, I noticed an e-mail to my Post account from whoever takes "contact us" questions on washingtonpost.com: An Ira Moskowitz would like me to contact him immediately. I recognized the name; I had just credited Moskowitz last week for his super-clever winning entry from Week 105 (1995), which I used as an example and inspiration for Week 1091, an encore of the same "good idea*bad idea" challenge: Good idea: Showing pictures of your kids at a private party.Bad idea: Showing pictures of your privates at a kids' party. So I e-mailed Ira and complimented him on his long-ago ink, said I figured he'd seen it again, and asked what I could do for him. He instantly e-mailed me back. "Call me." So I called (n.b.: I hate calling strangers on the phone). Ira informed me that he was very upset to see his name "used fraudulently" next to this joke, that he had just heard about it because someone had mentioned it to him. Page 3 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1092: Hmm, a challenge to do stupid things ...; The Empress of The Style Invitational talks about this week's new contest and results Furthermore, he did not find it funny to joke "about displaying genitals to children." And further-furthermore, he worked in a "very sensitive job." He demanded that I take the name off the joke immediately from the online version. I explained that I'd simply copied the joke from the archives of 1995; I didn't recently get anything with his name on it. He wanted to know if I could check the original entries from 1995. No, sorry, I said: It was the dawn of e-mail, and The Post's e-mail purged after 90 days. And anyway, most of the entries still arrived by fax and postal mail; they got trashed as soon as the prizes went out. (Heck, probably some were trashed before the prizes went out, to judge from the number of people who wrote me to complain they'd never gotten their bumper stickers from the Czarist regime.) So unless I'd just dreamed up the name by mistake, I told him, the joke must have been by another Ira Moskowitz, strange as that would seem. And I certainly wasn't going to deprive the Cleverer but Perhaps More Tasteless Mr. M. of credit because someone else was running around with his name. When I got home, I double-checked the Week 105 results, and indeed the winner was "(Ira Moskowitz, Lanham)." This Ira is not and never was from Lanham. I think, in fact, he recently moved to the Washington area. And so he seemed satisfied. If you Google the name, most of the hits are for an artist who lived from 1912 to 2001, residing in New York and Taos in his later years. There's also a doctor in California. The Ira I called had a D.C. area code. The original Ira, according to Elden's statistics, won the contest with his first ink, and never got another blot. Until the encore presentation last week. So I guess it's not likely that Ira Formerly of Lanham will be reading this, eager to set us straight and bask once again in the glory of a well-wrought chiasmus-type joke about children and genitals. (I do now, by the way, keep copies of all the entries except the few that straggle in through the fax machine.) Among the unanswerables:A. A cross-country trip in a Miata. Q. What is the best way to prepare for self-administered oral sex? (Harry Farkas) A. Mary Had a Little Lemming. Q. What is a cute euphemism for Mary's intimate foliage? (Tom Witte) A. An octopus doing the Hokey Pokey. Q. Who's got fewer things going in and out than Your Mama? (Jon Gearhart) ====================================================================== WEEK 1093, published October 12, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1093: Sometimes an oh-notion; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ewww) the week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs October 9, 2014 Thursday 7:39 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 2284 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I'm glad I noticed before this week's Style Invitational went online -and especially before the print version was typeset -that this week's fabulous second prize, the set of four crocheted coasters depicting the rear view of raised-tail cats, was pictured upside down. So you would have seen this instead of this. It was my fault; when my computer uploaded the photo from my phone, it automatically inverted it, and I didn't notice before passing it on to Arts & Style's layout editor. In the upside-down view, the little cat feet in crocheting artist Shanna Compton's design look a bit like little (or big) cat ears, and the curved tail looks as if it's sitting on the floor. But then, hmm, what's that little pink star in middle of the cat's ... face? chest? So I'm glad the cats are back on their feet again. And thanks again to nine-time Loser Diane Wah, who got them just for us -or, actually, for you. Provided that you're just a leeeetle short of being the funniest writer in Week 1093. This week's contest, which I slammed into existence just days after 162-time Loser Mark Raffman suggested it to me, bears some resemblance to one of my first contests as Empress, almost exactly a decade ago: Dating from October 2004 (Week 581) and headlined "Evil Things in Store," that contest asked the Losers to "think of similarly evil or just plain stupid practices that the staff of a retail or other establishment might perpetrate." The contest was suggested by then-rookie Dave Prevar (now the Dave Prevar of 245 inks), who'd written in with this Tru-Life Experience: "I was looking for some over-the-counter back pain relief, and guess where the store stocked it? The bottom shelf, naturally. It took me a while just to get down there, and I hung on to a shelf to get back up. While I was down there, I even helped an older feller with his selection." That example wouldn't really apply to Week 1093, because it seems to be based in just thoughtlessness rather than greed. But some of the results of Week 581 can inspire you -thie first runner-up is classic. Here's the whole list, with both kinds, including true ones: Report from Week 581, in which we asked you to think of evil or stupid practices that a business might perpetrate. About half of you took this as an opportunity to vent hair-tearingly about actual insanities you've witnessed, including the ever-popular waiting on hold with tech support because you can't connect to the Internet, and hearing a repeated recording directing you to a Web site; and numerous sightings of drive-through bank lanes that featured Braille keypads. The remainder were fanciful -at least as far as we know: The Empress cannot guarantee that there isn't some sign on some bus somewhere that says, "Illiterate? For help, write to . . ." Third runner-up: True story: I once went to an Italian restaurant where the restrooms were marked Donne and Uomini. I figured that donne was the plural of don, and so . . . (Wayne Rodgers, Satellite Beach, Fla.) Second (ewww) the week's new contest and results runner-up: Peep shows that won't start when you put the money in because "I think you know why." (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) First runner-up, the winner of the SpongeBob SquarePants sponge, plus a Loser pen: Replace the candy in the checkout lane with kittens and puppies. (Stanley Halbert, Lawrence, Kan.) And the winner of the Inker: "Due to the increase in Metro ridership, all commuters will now be required to make reservations at least 24 hours in advance. Please arrive at the station at least 30 minutes before scheduled departure to receive your seating* standing assignment." (Mike Cisneros, Centreville) Honorable Mentions:IMAGINED EVILSInstalling automobile GPS devices that give directions in a choice of two voices --Porky Pig and Betty Boop. (Peter Metrinko, Plymouth, Minn.)A large scale in a restaurant with an arrow pointing to a mark that says, "You must weigh less than this to order the Triple Death by Chocolate dessert." (Art Grinath, Takoma Park)Certain confessional booths designated for only mortal sins. (Chuck Smith)Furniture stores institute a "you sit, you buy" policy. (Eric Murphy, Chicago)Restaurants suggest a tip of 5-pi percent. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park; Danny Bravman, St. Louis)"If you are deaf, press 1 . . ." (Maja Keech, New Carrollton) Sell each produce item in a different novel way. Grapes: 4 cents each. Coconuts: $7.23 per cubic decimeter. (Russell Beland, Springfield)Along with the Levitra prescription, include condoms with wrappers that take four hours to open. (Josh Borken, Bloomington, Minn.)Emergency number is 1-800-271-8684; Press 1 for medical emergency, Press 2 for fire . . . For an electrical fire, press 1; for burning wood, press 2 . . . (Art Grinath)Encourage people to pay for debt consolidation services with a credit card. (Art Grinath)Display canned tomatoes with the canned pears and peaches instead of with canned vegetables, since, technically, they ARE fruit. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney)A housing developer could honor world culture by naming all the streets in a suburban subdivision after, say, famous Indians and Serbs, e.g., Ananda K. Coomaraswamy Boulevard, Zeljko Joksimovi Way. (Peter Metrinko)Free cold medicine with the rental of any heavy machinery. (Russell Beland)Pay toilets also have coin slots inside for pay toilet paper. (Chuck Smith)Grocery stores could put Aunt Jemima pancake mix in the ethnic-foods section. (Roy Ashley, Washington) And the first-ever Anti-Invitational winner: Add a half-cent to every price at dollar stores in Virginia so that, with the 4.5 percent sales tax, each item costs exactly $1.05. (Russell Beland) TRUE EVILSLarge-size bras are always hanging on the lowest, almost-on-the-floor racks, causing us top-heavy shoppers to have to bend over, losing our balance. This is evil. (Christy Miller, Charlottesville)Drive-through liquor stores: for when you're too drunk to walk. (Steve Fahey, Kensington)Hey, ladies, don't you just love those feminine-product disposal units stuck at nose level right next to the toilets in public bathroom stalls? (Michelle Stupak, Ellicott City)When applying for a job as an English teacher for foreign students, a friend of mine was handed a form that said at the top: "If you are unable to read English, please ask for a translator." (Dot Yufer, Newton, W.Va.)In a warehouse store in Nebraska a while back, I wandered into the feminine-products area. And there, on a support beam, between the tampons and the sanitary napkins, was a shrink-wrap*card display of ice picks. (Don Critchfield, Washington)In a CVS, the sign over the aisle read: Candy* Snacks* Diet Aids (Jessica Lynne Mathews, Arlington)I like how supermarkets now sell freshly brewed coffee --and have those little platforms by the checkout keypad slanted just enough for your coffee to slide off while you pay. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis)Banks are happy to lend you money when you don't need it. (Jack Cackler, Falls Church)Publish KidsPost in the same section as Tell Me About It [Carolyn Hax's advice column], The Style Invitational and stories about sex toys. (Russell Beland) And Last: From the Metro section of the Oct. 24 Washington Post: "Maryland education officials have notified Prince George's County that it cannot use federal money to provide extra tutoring because a large number of its public schools are falling behind under the No Child Left Behind law." (Rosie Behr, Baltimore) Note that today's headline is stolen directly from Kevin Dopart's honorable mention today -His definition of his neologism "oh-notion" is what Week 1093 is all about. You don't get a physical prize for it, but Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan gives a point in the Loser standings -the same single point that he gives to someone who wins the whole contest -for an honorable-mentions subhead, and even one for the "revised title," the alternative headline for the next week's contest that runs at the bottom of the online Invite. (ewww) the week's new contest and results Not too many people send in suggestions for these headings, so you might have a better chance to get ink than with a regular contest entry (on the other hand, I choose just one each, so maybe the chance isn't that much better -but hey, it doesn't require tons of effort, either). But first, I have to see your entry. Make sure of this by sending your HM*RT entry or entries -you can send up to 25 each, in addition to your regular entries -on a separate e-mail to the regular address, losers@washpost.com, and indicate in the subject line something that shows you're sending entries in either or both of these categories. (It's fine to send both in the same e-mail, and if you can't decide whether a certain title would be better for the honorable mentions or the alternative headline, that's okay.) See, as opposed to when I judge the regular contest entries -in that case, I work from one huge combined file with everyone's name deleted -when it's time for me to choose an honorable-mention subhead or a revised title, I just scroll down my e-mail inbox for that week's entries, and look only at the e-mails so designated. Usually, it's no more than a dozen. So if you just write it along with your regular entries, I might remember to group it with the other HMs*RTs, but there's a better chance I won't. Desperately seeking Losin'*: The results of Week 1089 (Subhead by Tom Witte) I was so excited four weeks ago to run a neologism contest based on a word-search grid, because I knew I was going to get lots and lots of different entries. I wasn't disappointed. I had expected a deluge of e-mails, because it was going to be easy to find some word or other, with the flexibility of the Boggle-style snaking of letters that was permitted -and that didn't happen; fewer than 200 people entered the contest. But many of those entrants sent the full complement of 25 entries, and many others at least 10, so it was no problem at all to find the 38 that got ink today. My first-cut "shortlist," in fact, was something like 150 entries. I'll definitely do this contest again. All four of the "above the fold" winners this week are regular guests in the Losers' Circle: The most frequent visitor among them is Pam Sweeney, who gets Ink No. 243 (and 244) and her 23rd blot above the fold, including nine wins, since Week 499. Frank Osen might as well just set up a cot -he has 21 above-the-fold inks in just three years of Inviting (and 121 blots in all). Today's Inkin' Memorial winner, Mark Raffman (who also suggested this week's contest, it turns out) is in rarefied territory as well: It's his seventh win, 15th above the fold, and 162nd ink, all in only a little more than two years. Whew. So in this company, Rob Wolf isn't quite as obsessive, but he's no dilettante: This is Rob's 29th ink, and second Loser Mug or Grossery Bag (Rob, let me know which). One entry was nixed this week by The Post's managing editor, the No. 2 guy in the newsroom: It was by almost First Offender George Wright: "Jivecrime: The next target for the NYPD's stop-and-frisk initiative. Also known as talking while black." Kevin argued that "jive" is considered offensive, especially in the context of the "stop and frisk" police practice, "which has actually led to people getting beaten unmercifully, in some cases, and even killed." I do think "jive" is an outdated term of slang, as in the hilarious "I speak jive" scene in the 35-year-old movie "Airplane." On the other hand, Kevin did not comment on "Clintonhole," or a picture of four crocheted cat anuses, so I'm not complaining. (For stuff that even I wouldn't think of running, see the bottom of this column, but only if you have no taste.) One entrant decided to keep tracing through the word-search grid until the sun went down. I didn't actually verify this one, and actually couldn't really follow it, but I'll share this effort from Larry Lasday: K-15: OOGLE AMYS MOTEL COT ON BANK TIME FAD SENDS TONY LUCK: Occurs when Tony, the bank teller, takes advantage of the time his fellow fantasy football league bank coworkers spend searching the internet for leaked photos of Amy Adams by claiming Andrew Luck for his fantasy football team. Win a vintage Style Invitational bumper sticker! And by "win," we mean "show up to claim": It's your Special Grand Party Favor for attending this month's Loser brunch at noon on Sunday, Oct. 19, at the buffet of The Front Page in Arlington, just a block from the Ballston Metrorail station. Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan has donated a huge stack of Czarist-era honorable-mention bumper stickers to the Greater Loser Community, so here's a chance to get a piece of Invitatiana that hasn't been produced (ewww) the week's new contest and results since 2003, when we switched to the magnets. I'll be there, and hope to meet some new people as well as see the Invite regulars. RSVP to Elden at NRARS.org; click on "Our Social Engorgements" at the top of the page. Effpelt: A beaver. (Jeff Shirley)Jismotel: Its rooms are available in 15-minute segments. (Edmund Conti)Peecolo: A skin flute. (Kathleen DeBold) [actually, I'm not sure that was unprintable, but Kathleen asked that it not be printed in the Invite)Matitse: A French artist who specialized in frontal nudes. (Elden Carnahan) [again, not shocking, but it wouldn't have gotten in]FistFaux: Marital aid. "She couldn't coax him from watching the playoffs in bed, so she amused herself with her Fist-Faux." (Sylvia Betts) And Rob Wolf's alternative definition to the one that got him a runner-up this week: Clintonhole: What to use when a humidor is not nearby. Next week's prize - a toy man who farts bubbles. ====================================================================== WEEK 1094, published October 19, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1094: If you get it, you don't get it:; The Empress of The Style Invitational on why most of this week's results are only online Washington Post Blogs October 16, 2014 Thursday 7:43 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1138 words Byline: Pat Myers Body "Sure don't see why not. Words are words," answered my editor a month ago when I sent him an e-mail titled "Can we do this contest?" I was pleased, of course, that he'd given the go-ahead to Loser Ward Kay's suggestion of a poetry contest based on the list of "50 Words That Sound Rude but Really Aren't." And readers seemed to agree: Four weeks ago, in announcing the Week 1090 contest, The Style Invitational printed 40 or so of the words, both in print and online, including such genuine wholesome English words as "shittah," "dreamhole," "fuksheet" and "dik­dik" -without any indication of what their real meanings were. And there was even a sample poem by Gene Weingarten, featuring "peniaphobe" (someone with a fear of going broke): My sister is truly a honeyBut a peniaphobe, as to moneySo my sis sells her tailTo most anyone male(Which is pretty ironically funny.) Yeah, it was a pretty immature idea. But "immature" is part of the Empress's job description anyway, and, as I'd expected, we received the usual number of complaints for a Style Invitational column: zero. Four weeks later, however -yesterday evening -my editor had a serious change of heart. He remembered his earlier approval, "but after seeing the page today I think we just have to go another direction. There's simply too much in there that crosses the line, when taking into account that we are still a family paper." Fortunately, he agreed late this morning to let the entire set of results run online, and to allow the winner and two other entries -ones that weren't double-entendres -to run in print. Officially, The Post's position is that there are not two sets of standards for print and online; everything is held to the same high standard. That may be true for its standards for accuracy, transparency and news judgment, but here's a case when differing standards do and should apply: As I note in the Web version's introduction to the results, readers paging idly through the Sunday Arts & Style section might reach Page E16 or 18 -let's say they had an unusually large breakfast waffle -and be unpleasantly surprised by what they could see as coarse humor (or, if they were young children, in-cred-ibly exciting humor). But to read the Invite online, you really have to track it down. You have to look for it through the search bar at washingtonpost.com, or you have to know the generic URL, washingtonpost.com*styleinvitational; or you have to know the usual specific-week URL, bit.ly*invite[week number]; or you have to have the link (which you get if you're on the e-mailing list by entering the Invite or by signing up on your own). And if you go looking for The Style Invitational, and you're upset by these poems, well, you're just being silly. most of this week's results are only online I'm delighted that The Post did give actual liquid ink to Danielle Nowlin's poem about the guy bragging about his Hawaiian fishing trip, with the conclusion "aholehole" (a fish). Danielle, who didn't start entering the Invitational until Week 995, already has blotted up 132 inks, including 14 "above the fold"; this is her fourth Inkin' Memorial. The Loser Community awarded Danielle plaques for both Rookie of the Year and Loser of the Year this past May. It's hard to see how anything could top that, but she's giving it a try - Moppet No. 3 is due shortly. So this week we have two second-place winners and two third-place winners. But just one "Klutz Book of Inventions." The book will go to Beverley Sharp, who edges out Chris Doyle by virtue of printability. Not to mention that Beverley once ended up with a flying squirrel in her bed, and maybe there's some invention in there that's a Flying Squirrel Debedder. With this 475th blot of ink -46th above the fold -Beverley continues inexorably downhill toward the welcome mat of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame. Chris's "penistone" couplet only increases his hold on the status of Biggest Loser Ever, as he slides away from the 1,600 mark. I'm not sending him anything. It's ironic that this contest deemed too risque for our readers includes two inking entries from Mae Scanlan, the most gracious and elegant of Losers. Mae, whose younger elementary school classmates included John McCain, has told us that she writes to her own criterion of tastefulness: She won't send in anything that might embarrass her minister on a Sunday morning before church. So while Mae's "gullgroper" entry -with no double-entendre at all -was the one that wins her a mug or bag, even she had her "dreamhole" poem cut from the print paper. And then there's the other fourth-place for Frank Osen, because Frank Osen seems to have some deal with the gods in which he has permanent squatter's rights above the fold. I don't know what it says about Frank that he ended up with five blots of ink in this contest - perhaps his next volume of poetry could contain a set of these. Some people didn't follow the contest directions, which stated that the poems had to make sense if you read the words with their actual meanings -even if you could also read them entertainingly with the wrong meanings. So it wasn't the contest to say "The Cohens were now sitting shittah" for someone who died, or "The bird fired a pakapoo [actually an Australian lottery] in my ear." It wasn't like the contests we've done in which you had to come up with your own, totally inaccurate definition for an archaic word. Chris Doyle suggested the Tour de Fours contest 11 years ago, basing it on a similar one that ran regularly as part of the New York Magazine Competition, in which he played a starring role (under various credit names) in its later years. And each year since then, the word-block neologism contest has evinced dozens of classic additions to the vocabulary. (I'll be sharing some this week from 2010 on the Style Invitational Ink of the Day.) If you'd like some inspiration for this week's contest, it's easy to find the 10 previous versions (with different letter blocks, of course) on Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List at nrars.org. Call up the list and search on "fours" to find each contest, then scroll four weeks down to click on a link to see the results. As always: An interesting made-up word -it's especially good if it has a real-life application -can become a funnier entry with a clever definition and*or a funny sentence as an example. It's not too late to join the Loser contingent this Sunday at noon at the Front Page in Arlington's Ballston section. I'll be there, along with about 10 others, including some I'll be meeting for the first time. There's a buffet (as well as a Bloody Mary bar) but you can also order from the menu. RSVP to Elden Carnahan here. I am so glad that I didn't have to show up on a week when there was no Invitational at all. ====================================================================== WEEK 1095, published October 26, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1095: The man who made Style ripe for the Invitational; Without Ben Bradlee's creation, you wouldn't be reading these jokes here Washington Post Blogs October 23, 2014 Thursday 7:04 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1507 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Ben Bradlee had nothing to do with The Style Invitational. Not personally, anyway -he retired in 1991, two years before the contest debuted. It was his successor, Len Downie, who approved the idea (a bit surprisingly, to me) and let the Czar run with it. But in another respect, Bradlee had everything to do with it: It was he who created the Style section in 1969, tossing aside the fusty and demeaning "For and About Women" section and replacing with a lively and irreverent digest -essentially a daily magazine -featuring some of the day's best writers. As he wrote in his memoir, "A Good Life": "We wanted to look at the culture of America as it was changing in front of our eyes. The sexual revolution, the drug culture, the women's movement. And we wanted it to be interesting, exciting, different." And it was Ben Bradlee who, in 1990, hired one Gene Weingarten away from the Miami Herald, where Gene had similarly transformed its Sunday magazine, Tropic, running cover stories like this one on the budget deficit, and recruiting Dave Barry as a humor columnist. Before long, Gene was given his own domain at The Post, the Sunday Style section, which until then was the final vestige of For and About Women, featuring a fashion column, society news, and features such as Ann Landers and the horoscope that on weekdays ran in the comics pages. Gene promptly made Sunday Style appointment reading for a major feature story every week (often of the true-crime genre), on which -he's a terrific editor -he would work closely with one of a roster of writers he particularly respected; occasionally he wrote his own. And he also, on Page 2, started up a contest based on the one in New York Magazine (in which his sole entry failed to get ink), and made it edgier than any of the contests run by that famously brash publication. Though from its earliest days it drew contestants from around the country, even before we had the Internet, The Style Invitational was never syndicated -it just wouldn't have been suitable for other newspapers' feature sections. But it was perfect for the one that Ben Bradlee created. Bradlee also hired me, by the way. After a few years working part time, I was hired as a copy editor in 1986; the job interview was brief. (He asked me what my father did; I looked young.) However, after I became Style's copy desk chief, a particularly honest job evaluation I did crossed his desk. "This Myers, she's tough as nails," he remarked to my editor, Mary Hadar. It wasn't true, but I treasured the Bradleean appraisal anyway. creation, you wouldn't be reading these jokes here There have been some marvelous Ben Bradlee appreciations published over the past two days. In addition to the excellent obit by The Post's former managing editor Bob Kaiser, I especially enjoyed these personal reminiscences by some of the paper's most talented writers from over the years: Bradlee and the Style section, by my former Style colleague Martha Sherrill. Bradlee backs up his young reporter against lawyers, anecdotes by The Post's Marc Fisher. (Note: "Flysh--on paper" is to be read as "fly sh--") From my former Style colleague David Remnick, now editor of The New Yorker, in his magazine. (In the understatement of the century: "His letters in no way resembled those of Emily Dickinson.") And one in Time Magazine by my former boss David Von Drehle. Given that in the 1960s, Ben Bradlee told Katharine Graham, in the middle of a fancy restaurant, that "I'd give my left one" to be editor of The Washington Post, it seems to me that the Invite is carrying on his legacy proudly. With both. Given the poetry chops of the Greater Loser Community -witness the "rude word" poems in last week's results -I'm always eager to set them upon a different genre of verse to bumfiddle, to use one of said words. Last week I saw a tanka posted on Facebook by Loser Madeleine Begun Kane, whose main gig is a limerick blog. I can't seem to find it now, but the form seemed just right for the Invitational -short enough for lots of them to fit on the page, long enough to get some cleverness in. And because real tanka -in English, anyway -doesn't actually hew to a strict syllable count (here's some beautiful poetry, labeled as tanka, by Gerard John Conforti, and the lines greatly vary), and it doesn't rhyme, I figured that rather than getting the poetry people up in arms with our insistence on 5-7-5-7-7, and rhyme, and humor, we could let them keep their arms down and we'll just call it something else. Hence TankaWanka. My hunch is that the rhyme will usually be set in the last two lines, in sort of a mini-mini-sonnet ending. But it can be anywhere, and in more than one place. The syllable count, though, and the rhyme requirement, will be fast rules. The subject matter is really flexible, but it can't just be a little personal*domestic musing, about your dog, say. It has to concern some topic that's mentioned in the news of late - i.e., not already out of the discussion. Lord knows, just because I have reading glasses dangling from a little chain around my wattly neck doesn't mean I'm mature. And I admit that both the Royal Consort and I kept breaking into almost weepy guffaws at the succession of poopy jokes, sex jokes and sicko jokes that I was reading aloud to him from my (un)short-list of "good idea*bad idea" entries for Week 1091. A lot of them were similar, and so it didn't make sense to run them all, but I hope the inking ones today will give you a giggle, even if it's a guilty giggle. I had no idea at all whose entries were whose until I put them on the page on Tuesday; because the format was predetermined, it was even hard to tell when one set of entries finished and the next began. And it was fun to see that three out of the four top finishers were either brand-new or occasional visitors to the Invite. But first prize -and not just my own choice, but that of both people I asked to read the short-list -goes to Him Again Frank Osen, who's having the kind of year that reminded me of when, one year about a decade ago, Brendan Beary got 179 blots of ink before returning to semi-sanity. But Jan Forman will have to be moved off the Loser Stats' One-Hit Wonders list, now that we'll supplement her Week 1060 FirStink with a genuine vintage Loser T-Shirt for her thing we used to call a chiasmus and then got corrected because technically it's "antimetabole" or "epanados" -having fun switching the order of words, whatever you call it. It's just the ninth blot of ink for Larry Carnahan (no relation to Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan), who's been stopping by in Loserland very occasionally since Week 551 -but did come to this past weekend's Loser Brunch in creation, you wouldn't be reading these jokes here Arlington, Va., along with what turned out to be about 20 other people; that's where Cheryl Davis gave me this week's cool prize. Larry might have lucked out a bit with "Use power tools to keep your ear functioning properly," since I recently had to go to the doctor to get one of my ears cleaned out, and I was struck by the mental image of a Dremel rotary reamer in my left auditory canal. And Eric Yttri's nifty wordplay earns him his choice of Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag along with the FirStink for his first ink. Eric, let me know which one you'd rather have. Some funny entries didn't quite fit the contest because they were good-news*bad-news rather than good*bad ideas; they weren't things that people might think to do. In fact, I hadn't noticed that myself until copy editor extraordinaire Doug Norwood pointed two cases out to me: Good idea: Thanks to the lottery, winning a million dollars. Bad idea: Thanks to the lottery, winning a million "relatives." (Lawrence McGuire) Good idea: The Post article describes you as an interesting person.Bad idea: The Post article describes you as a person of interest. (Howard Walderman) .So good news*bad news for Lawrence and Howard, good news*good news for the two entries that replaced them. (Not yours; yours got ink from the start.) Good idea: Surprising a co-worker by putting a cupcake in their office. Bad idea: Surprising a co-worker by putting a cupcake in their orifice. (Jeff Shirley) Good idea: Pulling your bowling balls out to clean them before going to the alley.Bad idea: Pulling your balls out to clean them at the bowling alley. (Brad Alexander) Good idea: Sneaking a piece of Good N' Plenty candy. Bad idea: Sneaking a piece of Good-and-Plenty Candy. (Jim Stiles) Good idea: Blowing one's own horn to advance in the company.Bad idea: Blowing your boss's horn to advance in the company. (Also Jim Stiles) Good idea: Stimulating children's minds.Bad idea: Stimulating children's hinds. (Tom Witte, who I bet will protest, "But I said it was a bad idea!") G: Write in your diary.B: Write in your diarrhea. (Kevin Dopart; sorry, too gross even for me) And the Scarlet Letter goes to: Good idea: Dishwashing liquid that is really hard on grease.Bad idea: Dishwashing liquid that is really hard-on grease. (Elden Carnahan) ====================================================================== WEEK 1096, published November 2, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1096: We just keep tooning along; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates (ew!) on the new and old contests Washington Post Blogs October 30, 2014 Thursday 8:26 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1097 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Did you know that when Bob Staake does his cartoon each week for The Style Invitational, he often makes two versions for us -one in full color, to be posted online, and one that will look better when it's printed in black-and­white? (Which is what's done each week now that the Invite is no longer on a color page of the print paper.) But this week, Bob also did two separate versions of his cartoons when they're both in black-and-white -just to add a splash of color with the numbers. Once I realized that we weren't suddenly going to be moved to a color page this week (and also four weeks from now, when the results are published), I knew that the contest wouldn't work if the cartoons in print were in B&W and the online ones were in color, because inking entries often refer or allude to the colors in the pictures, and then the print readers would be all confused and would fill up their fountain pens and start writing letters to the editor about how journalism has gone down the toilet. Maybe next time, Bob could just write RED -->, <---ORANGE, etc., right on the cartoons, and people could color them in. (Hey, we did a word-find puzzle, you know.) Actually, the large majority of our cartoon contests have been in black-and-white: The Post didn't publish much in color at all until 1999, when it built a gigantic high-tech plant in College Park, Md. (it was later closed in a consolidation after circulation shrank drastically). But even after that, the page that the Invite was on -Page 2 of the Sunday Style section -didn't get to be in color (with a few rare exceptions) until February 2004. And even then, we had to take turns with Page 2 of Sports: Sports got the color page for the whole football season, for the Super Bowl and, on alternate years, for several weeks around the Olympics. (And probably a few other events I'm forgetting.) So I scheduled the cartoon contests around those times, traded my firstborn child for a week with color during the football season, etc. One reason I wasn't too upset that the Invitational moved to the Saturday paper in 2007 -even though Saturday had the week's smallest circulation, barely half of Sunday's -was that I was promised a color page every week. And on many weeks it was really splashy, with all kinds of art and graphics (here's a good example, from Week 727, featuring the zany face of Loser Kyle Hendrickson). So I got pretty spoiled on that. But as the newspaper business and The Post itself got spun around every which way as it looked for some way to bring back circulation and especially ad revenue, there was a move to bolster Sunday coverage, and so in 2011 began the separate Sunday Style tabloid section -to which its editor, Invite fan Lynn Medford, brought us when she moved over from the daily section. And she gave us part of and later the whole back page. And that page was always in color, because the other half of the sheet of paper it was printed on -think of splaying out a magazine upside down - was the cover of the section. (ew!) on the new and old contests And that all lasted several years, while The Post patiently waited in vain for ads to show up on all these new arts pages, while a pared-down staff of editors and writers worked incessantly to fill two Sunday sections as well as the six daily Style sections (and Weekend, and of course all the blogs and other online sites). And now we're back to the reunited Arts & Style section, which is still very spaciously laid out, with tons of lovely big pictures and artsy white space (and many thoughtful, well-written stories). But the color goes to the arts stories -believe me, a black­and-white page featuring an abstract expressionist painter is not a great idea -while the Invite is on the same page as a crossword puzzle. But! You know how when you move to a new house, there's always some stuff that's not going to get packed up one more time? Well, we've made it into that van four times in our 211* 2 years (while numerous others weren't so lucky), and if this time we didn't get to move into the corner room with the bay window and the skylight, our friends still know where to find us. *An entry from Jeff Contompasis As I do most every week, I read through all the entries for Week 1092 from a list that included no entrants' names or addresses; made a short-list of my favorite few dozen entries; cut that list by half or more; and then picked the top four, and copied them into the template that makes up the Invitational's layout. After each, I typed "(XXXXX, XXXXXXX)." Then I copied another block of entries into the honorable-mentions area. Then I looked up my list of "Week 1092 with names," and searched for each entry. The person whom last week I called "Him Again Frank Osen" is now Him AGAIN Frank Osen. Frank's current string of highest-placing ink -and sometimes he'd have as many as five blots: Week 1092: Win. Week 1091: Win. Week 1090: Third place. Week 1089: Second place. Week 1088: Second place. Week 1087: Win. You have to go back to Sept. 21, seven weeks earlier, to find a Style Invitational contest in which Frank did not place "above the fold." I don't have time to find out how far back it was when he didn't get any ink at all. Has there ever been a run like this? Even in the year when Brendan Beary got 179 blots of Ink? Even Chuck Smith when he dominated the Invite in the early years? If there has been, that runner will surely let me know (or even another stats-obsessive Loser will, now that baseball season is over), and I'll let you know. And it was pretty yada-yada-yada with the others in the Losers' circle, as well. Beverley Sharp is just daring me to change the powder room guest towels of the Invitational Hall of Fame, as she glides smoothly toward Ink 500; and Lawrence McGuire and Danielle Nowlin have more than 300 inks between them. One Loser whose entry didn't quite make it -though I enjoyed its mix of yuckiness and utter wackiness -is Sandy Moran of Santa Rosa, Calif., who deserves a special Comedy Is In The Timing award, since four weeks ago she obviously calculated that this very day, her subject would be on the front page of every newspaper: "The Bumgarner Booger Blast: In celebration of the public nose-clearings of the Giants' star pitcher, two people face each other three feet apart, block one nostril and attempt to blow a snot rocket at their opponent. All for the Snotless Children of East Bermuda Fund." It took only 32 years, but I finally made the front page of The Washington Post. See the photo! ====================================================================== WEEK 1097, published November 9, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1097: If there were a Pulitzer Prize for horoscopes ...; The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses the week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs November 6, 2014 Thursday 8:31 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1401 words Byline: Pat Myers Body · "The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained." -The first in a list of "Seven Principles" written by Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946 · Hyderabad, India: Hello Raju, Everyone in India know that your father, Innaiah does not believe in horoscopes and astrology.I found a horoscopes column in the Washington Post. Do you believe in horoscopes? Raju Narisetti: I don't. But a newspaper needs to serve a very broad audience and horoscopes are very, very popular among WP's readers. -From a 2009 online chat on washingtonpost.com with Raju Narisetti, then The Post's managing editor, the second-in-command in the newsroom: · "The horoscope in the April 23 Style section gave an incorrect date. It should have said April 23, not April 24." -Correction, Page A2, 2007 It's a weird, weird thing, running horoscopes -the epitome of pseudoscience -in a serious newspaper. And The Post didn't always run them on the comics pages, either; they used to run right inside the Style section alongside the news and arts reviews. I'm sure that some readers assumed that Sydney Omarr was a staff writer. And they have continued to run in Style on Sundays to this day, now in the Arts & Style section. Right next to that other testament to Eugene Meyer's mission of truth-telling. So it's fitting, I think, to help clarify their grand truths in this week's Style Invitational contest, Week 1097. I've done my best to accommodate those who don't subscribe to either the print or online Post by directing you to Astrology.com; the online Post uses the "detailed" horoscope from that site, but you may use the short form as well. The print Post uses a different horoscope, by Jacqueline Bigar of King Features Syndicate. If you happen to find the two horoscopes hilariously contradicting each other on the same day, let me know -I can mention that with the results. While I remembering having to read the horoscopes many years ago while working on the Style copy desk, I have absolutely no evidence that bored copy editors would occasionally rearrange the day's various predictions for the zodiac signs, just to tempt the Fates. And today I asked Gene Weingarten, editor of the Sunday Style section in the 1990s and early 2000s, whether he ever tinkered with the text of horoscopes, perhaps at the request of the Czar of The Style Invitational. He said that he couldn't imagine having done that, although he did argue both in house and publicly that The Post should not be running horoscopes at all. Invitational discusses the week's new contest and re.... Does any scholar of the early years of The Style Invitational have any evidence to contradict this -a Loser-penned horoscope that appeared outside the Invite itself? If so, let me know. The Invitational did have fun with horoscopes in at least one previous contest: In Week 68, the Czar asked readers to name a new zodiac sign and write one day's horoscope for it. The ink: Fifth Runner-Up: TUCHUS: You'll get a little behind in your schedule today. (Kathy Weisse, Sykesville, Md.)Fourth Runner-Up: LIBRIUM: You will have a terrible day, but you won't care. (Linda Shevitz, Greenbelt)Third Runner-Up: OREO: You may feel yourself pulled apart today. (Lyell Rodieck, Washington)Second Runner-Up: TSURIS: Better you should stay home. (Stu Segal, Vienna)First Runner-Up: FECES: Watch your step. Avoid electric fans. (Jean C. Clancy, Fairfax; Joe Sisk, Arlington) And the winner of the painting of the "Abbey Road" cover featuring Bogie and Dean and Marilyn and Elvis: TEDIUS: You will wake up. You will stretch your left arm. You will stretch your right arm. You will yawn. You will stretch your left leg. You will rub your right eye. You will yawn again. You will . . . (Christie Houser, Alexandria) Honorable Mentions CUOMO: Do not make a decision today. (Gary F. Hevel, Silver Spring)LEONA: Everybody hates you. (Joseph Romm, Washington)ENIGMA: Spend Sunday as if it were Thursday. Monday finds you wishing it were Wednesday. Avoid non-sequential weasels. (Bev Wiedeman, Manassas)HYPOCHONDRIA: You have cancer today. You will have pimples tomorrow. (Kate Weizel, Bowie)ENNUI: Today will be so, oh I don't know, dissatisfying. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington; also, Dawn-Michele Gould, Germantown)HILARIUS: Today you have to screw in a light bulb. Be original. (Bill Harvey, Alexandria)TAURIST: You are going to visit new places, meet new people and pay 20 bucks for a seven-block cab ride. (Jon Patrick Smith, Washington)ARSENIO: You are past your prime. (Larry Gordon, Potomac)ZEBRA: It's not a good day to be with a Leo. (Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring)CAPRIATI: Stay off the grass. (Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring; Chris Rooney, Blacksburg, Va.; Gordon A. Janis, Washington)HERPES: Avoid flare-ups with loved ones. (Larry Cynkin, Kensington; Annie Wauters, Washington; Stephen Dudzik, Silver Spring)GIGOLO: Stay away from Virgos. (Dave Ferry, Leesburg)JIMINY: Stay on the straight and narrow! Don't steal, cheat or lie! (Eric Chang, Silver Spring)THESAURUS: Find new ways to express yourself. (David Siltman, Gaithersburg)ZEPPO: Your siblings may garner more attention than you. (Paul Sabourin, Greenbelt; Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)BIMINI: Avoid photographers. (Joseph Romm, Washington) Inkless alternative-headline entry by Gary Crockett What I kept encountering while judging Week 1093 -imaginative ways for businesses to squeeze yet another buck from us -were ideas that, while not actually in use (maybe), weren't so far from the realm of possibility that they'd be funny; they'd just be irritating. A charge at the supermarket for letting you type in your phone number rather than using your store card. A charge for extra condiments at the ballpark. There was one intriguing idea, sent by two people, that I wasn't sure had happened yet, but seems entirely plausible to me: A very upscale jewelry store charges $25 admission just to look around; it's credited back if a shopper actually buys an item. This idea actually doesn't sound like a bad business plan to me: It probably wouldn't deter the insanely rich shoppers whom the jeweler or Ferrari dealer is courting; in fact, they might prefer a shop where fanny-packed hoi polloi would be unlikely to brush shoulders with them. We had room for lots of entries on the page this weekend; all of today's inking entries are also in print. And perhaps the biggest news is that Frank Osen -whose six-week streak of "above-the-fold" ink I marveled at last Thursday when he snagged his second straight Inkin' Memorial -not only fails to reach the Losers' Circle, but gets no ink at all. I believe the last time Frank went inkless was July 3, with no entries in the results of Week 1075. In other words, Frank just broke an 18-week Losing streak. Perhaps his decision to leave his job and family to concentrate on writing Style Invitational entries wasn't the best strategy after all. (He did have several entries on my short-list this week.) Invitational discusses the week's new contest and re.... So, Frankless, my dear, we appropriately give this week's Inkin' Memorial to Gordon Cobb of Atlanta -Cobb County, in fact. I remember Gordon because he once wrote to the Empress to lament that she was obviously never going to like anything he sent in, and was giving up. I'm glad that Gordon (Loser Anagram: Corn Dog Bob) renewed his faith that I would smarten up one of these days, and indeed, this first win is his third above-the-fold ink out of four total! Meanwhile, the promising rookie Todd DeLap successfully counted on the Redskins to continue to undistinguish themselves during the three weeks between contest deadline and results. Todd had a terrific day, with three blots of ink - including his first above the fold - to reach 22 in all since Week 1039. The two other runners-up are, to understate the case, non-rookies: Roy Ashley picks up Blot 323 since his first ink in the famous Week 120 "bad analogies" contest of 1995, while Gary Crockett gets his 212th notch in the bad-Post. The Loser Community moseys up Rockville Pike for its next gathering, an annual brunch at the Mosaic Cafe, famed for its waffles. I won't be able to make that one, so someone save me a waffle with roasted apples. You can mail it to me. The brunch is at noon on Sunday, Nov. 16 - RSVP to Elden Carnahan here. ====================================================================== WEEK 1098, published November 16, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1098: The week of review; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ew) the week's contest and results Washington Post Blogs November 14, 2014 Friday 12:55 AM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 985 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Actually, as far as I know, J.P. Bezos of the Seattle area is not acquainted with The Style Invitational. But it's good to see that his sideline Web business has a sense of humor: Rather than getting huffy that people enjoy taking advantage of its sophisticated feedback system by writing creatively silly product reviews, Amazon seems to embrace them: It even sends readers to its own page of "Funniest Reviews" as well as "More Funny Reviews." And notice that it invites nominations for others. Amazon also offers a link to a "smart take on the funny reviews phenomenon," a blog post by Maria Popova called "The Art of the Humorous Amazon Review." I think that's notable because the reviews Popova cites includes some that actually mock the product being sold on Amazon, such as the Bic Cristal For Her pen in pretty pastel colors, and lauds the many recent snarky and sarcastic pen reviews for skewering "the gobsmacking marketing exploitation [of] the 'women's niche' (which is, of course, statistically a population majority) by pinkifying, softifying, and otherwise ladyfying products that are so obviously gender-neutral by nature." For our purposes, I think we can have as much fun as we want with the Week 1098 contest, as long as it doesn't mess with Amazon's star-system feedback ratings, which often determine which product and which seller a buyer will choose -often without actually reading the reviews. A listing with an average feedback rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars tends to be shunned in favor of one that has the full 5. So even if your bogus review is negative, if you post it on Amazon, you ought to give the product the maximum five stars. (I don't think there's an option to post a review without choosing a star rating.) And if you're going to make the review negative, it must be abundantly clear that you're joking; don't say it made you sick, that it injured your child, anything like that. When I checked the current reviews for the five products I chose, I didn't see any joke posts. But I bet that at least a few people will disregard my instruction not to post the entry until I print the results on Dec. 11. I love the solar dancing turkey -I got one myself, and it's a happy addition to my growing collection of solar dancers. (If you're on Facebook, you can see a few seconds of video here; Pukin' Paul on the right was an Invite prize that was declined by its winner.) "The inclusion of X in Week 1094's Tour de Fours really cuts down on the usable permutations," fretted Such a Loser Jeff Contompasis on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook minutes after I posted the contest four weeks ago. But a couple of days later, I was reassured by Even Bigger Loser Chris Doyle, who posted this: "Like Jeff, I was concerned about the limited useful letter permutations in Week 1094, but after playing around today (while watching soccer and football), I've decided Pat will have ample funny material to fill the column." the week's contest and results I'm glad that Chris decided this, for -though I wasn't really ever worried -we ended up with the usual lots of clever, varied neologisms for this Tour de Fours XI. And I never systematically checked, but I think that almost all of the 24 permutations proved usable (including for Jeff), provided the user was imaginative enough. There were of course a lot of jokes about taxis and taxes (and there was the resultant duplication of ideas; I picked the entry that I thought edged out the similar ones), but also so many with totally different, often unique approaches. An ingenious, instantly understandable term -and one that ought to gain currency in our language -is Ann Martin's winning portmanteau "prophylaxity," combined with "unplanned parenthood" in the definition. It's the second win for Ann -her 10th ink "above the fold" and her 67th in all -and I'm relieved that I won't have to ship the Inkin' Memorial overseas now that she's moved back from England. And Chris Doyle was especially creative (and amply funny) with "A_XI_TY," netting him an electronic bubble fart machine that might even work, as well as even more distance between Chris and Russell Beland atop the Invite's all-time standings. Two more veteran punsters round out the Losers' Circle to earn their Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag: Dudley Thompson (official anagram: Note Shoddy Lump) passes the 100-ink mark with this 14th ink above the fold, and Jeff Shirley (Fish Fly, Jeer) blots up No. 46. Note to honorably mentioned Losers: While I wrote four weeks ago that this week's HMs would get one of the two new Loser magnets, it turned out that I still have a couple dozen or so left from the 2014 set, and I'd like to use them up. This will probably be the last week of the Po' Wit Laureate and Puns of Steel, before I switch over to the Hardly Har-Har and The Wit Hit the Fan. (A few unprintables from Week 1094 are at the bottom of this column.) Right now, Brunchmeister Elden Carnahan has just a half-dozen names for this month's Loser brunch, at noon at the Mosaic Cafe, but it's not too late to join in. RSVP Elden here. (I'm afraid I can't make it this time.) AND! An announcement will be made very soon for a Super Great Event in early December that will feature several especially creative members of the Loser Community. I'll provide more details as soon as I'm given the go-ahead. Stay tuned to the Devotees page. Among the funny-but-nos: Buxatits: The Leslie Johnson lingerie collection. You'll look like a million dollars... or at least 79,000. (Nan Reiner) Foxtaint: A vixen's betwixen. (Tom Witte)Lixateen: Provides extracurricular instruction at a certain D.C. public charter school. (Nan Reiner) And the Scarlet Letter goes to the wonderfully clever but doubly unprintable ...Yu Xiating Mee: A Chinese comic whose name translates to "Are you serious?" (Warren Tanabe) ====================================================================== WEEK 1100, published November 30, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1100: With pun in hand; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ewww) this week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs November 26, 2014 Wednesday 7:03 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1830 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Just a few notes on this closing-early Invite week (filled mostly with the results of Week 347): This week's new contest: A number of people had suggested over the years that we do another story-pun contest. And as I notoriously tend to do, I said it wouldn't work -the Invitational's format can't handle long-form entries, and anyway, aren't all the good puns taken? But as I mention in the introduction to Week 1100, I was emboldened after seeing this week's sample entry, posted by new Style Invitational Devotee Ted Remington of North Carolina. Ted is just an amazing shaggy-dog-story generator; anything he posts on Facebook is going to end in a pun. He even put one up the other day about a funeral: Yesterday was a tough day. Any day with a funeral in it is a tough day, isn't it? The funeral was for Tina Martinez, who was a much-loved member of the Marion NC police force, but her career was cut short by a particularly nasty form of pancreatic cancer. Tina was a rising star in our police department, and had been top of the list for promotion to sergeant when she was diagnosed. And this was after only six years of tenure. When he learned that Tina's illness was terminal, her husband, Steve, asked to be demoted from sergeant to corporal so there was room to promote her. I was at the wake when Steve began to talk about the love he shared with Tina. He reminisced about their breakfasts together at the local Waffle House, where Tina would ask for extra crisp rye toast and then dunk it in her morning coffee. There wasn't a dry eye in the house when Steve held up a cup of coffee and a piece of toast, looked up towards heaven, and began to sing, "Dunk rye for me, Sergeant Tina." It's still not going to be easy. There are a lot of pun scenarios out there. There's even the long-running annual O. Henry Pun-Off event in Austin, Tex.; one of the winners was Washington Post humor columnist Alexandra Petri. But I'm optimistic. One tack you might take is to use newly famous names, or less well known ones. That worked for some of the inking entries from our original pun-story contest, Week 347 (a.k.a. Week XIV; don't ask). Here are the results, complete with the Czar's irritated notes on the "Steal Invitationalists": Page 2 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1100: With pun in hand; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ewww) this week's new contest and results Report from Week XIV, in which you were asked to contrive elaborate scenarios that end in painful puns. As usual for a contest such as this, the Steal Invitationalists were out in force, submitting anciently unoriginal jokes as their own: You can't heat your kayak and have it, too; with fronds like that, who needs anemones; I can see Claire Lee now, Lorraine has gone; transporting gulls over a staid lion for immortal porpoises; only Hugh can prevent florist friars; picking bunions on a Sesame Street bus; repaint and thin no more; making an obscene clone fall; and of course, the creakiest, rheumiest granddaddy of them all: No pun in ten did. We are pretty sure those below are original. * Second Runner-Up: Maggie Thatcher went to see the doctor about a painful boil. The doctor told his nurse to administer a local anesthetic and let him know when she was ready for treatment. When the nurse returned, the doctor said: "Is Thatcher Fine? I'll Lance Her." (Chris Doyle, Burke) * First Runner-Up: Lithuania's King Lothar loved golf. Competing in a tournament at the famed Pair of Dice golf course in Las Vegas, Lothar and his partner finished the 18th hole leading the field at one stroke over par. Waiting nervously in the clubhouse, however, he received bad news about his rivals' results: "They played Pair of Dice and put up a par, King Lot." (Sue Lin Chong, Washington) * And the winner of the huge men's underpants: Two park rangers are making their rounds in the Rockies when they discover a guy named Nathan erecting an oil rig on the side of a mountain. He explains that he has been inspired by those ads on the radio, and has decided to drill for beer. The rangers are going to issue a citation, but decide to do something crueler: let him try. Winking to his partner, one ranger observes that since the mountain won't really be injured, "Why don't we just let Nate here take its Coors?" (Bill Strider, Gaithersburg) * Honorable Mentions: After a series of box office failures, Arnold Schwarzenegger's career was in trouble. Then he made a comeback with a triumphant performance on Broadway as the lead in a production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," with background music based on the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. When asked the secret of his newfound success, Arnold said: "Albee-Bach." (Joseph Romm, Washington) Intrigued by rumors that a group of Tennessee Jews has been successfully marketing a brand of chewing tobacco, kosher food giant Manischewitz sends someone to investigate. He approaches a group of men loitering outside a Baptist church, spitting into cans, and he asks: "Pardon me, goys, is that the Chattanooga Jews' chew?" (Charles Frick, Kensington) Who would have thought that Chris Evert would get caught doing cocaine? No athletes are showing her any public sympathy, except for one ex-Yankee. As might be expected, "Strawberry feels for Evert." (Chris Doyle, Burke) A man is trying to decide between two careers in journalism: He wants either to be an investigative reporter, spending much of his time digging through files like a mole, or to write an advice column. He consults an editor friend, who cautions him against both paths, with the immortal advice: "Neither a burrower nor Ann Landers be." (Meg Sullivan, Potomac) [We were so sorry to hear that Meg died earlier this week. She was a mainstay of the Invite in its early years, with a total of 181 blots of ink.] The Enterprise had an important assignment to stop a civil war on a distant planet. On the way it would pass the aptly named planet Allure, inhabited by beautiful, naked, sex-starved women. Capt. Kirk's orders were clear: He was to proceed directly to the war-torn planet. If he visited the women's planet, he surely couldn't put it on his captain's log. When his communications officer asked him what he was going to do, he said: "Tour Allure, Uhura. Tour Allure and lie." (Scott Owens, Alexandria) Page 3 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1100: With pun in hand; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ewww) this week's new contest and results It is a little-known fact that Golda Meir's fierce nationalism was forged when she was a young woman. Golda had a waitressing job on the Haifa ferry, serving smoked-salmon snacks to travelers. She was deeply moved when, one day, the ferry had to transport for burial the bodies of three civilians killed by terrorists. To this day Israeli children are told "the ferry tale of Golda, lox and the three biers." (Chris Doyle, Burke) Animal activist Bo Derek was horrified to learn that the queen of England wears antique sable coats. When she confronted the queen at a recent London affair, Elizabeth responded haughtily: "Some wear old fur to reign, Bo." (Chris Doyle, Burke) One day the famous gastronome Oliver Hardy was so hungry he ground his partner to bits, chicken-fried him and sealed him in tins. When confronted by his director, Ollie admitted it but begged forgiveness. Since Hardy was the studio's meal ticket, the director agreed to say nothing. In fact, he was hungry himself, and proposed a banquet: "If you canned Stan to eat, get out the ketchup." (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) * The Uncle's Pick: I sent in 10 different puns in the hope that at least one would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did. (Dave Walcher, Belcamp) If that's how you want to look at it ... The results of Week 1096's caption contest I'm always looking through the Invite archives for classic entries to share on Facebook as the Style Invitational Ink of the Day (sign up here to get it). And while a cartoon is certainly fun to share with readers (with hope that they will share it in turn), I've found that very few of the winners of our many, many caption contest winners make great jokes in themselves. The humor in them comes usually more from interpreting a given picture in an original way. What's more, the humor is intensified when you get to see a wide variety of interpretations of the same picture. For example, the object being held in Cartoon D this week was seen as, sure, a dinner check, but also a formal document, a cellphone, a giant fortune cookie and, for two people, even a Pop-Tart. This week's winner, however -the couple arguing over the check and one of them (doesn't matter who) saying, "No, let MY client get it" -would make a terrific stand-alone cartoon. And I was delighted to discover that Inkin' Memorial winner Frank Mann is indeed a lawyer (though in the public sector). This is Frank's first win among his 16 blots of Invite ink since he debuted in Week 996, but he's been quite a fixture in recent contests; it's his third ink "above the fold." Danielle Nowlin paid funny tribute to funny Tom Magliozzi of radio's "Car Talk" to take second place and the moose-head cup. Tom and brother Ray would often read Invite entries over the air during the first minutes of the show -always crediting the writers, and of course always exploding in laughter over them. Danielle is a habitue of the Losers' Circle; it's her 16th ink above the fold out of a total of 138. As, for that matter, are Lawrence McGuire (23 ATF; 174 inks) and the really-goes-way-back Art Grinath, who started in Week 106 and gets his 354th ink and too many runners-up to count. Okay, I counted: 65. Major Loser events! Season's readings and eatings We should have a major Loser cheering section on Friday, Dec. 5, at the free light-verse program "Poetry & Punchlines" at Catholic University -headlined by 55-time Loser Melissa Balmain, who opted to share the spotlight with several other poets, including Losers Brendan Beary, Mae Scanlan, J.D. Smith, and Claudia Gary, as well as confessed Style Invitational fan Gene Weingarten. It's sponsored by Able Muse Press, publisher of Melissa's very funny collection (which includes some Invite ink). Here are the details. And nine days after that, we're having a special guest at the December Loser Brunch, at the buffet at Kilroy's just off the Beltway in Northern Virginia: Ten-time Loser and popular Devotee Diane Wah will be visiting from Seattle. The brunch is Sunday, Dec. 14, at 11 a.m. RSVP to Elden Carnahan here so we can get a head count. Page 4 of 4 Style Conversational Week 1100: With pun in hand; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ewww) this week's new contest and results Hope to see you at either or both of these, and have a happy and safe Thanksgiving weekend, everyone. ====================================================================== WEEK 1101, published December 7, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1101: Looking back on the look-backs; The Style Invitational Empress ruminates on (ewww) this week's contest and results Washington Post Blogs December 4, 2014 Thursday 7:33 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1565 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Before I start my usual weekly blather: I really hope you can make it to Catholic University Pryzbyla Center on Friday evening, Dec. 5, at 7, for the nine-poet light-verse readofest that's headlined by Loser Melissa Balmain and features several other Invite figures, including Brendan Beary, Mae Scanlan, Edmund Conti and one Gene Weingarten. It's all free, it's right near the Brookland Metro station, and parking should be easily available. See details at this link. A number of us are going to hang out and grab a sandwich beforehand at the nearby Potbelly (655 Michigan Ave NE, near the Metro station) starting at 4 and at least until the Pryzby-doors open at 6. (My first chance to meet Mr. Conti, who's up from Raleigh.) The poets will also surely hang around to chat after the reading, and Melissa and Gene and I'm sure others will happily sign books (Gene's not bringing books; you'll have to bring your own. I suggest bringing a Bible). And*or: Diane Wah of our Seattle Loser Bureau will be in town for the Loser Brunch, Dec. 14 at 11 a.m., at Kilroy's buffet, just off the Beltway in Northern Virginia. I'll be there from 11 to 1. Please RSVP for this one to Elden Carnahan so we can give the restaurant a head count. Back to the blather. I've been running year-endish retrospective contests, like Week 1011, ever since I began Empressing: My third contest ever (Dec. 28, 2003) was to enter any previous Invite; I offered links only to the previous 100 contests, though (the others probably didn't go up online back then). My predecessor, the Czar, also ran such whole-oeuvre contests: in Weeks 94 (1995), 289 (1998) and less than a year before I took over (Week 490, 2003). (I don't know how he expected people to remember what the contests were.) After I did that first one -I guessed correctly that some jokes the Czar had rejected over the years would end up on my list -I limited the pool at least a bit: My next retrospective was at my 100-week mark and encompassed only my mess so far; and since then, starting in 2006, they've been for the previous year, give or take a few weeks. This year we go back to Week 1047 (November 2013), since last year's retrospective covered up to Week 1046. Over the years, I've usually warned contestants that, because of space limitations, especially in the print paper, short-form entries - neologisms, horse names, etc. - were more likely to get ink than, say, elaborate song parodies. The thing, though, is that parodies and limericks have gotten retro-ink a number of times, even on the print page. Last year's results included two lengthy parodies, plus a limerick and a cinquain; the 2012 results had three parodies, including the first runner-up. Basically, if an entry is fabulous, it could very well get ink even if it's quite long. But it might be the only really long entry on the page. So it's definitely a gamble. (ewww) this week's contest and results Note that I said that, yes, you can resend an entry that didn't get ink last time. It seems counterintuitive, and indeed I'd say it's a low-percentage play, if you're the kind of person who's going to be figuring out which 25 entries to send in. But more than once, I have given ink in the retrospectives to entries that got robbed the first time around. It might have been because there were other entries like it, or that the bar was just in-cred-ibly high that week and even some of the rejects were highly worthy. (Song parodies again come to mind.) Please remember to give the week number of the contest you're entering, and if it's not abundantly clear, please add a line about what the contest was (e.g., "fi-to fo- limericks") so that I won't have to look it up. As you might imagine, this contest takes a long time to judge. And yes, once again you can be robbed: Part of the purpose of this contest is to showcase the variety of contests we do over the course of a year, and so I'm going to try to represent a fair number of them. If 10 people send me fi- limericks that are better than anything else I get this week, some of those limericks won't get ink. Sorry. It's also helpful if I don't have to use a lot of space to describe the contest, though I'm usually pretty good at boiling down the relevant point. For inspiration and whatever guidance you'd like to infer, here are the links to most if not all the previous retrospective contest results. Some of them were restricted to a certain subset of contests, and a few required entries to fit a certain theme. (These links are from Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List and won't affect your story count toward the paywall. Scroll down past the new contest to see the results.) Week 94. Week 223 Week 292 Week 490 Week 496 (beat the entries from the 10th-anniversary issue) Week 538 Week 635 Week 692 Week 735 Week 793 Week 844 Week 894 Week 948 Week 999 Week 1011 (beat the entries from the 20th-anniversary issue) Week 1050 This contest to "clarify" horoscopes brought tons of entries this week, even though it required readers to track down horoscopes in the print or online Post, and of course your starrier-touched Losers probably pored over every one of every day, along with the alternate versions on astrology.com. Jonathan Hardis noted that the advice given to Scorpios whose birthday was Nov. 13 -"Allow greater give-and-take between you and others" -was exactly the same as what was given to Pisces people a day later. I only pray that the astrologer didn't get the dates mixed up so that some poor Pisces gave and took when she should have stomped her foot and refused to budge. In general, I found the most humor in entries that played off typical horoscope phrases, rather than the really oddball stuff in some of the predictions. Notable exception by Bruce Alter: "Aries: You are really in your element when it comes to verbalizing complicated concepts so that your audience (whether that means your coworkers at the company shindig, your grandparents, your honey pie, your little sister, your little sister's punk rock honey pie or whomever) can grasp just what a good idea it is that you have.Bruce: Huh? The Losers' Circle this week is filled entirely with Invite Obsessives -the winner and three runners-up have close to 3,000 blots of ink among them, and ranked 1, 2, 5 and 8 in the current year's standings. (As almost always, I judged the entries blindly, and didn't check who wrote the winners until this past Tuesday.) I would have chosen another winning example for this week's contest (or, actually, I wouldn't have included it in a list of choices for Bob Staake) had I known at the time that Frank Osen would win Week 1097. Because the Invite in the past few months has annexed a region called Osenania: The Poet From Pasadena gets his sixth win in just this "Loser Year," which began in March, along with 10 runners-up and 49 honorable mentions. What is Frank doing with all those Inkin' Memorials? We demand photographic evidence. Meanwhile, it's the second second-place in a row for Danielle Nowlin, last year's Rookie of the Year and Loser of the Year. Danielle hasn't been quite as devoted to the Invite this past year, since she's been busy with her two pint-size Losers in Training while growing another one, due in just a few weeks: I see that Danielle's Facebook "cover photo" features a mantel from which hang a stocking labeled Joseph, a stocking labeled Abigail ... and a sign (ewww) this week's contest and results labeled "Reserved." (For some reason there are silly pine cones and greenery atop the mantel rather than the four Inkin' Memorials that should be there.) Though Frank has been getting all these wins this year, I see that in the current standings he's only in second place, with his 64 blots of ink before today. That's because in first place, with 66, is this week's third-place Loser, Chris Doyle, the highest-scoring Loser of all time (a position likely to last forever). While Chris has 49 first-place wins since his first one in 2000, he hasn't yet won any in this Loser year. Freaky! Yeah, he has "only" those six runners-up, those 51 honorable mentions, the subheads, the contest ideas, etc.... And trotting into fourth place is Kevin Dopart, highest-scoring Loser for seven straight years, who also is Bobble-Linc-less this year, but has still managed to mop up 48 blots of other ink. No First Offenders made the final cut this week, but it's just the third inks for Terri Berg Smith and Curtis Morrison. Curtis got two this week, and his one about "releasing the reins" and the "safe word" was the favorite of both the Czar and ace copy editor Doug Norwood. Sagittarius: "You're definitely ready for some good, old-fashioned recreation -with no strings attached." Edward Gordon: So Pinocchio, get between my legs and tell me lies. Aquarius: "Others will push hard for what they want, especially those involved in your personal life." Jeff Contompasis: And specifically your cellmate. Sagittarius: "Relax, kick back and let big things come to you." Nan Reiner: Like Catherine the Great did. And most crudely: Capricorn: "One key person will let you know that you are indispensable by the end of the day!"Brendan Beary: The exact phrase to listen for is, "Well, it's not going to suck itself." Presumably Brendan won't be working that phrase into a poem to read tomorrow night at Catholic U. See you there! ====================================================================== WEEK 1102, published December 14, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1102: My (five) stars, what Amazon product reviews!; The Style Invitational Empress ruminates on (eww) the week's new contest and results Washington Post Blogs December 11, 2014 Thursday 8:29 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1182 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Okay, let's go populate Amazon.com with amusing product reviews! As opposed to my rule about crediting The Style Invitational when you post your inking limericks at oedilf.com, I don't think it makes sense to mention the Invite when you post your paean to Pringles or your suggestions for eating cotton balls. Anyway, it's all in the family, if the CEO of Amazon wants to count as family that weird cousin from back East who, like, eats cotton balls. I don't think any of the "negative" reviews that got ink for Week 1098 would be harmful to their manufacturers in any way. Pringles is now owned by Kellogg (which bought it from Procter & Gamble), and Kellogg's stock isn't going to take a dive because you post a review noting that the chips seem to be made from packing material. I do ask, however, that if you're posting the review, you give the product the top rating of five stars, unless you have a real reason not to. The star system is a mathematical rating that buyers really rely on (often without reading the reviews) and I think that on principle, we shouldn't be doing any part toward corrupting it. It was inevitable that some Losers would be robbed this week -there were many clever reviews that were just too duplicative of one another; I chose the one I liked better or best, leaving the runners-up to get bupkis. Today's winner from Melissa Balmain, about the failure of the "Universal" paper clips to survive the "binary suns" of the planet Naxerine Bb, made the Royal Consort laugh loudly while I was reading him entries in the car earlier this week. But he also laughed at this one from Michael Greene: "Can't say enough about these paper clips! It's really hard to get good, heavy-duty products that can stand up to the crushing gravity here on Jupiter. And my brother-in-law on Saturn says these clips run rings around any other fastener he's used! Kudos, also, on the same-decade drone delivery!" And this one from Mark Raffman: "I was disappointed that the product is not truly 'universal.' On my small planet, we must use paper that is 3 forteks thick to accommodate a lower force of gravity. These puny 'paper clips' -a fraction of a fortek -are useless! I will not be ordering them again." Significantly more similar to one another than the ET paper-clip buyers were about a dozen testimonials from sadistic nuns over the efficacy of the wooden ruler. Danielle Nowlin's "making room for Jesus" addition got her the ink. The idea that "Original Pringles" meant the very first Pringles ever was also a recurring theme (nice research to Page 2 of 3 Style Conversational Week 1102: My (five) stars, what Amazon product reviews!; The Style Invitational Empress ruminates on (eww) the week's new contest and resu.... find out that they debuted in October 1967, people). I went with Second Offender (is there a funnier name for that?) Scott Berkenblit's entry that tied it in with preservatives and extreme food processing. Another best-in-group: Rob Cohen's complaint that the ruler's measurements were off because a certain something was obviously much longer. I liked that Rob put it in the voice of the girlfriend whose argument rested on the fact that her boyfriend "is an engineer." Several people voiced disappointment that the paper-clip box had no (or deficient) trombones inside, given the product's label. That was a new French word for me, too -it's a pretty cute one, too, obviously derived from the sound made when you put a paper clip between your lips and blow on it. It's the fifth win, and 55th blot of ink overall, for Melissa Balmain, who was just down from Rochester last weekend to headline the "Poetry & Punchlines" light-verse night at Catholic University. Melissa, by the way, is the editor of the light-verse journal Light, which comes out twice a year online. Given the poetic chops of so many in the Greater Loser Community, Melissa welcomes submissions of not overly topical poems that haven't already been published online. And she judges them blindly, too. Here's the submission info. Mike Gips's Pringles-box "maraca" wins not a box of Original Pringles but the Solar Dancing Turkey, along with points for three honorable mentions and this week's contest idea, for a total of 182 blots of ink since Week 509 (though most of them are from recent years). And Danielle Nowlin remains in the Losers' Circle for the third straight week, for Ink No. 142 (and 143), as B-day for Future Loser No. 3 nears ever closer. This contest seems self-evident to me, or at least is made clear by Mike Gips's examples: a funny idea for a niche radio channel, described possibly, but not necessarily, with a funny list of suitable songs. And of course, not all radio stations have to have music. Have fun with this one. (On other contests, having fun is not permitted.) This just in: Save the date Saturday, Jan. 10, for what I'm told will be the 16th annual Loser Winter Party At Someone's House, aka the Judeo-Christelvismas Party, held in January starting in 2010, when it got bumped to the next month by Snowmageddon. This year it will be hosted by 314-time Loser Craig Dykstra and wife Valerie. They live out in Centreville, Va., in a cool house (there's a curvy sliding board from the kitchen to the basement) that's especially well suited to performances of song parodies, poems, armpit-fart recitals, etc. It's not near public transportation, but carpooling is already being arranged. I can't remember the last time the party was held in Virginia; it's definitely the southsiders' turn. The Post-Holiday Party is perhaps my favorite Loser event of the year: There's more of a chance than at the Loser Brunches to meet and chat with a lot of people, because you're not stuck in a chair, and I just enjoy visiting someone's house (it's usually a potluck) rather than going to some anonymous meeting room or a back room of a restaurant. Craig will be working up an invitation in the next week. Watch your inbox. Seattle-based Loser and Style Invitational Devotee Diane Wah will be the Novelty Attraction at this Sunday's Loser brunch, 11 a.m. at the military-themed Kilroy's, just off the Beltway near Springfield, Va. About 20 people have already RSVP'd -including Ink-Drenched Losers Elden Carnahan, Chuck Smith, Brendan Beary, Roy Ashley and Mark Raffman -so be sure to let Elden know if you'd like to add your name to the list (otherwise you might have to sit on my lap). RSVP here to him at NRARS.org, the Loserly website. And then at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 17, Devotee Barbara Cackler -who's also the mother of Losers Joe and Jack Cackler -will share a piano bench with the other half of the Double C Piano Duo, as she and Rosanne Conway play the "Nutcracker" Suite in a piano-four-hands arrangement. Their concert is presented as an afternoon tea at Harmony Hall Regional Center in Fort Washington , Md., which happens to be right up the road from the Empress's house, Mount Vermin. So if anyone would like to join me there to enjoy the ivory-tinkling of Barbara and Rosanne while we nibble on tea-things, call Harmony Hall at 301-292-6070 to order a ticket ($16) and for more information. And let me know as well. Page 3 of 3 Style Conversational Week 1102: My (five) stars, what Amazon product reviews!; The Style Invitational Empress ruminates on (eww) the week's new contest and resu.... See you at one of these things! ====================================================================== WEEK 1103, published December 21, 2014 Style Conversational Week 1103: Get ready to do your revel best; The Style Invitational Empress talks about the contest and the Loser Community Washington Post Blogs December 18, 2014 Thursday 8:00 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1496 words Byline: Pat Myers Body First, some Important Loser News: Please watch your e-mail for your invitation -I'm hoping it goes out on Monday -to the 16th annual Loser Post-Holiday Party, a potluck hosted this year on Saturday evening, Jan. 10, by 314-time Loser Craig Dykstra and his wife, Valerie, at their house in Centreville, Va., a few miles off I-66. You'll RSVP to me at pat.myers@washpost.com, and if you're coming, I'll send you the address, etc. The Dykstras will put some food and drink out, and we'll bring the rest. You don't have to be a regular Loser -or have any ink at all -to come, and spouses or other handlers are welcome as well. (You can bring kids, too; Craig and Valerie will play family-friendly movies on the humongous screen in the basement, and they even have an ultra-cool sliding board that goes down there from the kitchen.) Hopefully, some of our Loserbards will contribute song parodies or read poems -the Dykstras have a piano, and there's a good chance that someone from the Loser Community will provide accompaniment. (And if not, we'll all be "singing" along anyway.) If you'd like to write something, preferably about the Invite, let me know. Dress for the party is anything you like except un-. In general, though, just as with all Loser events, it's just plain old chatting, not scintillating repartee: the official name of Loserdom, NRARS, stands for NOT READY for the Algonquin Round table Society. If you RSVP to me and I don't know you from the Invite, I might chat you up a little before giving out all the info. (Or just explain in your e-mail who you are.) If you don't get the weekly e-mail notification about the Invite, contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I'll forward you the invitation personally. (Or ask to get on the mailing list.) One more thing before I lose you: For the next two weeks, the Invitational and Conversational (surely a very short one) will be published on Wednesdays, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. It's going to be super easy to write entries for Week 1103 of The Style Invitational. It's not going to be so easy to write really clever ones, not "duh" ones. The song can't just be appropriate for the show - it has to be humorously appropriate. Whichever ones you end up writing, please don't send them one at a time on 25 separate e-mails -at least not until we've solved the problem we've been struggling with under the Invite's new "dropbox" in Microsoft Outlook that's the repository for all the entries sent to losers@washpost.com (Details farther down in the Technerds Only section.) Really, there's no advantage in sending your entry early in the week -I look at them all the same time. So I'd be perfectly thrilled if you let them all pile up in a draft e-mail until you send it off to me. (But certainly please don't sweat it if you want to send in another entry or two because you just thought of the most brilliant thing ever.) the contest and the Loser Community All the examples are of bare-bones form -just the TV show name and the song name -but I absolutely don't forbid some elaboration that would add to the humor. We like the fun-nee. I am, however, going to stick to the rule that both the song and the TV show have to be real titles. A note about this week's second-place prize hand sanitizers: While I just received the lovely Pee-Pee Poo-Poo product from Diane Wah, who'd brought it all the way from Seattle for last weekend's Loser Brunch, the Dog Slobber (remover -it's not claiming to be dog slobber in the bottle) has been on my desk at work for some time and managed to run away from the name of the person who donated it. If you were the Slobber Donor, please let me know and I'll make sure that Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan gives you a point. Let me know right away and I can credit you in the Invite this weekend; let me know later and I'll credit you four weeks from now when we award the "prize." Having posted the Invite online while I'm still writing this column, I'm already hearing rave reviews on the Style Invitational Devotees page for the results of this go-round of our perennial Questionable Journalism contest. Clearly, The Post's paywall, the limit of 20 online articles a month for non-subscribers, didn't hurt the quality of this week's ink. But there's no reason it should have, really, since a single story can provide fodder for a dozen entries; I'm pretty sure that even among the inking entries, one article is the source for multiple ink blots. Given the almost infinite source material for this contest -any sentence in the paper or online over the space of 11 days -I was surprised to get a number of entries based on the same sentence. "Not every turkey escapes the White House" does seem especially tempting, and Jon Gearhart's entry topped the field. "My head seemed disconnected from my body" also drew Loserly eyeballs. I tended to laugh most at entries that played on the meaning of the words in the source sentence -which means that it was clear what the original was about. The triumph in that category was Jeff Shirley's runner-up entry on the tidal forecasts, turning "waves" into a verb. On the other hand, wry comments on the actual meaning of the sentence - like Jeff Hazle's runner-up about Iraq - also proved fruitful. Oy! Beverley Sharp now has 490 blots of ink!! That's with her LOLling Inkin' Memorial winner - her 12th win -and two honorable mentions this week. So Beverley is probably polishing up her Sunday shoes (or at least some fuzzy bedroom slippers) to cross the threshold of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame. I'm afraid that Beverley and her long-suffering husband, Dick Amberg -such a good sport that at one Flushies he wore a name tag labeled "Dick Sharp" -are just going to have to come back up to Washington next year from their exile in Montgomery, Ala., to be "honored" in person. Pat Boone's priceless dating-advice tome "'Twixt Twelve and Twenty" goes to Jeff Hazle, who's racked up 44 inks including and 10 above the fold since his debut in Week 802. Surely it was a record week for Steve Honley, whose four inks this week bumps him eight spaces up the all-time stats list to a total of 43. And Jeff Shirley is back in the Losers' Circle with this 10th ink above the fold. (Unprintable entries from Week 1099 are at the bottom of this column.) When I judge the Invitational every week, I've been using one long master file in which I've combined all the e­mails for a particular week. (Actually two master files; I make two copies, then take out all identifying info from the second copy -everything except the text of the entries themselves -and that's what I judge from. I don't look at the full one again until I put the inking entries on the page; then I check to see who wrote them.) Combining all the e-mails into one searchable file was especially easy to do in our former system, Lotus Notes -you just highlighted all the subject lines in the inbox or another folder, and hit Forward, and you had one giant e­mail. This doesn't work in Outlook, to which the Loser dropbox has just been moved, years after all the regular e­mail moved there. Super-Helpful Loser Jeff Contompasis did show me a similar system in Outlook that saves all the e-mails to a giant .txt file, but it turned out that some of the e-mails (especially from Gmail and Yahoo) didn't show up on this combined list except for the headers -the person's name, email address, etc. Our IT guy said he's going to try to figure out why this would happen, but until then, I obviously can't use this method. the contest and the Loser Community But this morning, Also Super-Helpful Loser Steven Papier thinks he got it to work with a combined CSV file, whatever that is, that you then call up with an Excel spreadsheet. I'm going to try it out tonight. If that doesn't work, I guess what I'll do is use the Jeff Method, then copy in, one by one, all the entries that didn't make the transfer automatically. So obviously, one e-mail containing 25 entries is going to be a lot less time-consuming than 25 e­mails each containing one entry. Obviously, my fingers are really crossed for the Steven Method! (Which makes it kind of a bear to write this column, but you gotta do what you gotta do.) Just two this week, but both exceedingly clever - we'll give them both the Scarlet Letter: Post: If you're going to fumble pulling the box out of the bag, you should show that. (From a story about a hit video of women opening pocketbooks) Q: Why are surgeons required to videotape their hysterectomies? (Edward Gordon) It's a massive, bulbous, inexplicably sexual thing that droops down from the ceiling and fills the whole space. (From an article about avant-garde art at the Hirshhorn Museum) How would you describe one of the hanging hard-ons of Babylon? (Chris Doyle) Happy Hanukkah and, to those who inexplicably won't be reading this column on Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas. ====================================================================== WEEK 1104, published December 28, 2014 Thanks a lot, guys. No, really. Add to list Style Conversational: The Empress gets as blubbery as she’s gonna get By Pat MyersDecember 24, 2014 I’m not going to keep you (and myself) here on Christmas Eve — I have to do my shopping sometime,. and that fruitcake-on-clearance isn’t gonna buy itself. But since this is the final Style Invitational weekend of the year, I did want to take a moment to thank those who continue to put such large shares of time, effort and resources to keep this unlikely vehicle running on most cylinders well into its 22nd year. — To The Washington Post, which has kept us around longer than it’s kept its own recent editors and publishers. This year, as the Style department’s two Sunday print sections merged back to one Arts & Style section, we found ourselves on a black-and-white Page 16 or 18 or whatever, but we have just as many column inches of space as before. And what’s more important, as The Post inevitably shifts its priorities online, and toward a national and global audience, we’re surely reaching more readers than ever. (And it even gives me a page for this column here.) — To the Loser Community, all of you who’ve taken the Invitational beyond its role as a yuk-yuk newspaper feature into a thriving and continually expanding social group. The primary culprit of course is Elden Carnahan, Keeper of the Stats, Baron of the Brunches, Founder of the Flushies, uh, Webber of the Website. (Not to mention someone who’s found time to get more than 500 blots of ink.) But also to many others who Make It All Work: Pie Snelson, who passes out name tags at brunches and door prizes at parties. Dave Prevar, who’s been organizing the annual Flushies banquet. Kyle Hendrickson, who for years organized full-weekend “Loserfest” field trips. Randy Lee, who revived the dormant Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, which now is up to 868 members who yuk it up 24 hours a day (I know because I monitor it 24 hours a day). And those who’ve opened their homes to Loser events — including Steve Dudzik, Sarah Gaymon, Dion Black, Maja Keech and, this coming Jan. 10, Post-Holiday Party host Craig Dykstra. And the many of you who’ve provided entertainment at the Flushies and parties — writing up song parodies just for the occasion: Mae Scanlan, Nan Reiner, Mark Raffman, Pie Snelson, Dave Zarrow, Greg Arnold and whomever else I’ve stupidly forgotten. — To the numerous Losers who’ve volunteered their technical expertise to make the contests work: Elden for his now-indispensable Master Contest List. Kyle Hendrickson, Steve Langer, Gary Crockett, Jeff Contompasis, Craig Dykstra and I’m sure more, who’ve helped me out over the years when I needed, say, to figure out if a given entry contained any words that were not in the U.S. Constitution. And most recently Steven Papier, who spent three hours this past weekend at my home — plied only with pie and cookies — to figure out how I could continue to combine all the week’s entries onto a single text file without calling up each of the hundreds of e-mails, after the method recommended by Microsoft failed to work (it would include people’s e-mail addresses but would reject — rather snottily, if you ask me — the content of many of the entries themselves). — To The Czar of The Style Invitational, the Founder of Our Feast, and his earthly incarnation, Gene Weingarten, who, collaborating closely and almost incestuously, charmed*bullied Washington Post management into giving space in Our Distinguished Newspaper to a weekly contest celebrating the humor of excretory functions; shaped it for almost 11 years; and continues to contribute to the Invite by writing sample verses for poetry contests (next week’s is already done), as well as letting me bounce my short-list of entries off him almost every week. — To Bob Staake, who in 1994 was an up-and-coming illustrator based in St. Louis and delighted to score a gig that sent him a check every single week, but who is now The Really Big Deal, with the New Yorker covers,and the dozens of successful children’s books, and the Intel commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. But out of a sense of tradition — and a chance to bicker with me every seven days — Bob continues to work up a cartoon (or five!) every week, squeezing it in between book tour stops, supervising the gardening staff at his Cape Cod waterfront estate, etc. — And, of course most significantly, to the contestants, who jump through whatever verbal hoops I hold up in front of them week after week, in exchange for seeing perhaps 95 percent of their work go unacknowledged, and the rest “rewarded” with junk (some of which they bought themselves and donated to the cause). I am truly in awe of their talent, wit and just plain wackiness. In my totally objective view, the Invite puts out the cleverest stuff in journalism, week after week. (Okay, the Onion isn’t bad either.) So until they tell us to stop — and nobody’s said anything to me like that — bring it on. DID YOU GET YOUR INVITATION TO THE LOSER PARTY? It was e-mailed Monday afternoon Eastern time, to everyone on the Invite mailing list. Anyway, you’re invited simply by virtue of reading this column. Here it is minus Craig’s nifty artwork: DO YOUR REVEL BEST: PARTY WITH THE STYLE INVITATIONAL LOSERS Yes, you are so gosh darn fun to be with that you’re invited to the Style Invitational Losers’ Post-Holiday Party Saturday, Jan. 10, 7 to 10 p.m. At the home of Craig and Valerie Dykstra Centreville, Va. It’s a potluck -- Craig and Valerie will put out some food and drink, and we bring the rest. Spouses and other handlers are welcome -- and there will be movies for kids. Dress: Loserly (i.e., anything but un-) RSVP to the Empress of The Style Invitational, pat.myers@washpost.com, and she’ll provide the address and further information. Need a ride or want to carpool? Let the Empress know and she’ll see what the Loser Community can do. With malice toward none, With parody for all. We have about 30 RSVPs so far, including some people from out of town. You don’t have to send regrets unless you live in the area and you’re someone who usually comes to Loser functions. The ABCs, er, EFGs of Week 1104 So we’ll wrap up the year with Week 1104, a contest in classic Style Invitational form: to compare or contrast two entirely unrelated items — in this case two entities that happen to be abbreviated with the same three letters. Elden suggested this contest the first time around, for Week 1071, and I wasn’t surprised it was a success. Here are the results, for inspiration. (Scroll past the Week 1075 contest.) Intentional groaning*: The story puns of Week 1100 *Un-inking title entry from Jeff Contompasis Owwwwwwwwwwww. No, they were fun, for the most part — all the inking entries were, for sure. I think readers are going to love them. While judging them — I didn’t count the entries but I estimate a pool of about 1,000 — I found myself first reading the pun at the end of the story, to see if it would be worth having a long paragraph to set it up. Some entries I couldn’t even figure out — it took the Devotees to figure out for me “toupees in iPad” was supposed to be a pun on “two peas in a pod,” though I did manage to guess that “Own leader. G’day, Young” was “only the good die young.” I was going to give ink to Larry Gray’s “Juan spit in Dwight’s chai,” but none of several people I showed it to got that it was “once bitten, twice shy,” even though in my book it’s a perfectly valid pun, clearly approximating the sound of the original, once you figure it out. I also steered clear of entries in which the punchlines depended on obviously contrived names: “In the early 1900’s, a hurricane devastated the city of Approval,” began one that would end in something about sea lions and “seal of Approval”; or “Farmer Odd had a set of bees” ... “May the Odd’s bees hover on your flavor”; or one starting “John Huck and Tom Finn” and something about burying. It’s the 22nd win for Ultra-Loser Kevin Dopart of the 1,100-and-some Inks, but his first in a whole year. I’ll present his Inkin’ Memorial at the Loser Party. Chris Doyle — who’s famed for his trademark limericks that end in puns like these — not surprisingly inked up the place this week, with four feghoots. This week’s outlier in the Losers’ Circle is Marc Shapiro — it’s just his second blot of ink. And I’ll also be bringing a mug or bag to the Loser party for Nan Reiner, whose hilariously over-the-top fourth-place pun is topped over even farther by the long Web-only honorable mention ending in “a park ridge in a bare tree.” Maybe at the party we should take turns reading some of the feghoots out loud — and have everyone join in on the punch line. Merry Christmas to all — we’ll have another Wednesday Invite next week, on New Year’s Eve. Send me your party RSVPs! ====================================================================== WEEK 1105, published January 4, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1105: Send them off in Style; The Empress of The Style Invitational on the Invite's obit poems Washington Post Blogs December 31, 2014 Wednesday 8:34 PM EST Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1291 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I always feel bad -well, it's more of a happy-bad -when there are so many inkworthy entries in a Style Invitational week that even if I run a long list, some great work will go unread simply because readers will never reach the bottom of the column. So the last thing I'm going to do it keep you here when I'd much rather you read the results of Week 1101's retrospective contest. Plus, I have to pregame for my annual New Year's Eve revelry with the Royal Consort: the Cleaning Out of the Refrigerator. I don't know if there are more interesting people than usual on the 2014 Departure Manifest (in either word "more" could refer to), but there will be many to choose from. Wikipedia serves up a handy list, with links to most of their biographical entries. Most of the people on the list are obscure, but perhaps there's a worthy ode to be written about , say, Peruvian Environment Minister Antonio José Brack Egg. I'm happy to run a few identifying words above the poem, but not a paragraph of explanation that will set up your verse. Your subject doesn't have to be "original" -I'd be surprised if I didn't end up running at least one poem about Marion Barry or Joan Rivers or Robin Williams or even Michael Brown -but I tend to receive a number of entries with the same idea (I'll choose the single best setting for it). "No more than eight lines" allows for eight long lines. Long lines are more of a problem in the print Invite, which has narrow columns. (Actually, even short lines sometimes break in the print edition; it's just not set up well for poetry.) Historically, the obit poem contest allows for a bit more sentimentality and less edginess than other Invite contests do. In today's retrospective results, for example, Christopher Lamora's tribute to David Frost was utterly devoid of snark. But in general it's still good for the verse to make some joke -perhaps not at the expense of the subject. In today's example, for instance, Gene Weingarten joked that Dr. Jobe missed out on getting his famous surgery named after him, rather than the baseball player he used it on. Not cruel. Last year's winner, by Gary Crockett, got the bite in by using political humor that wasn't actually about the subject at all, the inventor of the Etch-a-Sketch -a product used as an unfortunate metaphor by a Mitt Romney campaign aide in 2012: Andre Cassagnes, your Etch-a-Sketch showed usWe needn't just tweak, fix and patch.That sometimes the best course, for peasant or POTUS,Is shake and start over from scratch. obit poems You can criticize the subject, but a warmly teasing tone often works best. Also from last year, Rob Cohen's couplet about Al Neuharth, the founder of the pioneeringly short-format USA Today: Al Neuharth died at 89.(No room to publish second line.) There's an easy way to find all the Invite obit poems -the Czar did a contest in 1997 for bad poetry, and I've run them every year since I started, since 2004: Call up Elden Carnahan's masterly Master Contest List and search on "died." The description of the contest is for the week it's announced; look on the right for the link to the corresponding week's results. Ha -just so much great stuff, and yes, a lot of it got robbed once again. As often happens, a lot of the ink went to entries playing off recent events; when it comes to The Style Invitational, "rectal feeding" x "Dick Cheney" isn't going to wait for next year. I didn't notice till the end, but I see that I didn't end up choosing entries from the most recent weeks of Invites; perhaps they were just too fresh in my mind, or it could have just been coincidence. I did remember reading many of the entries before, and at least a couple of today's inking entries had been sent in the earlier contests; Mark Raffman's parody of "Chim-Chim-Chim-Cher-ee" is one. But I'm pretty sure that almost all of today's ink is fresh. (One sort of troubling occurrence: At least one of the entries submitted already got ink; I wonder if the writer had never looked, especially if the entry had run only online.) While it is the 23rd Invite win for Kevin Dopart, it's the first time he's won two weeks in a row. And it's also the second time Kevin has won this year with a tour-de-force anagram: He also won the original contest a year ago, Week 1051, with this astonishing feat: Original text: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Anagrams to: We, the Tea Party of Republicans, our heads in our Rectums, freed to ensure the disestablishment of that Obamacare, promote domestic Religion (provided Jesus is your Savior), disenfranchise the Poor, Effete, Liberal or Such, stifle Intellects not nutty Men, demote Geopolitics, offend on Twitter, do intend another Sequestration. Kevin must have a method for doing these anagrams. Perhaps he'll share it in the comment thread for the Conversational on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook -where his user name happens to be an anagram of "Kevin P. Dopart." Current events continued to hold sway for the second-place prize, for Nan Reiner's zingy double dactyl, with its terrific final line, about the Rolling Stone "reporting" debacle. Be sure also to look at Nan's twin song parodies about "Oklahoma!" and "Fiddler on the Roof" near the end of the column; Nan, who's been tending to her mother in South Florida, sang them into her phone so you can follow the melodies; see the links. A virtual newbie, Ivars Kuscevics (it's Latvian), gets his first "above the fold" ink, and his sixth overall, for his ... yeah, it's an Ebola joke; while not-a-newbie Mae Scanlan gets Ink No. 267 for her super homophone-pun. Mae, by the way, has had a bit of excitement this past month: She'd been given a heart monitor to wear while sleeping, for a routine test (Mae is somewhat north of 50), and "my heart decided to take a vacation from beating for what the doctor called a significant amount of time," she wrote me in an e-mail. But her mind, and her good humor, didn't go on hiatus for even a moment. She concludes: I must say, it proffers a bit of a slamTo see a flat line on one's cardiogram. Mae declares that she fully expects to attend the Jan. 10 Loser Post-Holiday Party. How about you? (See the invitation here.) Please RSVP to me at pat.myers@washpost.com Complain to me in person about the ink you obit poems didn't get -I even got a new tiara for Christmas, so you'll know whom to hector. No, actually, come and do everything but that. I am told that a song is being worked up by two Loser Bards just for the occasion. If you sent your entries in as usual, but did not, as usual, get the rambling but reassuring auto-reply some time later, join the club. It seems that Outlook Exchange, the e-mail system that newly holds the "dropbox" for Style Invitational entries, is especially stingy with the auto-reply: You get it once, for the life of the auto-reply. Evidently this is to prevent an endless back-and-forth in case you also have an auto-reply. But obviously it's an unacceptable restriction, and I'm told that our IT people will address it once more of them get back from vacation. Perhaps we can turn off the auto-reply once a week and turn it back on, and that will work. For now (hopefully just this week), I don't mind if you ask if I received your entries; I can check on them. I also don't mind if you trust the e­mail system. Happy New Year, everyone! ====================================================================== WEEK 1106, published January 11, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1106: A sampling of Invitational Hebdo*; The Invite's Muhammad jokes have been about not making Muhammad jokes Washington Post Blogs January 8, 2015 Thursday 7:41 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 951 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Well. Not a great week for the Satirical Publication world. If you hadn't had a chance to, read the superb reactions written yesterday by Joe Randazzo, the former editor of the Onion (here), and the Onion itself (here) -the American publication for which the attack must have hit closest to home. The Onion, from what I can tell, shows more far maturity and taste than Charlie Hebdo, but it nevertheless has a proud history of pointing up the unpleasant ironies and ridiculous logic of whoever voices them, and some of those people aren't known for reacting very rationally. Perhaps the most shocking thing the Onion ever printed was this cartoon about cartoon censorship. It was surely offensive to practitioners of several religions, its point was: Yes, of course it's offensive and tasteless. But we believe that your response will be to perhaps complain about it, perhaps just turn the page. Not this. Over here in Invite land, we're just not brave enough to make the point so graphically. Our idea of courage is seeing if we can get "ass" past The Post's taste police when it fits into a limerick. In general, I steer clear of jokes that mock specific religions. I'm not a religious person myself, in the theological sense (I'm Jewish in the ethnic sense and I'm active at my synagogue) but I think it's unfair to make fun of what might seem silly or weird dogma or rituals; for one thing, all religions have them. I won't run jokes about "Mormon underwear," for example. And I do regret using the Book of Genesis as a word bank from which I invited people to pluck words and string them together into humorous sentences -even though the results were a hoot; many people view the Bible as a sacred text, and there are other lofty texts I could have just as easily used as penis joke fodder. On the other hand, the Invitational has, several times over the years, joked about the danger of retribution for creating an image of Muhammad. Here are some: Week 648, 2006, in which we asked for silly questions to ask customer service representatives on their phone "hotlines": Third place: To Blue Cross: "After a night of heavy drinking, I woke up to find an image of Muhammad tattooed on my chest. Do you think you might cover tattoo removal in this one case? It might be a pretty big health issue for me if I don't do something." (Fred Dawson) Week 651, 2006, in which we asked you to add another character to a book or movie and describe the resultant plot: Second place: "Harold and the Purple Koran": Harold uses his crayon to show kids the acceptable way of sketching Muhammad: Just draw his house and say he's inside. (Kevin Dopart) about not making Muhammad jokes Week 865, 2010, Googlenopes -phrases that had had no Google hits: "Muhammad Halloween masks" (Kevin Dopart) Week 988, 2012, add excitement to a sport or game: Pictionary: The Muhammad card. (Danny Bravman) *Actually, "Hebdo" just means "Weekly"; it's an informal truncation of "hebdomadaire," as in hepto-, as in seven. This week's contest is awfully straightforward, I think. And the Week 1102 results, as I mentioned, didn't bear as much fruit as I'd expected, but the fruit that's there is tasty enough, especially if you listen to the radio a lot, as I do. And I was happy to be able to add a few more entries from my short-list from Week 1101. Whoa, it's the 10th win for Pam Sweeney (official Loser Anagram: Weepy Mensa)! And Ink 246 in all for the biotech engineer from Boston (and formerly based here) who's been Inviting since back in the Czarist era. The "Dull Men of Great Britain" calendar goes -much earlier in the year than some of the calendars we've given away -to Warren Tanabe, who got his first ink in 2007 but only recently has become a regular Loser. Warren is up to his 25th blot of ink, and his second "above the fold." A mug or bag is headed for Heather Spence, who popped up at a Loser brunch a year or two ago when visiting from New York. Heather's 12 inks, including two runners-up, outscore by 11 her father, Brent Spence, who corrupted his daughter's mind at an early age by introducing her to the Invite. Karma, Brent. And I combined parts of Jeff Contompasis's and Lawrence McGuire's jokes about playing songs backward to give them yet more runner-up swag; they have a total of 60 inks above the fold, and more than 600 total, almost all of it in the last five or six years. We're currently at 55 Losers, Style Invitational Devotees and their support staff, parole officers, etc. -but fortunately there's plenty of room at the Centreville, Va., dreamhouse of Craig and Valerie Dykstra, who are hosting this year's Loser Post-Holiday Party, Saturday, Jan. 10, 7-10 p.m. And I'm tickled to announce that 43-time Loser Steve Honley -a church musician when he's not the editor of a foreign-service magazine -has volunteered to play the piano to accompany Loserbards Nan Reiner and Mark Raffman, who'll be performing song parodies they wrote just for the occasion. It's a potluck, but you don't have to bring very much food or drink: We don't need 55 giant platters for 55 people. If you haven't RSVP'd that you'd like to come, please write me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I'll give you the details. I'm especially eager to meet people who've never been to a Loser event, but I also hope to catch up with the longtime Losers as well. Also: Door prizes. And party favors: Get a genuine vintage Czarist-era honorable-mention bumper sticker just for showing up with your clam dip or whatever. See you then! I'll be the one with the skunk on her head. ====================================================================== WEEK 1107, published January 18, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1107: Unnatural acts, and the Loser Zing-Along; The Style Invitational Empress talks about the new contest and results, plus Loser events Washington Post Blogs January 15, 2015 Thursday 9:10 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1439 words Byline: Pat Myers Body For the second straight Congress, there's no new Rep. Johnson. But, ahem, there is once again a new Peters. It's a mortal lock that a lot more congressional legislation is going to be proposed in the next 10 days than in the rest of the 114th Congress. By my count, we have 102 names to work with in Style Invitational Week 1107 (no duplicates, for once) and many, many of them lend themselves to be used as words, either straightforwardly or as homonyms , or as syllables that will form homonyms when combined with someone else's name. The "joint legislation" contest -variously titled "There Ought to Be a Law," "Bill Us Now," "Bill Us Later," "Hill's Bills," "Send Us the Bill" and "A Word From Our Cosponsors" -has consistently been one of our most popular contests since it appeared in Week 5, April 4, 1993 (my first successful contest suggestion!). The pool of names used in each contest has varied, but the idea has stayed the same: String two or more names together to create some proposed law, resolution, etc., that reflects those names in some funny way. Note that because this is a relatively small freshman class, I've padded the list with most of the senators whose names (or homonyms thereof) never got ink in an earlier joint legislation contest. (As best as I could determine, anyway -I copied all the results onto one text file and searched name by name.) Some of the new people's names were used earlier, but I included the whole freshman class. I arrived at the "pronouncers," as they're called, by watching campaign spots on YouTube, with the candidate approving this message in his own voice. (After watching about 20 of these, I've decided that they must all have been produced by the same company, and that several of the candidates themselves may have been produced from the same uterus.) The new delegate from American Samoa, however, addressed her constituents by calling herself Aumua Amata, rather than Congress's official Amata Coleman. Radewagen, and I ended up calling her office's voice mail to hear the pronunciation. There's a LITTLE give on the pronunciations you can use: I could see Capito as "Capital" or Katko as "cat go." But Mooney can't be "money." But even with what I'd consider a valid approximation of the sound of the name, it can be hard to figure out some even cleverly done entries. (Like this one from 2013 by Frank Osen: In "The Donnelly-Veasey Act to establish limits on emigration," it's "don't leave easy.") I beg of you, especially when you're making whole phrases with the name combinations: Write out your entry and ask someone else, with no guidance talks about the new contest and results, plus Loser eve.... from you, to read it and see if that person can figure it out. If that person fails you, try one or two other people. If most people can't see what you're getting at, you have no joke. On the other hand, it's not necessarily no good because someone doesn't get the joke; sometimes I've failed to get an entry that other people got right away. (Sometimes I'll post an anonymous entry on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook to ask for help. That's why I note that you're welcome to send me translations, as long as they're on a separate line so I can try first to get them without help.) And so for the 2011 and 2013 contests, ran the results on two separate lists; the second one featured "translations" of all the entries. This allowed people the fun of figuring out the jokes themselves, but also an explanation for any they couldn't get. Here are the translated results of Week 1005. I'll most likely do that again, unless it turns out that all the inking entries are especially clear. I have nothing against clarity! If you're looking for inspiration, you can look up all the old contests on Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List and search on "legislation" and "bills"; clicking on the "LEG" link at the top of the list will give you a page of all the contests, but those links are to the contest announcements, not the results. I had misgivings about Week 1103: Would pairing up a TV show and a song produce matches beyond the obvious or the silly, into the realm of funny and clever? Jeff Contompasis offered up several good examples that persuaded me to go ahead, and I'm glad I did; while most of the entries confirmed my hunch, we ended up with lots of laughs in the final cull -especially when presented in a series, like the several "Cosby" variations in the online Invite. And we have three First Offenders this week, after a couple of weeks' lull without a being able to mail out a Firstink. It's the third Inkin' Memorial for Larry Gray of rural Union Bridge, Md. Larry's "Three Times a Lady" for "The Biggest Loser" was one of the few entries to make both me and the Royal Consort laugh out loud. Meanwhile, Frank Osen moves back into his regular parking space in the Losers' Circle with his 27th blot of ink "above the fold." Nancy Schwalb picks up a remarkable fourth above-the-fold ink in just 21 blots in all, while Mark Raffman and Christopher Lamora gain yet more redundant swag. Among the unprintables: For "19 Kids and Counting": "Mama Told Me Not to Come"; and "Beat It" for "Pee-wee's Playhouse" (Rob Huffman) "Free Man in Paris" for "The Simple Life"; and "Heart-Shaped Box" for "Leave It to Beaver" (Jeff Contompasis) I'm so sorry if you weren't one of the 60 or so people who came out of the 20-degree cold into the warmth of Craig and Valerie Dykstra's hospitality as they hosted the Loser Post-Holiday Party at their beautiful and whimsical home in the outer suburbs of Northern Virginia. By "whimsical," I mean that several chronologically adult Losers repeatedly tried out the curved tube slide from the main floor to the basement rec room. Video of Chutes and Losers! There was lots of delicious potluck food and drink, and lots of meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances. I finally managed to present Elden Carnahan with the booklet containing his first 500 blots of Invite Ink, thus inducting him -a year and a half late -to the Style Invitational Hall of Fame. Video of the E reading a sampling of Elden's entries; start around 4:30. . But the Big Moments of the party were the performances of song parodies written for the occasion. Nan Reiner and Mark Raffman collaborated once again on an ode to Loserdom, and this time 43-time Loser (and professional musician) Steve Honley accompanied them on piano. (Video here.) LAME! (to the tune of "Mame")We write light verse 'bout people who died... Lame!Pen puns 'bout politicians who lied... Lame!We pray to see elected a dweeb who has a double-entendre name.We know we'll be rejected, but still we play our masochistic game. We spout some trivia that's not true... Lame!Spawn phony foals, and parodies too... talks about the new contest and results, plus Loser eve.... Lame!We're just pathetic rodents who scurry on some hamster wheel of fame...We find it motivationalTo hope that our creation'll Ink in the Invitational... Lame! There's no low prank that we won't employ... Lame!We yank our TankaWankas for joy... Lame!We think that we'll be chosen when punchiness and pith are at their peak,Then find some guy named Osen has grabbed a hold of Abe again this week. We riff on people's intimate parts... Lame!When all else fails, we fumble for farts... Lame!Oh, how our old professors would scoff about the "scholars" we became...But we've had publication be-Cause of our odd fixation; we Have the last laugh! Who cares if it's lame? Lame! LAME!! Nan also sang the heck out of an update of a fabulous song she'd done at an earlier party, "Everything's Coming Up Inkblots." And we all sang a get-well song to 269-time Loser Mae Scanlan, who was having some problems with a newly installed pacemaker. Here's "Pacemaker, Pacemaker," by Melissa Balmain and Nan. Thanks to Not Yet a Loser Richard Wexler for doing all the video. Next on the Loser Social Engorgements calendar: Brunch Feb. 8 at Buddy's Crabs and Ribs near the City Dock in Annapolis, Md. I probably won't make that one, but I do plan to be at the March 22 brunch at Paradiso in Alexandria*Springfield, Va. And later in the spring or perhaps early summer -date and place TBD but we'll give a lot of notice - will be our next Big Event, the Flushies award "banquet." Congratulations to 2014 Loser of the Year Danielle Nowlin on the birth of Benjamin Steele Nowlin, her third Loserkind, born Jan 10. For some reason, Danielle didn't make it over to the Loser party, even though she'd had the baby that morning and wasn't planning to have any more of them for the rest of the day. ====================================================================== WEEK 1108, published January 25, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1108: We welcome your heartfeld sediments; The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week's contest and results Washington Post Blogs January 22, 2015 Thursday 6:55 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1382 words Byline: Pat Myers Body I tend to have two reactions to most contest suggestions I get these days: 1. "Sorry, we've done that." 2. "Oh, we've done that -yeah, that was a good one. Let's do it again." I can't state a strict criterion about when I make Reply No. 1 vs. Reply No. 2. But for Week 1108 of The Style Invitational -which repeats a contest we've done in various forms three times -I'll point to a combination of factors: First, I'm not paying attention to Week 47, which asked for "bad Valentine's Day poetry" -I would like funny-clever, not funny-because-it's-lame. (The results here -scroll down past that week's new contest -show that the latter gets old pretty fast.) The second and third contests, on the other hand, produced some great results. But they're from 2004 and 2006. And so I figure that there are lots of new people to mock with flowery sentiments. (Hey, a skunk cabbage has a flower, too.) Some winners from Weeks 544 and 645. Complete results are here and here. To the National Zoo's then-baby resident: As you chew on the bamboo and yawnIn the sun on your makeshift veranda,Here's my Valentine wish, dear Tai Shan:May you never be moo goo gai panda. (Chris Doyle, the winner of Week 645) Slinkity, binkity,Eva Longoria,Oh, how I pine as youPlay hard to get.Why does my ardor meetNon-reciprocity?I guess you aren't that"Desperate" yet. (Brendan Beary, runner-up the same week) As was this one, which I think worked better because at the time we didn't have to give his last name: To my favorite lobbyist: Remember that cash in the sack? I regret that I must give it back.If they ask about meWhile you're copping your plea,Be nice: Tell 'em I don't know Jack. (Nick Curtis) And among the valentines to generic people: To a veterinarian: From three little stray cats, each with a uterus:Happy Valentine's Day --please will you neuter us? (Sue Lin Chong) From one historical*literary figure to another: A Valentine, some hugs and pecks,A night of wild, illicit sex.As your pastor, I must say,Miss Prynne, you've earned yourself an A. (Chris Doyle, who, you might have noticed, has made himself pretty useful over the past 15 years). From Calvin Coolidge to his wife, Grace: Yrs. (Tom Kreitzberg) I'm very optimistic about this contest. For the option of actually composing a graphic card: It has to look really good as well as be really clever, and if it's going into the print paper, it has to be readable in black-and-white. I won't be looking at graphic entries blindly, and I might get back to you if there's something I'd like you to tweak. Don't put your own name into the graphic. And The Post will not publish it if the photo you use is copyrighted. Any photos on Wikipedia are for general use, and many Getty's stock photos are free if you use the proper credit, which we're happy to do. (See here for details.) Please send your graphic as an attachment, at least 500K resolution and preferably higher. I know that some of you out there are Photoshop whizzes - here's your chance. Can you believe that two people, one in Texas and one in California, noted that HPD stands for both histrionic personality disorder and highest posterior density -and then related them to the perfect-for-both Kim Kardashian? That's what Chris Doyle and Frank Osen did this week in this week's abbreviation contest. Larry Gray scored the rare Invite feat of snaring two wins in two weeks -for three in all since he debuted in Week 923. (I had told him, in this week's prize letter, to save a little room on the mantelpiece.) Frank Mann gets the perhaps dubious "fossilized dinosaur poop" from the otherwise reputable SkullsUnlimited.com; Chris Doyle yadda yadda; and Kristen Rahman picks up her third "above the fold" ink out -plus two honorable mentions -to boost her blot total by 30 percent in a week. There's lots of grousing discussion on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook about the list of members of Congress we're using for this year's still-running "joint legislation" contest, Week 1107 -97 comments as I write this. First of all, it was noted that it was missing the names of legislators who took office before the 2014 election but after the previous freshman class -most notably David Brat, who replaced Eric Cantor late last year in a ploy to give him seniority over this year's frosh. Yup, the list I worked from didn't have those people, and I just forgot about the gun-jumpers who'd won special elections. But as Loser Jeff Shirley noted: "Missing a Brat -not the wurst that could happen." No doubt lots of people would have sent entries playing off "Brat." But I would have run at the most two of them. Also, there's a lot of concern about the pronunciation of the legislators' names; while I'd included "pronouncers" for many of them, I didn't note, for example, that Blum isn't pronounced "bloom" as it is in Germany, or that Dianne Feinstein, who has been a prominent senator for 22 years, isn't "Fine-steen." Also, I hadn't explained that Moolenaar is "Mole-enar" rather than "Mool-enar." And then was the complaint that if you did use the right pronunciation of , say, Gallegos (guy-AY-gos rather than gal-LEG-os or GALL-e-gos), readers wouldn't understand the joke because they don't know how to pronounce Gallegos. These people have a point: A wordplay joke is more reliable when the pronunciation is less ambiguous -this is why some of the best song parodies and limericks make it very clear from the words used where their accents fall; that way people won't read them another way in their heads and "miss the joke." Still: There are about a hundred names on that list, and you get to try 25 combinations. So maybe you'd want to include some totally unambiguous pronunciations along with ones that require a little knowledge. Also: A lot of people do know how to pronounce Gallegos. And there is some give in how much you can stretch a pronunciation so that it sounds like another word. While you can't pretend that Gallego has something to do with plastic building blocks made for girls, or that Mooney sounds like Money, there's just a shade of sound difference between Moolenaar and Molenaar; either interpretation will probably work in a joke. In any case, this contest remains one of the most popular perennials we do -entries are flooding in, with many by new entrants. For the 2013 joint-legislation contest, I counted an in-cred-ible 105 new e-mail addresses that week; normally I might get 10. This time there might not be so many -for one thing, a lot of those 105 people came back since, and some just do this one contest -but it's clear that this remains a popular contest, especially in Washington, where legislators' names can be part of the local news. My apologies about the continuing problem with the auto-reply that you're supposed to get after sending your entries to losers@washpost.com I have talked to several people in The Post's IT department about this -and thanks, techie Losers, for your suggestions -and they've been trying to work around the usual set-up in which the auto-reply doesn't want to tell you more than once that Mr. Dropbox is on vacation (or in our case, that we've received your entry and here's the stuff you forgot to look at in the rules the first time around). William of IT has created a program that's working on his computer in which he updates it once a day; this is why many of you have begun to get the auto-reply again, but not for a second e-mail you sent the same day. When I go to The Post's newsroom next Tuesday, I'm bringing my personal laptop, and he'll load that program for me too. So my fingers are crossed that after next Tuesday, I'll no longer be answering e-mails all day long about whether someone's entry has reached me. (The other problem is that I currently can't see both my regular Post e-mail box and the Losers e­mail on my phone, so I can't check on entries until I get home.) And yes, it's been noted that the owner of this company might find all this mess a bit surprising. All I can say is that they know what my problem is, courtesy of my big and increasingly caustic mouth. ====================================================================== WEEK 1109, published February 1, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1109: A matter of laugh and death; The Style Invitational Empress discusses the new contest and results Washington Post Blogs January 29, 2015 Thursday 8:02 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1402 words Byline: Pat Myers Body (That's Tom Witte's headline, which didn't get ink because it didn't fit on the page) Well, after I die, I am definitely going to call up some Losers and ask for a poem. (Someone will write something about my "in-tiara-ment" but I will reject it.) The obit poems in Week 1105, as always, were clever and fun, managing in a number of creative ways not to be too tasteless or mean in making fun of the recently out-of-here. And this year might have the best assortment ever of subjects: fascinating animals (a little easier to joke about than people) plus, as maybe a dozen people decided to use, various people who were on a list of Darwin Award nominees. I ended up fitting 20 entries into the print version of the Invite, nestled cozily in the higher-numbered pages of The Post's Arts & Style section, and a rather profligate 29 into the online version. There were at least that many on my "short"-list that got robbed. There were also, as always, hundreds and hundreds of really awful poems -the kind that you (or at least I) tend to wince at when a relative reads one at a wedding. They tend to rhyme, or sort of rhyme, but don't have any consistent meter, and often painfully twisted syntax to effect said rhyme*sort-of-rhyme. One almost always lethal phrase, when it comes to ink, is "he did [verb]" rather than "he [verbed]" -especially if it kills the rhythm ("Many careers he did mold"). A notable exception this week: Diane Wah used this very construction in her sonnet about "radium girl" Mae Keane -"Mae's brush with fate did point her way to heaven" -but I thought it worked because the whole tone of the poem was self-consciously and humorously "poetic," and so a little twisted syntax adds gently to the joke. Diane's sonnet was an exception in another way: While I regularly give ink to two entries on the same subject, as I did for the poems about Marion Barry, I normally do that only if the two entries make different points, or use diffferent styles of humor. But in this case, I had two fairly lengthy (in Invite terms) rhyming poems that told the same story. And they both told them really, really well. I finally decided to put the shorter of them at the very top -it turned out to be by Chris Doyle -and the other, the 14-liner, near the bottom -because how could I deny it ink? So the radium-unpoisoned Mae Keane gets two glowing tributes. All four of the Losers "above the fold" this week, and many of the honorable-mention Losers as well, have gotten lots of ink in earlier Invite poetry contests: From my scanning of the Losers' own Master Contest List, I see that Chris Doyle has won the top prize in at least fourteen Invite poetry or song contests since Week 503 in 2003. Melissa Balmain and Frank Osen, both well-known published poets, have sharpened the Invite's funny-poetry new contest and results chops even more since they started entering within a few weeks of each other in 2011. And Beverley Sharp steps merrily onto the steps leading up to the Hall of Fame threshold -watch the ice! -as she nears her 500th blot of ink, a lot of it in rhyme. The favorite this week of Copy Editor Extraordinaire Doug Norwood was Rob Cohen's OMG tribute to Eric Hill, the "Where's Spot?" author. Doug's daughter and my son are about the same age, and both of us fondly remember reading this book to our respective offspring approximately 362,000 times. Last night I had the fun of watching perhaps a dozen clips on YouTube of babies being read to or reading "Where's Spot?" -had my kids been born in the digital-video era, they surely would have been among them -and I linked to one of them in the heading of the poem, with a child who clearly has been through this book many, many times. I also found one with Eric Hill himself reading the book, with the aid of a stuffed Spot. It's very entertaining in his plummy English voice, and he's very animated as he elaborates on the drawings as he lifts the flaps, but I'm partial to seeing and hearing the delighted kids themselves. As veteran contest-suggesters know, I'm much more optimistic that a new contest will work if I see some great examples to go with it. Mark Raffman suggested this one to me just this week. I'd have thought that Bob Staake would have chosen the L'Enfant Terrible example to illustrate (I usually let him choose from the examples) but he went for the river. I acknowledge that there's an inherent danger running a local-angle contest in this global era -Jeff Bezos himself has explicitly said the The Post would focus more and more on national and international coverage and readership -but I think it will still be fun. It'll be the locals who read the Invite in the print edition, while I can might add some links to online entries that help explain the joke if necessary. (But it's not always: For example, I wouldn't expect out-of­towners to have heard of the Anacostia, but it's clear from the joke that (a) it's a river and (b) that it's associated with some bad thing, either pollution or bodies being dumped there, which is enough knowledge for the joke to be funny.) In the past week, two Losers -both funny people with significant quantities of ink -noted to me that this year's magnets for honorable mentions have proved problematic: One said that she decided she'd better take down her "Wit Hit the Fan" magnets from the refrigerator when guests came to visit, because of the language of the wordplay. The other asked me if I could henceforth not send the "Hardly Har-Har" magnet because his kids found the graphic violence of the clown drawing - especially the bloody saw - disturbing. Let me emphasize that neither of them complained to me, or argued that we should have used different slogans or art. (Incidentally, the pistol in the clown picture originally didn't have a "bang" flag; it was just a gun.) I'm mentioning this to say that if you also feel this way about either of the magnets, you're not alone -and that if you have a magnet preference (or don't want one at all), I'll be happy to accommodate you if you let me know before the Tuesday after you get the ink. To the tech-types who've been following my Saga of the Lack of Auto-Reply with a mix of amusement, pity and perhaps a bit of contempt: I know, I know. Anyway, everyone who sends entries to losers@washpost.com will now get a receipt for each e-mail, with varying degrees of immediacy. On Tuesday, Will of IT installed a program on my personal laptop with which, in case the auto-reply doesn't work on its own (which seems to be almost always the case right now), I can just click on an icon and it will create an e­mail with the whole text of the auto-reply directions. And the subject line will retain the week number you sent, so you'll know which entry it refers to. So if I'm at my laptop at home and I see your entry come in, I'll just hit that button. The other improvement that Will made was to fix my iPhone so that I can now get the losers@washpost.com e­mail as well as my pat.myers@washpost.com e-mail, all in the same feed with my personal-personal Gmail e-mail. So if I'm away from my laptop and I'm looking at my phone -and I know you already know all the info in the auto- new contest and results reply -I'll just reply to the e-mail with a "got it." If I think you need to see that information, however, I'll wait till I get home and then click on the manual "auto"-reply thing. One problem with this is that the auto-reply will sometimes work on its own, and so some people will end up with two receipts. This problem, however, will not keep me up at "night" (i.e., 3 to 8 a.m.). Meanwhile, we at The Post were told this week that starting at 10 a.m. tomorrow, we're going to a new, improved spam-filtering service, which we cannot access until then. My prediction -not that I have any reason to be pessimistic or anything -is that at the beginning, more of your entries than usual will end up in spam. Currently I have a list of 100 e-mail addresses that always bypass the spam filter, and I doubt that list will move over to the new system, so I'll have to reconstruct it. But as always, I systematically check the spam filter every Tuesday night, and send out an e-mail to the affected people to explain why they didn't get the auto-reply. So sorry, if you didn't get ink, it really was because I liked somebody else's stuff better. ====================================================================== WEEK 1111, published February 15, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1111 (Four 1s and for all): The bills that would never pass; The Empress of the Style Invitational reviews this week's new contest and results. Washington Post Blogs February 12, 2015 Thursday 7:57 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1455 words Byline: Pat Myers Body It's like sausage: Once it's put before you with lots of links, you'll say, "What happened with that stupid patty?" Nah, the results of Week 1107 are great, no? While I always moan and groan while judging The Style Invitational's biennial "joint legislation" contest, I also always look forward to it, because I know it will pay off -both in reader popularity and in the quality of the results. The 41 inking entries from almost 40 Losers -including five First Offenders -topped the stack of at least 2,000 entries, many of them remotely intelligible. I do wish that more people had heeded my plea to have someone else read their entries, without hints, so they could see if your string of congressmen's names sounded like an English phrase outside your own highly deluded mind. My guess is that the person who sent this one, for example, didn't go through the just-ask process: Emmer-Schumer-Feinstein-Young-Barasso and Tillis Proclamation declaring March to be Victoria's Secret Appreciation Month. Except for "Barasso," I had no idea how any of these words related to Victoria's Secret, let alone what the whole phrase said. Maybe I was just tired, I figured, so I posted the entry on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, Their comments included: -"In William Goldman's ... first novel, Temple of Gold, breasts were referred to as "twillies" but I seriously doubt there's a connection. I only read it about 50 years ago and still remember that!"- " 'em are some-uh finest in young bare ass until it's ???" -" Emmer-Schumer seems to be the "March" part, but the rest seems full of empty syllables.- Schumer=showin' her or show him her.-and Tills="And still is?" Feinstein could be cockney rhyming slang for "fine?" -I suggest "finest teen" (even though it's TYNE) because you just can't ignore that S in Feinstein's name.- Don't know what Emmer-Schumer is yet, but I'm guessing the rest is: "finest in young bras show and tell us."-don't think the writer meant this but Emmer-Schumer makes sense as "amorous humor", I finally contacted the writer and asked. And what he was aiming for was this: "Them are (Emmer) some (Schumer) fine (Feinstein) young (Young) bare asses (Barasso) and titties (Tillis). "A bit of a reach perhaps." Style Invitational reviews this week's new contest and.... Perhaps. Obviously, the best way to make the your phrase clear is to use names that are perfect homonyms: Boyle-Dold-Rice is pronounced exactly "boiled old rice." But there could be a little stretch, as some of this week's inking entries demonstrate. I think the stretchiest this week is "The Hurd-Daines-Knight subsidy for those who have been working like a dog," But it totally works -because the rest of the entry makes it clear that David Friedman meant "Hard Day's Night"; because we don't have to puzzle out what the heck he's getting at, we can sit back and enjoy the joke. It's even kind of funny that it's phonetically off. Contrast that with "The Newhouse-Murkowski-Schatz resolution: Speaker Boehner's White Russian drinking contest to celebrate having a congressional majority and a personal bartender who don't want to get rid of him." The writer did think to add an explanation: "New House, more cowski shots! This joke requires the reader to figure out that a drinker as experienced as Boehner would have his own pet name for White Russians (which contain cream) - a "Cowski." This is asking a little much of even the hyperbrainy Loser Community. There's a difference between a joke -even a clever joke - and a puzzle. It was by accident that I hadn't included Rep. Dave Brat on the list of names to work with, even though he's not technically a freshman; he was rushed into his seat after beating House leader Eric Cantor in the primary, as a tactic to gain seniority. I just forgot to add him to the list of actual freshmen of the 114th Congress. So we can use him next time. There were many similar entries for Week 1107; some got double credit (I also occasionally combined elements of two entries for a double credit) but usually I chose the entry I thought worked a little better than the rest. But sometimes a slew of entries just canceled one another out; the many "Lieu-Trott" jokes about running to the bathroom, for instance, or "Love-Sessions-Booker," etc., about madams and pimps. Even without, for once, a Sen. or Rep. Johnson, there were lots and lots of off-color jokes (a sampling appears below). Thanks, Rep. Peters and Sen. Barrasso. I was mildly surprised that I didn't get any grief (as of this hour, anyway) from the newsroom Taste Police about the Peters-Nelson wrestling hold or the Torres-Dingle zipper safety legislation or the Buck-Tillis-Sasse-Hurd bronco-riding limits. Note, however, that none of those was used in a sexual context; and weren't as crudely graphic as some of the similar ideas noted at the bottom of this column. Lots of new and almost-new names among this week's inking entries, including "above the fold": It's just the third blot of ink ever for Inkin' Memorial winner Dawn Kral, who nevertheless has mastered the power of the elegant poop joke. And it's only the second ink for runner-up David Clayton, and the 10th for Joanne Free, who both nailed the Cosby angle in even this contest. And even longtime ace Losers Kathy Hardis Fraeman and Steve Langer -who have 17 winners or runners-up between them -total fewer than 100 blots (each has a Real Life as a scientist); contrast that with the Losers' Circle totals of well over 1,000 in many weeks. Too insidey for the Invite, but just right for here: Rep. Lee Zeldin was called into service for several tributes to a Hall of Fame Loser: -The Lieu-Zeldin Resolution to cheer the ink-seeking efforts of one Mr. Carnahan. (Nan Reiner) [Lose, Elden!]­The Schatz-Hurd-Zeldin-Sasse commendation honoring immunization advocate E. Carnahan for repeatedly demonstrating the hypodermic. (George-Ann Rosenberg) [Shots hurts Elden's ass]- The Emmer-Rice-Love-Zeldin Carnahan Act establishing that you don't have to be handsome to be the teacher's pet, as long as you're funny. (Mark Raffman) [Empress loves Elden Carnahan] This last one is disqualified because it implies that Elden is less than totally studly. (Refuted here.) I was thinking that we'd already done a contest that called for puns on song titles, but I guess not. And while we've done funny names for businesses, they don't seem to have played much on song titles: The only one I found was Style Invitational reviews this week's new contest and.... for the Week 641 contest to combine two businesses: Elliott Schiff noted that a petting zoo*bellsmith could be named A Ram, A Lamb, A Ding-Dong. Good, then! I'm expecting thousands of entries for Week 1111. Go to it! As usual, a familiar song title tends to make a funnier joke than an obscure one. You do need to change the title in some way, not just name a business that an actual song title would be good for. The March Loser Brunch has been set for Sunday, March 22, to coincide with the National Cherry Blossom Festival and the visit by Losers Kathy El-Assal and Becky Fischer from Wisconsin. It's the ample buffet at Paradiso, always one of my favorites. For more information and a calendar of Loser events, see the Losers' website, nrars.org, and click on "Our Social Engorgements" at the top of the page. Note: If you're reading all the way down here, we assume that you're not going to be offended by crude, tasteless humor. If you are, please don't read the following. They're not for you. There were a lot of entries along these same lines. Here are a sampling: The Peters-Torres-Sasse Penitentiary Reform and Inmate Reparations Act (David Clayton) Cruz-Young-Peters-Sasse Congressional Page "Mentoring" Act (Tim Livengood) Palmer-Rounds-Peters-Tillis-Hardy: This bill instructs freshmen congressmen on the best method to stay out of trouble when they become geo-bachelors in D.C. (Rob Wolf) The Torres-Sasse Bill to create a new opening for the President's staff, centered on servicing the privates sector. (Jon Gearhart)Cruz-Tillis-Peters-Hardy Act to study the invigorating effects of ocean voyages on erectile dysfunction (Jeff Shirley)Trott-Tillis-Dingell­Torres-Sasse: resolution to require the Surgeon General to warn men to wear jockstraps when jogging. (Rick Haynes) Young-Rounds-Mooney-Guinta-Bishop-Peters-Hardy Bill requiring altar boys to serve in pairs (Andrew Knapp) Hardy-Coons-Guinta-Tillis-Cotton Act to Repeal the Thirteenth Amendment (Elden Carnahan) I'm enough of a glutton for punishment to ask for ideas for a similar contest we can do before the 115th Congress goes into session in January 2017. ====================================================================== WEEK 1112, published February 22, 2015 Style Conversational: Eight neat things about (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.) Add to list Not many people can rock the ensemble of Skunk Hat and Pearls. But Beverley Sharp surely was the best-dressed lady in church. (FAMILY PHOTO) By Pat MyersFebruary 19, 2015 1. She used to be (Beverley Sharp, Washington). Beverley was living in the District back in 2005 when she figured she’d try that game in The Post with the horse names, and scored an honorable mention by “breeding” Uncle Whiskers with By Sunday and naming the foal Santa Domingo. And that was it for Beverley, Style Invitational-wise, for a whole year. Then a few more in 2006, including a runner-up. But then she got to work, blotting up as many as 80 inks per year on the way to No. 500, which she hit last week with her “joint legislation.” Along the way she won the Inker or Inkin’ Memorial 12 times and accumulated swag from 37 runners-up (see a sampling below), and was the Loser Community’s Loser of the Year in 2010, and managed to be “Most Imporved” four years later. 2. Beverley’s friends don’t know from “Beverley Sharp.” To them, she’s Beverley Amberg. Beverley decided to use her maiden name (or, as I call it, her own name) in the Invitational because her husband, Dick Amberg, was at the time the general manager — the head of the business side — of the Washington Times, a daily paper that used to be more of a competitor of The Post than it is now, and she didn’t want to embarrass Dick. (Dick played along with this, so much so that he even attended Loser events wearing a name tag reading “Dick Sharp.” In a roomful of Style Invitational Losers!) 3. Beverley once got six blots of ink in a single week. It was Week 804, a contest to create a “typo” in a real Washington Post headline, and then write a bank head: Third place: What Could Have Been Horse? Travelers Ponder the Mysteries of Foreign Menus Save an Additional 200% [had been 20%]: Local Merchants Get Desperate Miser Loves Company: Skinflint Invites Friends In Just to Watch Him Count His Cash Striving to Have a Vice in the Workplace: Company’s Sexual Harassment Workshop Has Unusual Purpose Smoking Bat Passes in Va. [Ban]: Veterinarians Had Advised Mammal to Give Up Tobacco Factoring In the Cost of Getting Some [Home]: Bachelors, Don’t Forget Movie, Dinner, Wine 4. In 2007, after starting to get some regular Invite ink, Beverley learned that a number of contestants and hangers-on kept in touch with one another via an e-mail group called Losernet, and that they even did things together in person. Soon afterward, without having met any of the other participants, she signed up to go away for a weekend to Williamsburg and Jamestown under the “direction” of a man who looked like this. She had a fabulous time. I first met Beverley at a Dorkness at Noon weekday lunch in town, and was instantly smitten by this refined, perfectly coiffed lady who was cracking up over the usual double-entendres that pass for prandial repartee in Loserdom. And she became a regular participant in Loser Brunches, the Flushies awards and the Loserfest field trips, until Dick retired from the Times and they moved back to his hometown of Montgomery, Ala., in 2011. 5. Even after she’d freed herself from the orbit of Loserdom, seemingly safely ensconced 800 miles away, what does she do? When Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan drove down to the Gulf Coast with a church group on his annual trek to repair houses, Beverley insisted that they all stop by Chez Amberg on the way, and gave everyone lunch. Two different times. 6. In retirement, Beverley and Dick have been traveling all over creation, visiting the grandchildren and touring the world. But I still receive her entries every week, sometimes sent from a cruise ship or Internet cafe in Outer Whoknowswhere. 7. It was Beverley who suggested the term “First Offenders,” when I started awarding the FirStink to rookies in 2008. And a year later, it was she who came up with the name for the brand-new Style Conversational. 8. I’m glad that I judge the entries blindly, without knowing who wrote the entries, because I get the most gracious thank-you note every time Beverley gets her prize and letter in the mail — which is, of course, practically every week. And I see from the stats that she’s gotten at least as much ink since I started the blind judging as she did before. Being nice has nothing to do with it — she’s just very, very good at this Invite thing. For example, these first-place winners: — Week 747, ways to improve air travel, 2008: And the Winner of the Inker: Install removable tray tables. Then when the person in front of you reclines his seat to the supine position, you can place your tray, drinks and all, right on his face. — Week 767, Questionable Journalism: Find a sentence appearing in that week’s Post and supply a question that it might answer, 2008: And the Winner of the Inker: A. I don’t know if I should say something, let it roll off, or what. Q. “Isn’t that the neighbors’ baby up on the roof?” — Week 771, names for employee handbooks for particular professions or workplaces, 2008: And the Winner of the Inker: “The Paean Is Mightier Than the S-Word: The Congressional Guide to Speaking Near a Microphone” — Week 830, a bank head for an actual headline in a Post story or ad, 2009: And the Winner of the Inker: Talk All You Want! Hook Up Now! High School Adopts ‘Progressive’ Policies — Week 859, i“If they can ___, why can’t they ___?,” 2010: The winner of the Inker: If they can train puppies to use the newspaper, why can’t they train yuppies to use the newspaper? — Week 927, short ad-poems as a series of road signs, a la Burma-Shave: The winner of the Inker: Why exercise To get a date? WE’LL do the push-ups; YOU’LL look great! Wonderbra. — Week 942, the winning entry to a contest that can produce only one great entry, 2011: A contest to come up with a name for an older-adult swim diaper. Winner: Deep Ends — Week 985, 2012, in which we showed five Bob Staake cartoons and asked you to say Invitational contest it could be for. The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial, for Week 982, a song parody including one line from the original song: The cartoon was of a horse sitting in a bathtub, holding a toaster: Picture E: To “Fugue for Tinhorns” from “Guys and Dolls”: I’ve got the horse right here, He’s in the bathtub, dear, But all the lights went out, and he’s toast, I fear. Boo hoo, I’m blue; The horse blew a fuse, it’s true; It looks like the horse is through; (The toaster, too.) — Week 988, bogus laws “still on the books,” 2012: In Bethlehem, Pa., an innkeeper MUST provide a room for a hugely pregnant woman (because you just never know. . .). — Week 1056, good*bad*ugly, 2014: Good: You get to spend a summer’s day at a beautiful beach. Bad: It’s awfully crowded and noisy. Ugly: It is June 6, 1944. — Week 1099, Questionable Journalism again, 2014: Sentence from The Post: Will begin to wane on Wednesday night. Q. What was the phrase that persuaded the Weather Channel not to hire Elmer Fudd? I’ve started preparing the compilation of entries that’s my reminder of time squandered gift to each Hall of Fame inductee, and would like nothing more than to present it to Beverley in person at this year’s Flushies awards in late spring. Which brings us to: Who has a nice big rec room? Flushies organizers Dave Prevar, Elden Carnahan and Pie Snelson are still searching for a place to hold the Losers’ 20th annual awards lunch or dinner, at which we fete the Loser of the Year, celebrate and mock others’ Loserly milestones, sing parodies for the occasion, and of course eat stuff. After several years of angst in dealing with banquet-room caterers and restaurant rentals, and not knowing till the last minute whether enough Losers would sign up to cover the guaranteed minimums, we agreed that it would be a whole lot better and cheaper for everyone if we could have it at someone’s house, and bring in the food, either potluck or from a caterer. Historically, we’ve had 50 to 70 people show up. Not everyone has to sit all the time, but we should be able to crowd around to hear the songs. Is anyone in the D.C. area in a position to host this year’s Flushies? Saturday, May 30, would be especially nice because out-of-town visitors could also take part in the Post Hunt the next day, but there are a number of other possible dates. We could do it outside as long as there was a Plan B inside for weather. Please contact Dave at DavePrevar [at] AOLl [dot] com as soon as possible. We’re already late in the game. Hars and flowers*: The valentines of Week 1108 *A headline submitted by a number of people I’m sure that some people would like to throw some Conversational Hearts at my face today after I robbed some worthy valentines of ink in the results of Week 1108. I did get 25 of them into the Web version, and 19 into print. The valentines include both poems and prose, to real and fictional people, and to a number of non-people, and even part-people (Kim Kardashian’s Butt). I was pretty flexible on what constituted a valentine, but I think it does have to be addressed to the recipient; it can’t be a third-person tribute or funny story about the person. That ruled out this otherwise very good double dactyl from Chris Doyle: Junkety, trunkety Kim West*Kardashian, Trying on clothes for the Valentine Ball, Checks on her signature Steatopygia: “Kanye, this dress makes my Butt look too small!” Also biting the dust was a song parody, “That’s Why Tom Brady Is a Champ,” from Barbara Sarshik and Duncan Stevens. I’ll share it on the Style Invitational Devotees page, though. And while valentines in general are something of an anachronism, perhaps, this one from Greg Arnold was out of phase by about 100,000 years: Lady Neanderthal to her Significant Other: I love you just the way you are. Your massive brow, your brawn. Your matted hair, your musky scent. It really turns me on. You lavish me with thoughtful gifts, But some, a bit surreal. Like, what am I to do with this... This thing you call a “wheel?” It is, if the Loser Stats are current, the big 100th ink for Rob Huffman, who didn’t start entering since Week 914. And it’s already his fifth win, and 10th “above the fold.” Rob, who hasn’t yet come up the 50 miles from Fredericksburg, Va., to Meet the Parentheses, told me recently that “by the way, I want to make a Losers social event this year. Time to come out of my Garbo-esque shell. Maybe the next one?” I hope he can make it to the next brunch on March 22, on his side of the Beltway at Paradiso on Franconia Road. See “Our Social Engorgements” at NRARS.org. Also visiting will be 30-time Loser Kathy El-Assal, from Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Mark Raffman closes in on 200 inks with his mayyybe problematic crush on the HR director, plus (at the bottom of the list, and only on the Web) one of the best double-entendres ever; it really deserves to be above the fold, but the Taste Police would have killed it, I’m pretty sure. Nan Reiner continues her specialty of skewering local politicos and institutions, and rising star Warren Tanabe gets a Loser Mug or Grossery Bag for his love letter from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to the teachers union. Meanwhile, the above-the-folders from Week 1107 haven’t gotten their prizes yet, because I didn’t go to the office on my usual Tuesday. I’ll mail them out on Friday. ====================================================================== WEEK 1113, published March 1, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1113: It's our parody - try if you want to; Plus new lies about D.C. - and we have a date and place for the Flushies! Washington Post Blogs February 26, 2015 Thursday 7:51 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1570 words Byline: Pat Myers Body Oh boy oh boy, I love song parody contests. I grew up on Mad Magazine in the 1960s , learning every word of Frank Jacobs's "MG" (sung to "Born Free"), "War" ("More") and one about a pampered poodle, set to "On the Street Where You Live" ("still he sits upon* his own private john* that I built for the dog that I love"). My predecessor, the Czar, though he also grew up on Mad, has never taken to song parodies. But within months after my Empress tiara was ceremonially implanted in my skull 11 years ago, I asked the Losers to offer advice to our nation's leaders in the form of a Christmas carol parody, and immediately realized that the Loser community could well out-Frank Jacobs Frank Jacobs. (The results.) Since then, we've had parody contests almost every year, with various themes and parameters: Sometimes you've had to work with a particular genre (holiday songs, Beatles songs, Stephen Foster songs, music that had no lyrics, "The Star-Spangled Banner" and no other choice); other times the music field was wide open but you had to write on a particular theme: campaign songs, songs about natural disasters, songs describing particular TV shows. This week's contest, Week 1113, is in the latter category; use any music you like. Feel free also to make a video featuring your song, and send me a file or preferably a YouTube link; sometimes I do a little editing to lyrics, though, so the final products might not be the same. My choice for ink, though, depends on the lyrics rather than the video. As always, because this is a column that gets read rather than heard, I'm looking for parodies that also work as well-crafted humorous poems; that means they have to really rhyme, not just have the assonance of the same vowels, a practice that works fine on pop recordings (current examples include reckless*breathless, feet*cheeks; mouth*out). That's true even if the song you're paroudying doesn't have "perfect rhyme." The structure of a parody-as-poem is also different from parody-as-performance: It works better when it ends with a sort of punchline, rather than a refrain that repeats earlier material; also, when we want people to read the lyrics of 10 or 14 or 25 songs (I tend to overshare because they're so good), there's just no room for verses that don't add to the wit. And, yeah, wit: However well crafted, the song still needs to make a funny or ironic point; it just can't be a translation of some other writing cleverly fitted into the form of some song. There's no limit on the length of a parody, but it has to be worth the length. Very often, the best parodies are no more than eight lines. On the other hand, just sending in a single couplet parodying two lines of a song is unlikely to get ink over more ambitious successes. date and place for the Flushies! Note that I specifically permitted collaborations for this contest, something I hope not to regret. Parodies are complex works that surely benefit from a bit of brainstorming, and I think we'll end up with even better material than usual with co-written songs. And so I don't mind spending a couple of lines crediting people; it's different from, say, a horse name, where multiple credits would be longer than the entries themselves. And this really isn't my department, but for Losers who care about their standings in the ink-gathering competition presided over by Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan, being part of a co-written entry gets each contributor a whole point of ink, in Elden's system. This seems kind of unjust to me -you know, Lennon and McCartney took double credit for every song, but they didn't make double the money -and so I don't plan to welcome double crediting except for the most labor-intensive contests, or perhaps for visual-art contests, in which one person comes up with the idea and the other makes a graphic out of it. This week's theme -it's pretty wide open. Creative "occasions" are welcome. And the song may be sung to a particular person. *Mark Raffman's allusion to a comment by D.C. Council candidate Christopher Barry, son of Marion. It seems that the Losers are ready for jobs as Capitol interns. I was a bit concerned for a while as I read through my master-list printout and swooshed off whole pages of fictoids at a time, but Week 1109 turned out to be one of those fairly frequent contests in which I ended up with a funny and even fairly long list of inkworthy entries. (I added a number of honorable mentions to the online Invite because they didn't fit on the print page.) The inking Losers not only are clever at spoofing the trivia genre, but they get the difference between satire and plain untruth: The former uses untruth -and writing that's is designed to make it clear, either subtly or in a comically over-the-top way that it's untruth -to make a joke or pointed comment about something that is essentially true. Or at least something that has the elements of a joke, not just an inaccuracy. It's the difference between The Onion ("Report: Only 40% Of Celebrities End Up Marrying Their Stalkers") and a hack clickbait factory like Empire News ("California Woman Shocked After Waking Up With A Drunk Channing Tatum In Her Bed"). But to tweeze out the gems of humor, I had to step over gobs of "Pierre L'Enfant's tomb is in L'Enfant Plaza" and "William Howard Taft was distantly related to Moe Howard of the Three Stooges." For the second straight week, the Inkin' Memorial -whose polyresin comes from the same Tennessee quarry as the actual Lincoln Memorial statue -goes to Rob Huffman of Fredericksburg, Va. As I noted to Rob last week, as he also marked his 100th blot of Invite ink along with his win, he's the 71st Loser to reach the 100-ink mark -and one of only six I haven't met in the flesh (and that includes numerous non-Washingtonians). So I'm really hoping that Rob comes up for either the March 22 Loser brunch or the May 30 Flushies (see below). The rest of the Losers' Circle is filled with other Invite veterans: Jeff Contompasis, with 435 blots of ink, is next in line to make the 500-ink Hall of Fame, and is already considering the Week 1112-style neologism contest based on his name. Frank Osen is "above the fold" so often that he just keeps a cot there. Fourth-place Thad Humphries, however, has seen fit to have a life; it's his 16th blot, dating way back to Week 263, when he sent his entry in by Pony Express. (He didn't get the auto-reply then, either.)The favorites this week of ace copy editor Doug Norwood: Chris Doyle's Brian Williams joke, Kristen Rahman's about President Ford refusing to go to the Lincoln Theatre, and Ivars Kuskevics's entry about the Capitol dome being named for Rotunda, the Goddess of Pork. Unprintables? Well, I sneaked in Art Grinath's factoid about the topiary at the base of the Washington Monument, but still thought it Too Soon for this one by Kevin Dopart: "Target sponsored the 1997 renovation of the Washington Monument; it was denied a similar role in the restoration of the JFK bust at the Kennedy Center." Huge blubbering thanks to 2014 Loser of the Year Danielle Nowlin and husband Ryan for offering to host the Losers' 20th Flushies awards, banquet and toilet paper toss at their house in suburban Fairfax County, Va. After several years of angsty arrangements with hotels, restaurants and caterers, the Flushies organizing team of Dave Prevar, Elden Carnahan and Pie Snelson will be able to disconnect their blood pressure cuffs once in a while. date and place for the Flushies! I'm thrilled to hear that both Beverley Sharp and Frank Osen plan to come in to Washington for the Flushies, from Montgomery, Ala., and Pasadena, Calif., respectively though surely not respectfully. Jeff Shirley also tells me that he'll be driving up from Richmond. Where the food will come from is still to be determined, but we now have time to work that stuff out. And you know we're going to have plenty of song parodies! We decided on the May 30 date -later than usual for the Flushies -because of some scheduling conflicts but also to give a chance for the out-of-towners to make it a Double Crazy Things From The Post Weekend: On Sunday, May 31, is the Post Hunt, the spectacularly nutty brain-teaser*scavenger-hunt*mass-gathering devised and run every year in downtown Washington by Gene Weingarten, Dave Barry and Tom Shroder, who created the original in Miami. Loser teams have been getting closer and closer to winning in past years. The Huntmasters haven't said too much about this year's event, but to give you an idea, here's the advance from 2014. Also with out-of-towners. At Paradiso on Franconia Road just outside the Beltway between the Van Dorn Street and Springfield exits. I'll be there doing my typical buffet overeating. This one is in conjunction with the Cherry Blossom Festival. Details under "Our Social Engorgements" at the Losers' website, NRARS.org; please RSVP to Elden Carnahan through that page. We had at least 20 people at our last Paradisofest, so it's important that we can give the place a head count. I got an e-mail from Mary Pershing, the daughter of 269-time Loser Mae Scanlan, who's been in and out of the hospital for several weeks. Mae was back in, Mary said, and was too weak to write -but she dictated some entries for Week 1111, and she was passing them on in time to make the contest deadline. There were 18 entries. ====================================================================== WEEK 1114, published March 8, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1114: Laughing Maters Add to list The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest By Pat MyersMarch 5, 2015 Think of all the different ways the contestants of The Style Invitational have offered up memorably witty humor in the past 1114 weeks or so. The neologisms, of course, in so many formats. The song parodies. The cartoon captions. The plays on headlines. The horse names. The crossword clues. The limericks. The obit poems. The joint legislation. Writing something that uses only the words in some other writing. Comparing two items from a list we give. Such a variety of ways to put your clever on. But for pure laughs, not surprisingly, the best Invite contest category is what I lump together as “jokes”: I’m including wry observations about, say, how to “improve” air travel, (“Serve the meals already in barf bags” — John Kupiec) as well as a contests specifically asking for jokes that could be used as funny airport announcements. (“At this time, we’d like all passengers who paid full price for their ticket to stand up so you can be mocked” — Seth Brown). And of course, the classic form of standup-style one-liners. We even ran a contest for Rodney Dangerfield-style “no respect” jokes, with Rodney himself weighing in on the finalists. (The winner: “In bed, I don’t get no respect. My wife’s favorite position is back-to-back.” — Chuck Smith) And certainly, the (Someone’s) Mama results of Week 1110 — like the original Your Mamas from Week 932 — will be Instant Invite Classics of the one-liner genre. Like those from the first contest, many of them use the brash-talking, terse standup rhythm but incorporate a variety of topical, historical and literary references. And — in another hallmark of Invite humor — a number of them give the reader the extra joy that comes from a second or two of figuring-out. (Kevin Dopart’s Descartes’ Mama might be the prime example this week.) I decided not to link to explanatory articles for fear of being heavy-handed — if you don’t get the reference, just Google the name. The contest was inspired by Tom Scocca and Joe MacLeod’s funny “Pope’s Momma” jokes on Gawker; I’m grateful to Tom’s brother Dave for suggesting it. Some of the jokes, I admit, would also work perfectly fine as a Your Mama joke; they’d also be funny without the famous son or daughter. Ted Weitzman, known in ancient Loserdom under the pseudonym Paul Styrene (we now ban pseudonyms), could have just as easily directed his “anal-retentive” joke to anyone’s Ma as to Felix Unger’s. That didn’t factor into my judging at all; I just went for the funny. Also, some of the jokes, including two of the winners, weren’t phrased as insults to the Mama, as the classsic YM jokes are; I didn’t care. I’m going to be featuring Week 1114 entries over the next week as graphics on the Style Invitational Ink of the Day page on Facebook — they’re perfect for that format. I hope people share them! It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial — indeed, the first blot of ink “above the fold” — for Dave Silberstein of College Park, Md., who’s yet one more in the Invite’s long roster of astronomers and other spacey people. This is Dave’s 10th ink since he first landed on the Invite surface in Week 957. Former Loser of the Year Robert Schechter (official Loser anagram: Sober Retch Retch) grabs second place and Ink No. 149 with the best of several amusing Brian Williams’s Mama achievements. Mark Raffman’s earnest Hemingway spoof gets him yet another Loser Mug or Grossery Bag — and hey, he seems to have blotted up his 200th ink this week, all since Week 979; and Ben Aronin gets No. 61, and his 11th above the fold. I got an unsolicited e-mail last night from my former copy desk colleague Courtney Rukan, who unlike me is still a fully functioning editor at The Post; she’s now a bigwig on what’s now called the “multiplatform desk.” Courtney had just finished reading this week’s results, and she wrote to tell me that they were “side-splittingly funny. Every last one!” So I asked if she’d share which were her particular faves: ADVERTISING “The Yo-Yo Ma joke is genius and the two Truman jokes made me giggle,” Courtney responded. “Here are the others that made me laugh out loud, particularly the naan pun and Stevie Winwood playing in traffic (the visuals on the two of those are vivid as well). As for Muhammad Mama, that is the best possible way to end, and I laughed so hard that I choked on my apple. (However, I will not say whether I saw 72 virgins during my near-death experience.) [Colleague] Martha Murdock pointed out that Muhammad was orphaned at an early age, which adds another layer of delight to the satire.” I’m happy to report that Courtney is game to be the latest person to weigh in weekly with her faves, as Lynn Medford (“Haw!”) and David Malitz (“With Malitz Toward ...”) used to do. What would be a good name for her weekly opinion? Her last name rhymes with “two-can.” (A few not-for-your-mother unprintable entries at the bottom of this column.) Look on the funny side: Be an Optimist for Week 1114 Hardboiled ink-stained wretch that I am, I admit that I said “Ewwww” when I got my first e-mail newsletter titled The Optimist, The Washington Post’s entry into the field that also includes the Huffington Post’s Good News and the site Good News Network. But I also admit that I sometimes can’t bring myself to read one more article today on the horrors of or another war or attack or disease or misuse of “whom.” And clearly, I’m not alone: Post subscribers were eager to click on the various links in the weekly newsletter, Optimist editor Dave Beard told Ivoh.org. “It may help that it appeared after a summer of unrelenting news from places like Ferguson, Gaza, and Ukraine.” And even some members of the Style Invitational Devotees, mostly a pretty jaded bunch, talked of how “I love my little good news email!” and “I looked through the titles for today. They’re great stories. I suspended cynicism enough to go ‘awww’ several times.” As soon as I published this week’s contest this morning, Loser Matt Monitto noted that it’s very similar to Week 902, the one that got him his first blot of ink. And so it is; I’d forgotten about that contest from four years ago, though it had some classic results. That contest was to find a sentence in a Post story that week and spin it into something upbeat. The winner: Original: Maine’s governor told critics Friday to “kiss my butt” over his decision not to attend the state NAACP’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations. Spun: Maine’s governor found it in his heart to turn the other cheek . . . (Dixon Wragg, Santa Rosa, Calif.) And Matt’s debut (he now has 64 inks): O: School board in N.C. . . . abolishes integration policy S: School board in N.C. takes a step closer to America’s roots This time you have much more source material — basically everything. It can even be fictional (it specifies that the event could be in the future), though I’d predict that actual historical or current events would be funnier to spin. I’ve been surprised many times before, though. Should have kept mum: Unprintable Mama jokes from Week 1110 Oedipus’s mama so hot, she was the original MILF. (Chris Doyle) Captain Ahab’s mama’s so loose, she’s known as Moby Vagina. (G. Smith) And not dirty, just too cheap a shot, but hahaha: Oedipus’s mama so hot, she was the original MILF. (Chris Doyle) Edward Jenner’s mama spread so fast, smallpox had to invent a vaccine against her. (Ben Aronin) (I didn’t think I could get away with “spread.”) And not dirty, and really funny but too much of a cheap shot for the Invite: Bristol Palin’s mama is so stupid, she’s Sarah Palin. (Robert Schechter) The snow’s coming down harder and harder here at Mount Vermin near the Potomac, and this column already crashed once, causing me to lose my thank-you note to Pepco allowing me to finish it without incident. Don’t forget to sign up to attend the Loser brunch on March 22 — see NRARS.org, and click on “Our Social Engorgements.” ====================================================================== WEEK 1115, published March 15, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1115: They’re slaying our songs Add to list The Style Invitational Empress discusses the week’s contest and results By Pat MyersMarch 12, 2015 I do really hate to waste paper, but I’ve discovered over the years that for some Style Invitational contests, the most efficient way by far for me to judge is by eyeballing a printout. I did feel a bit guilty, however, when the compilation of song title puns for Week 1111 ran to 382 pages, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 entries. My first “shortlist,” compiled from the entries I checked off from the printout, ran to 184 entries. Then I chopped it in about half and bounced that second pass off my regular, ultra-agreeable sounding board, the deposed Czar, the founder of The Style Invitational, who is continuing to enjoy his lengthy vacation in Ekaterinberg, especially the 60 minutes a day he is permitted to see sunlight. From that list, the Czar chose his 28 favorites, virtually all of which are included among this week’s inking entries. I then chose about 30 others from that same list, ones I couldn’t live without (including one of the four top winners). The pain of chopping worthy stuff was made.easier for me this week because each entry takes up so little space on the page, and so, even with both Bob Staake’s cartoon and the prize photo, I had room for a whoppin’ 57 entries, which turned out to be by 44 entrants (including double credits), four of them First Offenders. But just as it was for me (and to a factor of 100), the list should still be an easy, fun read. It was fun (though not really necessary) to find YouTube links for all the songs whose titles were punned on. (I know that some of the links have stopped working, probably because they were overridden by some typesetting code. I’ll be fixing a few of them later today; e-mail me if you see another fail.) The results form a great playlist , ranging from Christmas carols to recent pop hits. I didn’t choose entries to ensure a wide variety of songs, though; I just went for the puns. (By “puns,” by the way, I’m referring broadly to wordplay in general, rather than to only the sound-focused variety; for example, Jeff Contompasis’s “Pu Pu and Away” wouldn’t count as a pun by some restrictive definitions, but no way was I going to leave that one out.) Of course, even with so many songs to choose from, I inevitably ended up with many similar entries. Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” brought many entries with “Pair o’ Dice” about retro auto decorations. And here are at least most of the variations I received on “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”; none of the following entries got ink, but a couple of them made my short­list. A gourmet delicatessen specializing in pâté: 50 Ways to Love Your Liver (Nancy Schwalb) Hannibal Lecter’s Favorite Recipe Collection: 50 Ways to Love Your Liver (Ellen Raphaeli) A liquor store: Fifty Ways to Loathe Your Liver (Jeff Shirley) A luxury toilet fixture store: 50 Ways To Love Your Lever (Rick Haynes) A free Internet porn service: Thrifty Ways to Love Your Lever (Jeff Shirley) A store that sells axes, hatchets and butcher knives: Fifty Ways to Cleave Your Lover (Roy Ashley) A toupee and hairpiece groomer: 50 Ways to Weave Your Cover (Diane Wah) A very discreet funeral home: 50 Ways to Grieve Your Lover (Warren Tanabe) A weight loss clinic: 50 Weighs to Bleed Your Blubber (Bruce Alter) And for the alternative headline: 25 Ways to Love Your Loser (Phil Frankenfeld) It’s the third win — and 151st blot of ink in all — by John O’Byrne of Dublin, Ireland, who’s been playing the Invite since Week 334, back in the Czar Administration. John is fascinated with America and especially U.S. politics, I’m often surprised to learn that some rather insider joke about the U.S. Congress was from John. I was thrilled to discover that the second-place pun — “My Oaken Tacky Home” — was by Mae Scanlan, who’s been in and out of the hospital and rehab facility for months with heart trouble and then a violent reaction to a pacemaker. But almost every week since Mae was taken ill in January, she’s dictated entries to her daughter Mary, who sends them along. Mary reports that Mae is finally due back home in a few days, and promises to let us know when she’ll be up for a visit; “the fatigue is extreme,” she says. But not enough to stop Mae from entering 18 song puns! And — yes, yes — full parodies (her specialty) for Week 1113. I’m sure Mae can’t wait to have a Mr. Fart Noise Machine of her very own. George-Ann Rosenberg got an honorable mention in Week 91 — that would be early 1995 — and then wasn’t seen again on the Invite page for 17 years, when she got ink with a horse name. But suddenly, in just the past couple of months, George-Ann has burst back into the Invite with all puns blazing, and has been blotting up the ink practically every week, often twice or more in a week — 15 inks in all. This is George-Ann’s first ink “above the fold,” but whether she chooses the Loser Mug or the Whole Fools Grossery Bag, I have a strong hunch she’ll qualify for the other one before long. And No Not That John Glenn continues to enhance his amazing ATF-to-ink ratio, with his ninth Losers’ Circle ink in just 39 in all. Laugh Out of Courtney*: Asked for her favorite entry, copy chief Courtney Rukan gushed: “So many great ones this week.” She said that “Gary Crockett’s ‘Losing’s My Religion’ made me giggle most,” but she also “singled” out “I Only Advise for You” (Frank Osen); Davey FitzPatrick’s” Geico Killer; Bill Lieberman’s “Consultants of Swing”; Todd DeLap’s “Ice, Rice, Baby”; Chris Doyle’s “We’ve Only Just Big Guns”; from Carmiya Weinraub, also a First Offender, “Peaceful, Easy Stealing” for the investment fraud school; Gary’s “Boulevard of Broken Teams” and Christopher Lamora’s “I Got Yew-Babes.” (*Larry Gray’s suggestion for the heading.) What Doug Dug: And from ace copy editor Doug Norwood, my longtime close colleague: “Four Runts in My Life” [Robert Schechter]! “Geico Killer”! “That’s What Fiends Are For” [Dave Prevar]! “The Impassable Stream” [Beverley Sharp]! “Your Arse So Beautiful”! [Beverley again] “Can’t pick one ...” That’s okay, Doug. Five’s even better. Song titles too risque for airplay, or even Invite play, appear at the bottom of this column. Don’t read them if you’re offended by risque or sick humor. Loser Dy“nasties”: Today’s winner, John O’Byrne, is the brother of 19-time Loser Brendan O’Byrne of Saskatchewan. But also: Among this week’s First Offenders — with two blots of ink — is David FitzPatrick, of Rochester, N.Y., who happens to be the 15-year-old son of 63-time Loser Melissa Balmain (who got just one blot this week). And that’s not all: Melissa’s brother, Barr Weiner of Washington, has half a dozen inks himself. Can you imagine the Balmain*FitzPatrick*Weiner Thanksgiving dinner repartee? Meanwhile, Barry Koch and Gregory Koch, who both got ink today, are not related. (Barry’s name is pronounced “Cook” and Gregory’s is “Kotch.”) And so it would be very, very wrong to call them the Koch Brothers, even in Loserdom. REALLY mess with our heads: The Week 1115 contest If you’re familiar with our many “Mess With Our Heads” contests, you’ll know what to do here: The point is to write a “bank head,” or subtitle, that reinterprets the actual meaning of the headline. The twist this time, as it was in Week 804 and Week 940, when we also did this contest (results of Week 940 here), is that you first create a “typo” in the actual headline and then write the bank head to go with that. (Here are also the results of two of the classic-version contests: (Week 1073; Week 987). In general, these jokes will work best when the reader understands what the original wording was, without being told. But as I did last time, I’ll include the original word in brackets if I think it’s necessary. You must tell me what the original word was; as much as I love you all, I don’t want to track down the headlines to look them up myself. It’s fine to give me a link to the headline that you found online, but please do me a favor: Because of the way I now compile the entries, the links turn into a garble of code; so please don’t embed the links directly into your entries; put them at the end, where I can check them on your actual e-mail. The wiggle room I’m offering in “You may omit a beginning or ending phrase” is not an invitation to use little nuggets of the headline; what you’re playing on should still be the major part of the head. It’s going to be a judgment call, so please include the entire headline that you’re working with. (You can’t go wrong if you play off the whole headline.) What we’re calling a headline: Any header that has a block of text under it, including bank heads and jump heads (the headline in the print paper over the second page); plus online headlines that serve as links to the actual stories. A photo caption is not a headline, but a little head over a stand-alone photo will count. Thanks again to Dave Prevar for the squid hat. Brian Whitaker is an instructor at my local gym (he actually just moved on to another branch), and you might gather that he is not an especially reserved man, although he is a sergeant in the Army Reserve. One year on Halloween, he led a class while dressed as Richard Simmons, complete with short-shorts and a fright wig. When I asked him, “Do you want to wear this silly hat and get yourr picture in The Washington Post?” Brian replied, “Where do I stand?” The burgeoning buffet: Join the March 22 Loser brunch Elden Carnahan reports that there will be a healthy and hopefully hungry crowd at the next Loser brunch, at Paradiso on Franconia Road, March 22 at noon. It’s being held late in the month to coincide with D.C.’s Cherry Blossom Festival and the visit by Losers Kathy El-Assal and Becky Fisher from Wisconsin. So far, 20 people have RSVP’d to Elden, but the restaurant can accommodate more of us at adjacent tables. We have to give the management a number , though, so be sure to contact Elden; for details click on “Our Social Engorgements” at NRARS.org. Maybe Jeff Contompasis’s fan will stop by again. If you need a ride, let Elden know or post it on the Style Invitational Devotees page, and hopefully someone can give you a lift. The bestest policy The Invite works on the honor system; it’s the only way I can make the contest work — it’s not part of the game to see if you can put one over on the Empress. And so I was so happy on Tuesday night to get an e-mail from Loser Jon Gearhart, telling me he’d just noticed that the e-mail with his Week 1111 entries (the song puns) had more than the maximum of 25 entries; he’d sent me the untrimmed version accidentally. I hadn’t noticed the overlong list when I combined everyone’s entries and then removed the writers’ names, and by that time I’d already chosen the winners (including one by Jon). And I realized that I might have chosen one from the beyond-the-limit part of this list. So I asked him to send me the list of the 25 entries he’d intended to send. To my relief, “Omward Bound” was on it. An honorable mention indeed. Na na na na: Unprintable entries from Week 1111 A male escort agency called Penis From Heaven (Richard Silberg; Stephen Gold) Male escort service: Great Balls for Hire (Rick Haynes) Equine stud service: Great Balls of Sire (Steve Shapiro) A clinic that improves men’s stamina: A Day in the Wife (Tom Witte) A clinic that treats premature ejaculation: For Once in My Wife (more Witte) A swingers’ club: Got to Get You Into My Wife (Gary Crockett) A tattoo parlor that specializes in intimate areas: Paint Tit Black (even more Witte) A hospital wing for epileptic boys: House of the Writhing Son (Steve Langer) A store that sells naughty blow up toys to rural customers: The Farmer in the Doll (Roy Ashley) Congressional lobbying firm: Another Prick in the Hall (Drew Bennett) A Thalidomide victims support group: Mary Had a Little Limb (Jeff Contompasis) And a special prize for just the grossest title of the week: Thyroid doctor: Why Your Goiter Gently Seeps (Rob Huffman) ====================================================================== WEEK 1116, published March 22, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1117: A song for every occasion — and for none Add to list The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s parodies Nan Reiner shows a Florida “souvenir snowman” globe — featuring a melted snowman — at last weekend’s Loser brunch. With Bruce and Marsha Alter and Marty McCullen; in back, Rob Huffman. (Photo courtesy of Nan Reiner) By Pat MyersMarch 26, 2015 As usual, I was marveling at many of the hundreds of song parodies submitted for Week 1113, of The Style Invitational, which asked for “a song celebrating someone’s birthday or other personal occasion (rather than, say, a holiday).” In fact, I was so deeply into Marvel Mode that at first I didn’t notice that a number of the parodies didn’t meet that requirement even by a yogic stretch. Some were about recent news items; others summed up a dead person’s life story. And, yup, others celebrated a particular holiday. But, as the contents of her closets, cabinets and dressers here at Mount Vermin can testify, the Empress hates to throw away perfectly fine, usable things. Especially when they can work as a perfectly fine, usable contest. So while not all of those non-occasion parodies will be eligible for Week 1117, at least some will. I still have the marked-up, blindly judged printout from Week 1113, so I can just look back at where I wrote “NO OCCASION” in the margin, and reconsider them as “a topic or person lately in the news.” You won’t have to send those parodies again. The encore contest will, for example, be good news for the parody about an anti-vaxxer whose kid ends up sick, though still not for the “Stairway to Heaven” parody about a woman ashamed of “buying from 7-Eleven”). I also received a number of well-written parodies — they were in sets, from what I’m sure were two different submitters — that were obviously written for the birthdays, retirements, weddings, etc., of actual people they knew. It’s not that I forbid such songs to be used as Invitational entries — I used the “Bare Necessities” parody that Jeff Contompasis and his brother Stephen wrote to celebrate Stephen’s 50th birthday (and now can soon be used for Jeff’s). But these others were full of specific references about people we don’t know, and were also very laudatory — great big musical hugs, much like the parody paeans that the Losers write to laud the Loser of the Year at each year’s Flushies awards. I’m sure they were deservedly huge hits at the events they were performed at, but for an outside reader, it’s kind of like showing up at someone else’s party. I had a bit of trouble figuring out which parodies to use on this week’s print page, in addition to the top four “above-the fold” songs: For one thing, they had to add up to fit exactly in a certain space; for another, I wanted songs that readers were likely to know the melodies to. After trying out various combinations, I ended up using JeffCon’s “Downsized,” Chris Doyle’s “Amazing Grades,” Mark Raffman’s “Hey Dude,” George-Ann Rosenberg’s “You Can’t Come Home, Ed Snowden,” Matt Monitto’s “Feeding Vladi­mir Down by the Gulag” (sorry, Matt, for deleting the first verse), and Chris’s “And Last” about the Invite. I got very few parodies set to tunes written after 1980. Cannibal soup is m-m-good: The Empress models the squid-hat prize while finding a kindred spirit at last Sunday’s Loser brunch. (Photo by Nan Reiner) Obviously, Nan’s “Bloody Menses” wasn’t going to be greeting people’s Sunday morning coffee; it’s only online. (By the way, Bob Staake’s cartoon is depicting psychiatrist Ethel Merman, not psychiatrist Nan Reiner.) All four of the “above the fold” parodists today — actually, all who got ink — are Invite veterans. This is Nan’s 11th Inkin’ Memorial, a phenomenal number when you consider that she didn’t get her first ink until less than five years ago. Jon Gearhart is either a rookie or close to it; he’s most famous in Loser circles for his amazing facility for the anagrams with which he welcomes each new member of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, but obviously he’s far more versatile than that. It’s just the eighth blot of ink for Ivars Kuskevics, but it’s his second trip to the Losers’ circle and he’s becoming more and more frequent a visitor to inkdom; I can now spell his name. And Frank Osen continues to bring it. What Doug dug: Features copy editor (or now, officially, “multiplatform editor”) Doug Norwood also chose Nan’s winner as his favorite, and shared her video clip; he also especially liked Mark Raffman’s “Hey Dude.” Laughed out of Courtney: From copy chief Courtney Rukan: “The Brian Williams one (by made me laugh out loud, as did the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial. This is a particularly clever line: ‘You’ve got trauma that could constipate Freud.’” She noted that the “Downtown” parody about an “involuntary employment transition” was “hilarious but hits too close to home, so it made me laugh and sent shivers down my spine!” And she loved Matt Monitto’s line “We’ll be feeding Vladimir down in the gulag.” Everything’s coming up ‘Everything’s Coming Up Moses’! Madame Rose’s psychotically upbeat show-stopper in “Gypsy” — she sings it desperately to her bewildered daughter as their lives have fallen apart around them — proves to be valuable parody fodder. Not only was it the source of Nan’s Inkin’ Memorial winner today (the link above the parody is to Nan herself singing it;) but also to two Passover-themed parodies by masterly Loserbards. This week there was Beverley Sharp’s excellent “Everything’s Coming Up Moses” — the same title as Barbara Sarshik’s parody from 2001. Here they both are: My daughter and I have been drafted to lead both my family’s seder and my synagogue’s community seder on April 3 and 4, and we very well might have room for both of these after dinner. First, Beverley’s: Who’s the mensch? Who’s the guy Who could part the Red Sea and stay dry? Who’s the prince? Who’s da man? Funny, everything’s coming up Moses! Burning bush — such a fuss! (Why does God speak to him, not to us?) Golden calves, bite the dust! Funny, everything’s coming up Moses... No more leaven — Now our bread will be flat; Laws from heaven — (Couldn’t we scrap six or seven?) Forty years — what a trek! (Sure, the manna got stale--what the heck!) Jordan’s here — time to cross; But (oh dear!) — where’s the boss? Now Joshua will have to see us through; Finally everything’s coming up rainbows and Promised Land, Everything’s coming up Joshua and Jericho; Everything’s coming up dreidels and Hanukkah; Everything’s coming up, Moses, for us — thanks to you! And Barbara’s, from her excellent collection of “Seder Songs” that I once again encourage everyone to download and savor — Barbara welcomes anyone to use them for free: Bang a drum! Spread the news! Things are looking real good for the Jews! We’ve escaped! We’re alive! And now everything’s coming up Moses! We were slaves. Now we’re free. ’Cause we made it across the Red Sea. No more whips! No more bricks! And now everything’s coming up Moses! We’ll eat matzo. We’ll drink wine till we burst! Pure de-lir-ium, Led by the singing of Mir-iam. Play a harp! Ring a bell! ’Cause we’re traveling to Yis-ra-el! Pack your bags! Grab a map! ’Cause now everything’s coming up Moses! Frogs, lice, locusts, Slaying of the firstborn. Say a prayer, “Oh, Thanks, God, for vanquishing Pharaoh!” Not by luck or the sword. No, we all owe our lives to the Lord. Say a prayer! Sing a song! Make it loud! Make it long! A-do-noy yeem-loch l’o-lam va-ed! ’Cause now everything’s coming up Moses Just like God has said! Squids! What’s the matter with squids today? Nothing, for sure, at Paradiso restaurant in Alexandria, Va., this past Sunday as close to three dozen Losers and their auxiliaries gathered for the monthly Loser brunch. Because we had several people joining us for the first time, I felt obliged to wear an identifying garment. And since my usual tiara was in the wash, I wore my beach tiara instead. The squid hat, you might remember, will be the second prize for Week 1115, the headline “typo” contest. And several Losers showed up with a bagful of future prizes, including the “Souvenir Snowman” globe that Nan is holding in the photo above: When you shake it, you get not “snow,” but some grayish threads of yuck. And also ceramic grass and, floating around, a little ceramic hat, scarf, buttons and carrot. It’s a Florida souvenir snowman, see. Nan found it in a thrift shop in Key Largo; it was so weird that the guy gave it to her. Thanks again to everyone who came out. It was fun to meet Wisconsinite Kathy El-Assal and her friends; as well as six-time Inkin’ Memorial winner Rob Huffman with his whole family in tow. (Kids clearly thinking: At least my mother doesn’t go out in public with a pink velveteen squid on her head.) The next Loser Brunch will be at Grevey’s, just off the Beltway in Falls Church, Va., at noon on Sunday, April 19. See “Our Social Engorgements” at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, to sign up. ====================================================================== WEEK 1117, published March 29, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1117: A song for every occasion — and for none Add to list The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s parodies Nan Reiner shows a Florida “souvenir snowman” globe — featuring a melted snowman — at last weekend’s Loser brunch. With Bruce and Marsha Alter and Marty McCullen; in back, Rob Huffman. (Photo courtesy of Nan Reiner) By Pat MyersMarch 26, 2015 As usual, I was marveling at many of the hundreds of song parodies submitted for Week 1113, of The Style Invitational, which asked for “a song celebrating someone’s birthday or other personal occasion (rather than, say, a holiday).” In fact, I was so deeply into Marvel Mode that at first I didn’t notice that a number of the parodies didn’t meet that requirement even by a yogic stretch. Some were about recent news items; others summed up a dead person’s life story. And, yup, others celebrated a particular holiday. But, as the contents of her closets, cabinets and dressers here at Mount Vermin can testify, the Empress hates to throw away perfectly fine, usable things. Especially when they can work as a perfectly fine, usable contest. So while not all of those non-occasion parodies will be eligible for Week 1117, at least some will. I still have the marked-up, blindly judged printout from Week 1113, so I can just look back at where I wrote “NO OCCASION” in the margin, and reconsider them as “a topic or person lately in the news.” You won’t have to send those parodies again. The encore contest will, for example, be good news for the parody about an anti-vaxxer whose kid ends up sick, though still not for the “Stairway to Heaven” parody about a woman ashamed of “buying from 7-Eleven”). I also received a number of well-written parodies — they were in sets, from what I’m sure were two different submitters — that were obviously written for the birthdays, retirements, weddings, etc., of actual people they knew. It’s not that I forbid such songs to be used as Invitational entries — I used the “Bare Necessities” parody that Jeff Contompasis and his brother Stephen wrote to celebrate Stephen’s 50th birthday (and now can soon be used for Jeff’s). But these others were full of specific references about people we don’t know, and were also very laudatory — great big musical hugs, much like the parody paeans that the Losers write to laud the Loser of the Year at each year’s Flushies awards. I’m sure they were deservedly huge hits at the events they were performed at, but for an outside reader, it’s kind of like showing up at someone else’s party. I had a bit of trouble figuring out which parodies to use on this week’s print page, in addition to the top four “above-the fold” songs: For one thing, they had to add up to fit exactly in a certain space; for another, I wanted songs that readers were likely to know the melodies to. After trying out various combinations, I ended up using JeffCon’s “Downsized,” Chris Doyle’s “Amazing Grades,” Mark Raffman’s “Hey Dude,” George-Ann Rosenberg’s “You Can’t Come Home, Ed Snowden,” Matt Monitto’s “Feeding Vladi­mir Down by the Gulag” (sorry, Matt, for deleting the first verse), and Chris’s “And Last” about the Invite. I got very few parodies set to tunes written after 1980. Cannibal soup is m-m-good: The Empress models the squid-hat prize while finding a kindred spirit at last Sunday’s Loser brunch. (Photo by Nan Reiner) Obviously, Nan’s “Bloody Menses” wasn’t going to be greeting people’s Sunday morning coffee; it’s only online. (By the way, Bob Staake’s cartoon is depicting psychiatrist Ethel Merman, not psychiatrist Nan Reiner.) All four of the “above the fold” parodists today — actually, all who got ink — are Invite veterans. This is Nan’s 11th Inkin’ Memorial, a phenomenal number when you consider that she didn’t get her first ink until less than five years ago. Jon Gearhart is either a rookie or close to it; he’s most famous in Loser circles for his amazing facility for the anagrams with which he welcomes each new member of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, but obviously he’s far more versatile than that. It’s just the eighth blot of ink for Ivars Kuskevics, but it’s his second trip to the Losers’ circle and he’s becoming more and more frequent a visitor to inkdom; I can now spell his name. And Frank Osen continues to bring it. What Doug dug: Features copy editor (or now, officially, “multiplatform editor”) Doug Norwood also chose Nan’s winner as his favorite, and shared her video clip; he also especially liked Mark Raffman’s “Hey Dude.” Laughed out of Courtney: From copy chief Courtney Rukan: “The Brian Williams one (by made me laugh out loud, as did the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial. This is a particularly clever line: ‘You’ve got trauma that could constipate Freud.’” She noted that the “Downtown” parody about an “involuntary employment transition” was “hilarious but hits too close to home, so it made me laugh and sent shivers down my spine!” And she loved Matt Monitto’s line “We’ll be feeding Vladimir down in the gulag.” Everything’s coming up ‘Everything’s Coming Up Moses’! Madame Rose’s psychotically upbeat show-stopper in “Gypsy” — she sings it desperately to her bewildered daughter as their lives have fallen apart around them — proves to be valuable parody fodder. Not only was it the source of Nan’s Inkin’ Memorial winner today (the link above the parody is to Nan herself singing it;) but also to two Passover-themed parodies by masterly Loserbards. This week there was Beverley Sharp’s excellent “Everything’s Coming Up Moses” — the same title as Barbara Sarshik’s parody from 2001. Here they both are: My daughter and I have been drafted to lead both my family’s seder and my synagogue’s community seder on April 3 and 4, and we very well might have room for both of these after dinner. First, Beverley’s: Who’s the mensch? Who’s the guy Who could part the Red Sea and stay dry? Who’s the prince? Who’s da man? Funny, everything’s coming up Moses! Burning bush — such a fuss! (Why does God speak to him, not to us?) Golden calves, bite the dust! Funny, everything’s coming up Moses... No more leaven — Now our bread will be flat; Laws from heaven — (Couldn’t we scrap six or seven?) Forty years — what a trek! (Sure, the manna got stale--what the heck!) Jordan’s here — time to cross; But (oh dear!) — where’s the boss? Now Joshua will have to see us through; Finally everything’s coming up rainbows and Promised Land, Everything’s coming up Joshua and Jericho; Everything’s coming up dreidels and Hanukkah; Everything’s coming up, Moses, for us — thanks to you! And Barbara’s, from her excellent collection of “Seder Songs” that I once again encourage everyone to download and savor — Barbara welcomes anyone to use them for free: Bang a drum! Spread the news! Things are looking real good for the Jews! We’ve escaped! We’re alive! And now everything’s coming up Moses! We were slaves. Now we’re free. ’Cause we made it across the Red Sea. No more whips! No more bricks! And now everything’s coming up Moses! We’ll eat matzo. We’ll drink wine till we burst! Pure de-lir-ium, Led by the singing of Mir-iam. Play a harp! Ring a bell! ’Cause we’re traveling to Yis-ra-el! Pack your bags! Grab a map! ’Cause now everything’s coming up Moses! Frogs, lice, locusts, Slaying of the firstborn. Say a prayer, “Oh, Thanks, God, for vanquishing Pharaoh!” Not by luck or the sword. No, we all owe our lives to the Lord. Say a prayer! Sing a song! Make it loud! Make it long! A-do-noy yeem-loch l’o-lam va-ed! ’Cause now everything’s coming up Moses Just like God has said! Squids! What’s the matter with squids today? Nothing, for sure, at Paradiso restaurant in Alexandria, Va., this past Sunday as close to three dozen Losers and their auxiliaries gathered for the monthly Loser brunch. Because we had several people joining us for the first time, I felt obliged to wear an identifying garment. And since my usual tiara was in the wash, I wore my beach tiara instead. The squid hat, you might remember, will be the second prize for Week 1115, the headline “typo” contest. And several Losers showed up with a bagful of future prizes, including the “Souvenir Snowman” globe that Nan is holding in the photo above: When you shake it, you get not “snow,” but some grayish threads of yuck. And also ceramic grass and, floating around, a little ceramic hat, scarf, buttons and carrot. It’s a Florida souvenir snowman, see. Nan found it in a thrift shop in Key Largo; it was so weird that the guy gave it to her. Thanks again to everyone who came out. It was fun to meet Wisconsinite Kathy El-Assal and her friends; as well as six-time Inkin’ Memorial winner Rob Huffman with his whole family in tow. (Kids clearly thinking: At least my mother doesn’t go out in public with a pink velveteen squid on her head.) The next Loser Brunch will be at Grevey’s, just off the Beltway in Falls Church, Va., at noon on Sunday, April 19. See “Our Social Engorgements” at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, to sign up. ====================================================================== WEEK 1118, published April 5, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1118: In which we once again cry foal play Add to list The Style Invitational Empress ruminates on the week’s new contest and results Call them the Monu-Mentals: With Opening Day upon us, Loser and passionate baseball fan Nan Reiner has set up her nine Inkin' Memorials (the latest of them won last week) as a tribute to Bud and Lou. (By Nan Reiner) By Pat MyersApril 2, 2015 Are we beating a dead horse with this 21st running of The Style Invitational’s horse names contest (plus its many spinoff contests)? Not yet, I’d wager. At least if last year’s entries were any indication, Week 1118 is likely to continue to be the Invite’s most popular contest of the year for entrants (with the possible exception of the freakishly popular recent contest with song title puns). It’s also one of our most democratic contests — and by that I mean that your typical astonshingly brilliant Loser who tends to blot up vats of ink in a single week isn’t as likely to do so in this contest, now that everyone is limited to 25 entries apiece: And that’s because, over the years, the sophistication of the wordplay has risen over the entire entry pool. An entry such as “Take a Bow x Smithfield = Ham Actor” (Week 163) or “Keep It Strait x Take a Gamble = Inside Strait” (Week 216) wouldn’t get ink today, for example. In fact, I don’t think the winner of Week 163 — “Call for Change x Tiz the Whiz = Pay Toilet” — would even make my first cut today, and we’re talking of a first cut of perhaps 250 entries. Not that toilet humor is passe, of course; last year we had “Streaming x Financial Mogul = Wizzer of Wall St.,” from Laura Bennett Peterson, a lawyer who’s so passionate about horse racing that a few years ago she actually invested a chunk of money to be part owner of a real Thoroughbred, Thunder Quay, and followed his every move (including four wins) during his 11-race career, attending his races like a dutiful soccer parent. Inking entries these days tend to be (with numerous exceptions) of two types: (a) the name is a funny pun (“Effinex x Coastline = That Beach,” from Beth Morgan last year); or (b) the final name results from an alteration of Horse 1’s name by Horse 2. Some entries combine both types. Type B really cleaned up last year, with really all four of the “above the fold” entries in that category: Toast of New York x General A Rod = Toast in New York (Jim Stiles) Best Plan Yet x Cut the Net = Best Pla_ Y__ (Pie Snelson) I Earned It Baby x Undertaker = I Urned It Baby (Pam Sweeney; Gary Crockett) Russian Humor x Constitution = What Constitution? (Roy Ashley) I probably should have mixed up the humor more in choosing the top four, in retrospect. I had toyed with the idea of using a new format this year — one idea was to present a Group A of 10 or 15 horses, and you could breed a horse only to one of these. But I feared that I’d end up with too many clever names that I’d have to disqualify because too many people (i.e., three or four) had the same idea. I do, however, enjoy showing several different clever plays made with a single horse.name; occasionally I’ve run a little sidebar list. As usual, I started choosing my list of 100 names with 20 to 30 horses considered most promising to run in the Kentucky Derby, the first of the Triple Crown races, which always is held the first Saturday in May, the weekend these results will run — I love rooting for “our horses” in the Derby field (not to mention the winner’s circle). This accounts for a few of the less promising-sounding names on this week’s list, like El Kabeir and Mubtaahij (sure, take it as a challenge). After that picked names that seemed they’d be good for wordplay and jokes, and not too duplicative of one another. I’m a little apprehensive about names that are already puns, such as Mighty Mousse and Zip N Bayou, but we’ll see what we get. It’s a good thing we’re not literally breeding these horses; this year’s field of 3-year-olds comprises 97 males and three fillies: Take Charge Brandi, Condo Commando and Puca. And several of the males are geldings. (Some are also classified as ridglings, which are horses with one or both testicles that never descended from the abdomen.) The list I used also notes the sire and dam of each nominated horse, and I was disappointed in how few of this year’s names actually reflected both parents’ names — the original premise for this contest back when 101-time Loser and serious horseplayer Mike Hammer suggested it in 1996. Carpe Diem is the offspring of Giant’s Causeway and Rebridled Dreams, and Easy to Say comes from Eskendereya (ha!) and Wild Snitch. A number of them do reference the sire, though not very interestingly; Battle of Marathon was sired by War Front. And the few two-parent blends tend to be throughly lame-o: Papa Clem x Bold Robert = Bold Papa; Bellamy Road x Kiss the Diva = Kiss the Road. Let’s inspire the future generations! I tried to head off a few judging problems at the pass by including some requests at the top of the list online (if you’re going to use the list in the print paper instead — same horses, of course — please check the out these guidelines). And I’d like to add one more: In the new e-mail system The Post is using, when I combine all the e-mails en masse into one long list, the first line of text of each e-mail tends to run into the header information — which I delete before judging, so I don’t know who you are and I can’t be accused of caring who you are. (As if.) Anyway, it would be very cool if you’d start off your e-mail with some line that ISN’T your first entry. It can be your name, it can be “hello,” whatever — just something I don’t need to save. I have been taking care not to delete anyone’s first entry, so you don’t have to worry that I’ll lose your best joke, but this would let me do the erasing a little faster. (I’m not deleting this material forever; this is just the copy I use for judging. I do keep the original master list, and do read all your love notes, veiled threats, etc.— just not while I’m looking at your entries.) GOOD NEWS: A FEW OF YOU DIDN’T TOTALLY WASTE YOUR TIME ENTERING WEEK 1114 There was plenty of faux-upbeat snark among the entries in Week 1114, our homage to The Post’s popular (500,000-circulation) e-mail newsletter The Optimist, which offers a series of links to feel-good, inspirational fare among that week’s Post articles. Some of the jokes were just Too Soon, in terms of taste — and sometimes, 2,000 years is too soon. (See the bottom of this column for unprintable entries ONLY if you aren’t going to be bothered by very, very bad taste — or at least if you’re not going to complain about it.) A nice variety of approaches in today’s above-the-fold winners. It’s the 21st blot of ink and the second runner-up prize for fourth-place Kathleen DeBold, who got her first ink back in 2007 but all the rest of it only recently. Pie Snelson (Pie is a nickname, as in “cutie”) is known to all Loser event-goers as the person who keeps track of who went to what brunch; who made up the “I’m a Loser” and “I’m With a Loser” name tags; and who gives out a boxful of door prizes at the Flushies and the Post-Holiday Party. But along the way, she’s also managed to blot up 66 inks, with six above the fold including this week’s history lesson. Robert Schechter’s awww-story about the hamster is especially zingy in light of the fact that Robert is a regular contributor of children’s poems to Highlights magazine, in addition to being a 151-time Loser. And Mark Raffman grabs his eighth Inkin’ Memorial — as another big Nationals fan, Mark could soon set up his trophies as Nan Reiner has in the photo at the top of the column. Laugh Out of Courtney: Speaking of the Raffster: Post copy chief Courtney Rukan agreed with my choice of Mark’s milk carton joke: “The winner is so dark and twisted that it’s actually light and funny. I don’t know how Mr. Raffman accomplished that, but it’s a thing of beauty.” Courtney’s other faves this week: Jeff Shirley’s entry about the letter to Iran (the best of several funny entries on that topic); George-Ann Rosenberg’s “American Inventiveness”; Jon Gearhart’s falling tree (inspired by a recent tragedy on the Appalachian Trail); Warren Tanabe’s Mariupol; Kevin Dopart’s dig at the Secret Service (also my choice from many close competitors); newbie James W. Hertsch’s Ford’s Theatre joke (also well used). Courtney adds that Mike Gips’s item about the Berlin Wall “made me snicker; its understatement is rather elegant.” Artistes, all of you. Loser Brunch, April 19. Grevey’s. I’ll be there. The Royal Consort and I hope to chow down along with you at the next Loser Brunch, at Grevey’s sports pub right outside the Beltway at the Gallows Road exit. It’s at noon. Not a buffet, but the servers have been perfectly accommodating about separate checks. Contact Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”), I will not be wearing a squid hat this time, since I’ll have sent it out to the second-place winner of Week 1115 (headlines with “typos”), which I’m just starting to judge. Appalliana: Unprintable headlines from Week 1114 Too awful even for me, let alone The Post’s taste police: In PR Move, ISIS Switches From Beheadings to Lethal Injections (Chris Doyle) ISIS Beheadings Spark Renewed Interest in Brain Transplantation (also Chris Doyle, who doesn’t usually get into the Unprintable listings) Nov. 22, 1963: Area Crowds See Great Man’s Brain Up Close (Benjamin Yeager) And, just in time for Holy Week: . Jesus Revolutionizes Yoga With ‘Pinioned Eagle’ Pose (Rob Huffman) On that note, a Happy Easter and Chag Pesach Sameyach to you all. ====================================================================== WEEK 1119, published April 12, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1119: Our updated color scheme Add to list By Pat MyersApril 9, 2015 Some of our readers who are on Facebook see the Style Invitational Ink of the Day, a page on which I post a little graphic containing some entry from the past 1,118 sets of Invite results, with the hope that someone out there will share it and thereby spread the word about the ’Vite in general. The Ink of the Day is now in its third year, so I’ve put up more than 700 of these things, but still you’d think it shouldn’t take me more than a minute or two to dig up some classic entry from all the links on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List. But it turns out that a lot of Invite humor doesn’t really work in this form. Sometimes a contest is just too hard to explain; sometimes it’s a bit too highbrow; sometimes the humor in the contest comes from how well the writer met the challenge of the contest, rather than the intrinsic funniness of the entry (I’ve discovered this is true for cartoon captions; as clever as they are in context, they don’t tend to make very funny stand-alone cartoons). But perhaps the main reason old entries aren’t good for tomorrow’s Ink of the Day is that they’re dated. But of course humor doesn’t need to be timeless to be terrific. The Invitational has always been full of zingy topical humor, like so many of the entries I rediscovered as I read the results of Week 39. These entries are still enjoyable now, if you know the references, but their freshness must have made them that much more fun at the time: Fourth Runner-Up: Kevorkian: Description: A bright, light white. (Linda K. Malcolm, Silver Spring) Second Runner-Up: Rainbow — Description: Black. (Douglas Olson, Beltsville; also, Henry Lynton, Arlington, and Richard J. Swanson, Mount Airy) First Runner-Up: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buttafuoco — Description: The color and oily texture of rancid margarine. (Kelly A. Lindner, Washington) Packwood — Just a touch of flesh. (Stu Segal, Vienna) Cincinnati Red — Multicolored, with a white flaky head. (Steven King, Alexandria) Ed Rollins — Toast. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Where’s William Kennedy Smith? — Cinnabar, usually. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Petit-Bone — Very pale. Soon to be discontinued. (Tom Lehker, Silver Spring; also, Steve Shearer, Alexandria) Twenty-one years later, surely there are so many more colorful characters ripe for an eponymous hue, so I’m confident that we’ll have lots of good entries for Week 1119. Rip ’em from the headlines. (Though less topical humor is welcome as well.) Meanwhile, some people just Never. Go. Away.: Rust Limbaugh -- A big fat crayon with no point, but very colorful. (Lowell Feld, Arlington) Err heads*: The results of Week 1115 *Jeff Shirley’s idea. I’m in a bit of a glass house this week — one of my sample horse names in last week’s contest was longer than the maximum 18 characters — but I’m still going to lament over how many entrants to Week 1115 ignored these very specific instructions: “Change a headline in an article or ad in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com from March 12 through March 23, by adding or subtracting one letter; substituting a letter; switching two letters; or changing spacing or punctuation.” This is not going to allow a change from “Some Nats extra careful about protecting bodies” to “Some bodies extra careful about protecting ’nads.” Or “abstract art” to “abs-tracked art.” Or “campaign” to “camping.” Enterprising though they were. As this week’s inking entries — and many others — prove, 10 days’ worth of Washington Post headlines offered plenty of funny “typos” to be found within the rules. I’m glad I said that people could use “upstyle” headlines when the joke involved a capitalized word, such as Brian Collins’s “Go Palestinian State.” (I didn’t make all the headlines consistently upstyle because they’re a bit harder to read in the narrow columns of the print paper.) The previous time we did this contest, Week 940, I didn’t think to (or didn’t know how to) use the strikeout function to show the original word when displaying the results; instead, I put the word at the end of the entry, in brackets. I think the strikeout method is better because it requires less work for the reader to go back and place the original words back in the headline. Or do you think the first way was better because it was less heavy-handed? Also, in most of the Week 940 results, I didn’t say the original at all; I counted on the reader to figure it out — which often makes a joke more fun. For when we (inevitably) do this contest again, which way should we do it? Any way you strike it, lots of fun stuff among the 35 inking entries from 25 Losers. Three of the four “above-the-fold” names — eight-time winner Gary Crockett and runners-up Frank Osen and Chris Doyle — have almost 2,100 blots of ink among them, and each had at least three inks today. But the coveted squid hat goes to Brian Collins, whose “Palestinian State” gets him only his second blot of ink ever — and his first was in Week 668, nine years ago. What Doug dug: Ace copy editor Doug Norwood, one of the few people who get paid to read The Style Invitational, “loved Palestinian State and the winner. too. [Elden Carnahan’s] ‘One-way crush’ and the subhead were nice. [Chris Doyle’s] ‘pot-seeded Terps’ and [Gary Crockett’s] ‘Student Acid Bill of Rights’ made me want to go back to school.” Unprintable entries at the bottom of this column. Loser Brunch, April 19. Grevey’s. I’ll be there. [Mostly reprinted from last week’s Conversational] The Royal Consort and I hope to chow down along with you at the next Loser Brunch, at Grevey’s sports pub right outside the Beltway at the Gallows Road exit. It’s at noon. Not a buffet, but the servers have been perfectly accommodating about separate checks. Contact Elden Carnahan at bit.ly*invitebrunch so he can get a head count. While I’ll be sending the squid hat to Brian, I still have a future-prize orca hat (courtesy of Cheryl Davis) that I can wear with my Sunday best. Headed for trouble: Unprintable entries from Week 1115 Sexual or scatological references about a particular real person usually lead to Convo-exile. I also wasn’t going to make the Japanese jokes. Japanese historians contest textbook’s description contest: textbook’s description of ‘comfort women’ Tokyoho and Nipponmybooty are favorite entries to replace outdated term (George-Ann Rosenberg) Rebels’ Defiance Could Tip Yemen Semen Into Civil War Boiling fluid more effective than oil for defense of fortified positions (Elden Carnahan) Netanyahu warns supporters he may lose election erection Will seek new handlers to increase odds of retaining his post (Jon Gearhart, as well as the same “typo” but a less racy bank head by Jim Kosinski in his first entry ever) Dulles passenger subdued after rushing cockspit Penalty for early withdrawal charged to compensate flight attendant (Jon Gearhart) Dan Balz, Washington Post chief correspondent, wins Toner Boner Prize Lives up to more than his name, says John Holmes Society president (Rick Haynes) Plane forced to land after blowing tire rite Crew breaks up passenger’s initiation into mile-high oral club (Chris Doyle) Struggling to save young sea lions loins Shore leave poses challenge for Navy as sailors continue contracting ‘crotch rot’ (Jeff Contompasis — would have been usable had it said “jock itch,” probably, but Jeff specified “’Verse Only” and so I didn’t consider it) Victorious Netanyahu faces feces host of troubles Post-election excitement creates slip hazards at celebration (Dave Prevar) And the Scarlet Letter goes to: A search for safe-deposit boxes safe deposit-boxes Men encouraged to check out brothels first (Elden Carnahan) ====================================================================== WEEK 1120, published April 19, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1120: We’re not pulling your chain — get ready to Flush Add to list The Flushies, the Losers’ award lunch & infestival: May 30 in Northern Va. The Empress and family pal around with Week 1120 second prize Barack Obama at their Passover seder. The handsome yet rather shallow president will make an encore appearance at the Flushies before being sent off to his new home. (By Scott Malcolm ) By Pat MyersApril 16, 2015 A number of people have asked me this past week about the plans for this year’s Flushies, which makes me realize that I buried the news too far down the page in previous columns. Not all the details have been hammered out, twisted out of shape, etc., but within the next couple of weeks, if you’re on the Style Invitational e-mail list, you’ll be getting an invitation to the 20th annual shebang, which this year — in a Flushies first — will be held a safe distance from public facilities: It will be at the home of 2014 Loser of the Year Danielle Nowlin and her understanding husband and tykes, on Saturday afternoon, May 30, in the D.C. suburb of Fairfax Station, Va. In recent years we’ve usually gathered in a meeting room of a suburban hotel, shoveling out close to $40 per person for suburban-hotel food and ambience, as we gathered to “honor” the Loser of the Year and other beleaguered souls. But this time, Danielle has offered her spacious, musically equipped house “as long as I don’t have to cook.” And if we do it as a potluck, with each of us showing up with a modest amount of food or drink, this year’s entrance fee will be close to (or at) zero. And you even have a good chance to be stuck with one or another of the door prizes. Flushies Pooh-Bahs Elden Carnahan, Dave Prevar and Pie Snelson are still figuring out what they need to buy or rent, but once things are pretty much set, I’ll send the invitation with RSVP directions. Given that it’s the 20th Flushies — named for the talking toilets (something like this) that used to be given out as awards — I’m hoping that we’ll reconnect with some Invite old-timers as well as meet the newer names. We already know that some far-flung Losers are coming in for the event: Frank Osen from California and Beverley Sharp from Alabama. And I’ve heard from two other faraways as well who are going to try to make it. Songs for the occasion are already being composed — and even though both Nowlins are professional musicians, they’re still going to let us sing them. Meanwhile, THIS VERY SUNDAY ... is a Loser brunch at noon at the sports pub Grevey’s, just outside the Beltway at the Route 50 exit near Falls Church, Va. Both the Royal Consort and I will be there. Not too many people have signed up so far, so I hope you’ll tell Elden Carnahan at bit.ly*invitebrunch that you’re coming. Re-airing our Differences: This week’s contest, Week 1120 Out of some inexplicable compulsion, or some weird sense of obligation — all I know is that I’m eternally grateful for it — Loser Since Year 1 Elden Carnahan maintains, for zero compensation, the Web site nrars.org. The URL stands for Not Ready for the Algonquin Round-table Society, the amorphous community that is now better known as the Losers. Along with the statistics tracking the some 5,000 people who’ve gotten ink in The Style Invitational since Week 1, Elden also maintains the literally marvelous Master Contest List, which contains a link to every last Invite contest, often in multiple formats. And because it’s Elden’s site, not The Post’s, views of the contests don’t count toward The Post’s “paywall” limit of articles you can read without a subscription. ADVERTISING I am probably the Master Contest List’s most avid reader, since I’m constantly checking whether we’ve used some idea or another in one of our previous 1,119 contests, and what the results were like. And Elden has also created more than 40 sub-lists for various contest categories: Cartoons, Horses, Poetry, Anagrams, etc. Sure enough, there’s a category called Differences — and so it was easy for me to click my way down the list to select the single item from each contest to use in Week 1120. Valuable as it is, though, the Differences list gives links to the weeks those contests were announced, not to the results. For that, you need to go back to the Master List, find the contest, and then look three or four weeks down. But in my Empressarial beneficence, I have done that for you, as a special prize for bothering to read this. If you’re entering this week’s contest, you do want to look at the old results, because even though these elements have been combined for the first time, there’s still a chance you can repeat a winning joke, something we’d like you not to do. There are just a few answers in each contest that feature any of this week’s elements, so you don’t have to read all the results (though of course they’re funny). (On each link, scroll past the new contest to the results of the Differences contest.) 1. Results of Week 155 ($4 haircut) 2. Results of Week 169 (Dilbert’s necktie) 3. Results of Week 199 (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) 4. Results of Week 276 (that not-so-fresh feeling) 5. Results of Week 402 (pizza-scented shampoo) 6. Results of Week 466 (offensive line) 7. Results of Week 563 (old socks) 8. Results of Week 628 (400-meter dash) 9, Results of Week 697 (Loser magnet) 10. Results of Week 738 (“American Gothic”) 11. Results of Week 754 (Gandhi) 12. Results of Week 821 (elderly Labrador) 13. Results of Week 883 (Elizabethan sonnet) 14. Results of Week 934 (Biden tattoo) 15. Results of Week 972 (Yemen) 16. Results of Week 1022 (overactive bladder) 17. Results of Week 1063 (three-cupped bra) I’m only a little bit worried that this revisiting contest won’t work. But hey, I can always fill the page with extra song parodies from Week 1117, which I’m judging now. Giggle Maps:* The results of Week 1116 (*Another good title from Tom Witte, who also submitted the one I used in the column,“Inking Globally.”) As usual when I run a neologism contest — in which the winning coinages are almost always plays on existing words — I said the entries in Week 1116 didn’t have to relate to the place whose name supplied the letters, but “entries are more likely to get ink if the definitions relate in some way to the place name.” This turned out to be true for approximately 100.00 percent of this week’s inking entries. It wasn’t quite enough that the definition acknowledged the place name, though; there had to be some logical connection. One that was pretty comically lacking: From “Ayers Rock”: “Oy! Rack!: Well-endowed outback rabbi’s wife.” Yes, the wilds of the Australian Outback are so well known for its rabbinical community. I expect to extract at least a week’s worth of Style Invitational Ink of the Day graphics from this week’s 30 or so inking entries, several of them from new or seriously infrequent Losers. While the rules said it didn’t matter if the new word contained all the letters of the place name — and I didn’t consciously choose entries because they did — all four of this week’s “above the fold” neologisms happen to be anagrams of the place name; it certainly does add to the niftiness. None more so in this week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner, the mordant transformation of “Russia” into “USSRia.” It’s only the 18th blot of for Invite ink Peter Jenkins since he First-Offended way back in the Czarist era, in Week 497 — but it’s the third time he’s won the contest, and he also has two runner-up blots. That is some high-quality ink in Peter’s little well. I had no idea until the winners were on the page that second and third place would go to the same person, but I wasn’t astonished that they were by Mark Raffman, who’s now been above the fold 21 times in his 207 inks since Week 979. I assume that Mark will opt for the second-prize Creepy Horse Man rather than a bag or mug (how dumb of me not to use that prize for the horse contest!). And what a happy return for Don Druker of Rockville, Md., who hadn’t been seen in Loserland since a sole appearance in Week 91. Don will move off the One-Hit Wonders list on Elden’s Loser Stats, but presumably will retain his excellent official anagram of Nuder Dork. Laughed out of Courtney: Copy desk honcho Courtney Rukan was positively gushy over this week’s ink, as she wrote to me in an unsolicited e-mail: “I LOVE the winner! USSRia is just perfect. “Baconrot [Bird Waring] is laugh-out-loud funny! Completely gross, but hilarious. I also like Off-blu [newbie Gregory Huyck] for the same reason. “Demnoises [Jim Stiles] is excellent, especially because Jim characterizes the politicians as “thundering.” Vivid language and so very true – and the sly reference to gopnoises really closes the loop. “Snobot! Lovely “2001” reference. [Julia Shawhan’s play on Boston was the most imaginative of several Snobot entries.] “Chattelover [from First Offender Amy Harris] is sassy and smart. “I like Anti-us [Frank Osen] because it’s true. “Dubbiah [Jack McBroom] is well played. Even though it’s not outrageous, this one might be my favorite (mainly because I’ll be saying Dubbiah in my head all night in the manner of a corn-fed Big 12 lineman – duhhhhhhbbiah.) “I almost choked on my water when I read Ponder, Texas. Nice inside joke from Ponder, Tex.” (Unprintable entries at the bottom of this page.) We’ll get back to you right away — really! After only many weeks of not sending Losers an auto-reply to their entries, followed by many more weeks of a NOT-auto reply in which I was actually sending the receipt e-mail myself when I got to a computer, our newsroom IT department seems to have fixed the problem. Now, whenever you send an e-mail to losers@washpost.com, you should quickly get an automatically generated response. If you don’t, please let me know so that I can make the day miserable for tell Will the IT Guy. Unsavory places: Unprintable entries from Week 1116 Lots of entries this week that the writers desginated “Convo only,” even those that weren’t all that risque. Among the clever-but-no-ways: From “San Antonio”: “Saint Onan”: Patron of lonesome cow hands. (Chris Doyle) From “Donner Pass”: Nadsperson: A really specific kind of cannibal. (Jeff Contompasis) Prince George’s County: No Pricey Negroes, a phrase often found on advertising circulars in Upper Marlboro slave markets in the 1840s (Elden Carnahan) But the Scarlet Letter this week goes to a typical tour-de-force from anagram savant Jon Gearhart, who we’re hoping is back to his amazing wordplay after suffering a scare a few days ago when he almost totally stopped breathing (Jon lost the use of much of his body after a horrific auto accident years ago): Harrisburg, Pennsylvania --> Lap Brushing Anniversary: April 1 is the anniversary of the first female fur trappers in Harrisburg. After washing their beavers in the Susquehanna River, they would brush them and stretch out to dry them in the sun. Also from Jon: Pierre, S. Dakota --> Troika-speared: Having a rare condition where a male is born with three prongs like a wall plug. They usually die lonely because woman can’t adapt. See some of you on Sunday! ====================================================================== WEEK 1121, published April 26, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1121: The author’s storied history with the Invite Add to list The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s contest and results “Book of Bad Days” author Michael Farquhar -- onetime Style Invitational Flunky and now some graybeard — at dinner with the Empress and Royal Consort last November. (Pat Myers) By Pat MyersApril 23, 2015 This week’s contest is your chance to outdo the Empress — something I’m sure you’ll accomplish easily. Just over a year ago, my long-ago colleague Michael Farquhar got hold of me. Mike, who’d grown up (-ish) to become a successful author with a series of popular-history books beginning with “A Treasury of Royal Scandals” in 2001, had another project for Book No. 7 — one that needed 365 headlines. So over the next several months last year, Mike would send me a month’s worth of fascinating historical vignettes, and I’d send back to him and his editor at National Geographic’s book division a heading for each one. Like these: Feb. 1, 2004: Keeping a Breast in the News: “On a day that saw two suicide bombings in previously calm Kurdistan, hundreds of pilgrims crushed to death in the Muslim holy site of Mecca, and continuing genocide in Darfur, media attention ... was focused on something else entirely: the brief exposure of Janet Jackson’s nipple ...” Feb. 2, 1685: Doctored to Death: After Britain’s Charles II woke up pale and unable to speak, the royal physicians began a five-day ordeal of “treatments” ranging from “spirits of the human skull” to burning his skin with hot irons to “draw out the bad humors from his brain” to the usual bleeding, till the poor monarch finally expired. And in a headline that I hoped readers would get — we went ahead with it after I tested it on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group last summer: Feb. 3, 1959: Bad News on the Doorstep: A small plane crashed into an Iowa cornfield, killing rock ’n’ roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “the Big Bopper” Richardson. The obvious heading, of course, would have been “The Day the Music Died,” but as I point out ad nauseam, making the reader think for just a moment longer results in a much bigger payoff — as long as the reader gets it. So this week’s contest is for more items like these. Of course, I’m not expecting you to go out and buy “Bad Days in History” (although it’s a really fascinating read, with many events that will be new to even you), so it doesn’t matter whether the book already features the same event you’re using (as long as it doesn’t happen to have the identical heading, a small but unavoidable risk). And as I mentioned in the instructions, you don’t have to know the exact day and date of some ancient history — it can be a longer-term event, like a war. But do write a concise description of the event, so that the point of the headline will be clear — anywhere from just a few words (“The Japanese invade Pearl Harbor”) to a short paragraph like those above. It does have to be an actual historical event, not something you make up. Remember that this is a humor contest, and Mike’s book, while written in a breezy tone, isn’t really a humor book. So I’m hoping that the Invite entries will be more funny-clever than poignant-clever. Even if you don’t win second place — for example, if you end up with the Inkin’ Memorial instead — you can still get Mike to sign a book for you: He’ll be appearing at Politics & Prose bookstore, in upper Northwest Washington, on Sunday, May 17, at 5 p.m. I’ll be there, too, to say, “I knew him when he was the Style Invitational Flunky.” Indeed, all this book-plugging is something of a restitution to Mike, who was the Invite’s aide — prize mailer, prize buyer, fax gatherer, etc. — when the contest debuted in 1993 and for a couple of years afterward. (There is no Flunky now; the Empress must self-flunk.). Mike went on to write for Horizon, The Post’s unfortunately defunct weekly section about history and science, until he started writing books full time. When he worked in the Style section in the 1990s doing mostly scut work, Mike also had the chance to write several historical-vignette pieces for the Sunday section, which was run by one Gene Weingarten. “A Look at History’s Least Compatible Couples,” “Pop Was a Weasel” (bad dads through history), etc., are what caught the eye of book publishers — and the rest, so to speak, was history. But under Gene’s editorship, that mean ol’ Czar of The Style Invitational gave Mike some clips like this: Week 240, October 1997: “This Week’s contest was proposed by Michael Farquhar, who worked for years as the Style Invitational flunky before he received a promotion. Now he is the Horizon section flunky. Why, in a few years, if Michael keeps his nose to the grindstone, he might rise to be chief executive Washington Post urinal attendant! Michael proposes that you come up with elegant insults ...” Week 273, June 1998: “This Week’s Contest was proposed by Michael Farquhar of Washington, who wins a handsomely embossed promise that we will no longer humiliate him in print every time he proposes a contest. Michael is a fine lad, a man of irreproachable moral character, a highly competent professional who, with just a few career “breaks” along the way, might have made something of himself instead of becoming a simpering lickspittle. Also — and we mean no disrespect here — Michael has absolutely no behind. It is as though God simply forgot, for a moment, at the birth of Michael Farquhar, that humans must sit, wear pants, and in his case, display the occasional “Kick Me” sign. Anyway, Michael suggests that you provide examples for any of the four above categories. ...” For the record: I have no recollection of the size or shape of Mr. F’s posterior, then or now, though I do think he was awfully cute back then, and still is, although the gray beard could go. He can’t fool me by trying to look grown up. (The photo above doesn’t show that he was wearing sneakers to the restaurant.) Clown Criers*: The news parodies of Week 1117 *Tom Witte’s non-inking headline A mere four weeks after another parody contest (for birthdays and other personal occasions) I was deluged — as I knew I’d be — with dozens of excellent song parodies about topics and people in the news. Of course, far fewer people enter a contest that requires so much skill and effort — there were fewer than 100 entrants, as opposed to close to 400 for the next week’s horse name contest — but still, so many clever lyrics have been robbed of ink, because you just can’t expect a reader to take in dozens of songs at once, especially while singing or listening along with the melodies. I’ve evolved over the years, I’ve realized, in how I run parodies; in earlier years, I would sometimes run only perhaps four good lines of a parody, so I could spread the ink around. But I’m more likely these days to run songs at length, and only rarely cut a song off before the end of at least a full verse. People who sent just a few lines with a good idea, but didn’t finish a verse, didn’t get ink. All four of this week’s “above -the-fold” Loserbards — Stephen Gold, Nan Reiner, Barbara Sarshik and Mark Raffman — have gotten lots of parody ink over the years; Nan, this week’s first runner-up, won the contest four weeks ago. By the way, the links for Nan’s parodies are to Nan singing them herself — you’ll see why she’s become the perennial entertainment at recent Flushies and Loser Holiday Parties. I will feature some “noinks” in the coming days on the Style Invitational Devotees page. ARE YOU GETTING THE E-MAIL? Well, obviously you found this column, and many of you reached it through the link your received in your weekly e-mail “newsletter” sent by The Post, with links to the Invite and Conversational. But some crazy thing seems to have happened: Hundreds of names among the more than 6,000 “Losers, aspiring Losers and hangers-on” fell off the mailing list. Fortunately, some people wrote to tell me that they hadn’t gotten their Thursday afternoon notification. If you’re in this boat, this seems to be the easiest way to fix it: If you’re not getting the e-mail, use this link — https:**subscribe.washingtonpost.com*newsletters*#*newsletters — to go to The Post’s newsletter sign-up page, and sign up (even if you’ve done it before) for The Style Invitational. The only information you need to enter is the e-mail address where you’d like to get the notification. For one thing, you don’t want to miss your personal invitation to the Flushies — the Losers’ annual awards lunch — to be held this year at Chez Danielle Nowlin, in Fairfax Station, Va., on Saturday, May 30. It’ll be a potluck, and the organizers just ask $5 a person to pay for the sundry Stuff They Have to Get. There will be a 60-person limit so that people’s elbows don’t end up too often in other people’s baked beans. I should be sending out the e-mail through the usual newsletter method in the next few days, perhaps as early as tomorrow. Until then .... ====================================================================== WEEK 1122, published May 3, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1122: Lining up 3,700 horses in the starting gate Add to list The Style Invitational Empress gives a turn-by-turn look back at this year’s foal name contest Loser Jonathan Hardis saved the Empress many hours and a lot of sanity with his program that sorted and cleaned up the 3,700-entry list of horse names. Here are two random snippets. (The Washington Post) By Pat MyersApril 30, 2015 Happy Derby Weekend to all, including you 58 presumably happy Losers and 312 presumably less happy ones. Judging The Style Invitational’s horse name contests is always a time-consuming, labor-intensive task; it’s always going to be when one person is pondering almost 4,000 crosses of two horse names and deciding whether each is funnier and cleverer than the others. But it’s one I always look forward to — I’ve judged this contest more than 20 times, if you count the “grandfoals” spinoffs — because the entries are just so dang good. And this year, the process became far less of a slog with the offer of help from Jonathan Hardis. Jonathan happens to be a PhD physicist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an expert in optical metrology who has been known to write up such juicy fare as “Enhancement of lanthanide evaporation by complexation: Dysprosium tri-iodide mixed with indium iodide and thulium tri-iodide mixed with thallium iodide.” But far more significantly, Jonathan is also a 42-time Loser who evidently likes to write computer programs (and loves the horse names). While working through the list pictured above at right — a combination of all 370 e-mails I’d gotten for the week, and then removed all identifying data from the entrants (a task I’ve been doing each week, though the pool is usually about half the size) — I posted to the Style Invational Devotees page on Facebook a screen shot of a snippet of the list in which the entrant had used some formatting that had caused the elements of the horse name to scatter about the page, plus one in which an embedded link had turned into a garble of code. The thread ended up with a 28-comment discussion about tab replacement and Excel possibilities, but the upshot was that Jonathan had a very cool idea, and he created a program on a Mac application called BBEdit that, after a fair amount of cleaning up on his part, gave me, the same evening, what you can see (if not read) in the left photo: all the entries sorted alphabetically, from 001 x 002 (Acceptance x Action Hero) to 099 x 100 (Your Thoughts x Zip N Bayou). He made it work even though some people started their entries with numbers; they’d numbered their lists. And they were all perfectly spaced, and in the same Horse x Horse B = Horse C format, no matter what had been submitted. But this part was the real time-saver: In the past, I searched through my whole master list of entries, one horse name at a time, copying out the entries I liked onto a shortlist. Each horse name, of course, was a part of many different entries, sometimes well over 100. So I’d just hit Find, Find, Find ... until I found all the entries for Horse 1. Then for Horse 2 — etc., etc., literally a hundred times over. The thing was: With this method, I ended up looking at all the entries twice — because the names also came up when I was looking for the matching horse: The entries featuring Horse 92, for example, had already come up when I did the previous 91 searches. I tried marking the entries I’d already looked at, but that took even more time than looking again. But under Jonathan’s alphabetizing, when I got up to Horse 92, I simply skipped over the list of “092 x 001; 092 x 002,” etc., and looked only at the few remaning Horse 92 entries I hadn’t read yet. I saved hours and hours and hours of judging time. Another thing: As I read through the lists , it was easy to mark the entries I especially liked with the letter A in front of the number at the beginning of the line. And ones I super-duper liked, I put “AA.” Then, at the end, I sorted the list alphabetically (it was in Microsoft Word) and my short­list immediately appeared on top — topped by the AA group of about 25 entries. The A-group was more than 300. Then I made my final list: All the AAs (with the four winners chosen from them) plus as many A’s as I could fit on the print page, once I finally looked up the authors of the inking entries: 63 entries, 58 people (including multiple inks for remarkably few people, and double credits for really remarkably few people). If you’re of the techie persuasion and would like to discuss details of the program with Jonathan, e-mail me and I’ll forward your note. I say this with a sense of shame rather than pride, believe me, but I still use words like “magic” when it comes to computers. And I shouted out “YESSSS!” in the middle of the newsroom on Tuesday when, near the very end of my Loser-name-looking-up task, I discovered that the 63rd inking entry of 65 was by (Jonathan Hardis, Gaithersburg). Arbitrary, somewhat. Subjective, very. Random, no. So why did some entries get ink and other clever entries not get ink? Sometimes, the same entry was sent by too many people. Ocho Ocho Ocho x Pain and Misery = Oucho Oucho Oucho. Great entry, but I’m not going to credit six Losers. Other excellent entries too frequently submitted: Carpe Diem x Far Right = Seize the Gay; Help From Heaven x Action Hero = Manna War; Acceptance x Itsaknockout = OKO. Just a slew of similar entries using In the Pocket that produced Happy to See Me, That’s No Banana, etc, that all canceled one another out. (Sometimes, though, I gave ink to an name that came from a better cross of parents than the others did.) Sometimes an entry would overshadow similar ones with one winning detail: There were several “Kneel Armstrong,” but only Matt Monitto turned it into a sentence with the comma making it “Kneel, Armstrong.” (If you indeed sent in an entry identical to one that inked and you weren’t credited, contact me ASAP.) But in large part, my choices rested on what I, at that moment, reacted to with a laugh or “hah, cute!” Judging horse names is much less objective than judging song parodies (our previous contest); for that, you can point to a line that doesn’t scan, or strained syntax, or a blah ending after a strong beginning, or a trite or screedy sentiment. It’s just that hundreds of entrants now get the horse names — they understand what we’re looking for. But I’m going to mail out only so many magnets — and I can tell you from experience that reading twice as many entries isn’t necessarily twice as fun. But yes, I did read every one, often while awake. Win, Place, Show, Other Show This week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner wasn’t just funny and creative, with a different approach from the usual puns and transformations that characterize most of this week’s entries. But it also managed to use the name Mujtaahib, one I’d included only because he had a good chance to do well in the Derby. And it was also the favorite of Bob Staake, who used it for this week’s cartoon. Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan has a page on the Loser website, NRARS.org, headed “Most Cantinkerous.” It’s a list of the 100 people who have the most Invite ink but have never won first place. Elden himself held the top (?) honor for a while (before going on to win 20 times), as have such future notables as Tom Witte (26 wins) and Jeff Contompasis (7). But for the past two years and change, topping the list — with 106 inkblots without a win — was Brad Alexander, an Amerian expat living in Wanneroo, Western Australia. I met Brad and his wife, Shani, a couple of years ago when they were visiting relatives in the States, and he told me that he made it a point to enter the Invite every week, even if were just a single entry or an idea for an honorable-mentions subhead. I’ll be sending Brad an Inkin’ Memorial, and he’ll have to hand the Cantinkerous crown back to former laureate Kyle Hendrickson, who has 83 inks and used to be the Cant himself. We’ll give the special Cantinkerous plaque back to Kyle at the Flushies banquet on May 30 (see YOUR invitation right here), when he’ll be serving as MC. None of the others in this year’s Losers’ Circle qualify for the Cantinkerous list; Doug Frank has two wins, Jeff Shirley has one, and Ben Aronin has five. Doug’s entry, Apollo Eleven x No Problem = No Movie, is a strong example of the “transformational” style, in which the result is a changed version of one of the elements; and it manages to get in a dig at Hollywood to boot. Ben’s Neil Strongarm is an ingenious (and unduplicated) combination of Apollo Eleven and Gangster. And Jeff Shirley, who actually understands fluent dentist, being a retired one, scores with the coffee-spitter Let My Pimple Go.” Both Courtney Rukan and Doug Norwood, both aces of The Post’s copy desk, are back this week to weigh in with their faves. What Doug Dug: Doug “loved all the American Pharoah and Apollo 11 entries. And the winner, of course.” Laugh Out of Courtney, who’s just back from vacation: “All four of the winners are fantastic and each got funnier from fourth to the winner. Love Let My Pimple Go and Chat With Dentist.” Courtney, whom I’m loving more and more each week, the way the woman agrees with me, did say that one honorable mention “might be my favorite of the bunch”: Medieval Knievel, sent by both Lawrence McGuire and Malcolm Fleschner. She also thought Mae Scanlan’s “Connery Row” was “brilliant.” Meanwhile, the Beyond Nerdiness entry of the week goes to this one, which I quote verbatim, complete with accompanying note: “Easy to Say x Data Driven = 45617379746F536179 (This is ascii hex code for ‘EasytoSay’ just in case you are not fluent in ascii codes. I would have done binary but that would have exceeded the 18 character limit. I could have compressed that with gzip but then might have lost about half the audience reducing the impact of the joke).” My favorite thing is how the person assumed that most readers would get that entry just fine, as long as he didn’t do it in binary and compress it with gzip, which would cause a 50 percent audience reduction. Foaling down: The next generation The grandfoal contest is a whole lot like the foal contest, but a little harder: First and less significantly, you have 65 horses rather than 100 to work with. More of a challenge is that most of the names are already puns: Your grandfoal might pun on the words or names in the foals name, or the names that they’re punning on. Times two, for the two child brides. The way out of it is not to try to incorporate all of these elements, but also not ignore the most conspicuous ones — an arguable standard, as you’ll see. Here are some winners from past grandfoal contests: Criminal in Tent x Lookn Mighty Fat = Osama Been Lardin’ (double winners Jennifer Rubio and Lois Douthitt, Week 814): The first element works both ways as “Intent” and “in tent” with bin Laden, and the second element wasn’t a pun; it was a transformational entry for Lookn Mighty Fast x Sumo. So that worked super-well: It was easy to read, and of course fun to mock Osama bin Laden. Myth Congeniality x Paul Bunion = Sandra Bull Ox (Kathy Al-Assal, winner of Week 969). Here, Kathy’s playing on both source names, rather than the pun names. Nothing about bunions or myths (well, the ox is also a myth). But it’s very clear and clever, playing on Sandra Bullock’s name and movie, and obviously it worked for me. &*^$ Mammogram x Clans Casino = Squish and Chips (Danielle Nowlin, winner of Week 1070). The first element isn’t a pun, so Danielle could work freely with that; then she ignored “clans” and really only tenuously alluded to its source, “clams casino”; okay, it’s a seafood dish like fish and chips. But just “chips” and “mammogram” were enough to make the funny pun. See what you can come up with. All I know is that Jonathan is going to run my list again. Note; Please do not break a single entry into two lines! This really messes up the software. Thankew. So sip your mint julep this Saturday and root for one of “our” horses — FOURTEEN of the 20 horses made our 100-horse list, out of the 429 I chose that 100 from. And 11 of them got ink today. And on Friday, you can root for Condo Commando and*or Puca in the Kentucky Oaks race for fillies. Get Flushing! RSVP for the Flushies, May 30 You should have gotten an e-mail invitation. Here it is online. It’s a potluck with just a $5 fee to defray costs for paper goods, door prizes, plunger rental, etc. Please RSVP to Elden; Danielle Nowlin can fit just 60 of us into her house, even if we sit on her kids. ====================================================================== WEEK 1123, published May 10, 2015 Yes, dear, I was wrong, you were right. Add to list Style Conversational Week 1123: JefCon’s perseverance pays off with the ScrabbleGrams By Pat MyersMay 7, 2015 Our now-perennial ScrabbleGrams contest met with my usual negativity when Next In Line For The Hall of Fame Jeff Contompasis suggested a “Hardscrabble Humor” Style Invitational contest to me in 2012. “I’ve been playtesting this” on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, Jeff said, “and I’m now convinced it has contest potential.” He listed several very good examples. I said no because I didn’t think we’d have the room to print a list long enough to prevent too much duplication. Jeff proceeded to slap his head at my stupidity for an entire year. The next March, he tried again — noting that I’d recently run a long list of words in paragraph form, rather than a table, and remember that ScrabbleGrams contest? Also, the Invite had come into some more real estate: It now took up the whole back page of the Sunday Style tabloid — about 30 percent more space than we’d had since 2011. I was still hesitant. But Jeff did what does finally convince me: He provided several varied and inkworthy examples, demonstrating that entrants could take a wide variety of approaches. Looking back, I have to admit: Why on earth couldn’t I see what a suitable Invite contest this would be — over and over and over? Anyway, Week 1021 — headlined “’Gram Theft” in the print paper, “Nice Sets of Racks” online — proved wildly successful, of course. I listed 100 letter sets, and then: “I have 2 million Scrabblegrams neologisms,” I told my daughter in a late-night IM (thanks, Gchat archives). Bob Staake’s cartoon featured a drawing of Jeff himself, looking much wider than in real life but just as winsome, juggling seven letter tiles above his head. That week’s winner brought Frank Osen his second Inkin’ Memorial, no doubt because of his sample sentence: “AUFWRGF: Gruffaw: A mocking, dismissive laugh. ‘Listen, kid, if you can’t take the constant gruffaws, you’ll never make it big in the mime biz.’” Because there were so many good entries — and especially because it was fun to show several very different uses of the same rack — I ended up running 41 results at the usual time, then 48 more honorable mentions two weeks later. The next May, of course, I was eager to run the contest again. And in Week 1072 — Jeff got his cartoon again — I cut the list from 100 sets to 40. And the results were still plentiful, and plenty good. That week’s winner was by Brendan Beary: “AAURGJN → Uganja: Country ruled by the surprisingly mellow dictator Weedy Amin.” So here we are again: This year JefCon is acknowledged only here in the Conversational, but he is not the type to grouse about that. Is he. There’s something about this contest that brings out the newbies: In Week 1021, there were nine First Offenders among the two weeks of results. My theory is the list in the print paper: It presents readers with a prompt — a set of parameters that they can look at quickly, and think of something quickly as well And then, oh, they think of another one. Hey, this is fun! The foal name and “joint legislation” contests also feature long lists, and have always had both especially large entry pools and especially large numbers of first-time entrants. And remember, Loser Obsessives, regular doses of fresh blood are essential to keep the Invite, um, fresh-blooded. Note that I beg you, when you submit your entries for Week 1123, to include the original letter set before each entry, and in the same line: DON’T do: “ABCEDEFG: Entry 1 for that. Entry 2 for that.” This is because I hope to sort the entries alphabetically, as I did for the Week 1118 horse names, so that I’ll be able to judge the sets together, and also have not the foggiest idea of who wrote which entry. My little Sort function is rearranging what it sees as paragraphs; so if you hit Enter between the letter set and your word, it’s going to go astray. (I’ll still be able to find it — it won’t be totally lost — but it won’t show up with its pals from the same letter set.) I alphabetically sorted the entries for today’s results, and it worked close to perfectly. ADVERTISING DYE LAUGHING*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1119 *A non-inking entry from both Kevin Dopart and Jeff Contompasis Our contest for color names (reprising one from 22 years ago) echoes those for names of restaurant dishes, chemical elements, rooms in buildings, etc.: The inking entries feature lots of puns, and words that cleverly carry multiple meanings, with some zingy, timely jokes tossed in. Classic Invite. Because such entries tend to be very short, I was able to run the whole list of more than 30 in the print paper even though we also have the table of the 40 ScrabbleGrams names. With “Lilac a Rug,” John McCooey finds himself bumped off the Cantinkerous list with his first Inkin’ Memorial among his 33 blots of ink since Week 903. The Royal Consort and I had lunch with John and his wife near their his home in Rehoboth Beach when we were camping at Cape Henlopen a few years ago; I’m glad he continued to enter the Invite nevertheless. Edward Gordon, who logged a fair amount of time in hospitals recently, should find it especially fun to throw the Happy Pill against the wall as it laughs irritatingly. Among Ed’s 57 blots of ink are six “above the fold,” including his slogan “Certifiably Inane” for one of the 2009-10 honorable-mentions magnets. And I’ll deliver in person, perhaps right from a cake, the prizes for the other two runners-up: Frank Osen is flying in from Pasadena to attend this year’s Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual award banquet, for which, if you pay the $5 and bring some potlucky thing, you can get your own plastic fork and probably a door prize. And I’m also sure that Danielle Nowlin will be there on Saturday, May 30, noon to 4, because the event is at her house in Fairfax Station, Va. As of this writing, we can take about 20 more people; please RSVP to Elden Carnahan here ASAP if you intend to go (or, if you think you’re expected, if you intend not to go). By the way, I’ve seen a couple of the song parodies written for the occasion, and they’re classic. Laughed Out of Courtney — the faves of copy desk chief Courtney Rukan: “The winner is brilliant. It’s a great pun – and not an obvious one to make. Also love Indigo Montoya, Spinal Taupe, Andy Marooney, Goooooold, Inhofe, Bureaucratic Maize (nice to see Ink after so long!), Board of Directors Rainbow and Invisible Ink (great inside joke). Unred, Kiddie Pool Blue, Perple, Fuchsiashima, Obamatone and Beat Red made me laugh AND cringe. Another very strong week – and you can’t lose with Inigo Montoya and Cary Elwes.” I hope Courtney can come to the Flushies and gush over all of yas in person. What Doug Dug — from my longtime colleague and onetime boss Doug Norwood: “I liked all the runners-up and the winner, plus Gooooold, and Beiging and Board of Directors Rainbow and Rich Maroon — how is it that Trump jokes never get old?” Loser Blue: Unprintable ink from Week 1119 Two grossouts: Shartreuse: A brownish stain (Jeff Contompasis, and in even more graphic detail from Jon Gearhart) And one for which, even had the writer not included his own name, I would have known anyway: “Eff-white: The color of male eff-luent. Also known as tapiOca and uh-roe. Or, in my case, Cream o’ Witte and, unfortunately, Quick Bisque.” (I don’t get “uh-roe” and probably don’t want to.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1125, published May 24, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1124: The tale of the once-titillating sonnet Add to list The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest Fox’s New York affiliate didn’t want to offend the Nipple Police during its news report, so it helpfully smudged over the cubist breasts. (Taken from TV) By Pat MyersMay 14, 2015 This past Monday, the Picasso painting “Women of Algiers” sold for $160 million (plus hefty commission), shattering the record for a work of art sold at auction. Even though the 1950s work did not specifically criticize Barack Obama, New York’s Fox affiliate brought the news to its viewers anyway. Well, sort of. This screen grab from Monday night shows how the station protected its viewers’ eyes from depictions of female breasts. (Evidently, the curvaceous bare butt in the middle of the painting did not pose an ocular hazard.) I read about the Ridiculous Fox Blur just as I started writing this column today — two days after I did something not all that different, really. As his best entry in Week 1120 of The Style Invitational, Frank Osen — author of an award-winning poetry collection, as well as an incessant Loser — linked the categories of “an Elizabethan sonnet” and “a three-cupped bra” in the excellent full 14-line sonnet that gets ink as the last item of today’s results. Except that Frank’s original was a bit different. Frank’s little story-in-verse is about God originally making Eve as the first human — with three breasts — then using the third one to make a helpmeet for her. And it ended, originally, with this couplet: Then God said: Hold off thanking Me, a bit. Let’s see, where did I put that useless tit? My initial reaction was to put the poem only in the online Invite, because of its length but primarily because “tit” is considered a verboten vulgarism by The Washington Post, right up there with [deleted], [deleted] and [are you kidding? deleted!]. But I personally don’t think that term is very offensive if it’s not used in an offensive context — and this one wasn’t. And when I found on Tuesday that I actually had a fair amount of room in this weekend’s Style section, and found that Frank’s poem fit perfectly on the page, I added the poem at the end (this is why it didn’t end up as one of the top winners) and went to bat for it. I sent copy editor Doug Norwood this in an e-mail: “You’ll see that the very last entry is a perfect 14-line sonnet, beautifully done, plus funny. The last word is “tit.” If you*they insist, we can make it “[breast],” “t-t,” etc. But I think that would make us look awfully silly. The other 13 lines, as you’ll see, are not at all vulgar.” “The old 13-out-of-14-ain’t-bad argument! I like it!” Doug answered. But it wouldn’t be Doug’s call; he’d be obligated to show it to a higher-up editor. And in my experience, people don’t like to be asked to be daring if they won’t suffer by not being daring. I had also asked the opinion of my predecessor, The Czar of The Style Invitational, who coincidentally provides today’s “poetic” example. From Gchat instant messaging on Tuesday: Czar: of course they will [kill the poem]. you cannot put that in the paper. Pat Myers: i think it’s fine it’s not sexual and for 13 3*4 lines it’s not the least bit vulgar Czar: ARE YOU S---TING ME? you are toying with me. Pat Myers: no! i’m serious Czar: f--- = s--- = c--- = d--- = c--- = tit. [In The Post’s eyes, he meant; not his own.] And so instead, that evening I wrote to Frank and asked him for an alternative couplet, one that didn’t use The Bad Word. And within minutes, Frank wrote me back, without a word (to me) of grousing: Then God said, as he rummaged in his trunk, Let’s see, where did I put [that] [your] useless hunk? Then God said: Hold off thanking Me, a bit. Let’s see, where did I put [that] [your] useless bit? Then God said: I’ll need clay, a largish clump. Let’s see, where did I put [that] [your] useless lump? [could switch clump and lump ] Then God said: Help me search here in the grass. Let’s see, if we can use [that] [your] useless mass? Then God said: He won’t be a work of art. Let’s see, where did I put [that] [your] useless part? I chose the last one, allowing our print-paper readers to cast their eyes upon Frank’s art, just as the Fox5 news director felt he had to do with the Picasso painting. Just as silly? Feel free to discuss here or, preferably, on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. Meanwhile, lots of other ingenious comparisons among this week’s inking entries. There was a lot of duplication that sometimes canceled out all the similar entries, while other times I chose one that I thought was better than the others in some small way. How exciting to have a First Offender walk away with the Inkin’ Memorial this week! Jaclyn Yamada just missed getting ink when she first entered the Invitational one week earlier, and this time the New York mortgage banker came up with the super-nifty 3-snips-and-out*3-snaps-and-out comparison between a $4 haircut and the Redskins’ offensive line. (I had so many clever wordplays on football terms that I think I could have filled the results with only combinations for “offensive line.” But Jaclyn’s was especially clever, and appropriate for “offensive line,” as opposed to some that referred to catching balls and such.) While the first- and second runners-up, Brendan Beary and Elden Carnahan, are both Invitational Hall of Famers, such fixtures that new entrants sometimes refer to their celebrity in their entries, as if referencing Abraham Lincoln or John Wayne Gacy. But fourth place is shared this week by two much fresher names: It’s just the second blot of ink for Jack McBroom of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley; he first scored in Week 1111’s song-title-pun contest (Theme song for the National Super PAC Clearinghouse: “As Slime Goes By”). On the other hand, John Conti (no relation as far as I know to Loser Edmund Conti) has been entering with laudable discrimination all the way back to the Empress’s first year, 2004; this is only John’s 15th blot of ink, but it’s his fourth “above the fold” (including a winner). (A long list of unprintable entries cowers in shame at the bottom of this column.) What Doug Dug: Doug Norwood’s faves this week: Brendan’s second-place “Middle Eastern vs. You’re a peein’ ”; Mary Kappus’s idea of putting the $4 haircut and 3-cupped bra into “The 12 Days of Deep Discount Christmas”; Wendy Sparks’s “finishing Number 1” (overactive bladder, 400-yard dash), and Rick Haynes’s “16 quarters aren’t enough ($4 haircut, Redskins line) . Laugh Out of Courtney: Desk chief Courtney Rukan’s background is in sports news, and she did enjoy “all of the digs on the Washington Football Club,” but she picked as her top favorite another one of Brendan’s:”With an overactive bladder, you need to pee urgently; with a $4 haircut, you need a toupee urgently.” POETRY TO THE MAXIM: THE NEW CONTEST FOR WEEK 1124 I am foreseeing many Style Invitational Ink of the Day memes after I print the results of this contest, in which I gave five little bits of advice for everyday life (drawn from a long list of topics that occurred to me and the Czar) and ask for poetic versions of same. ADVERTISING Up-and-coming Loser Todd DeLap (36 inks since Week 1039) was inspired by something rather different from the contest topic: He’d seen an article about a county council in Britain that received a resident’s e-mail asking for a replacement trash can lid — and the request was in the form of a limerick. In response, the councilors (or I guess I should make it “councillors”) left her a phone message asking her if the “bin lid” would be for refuse or recycling. Also as a limerick. So Todd extrapolated that idea into “a poem usable in regular(ish) daily life,” resulting in today’s contest. The “eight lines or fewer” can mean eight long lines, with interior rhyme, if they’re wonderful; we had a little kerfuffle over this matter a couple of years ago, and I do not wish to rekerfuff. But as with all longer entries, they have to be really outstanding to make the print paper — and you probably can’t be one of the top winners if you can’t make the print paper. DON’T PULL OUR CHAIN: RSVP TO THE FLUSHIES We’re at only about 42 people who’ve told Elden they’d be attending this year’s Flushies Awards and Sillifest on Saturday afternoon, May 30. Are you still rooting around in the bottom of your purse for the $5, or what? We can take roughly (oh, baby, yeah) 18 more of y’all. See bit.ly*flushies2015 and RSVP to Elden. (And let me know, too.) I think we will demand that Frank Osen — who’ll be coming in from L.A. — read The Unexpurgated Sonnet. A-HUNTING WILL YOU GO? One reason that the Flushies are on May 30 is that out-of-towners can also participate in the Post Hunt — the annual spectacle in downtown Washington in which thousands of people run around trying to figure out diabolical brain-teasers cooked up by Gene Weingarten, Dave Barry and Tom Shroder (who all will be there as usual). A team of Losers got very close to winning last year — maybe this time will be the charm (and you get to split $2,000, not a bobblehead). Let’s see if we can get a couple of Loser teams together this time. I think the Devotees page would be best for coordinating it. Don’t dare compare: Unprintables from Week 1120 Among many more: Dilbert’s necktie and that “not so fresh” feeling: The first appears much higher in Google search results for “douche.” (Kevin Dopart) Pizza-scented shampoo and that “not so fresh” feeling are both recognized by the fragrance of Eau d’Anchovies. (Brad Alexander) A style invitational magnet and a tattoo of Joe Biden: Both involve the output from a bunch of pricks.(Rick Haynes) An elderly Labrador retriever vs. that “not so fresh feeling”: Neither one is suitable for heavy petting. (Tom Witte) An elderly Labrador retriever vs. that “not so fresh feeling”: One is a mangy Lab, the other is a mangy labia. (Witte again) Dilbert’s necktie isn’t like a Style Invitational Loser magnet: No drunk chick at an office party ever tried to Lewinsky the magnet. (Lawrence McGuire) Pizza-scented shampoo and that “”not so fresh”” feeling: Both are heavy on the extra-cheese and mushrooms. (Rob Huffman) The Redskins offensive line vs. an overactive bladder: Both are likely to result in pissing away an afternoon. (Larry Passar) Yemen vs. the 400-meter dash: There is contest for control of Yemen by some cunning runts, and the 400-meter dash is often contested by some running gents. (Roy Ashley) [Yeah, right, Roy. Big fix there.] An elderly Labrador retriever and Ruth Bader Ginsburg doing the Macarena: Them old bitches don’t move like they used to.(Jon Gearhart) What an amazing coincidence: Every one of the above entries was written by a man! ====================================================================== WEEK 1126, published May 31, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1126: Putting the cartoons before the horses Add to list The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results By Pat MyersMay 28, 2015 This week’s caption contest might be more challenging than usual. It wasn’t until late in the process that it dawned on me that none of Bob Staake’s four cartoons this week featured characters saying anything. While of course you can always just write a funny description of the person in the picture (or in one case, part of a person), it’s also handy to be able to use an amusing quote. Which is why I have decreed: Feel free to assume that the people in this week’s cartoons are able to speak perfectly well with their mouths closed, and that they could be speaking to someone just out of the picture. Really, I am very easy sometimes: As Gilbert and Sullivan put forth the Loser Mantra: They don’t blame you so long as you’re funny. . And I’ll also have you know that I’m easier than the folks at The New Yorker, which runs a cartoon caption contest every week, drawing more than 5,000 entries (but only one per person). For one thing, the caption can’t exceed 250 characters and you can’t enter if you live in Quebec — true fact. But even worse, all those captions are for one cartoon. The editors then pick three finalists, and readers vote for the winner, who then gets something possibly nicer than a bobblehead of the Lincoln Memorial statue — the original cartoon, valued at $250 (i.e., $250 of taxable income). Which you then get to frame yourself. I know that last part because at least two Style Invitational Losers have won this contest: 231-time Loser Gary Crockett and, before that, 217-timer Jay Shuck, who’s won it twice. But the duplication of ideas must be enormous every single week, with 5,000 captions for one picture. I know this because I get a fair amount of duplication in our caption contests, and I’m offering four to six cartoons to choose from, and get a total of usually fewer than 2,000 entries. I also know this because I had a sneak peek at the Below the Beltway column by Gene Weingarten in the June 7 Washington Post Magazine, in which Gene interviews Robert Mankoff, The New Yorker’s cartoon editor and the head of the contest. I don’t want to give too many details about the column, but Mankoff does mention that one particular word was used in a recent contest in sixty-eight different entries. In its strict and legalistic set of rules, TNY says that in the case of two or more entries that are absolutely identical, including punctuation, the one that arrived first gets the ink. Meanwhile, we have the Empress, whose fuzzy and illegalistic set of rules state that “when two or people send pretty much the same idea and their wording is equally good, either (1) I’ll use one person’s wording and credit both people, or (2) I’ll use elements of both entries and credit both people. When people send in the same idea but one person says it significantly better, that person gets the sole ink. If several entries are similar and all pretty much the same quality, I just toss them all or, very rarely, print the entry and credit no specific person.” But the real difference is that I am going to give ink not to one entry, but to perhaps 30. In fact, part of the fun of the caption results is in seeing a cartoon interpreted in wildly different ways. Like these from our most recent caption contest, six months ago. And all those entrants got prizes that no one will ever get from The New Yorker. And if you win the big one and you are tax-fastidious, you may declare income valued at $12. Jay and Gary have probably paid off their big-shot-contest tax bills by now, so I hope they’ll enter Week 1126. PUN FOR THE ROSES: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1122 It might seem no surprise that all four of this year’s “grandfoal” “breeders” are longtime successes in the Invite’s equine history — but it actually was to me. Over their 20-year history, and especially since the institution of the 25-entry limit, the horse names contests have provided more parity than many others. For instance, there aren’t that many people who are going to send me an elaborate, perfectly crafted song parody, and the people who win tend to be those who know just what I’m looking for. But so many people have come up with a clever way to play off two horse names and produce a pun or other joke. And! Just as with this year’s first horse contest, Week 1118, not only did i not know who wrote which entry, I didn’t even judge anyone’s set of entries in a block: Thanks to a program devised and run by Loser Jonathan Hardis, all the entries were sorted by “parent” name. And there were lots of good entries for practically every parent name on the list. But Jonathan Paul’s “NOT WITH TONGUE!!!” made me laugh out loud, repeatedly, sending him across the finish line first, as he did in the horse contests of Weeks 396, 810 and 914 (along with 21 wins in other contests). And with the super-synthesis of Absolut Zero and Look Ma No Hanes into Me and My Kelvins,* Pam Sweeney added to her amazing record with the ponies, which includes wins in Weeks 660, 712, 763, 863 and 918. And Brendan Beary and Chris Doyle, zub zub zub. *The levels of Pam’s breeding success: 1. Absolute zero is zero on the Kelvin temperature scale. 2. The famous slogan for Calvin Klein jeans: “Nothing [absolutely zero! and certainly not Hanes underwear] comes between me and my Calvins.” Also another huge horse week for Jeff Shirley, who had four horses in this week’s field, and special mention to Francis Canavan, who got his FirStink with Poise N the Hood in the previous horse contest, then came back to be magnetized with the pithy “Hertz!” Laugh Out of Courtney: Before she took off on a three-week vacation, Post copy chief Courtney Rukan shared her faves for this week. Her verdict: “Please send Pam Sweeney my regards; she is the ‘grandfoals’ goddess.” (Unprintable entries are at the bottom of this column.) LAST CALL FOR THE FLUSHIES! There are still a few more places left for Saturday afternoon’s Flushies, the annual award ceremony*meetup*songfest*potluck-pigout*humiliation sponsored by the Losers themselves. I’ve just seen the amazing sort-of-board game devised by emcee Kyle Hendrickson, and have printed out the lyric sheets for the song parodies written to “honor” the Loser of the Year and others. And I will bring a dessert that is guaranteed to be edible by the undiscriminating. To RSVP and to get the address of Chez Danielle Nowlin, RSVP right away to Elden Carnahan. Details here. Neigh neigh neigh! Unprintable ‘grandfoal’ names from Week 1122 I was going to try to run this one — Gone Tomorrow x Tough, Customer! = Tempus Fuggit (Frank Osen) — but went with Larry Passar’s slightly safer-sounding Zit Outta Luck. But no way for: Magnum, T.I. x Rush Lintball = Private Dick (Kathye Hamilton) Look Ma No Hanes x BobDylan’sMustache = Like Two Lolling Stones (Rob Huffman) Buzzed Aldrin x Prince Charmin = Orbiting Uranus (Rob Wolf) Prince Charmin x KO Pectate = Seeping Booty (Pam Sweeney — ewwww) Paternity Soot x Sphinxter = Ash Hole (Rob Wolf) A special bad-taste mention to Mike Gips for a reference I had to look up to refresh my memory: Kiljoy Was Her x Let My Pimple Go = MaryBeth Whitehead. Mary Beth Whitehead was the woman hired in the 1980s by a couple named the Sterns to be inseminated by Mr. Stern with her own egg, carry the fetus to term, then hand over “Baby M.” And then, 24 hours later, she changed her mind. The courts went back and forth, as did custody of the baby; now-adult Melissa Stern now lives in London. Anyway, I didn’t think we wanted to call the baby a pimple, or even Ms. Whitehead a killjoy. Clever as it was. Can’t wait to see more than 50 of you on Saturday! ====================================================================== WEEK 1127, published June 7, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1127: Everyone wants to hang with the Losers Add to list Notes from the 20th Flushies awards and sillifest President Obama, looking younger and even slimmer than usual, greets Loserdom at the Flushies: Clockwise from top left: Ann Martin; the Empress and Melissa Yorks; security detail Dave Prevar; Todd DeLap; Mae Scanlan; Dave Zarrow. (Photos by Mark Holt; collage by Valerie Holt) By Pat MyersJune 4, 2015 A tall, lean but somewhat stiff and, let it be said, rather shallow figure greeted guests Saturday afternoon just inside the front door of Chez Danielle Nowlin in Suburbia, Va. But setting politics aside (and nearly tipping it over), close to 60 Style Invitational Losers and various handlers and orderlies took over the house of last year’s Loser and Rookie of the Year for the 20th annual Flushies award “banquet,” failing to cause more damage than whatever a mis-tossed roll of toilet paper can do to a blank wall. The 19 previous Flushies — except for one ill-fated assembly in a public park — were held in either restaurants or hotel meeting rooms, some more appealing than others, but all of them requiring the organizers to haggle over room reservations, beg for permission to play music, guarantee a minimum or maximum number of attendees, dicker over food options and charges, etc., etc, etc. But near the end of the 2014 gathering in an undistinguished room at the College Park Holiday Inn (motto: We Kind of Share a Parking Lot With Ikea), Ms. Nowlin — flush with victory and perhaps a little celebratory wine — approached the Empress and said, “You know, Ryan and I just bought a big new house, and we could host the Flushies next year. If you like.” ADVERTISING Yeah, we would like. And even though Danielle would somewhat misplace priorities and dial back her Losing over the next year, getting less ink because of the distraction of a new baby this past January (she and Ryan now have three children age 5 and under), she made good on her offer, resulting in perhaps the most enjoyable Flushies I’ve been to — and I think I’ve now been to 13 of them. The Nowlins cleared away the furniture in their spacious living and dining rooms and let Elden Carnahan and his fellow Flushies organizers bring in tables and chairs for the potluck lunch, then set up an ad hoc auditorium for the afternoon’s program of awards, song parodies, and a PowerPoint “Leopardy” game devised by emcee Kyle Hendrickson, the current holder of the Most Cantinkerous plaque, for having the most blots of ink (83) without ever having won first prize. The attendance by three Losers in particular made the event especially memorable, and each of them was lauded with a custom-written song, each written in part by parody ace Nan Reiner: First up was the return of Mae Scanlan to in-the-flesh Loserdom after a nasty hospitalization caused her to miss the holiday party in January. For that occasion, Loser Melissa Balmain and Nan penned a rallying pep cheer to Mae’s new pacemaker, set to “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” and those at the party sang it into a camera and sent it off to Mae. It cheered her up so much, Mae said, that she asked for an encore at the Flushies. We happily obliged, with Loser Pianist Steve Honley once again handling keyboard duties. It was my turn, and pleasure, to induct Beverley Sharp as the 10th member of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame; she passed the magic 500-blot mark in February. Beverley and her husband, Dick Amberg, drove up from Montgomery, Ala., to be with us (and to visit others afterward) — and even passed up the invitation to the farewell reunion for her alma mater, the soon-to-close Sweet Briar College, the same day. The crowd laughed heartily at the dozen or so jokes I read from Beverley’s Hall of Fame swag, the booklet comprising all 500 inking entries (a surprising number of them concerning dog poop), and then we joined in with “Wouldn’t It Be Beverley,” written by Brendan Beary and Nan. Hugs ensued. Have you noticed what’s missing from this event? Snark. The sharply caustic wit that characterizes so many Invite entries is put away for the day — at least toward one another. It’s a bit of a secret, but even the most acerbic Losers tend to be teddy bears in person. Then there were the awards for Rookie of the Year — Todd DeLap, at his first Loser event; Most Imporved — Jeff Shirley, who wasn’t able to come up from Richmond; and Least Imporved, to Danielle herself; the annual milestone awards of tossed toilet paper rolls for those who’d reached 50 blots, 100 blots, etc.; and finally for Loser of the Year Frank Osen, the Loser poet turned jokester-of-all-trades, who’d flown in from California and boy were his iambs tired. And Frank was serenaded with — what else — “Little Old Loser From Pasadena.” That wasn’t all the singing: Dave Zarrow and Dave Ferry (visiting from Mississippi) made a partial reunion of the Dueling Loser Band, which played at many an early-years Flushies, and sang several classic-rock parodies with keyboard and guitar, such as “Hotel Where the Brunch Is,” to “Hotel California” (which the Loser crowd sang along with perfectly), and “One Inkblot,” set to the Wallflowers’ “One Headlight” (a little less perfectly). The latter is about managing to score ink in all 23 years of the Invite — something Le Zarrow himself has done, along with several others in the room on Saturday: fellow Hardy Perennials Chuck Smith, Elden Carnahan and Stephen Dudzik, Hall of Famers all. Kyle, known as Loserfest Pope for the elaborate weekend field trips he used to arrange (and says he may again), recruited three eager and able Losers to play his “Leopardy” game: parody master Matt Monitto (who’d driven all the way down from Connecticut), Latin teacher Ann Martin, and librarian Deborah Hensley, spouse of the Invite-ubiquitous Kevin Dopart. The categories in Single Leopardy: L, O, S, E, R. The categories in Double Leopardy: LL, OO, SS, EE, RR. The Final Leopardy answer: I forget. (I also don’t remember who won.) Not only did Kyle put up your standard trivia questions, but some “answers” required the contestants to act out an abstract word charades-style or to draw it on a whiteboard, using a marker embedded in a giant pool noodle. The whole thing would have flopped like a belly hitting pool water if not for the remarkable talents of both the contestants and the guessing audience. But it rocked. Finally, Queen of the Door Prizes Pie Snelson called out the ticket numbers, distributing everything from bacon-flavored lip balm to an artificial nose. But Barack Obama rode back in the car with the Empress and the Royal Consort, for future delivery somehow to Brendan Beary, who’d won him in Week 1120. The Flushies are over for another year (hey, someone else with a house, we’re waiting to hear from you about 2016!) but Loser events continue: This very weekend will be Sarah Gaymon’s Loser Olympics at her home out in Anne Arundel County, and the monthly Loser Brunches resume on Sunday, June 28, at Chadwicks in Old Town Alexandria, near the river, time TBA. As always, we’re always eager to greet new Losers and even just fans of the Invite at the brunches, as well as reconnect with the old-timers. RSVP to Elden here. (I should be able to come to Chadwicks.) Alternative Reality: The Week 1127 contest This week’s new contest was suggested by Jeff Contompasis on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page, and his example was so good that I just lifted it into the Invite. One reason it works so well: It doesn’t concern arcane details of the series; a reader who isn’t very familiar with the show can get the idea right from the joke. In fact, I’ve never watched “Say Yes to the Dress.” Note that you may use old TV shows as well as current ones (handy for those of us whose TV viewing has waned), and of course, funny writing will probably be the key to ink. Rack*tile dysfunction*: The ScrabbleGrams neologisms of Week 1123 *A non-inking entry from Beverley Sharp The Tile Invitational III happened to feature ScrabbleGrams racks that were designed to yield real seven-letter words, while the previous two installments of this contest used the ones that were supposed to have six-letter words. This made no difference whatsoever in the quality or quantity of entries; we had lots of both in Week 1123. Once again, the task of judging was made immeasurably easier by the sorting program devised and run by Loser Jonathan Hardis, which grouped all the entries by tile set, and also removed all the material in the e-mails that wasn’t part of an entry — a task I usually do manually every week. Almost all of the 200-odd entrants followed my direction to include the tile set at the beginning of the entry, and not to insert a line break within an entry (so it wouldn’t break apart in the middle during the sorting process). I think Jonathan or I rescued the violators (e.g., someone who used the letter set as a subhead, then followed it by three separate entries using that letter set), but if I didn’t, I’m not feeling any guilt about it. As usual, I didn’t look up the winners’ names until this past Tuesday, when I was fitting them onto the Invite page; otherwise I’d see how you’d think I was giving a five-ink thank-you note to Danielle Nowlin. And as always, it was exciting to find that a First Offender had written the winning entry; in fact, as far as I can tell, it was Ricardo Rodriguez’s first Invite entry ever. There were a number of entries coining the term “Filefry,” but Ricardo’s was the only one to play on two meanings of “bug.” Ric wins a FirStink for his first ink, along with the Inkin’ Memorial bobblehead, but he’ll have to keep entering if he wants to be a Loser. I sure hope he will. The runners-up, on the other hand, are well-known names to both Invite readers and the Style Invitational Devotees (who are not, I’ve found, entirely overlapping groups): Jeff Shirley continues his recent squatting in the Losers’ Circle, while Dion Black, who’s entered intermittently in the past couple of years, blots up Ink No. 56, and his seventh “above the fold.” And Jeff Contompasis continues his inexorable march toward becoming the next Hall of Fame member as he nears 450 ink-spatters, almost all of it in the past seven or eight years. Another well-known Loser name among this week’s ink-blotters, but it’s a different generation: Adam Beland, the young-adult younger son of Russell, of the 1,500-plus inks (and, if a recent Facebook photo is any indication, the spitting image of his father). Adam himself has 11 blots of ink, but most were joint entries with Dad. Bring it on, Adam — you might end up with one of the odd prizes that Russ donated years and years ago but I’ve never given out, like the Alexander the Great action figure. What Doug dug: Ace copy editor Doug Norwood reports that he “loved the example for the next contest, plus ‘glopess’ [Jeff Contompasis] and both ‘manlace’ definitions, but especially the tattered underwear [Jeff Shirley]. ‘Cellosy’ [also Jeff S.] was clever and ‘ratboil’ [Barry Koch] too.” The deposed Czar of the Style Invitational also weighed in this week, noting that he literally laughed out loud at “glopess,” “ratboil” and Danielle Nowlin’s “penism.” Better re-scramble those — the unprintables: Just a couple this week, and they’re not shockers: ACDILOR => Dicrol: A frankfurter bun (William Kennard) and HILSTXY=> Lixshyt: The scientific name for a fly (Bird Waring) Caption contests, continued As our Week 1126 Bob Staake contest continues, here’s a follow-up to my comments last week on The New Yorker’s contest: I noted that Gene Weingarten had interviewed TNY’s cartoon editor and contest honcho, Bob Mankoff, about duplication of entries, given that thousands of people are writing captions for a single cartoon. Here’s Gene’s latest Below the Beltway column, in which he reveals that his own entry was virtually identical to one of the three finalists. Which counted for bupkis. Sure, go ahead and enter that contest, people. But the Invite is a lot more benevolent. ====================================================================== WEEK 1128, published June 14, 2015 The Style Conversational: Give it a whirl Add to list The Empress on this week’s Style Invitational micro-drone contest and advice-poem results By Pat MyersJune 11, 2015 Jeff Brechlin used to enter The Style Invitational every single week, even when he didn’t have much of an affinity for that week’s contest — and he has the 382 blots of ink to prove it, most famously Ye Olde Hokey Pokey Sonnet , which he sometimes even gets credit for (but usually not ). But lately Jeff, who moved back to his native Minnesota after a few years in the D.C. suburbs, has dropped us a line only sporadically. But he’d recently read an article about the CICADA mini-drones shown off to the public at a recent Defense Department open house, and was inspired to suggest the contest that became Week 1128 , offering a deluge of ideas for how someone (especially an immature someone) might use them. I’ll let Jeff expand on his own ideas and enter the contest himself (suggesters are always welcome to do so), but what I think will be funniest — this is, remember, our goal — are colorful scenarios, not just the jotting of a vague idea. That’s why I gave a 75-word limit for an entry, a large one for the Invite. It certainly may be shorter, and I’ll most likely intersperse “long” and pithy entries. Masticating over the advice poems of Week 1124 Indeed, I got 21 poems about chewing with one’s mouth open that included some form of “masticate.” And while perhaps that’s a word no one should encounter more than once in a sitting, I gave ink to three of them anyway, including an uncharacteristically juvenile contribution from the World Court muckamuck Hugh Thirlway. It’s no surprise that many of the entries took a common tack; that was inevitable since the Loserbards could use one of only five themes of advice, and their poems couldn’t run longer than eight lines. But duplication of ideas isn’t a problem — on my side — for a contest like Week 1124 , because I can simply choose my favorite poem among the variations; they’re distinctive enough not to cancel one another out, as opposed to half a dozen of the same horse name or neologism definition. On the other hand, lots of inkworthy poems among the 600 or so entries were too similar to more fortunate entries to get ink among the 16 poems that will appear in the print Invite or the 11 others added to the online version . The main reason I didn’t ask for advice poems on any topic at all was that this way, I can run the contest again next year (or earlier). Suggestions welcome for new topics! (Write me at losers@washpost.com, with something in your subject line to tip me off.) The entry pool included verses in a Poetry 101’s worth of genres, tailored to the eight-line limit. There were, among others, limericks, haiku, double dactyls, cinquains, truncated sonnets (sonnetinas?) and a short version of a rondeau by Marcus Bales, who earns his FirStink for his first ink but is a prolific poet in various genres, appearing in journals and sharing poems frequently (daily?) on Facebook. Speaking of prolific poets: Yet again the Inkin’ Memorial goes to newly garlanded Loser of the Year Frank Osen, who found all too much inspiration about airplane seats on his flight back to Pasadena after visiting here for the Losers’ Flushies extravaganza (well, maybe it was just a regular vaganza). Jon Gearhart is better known in the Loser Community for his savant-like facility with anagrams — every time someone joins the Style Invitational Devotees , various Devs greet the new member by anagramming the person’s name ... and then Jon shows up with a little paragraph containg half a dozen more permutations. But Jon has gotten ink with song parodies, along with a variety of other contests, so I think it’s time to dub him a Real True Loserbard with his twist on the meaning of “parking brake” (as well as “accident’). Nan Reiner, as usual, inked up the joint with four poems, hitting the 250-blot milestone (including 34 inks “above the fold”), and Mike Gips is also no stranger to the Losers’ Circle, with 21 wins or runners-up among 194 inks. The warning to the passenger in front of you not to recline your airplane seat drew some pretty nasty threats-in-verse; while Beverley Sharp merely promised to slap the recliner’s face, several other Losers warned of nose-breaking, strangulation, skull-bashing, garroting and beheading. Honestly, people. No wonder they serve wine on every flight. (I won’t identify or quote their authors, but they’re free to post their “noinks” on the Devotees page along with everyone else.) If Ogden Nash had had no propriety ... He might have coined a “Natchez” limerick like the following one by Brendan Beary, re “Close Cover Before Striking,” along Nash’s own famous one : A naturist nympho from Natchez, Who’d always been careless with matchez – Not closing the covers – Now sickens her lovers With burn marks around where her snatchez. That’s our Scarlet Letter winner this week, for sure. Next Losers With Forks sighting: Old Town Alexandria, June 28 I should be able to make it to Chadwicks, right near the river, at noon. If the weather is nice, maybe some of us can walk around Old Town before or after. RSVP here . ====================================================================== WEEK 1129, published June 21, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1129: For once, I’ll make spelling count Add to list By Pat MyersJune 18, 2015 The Style Invitational has asked numerous times for poems featuring obscure words, or for ones on obscure topics: For the past 11 years, for example, our Limerixicon contests — which ask for a limerick featuring any word from some given sliver of the dictionary — have yielded verses that included “amplexus” (2004), “coprophiliacs” (2007) and “ecdysiast”(2009). And how about the time in 2005 when we asked for songs about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act; sea urchin sushi; or tungsten, bismuth and*or molybdemum? In fact, this week’s contest — for poems that include words used in this year’s National Spelling Bee — is almost the same as one the Empress ran in May 2007, except that the Week 716 contest offered 75 possible words; today you get to choose among a mere 50. (Fortunately, this week’s list features no words that were in Week 716; I totally forgot to check that.) Here are the top winners from the first spelling bee contest: 4. Oubliette, a dungeon with an opening only in the ceiling: With an old oubliette, one could just forget About terrorists like old Geronimo. So why must the press write of the distress At our new oubliette in Guantanamo? (the late Steve Ettinger) 3. Affliction by leeches -- hirudiniasis: Bloody disgusting, however you spin it. They trigger our deep-seated hygienic biases: But worst is that one of them’s born every minute. (Mark Eckenwiler) 2. Strigil, an ancient Roman tool to scrape dirt and sweat from the body: He comes, he sees, he takes a bath, For he is dirty. Crud he hath. He’s pulled another all-night vigil. Caesar takes his trusty strigil, Scrapes away all grimy matter, Then goes after Cleopatter. (Mae Scanlan) And the Winner of the Inker: Acariasis, a mite infestation: I’m sad to say my grandpa Zacharias is, Alas, no more. The doctor has suggested The cause of death was likely acariasis; With tiny parasites he was infested. The wee arachnids he indulged with bonhomie, For piety was one of his delights; Remembering the book of Deuteronomy, He loved the Lord his God with all his mites. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) While the Loser Community is not composed entirely of excellent spellers — almost every week, I see an entry that misspells “Barack Obama” — in general, of course, it’s a fairly literate bunch. And indeed, at least two Losers did extremely well in National Spelling Bees: 186-time Loser Mark Eckenwiler ended up in sixth place in 1974, earning the Pride of Tulsa a visit to the White House, where young Mark was photographed staring straight into Pat Nixon’s chest; and 16-time Loser Ned Andrews scored the grand prize in 1994, and later wrote a book on how to be a champion speller. Both Mark and Ned are now lawyers and presumably don’t mess up the Latin terms. Or stare directly into women’s chests. By the way, I pulled several of today’s spelling bee words from this entertaining quiz created by USA Today. So you should now get several of them right. ADVERTISING And while I didn’t prepare a list of the meanings of the 50 words, with links to the definitions, I wouldn’t be surprised if such a document appears within a few days on the Devotees page, provided by some in­cred­ibly generous Loser. Listen, it’s really worth joining Facebook (even with a pseudonym) just to join the Devotees, if you’re playing the Invite. Now that The Post’s blogging software is much more useful than it was when we formed the Dev page on Facebook, I was toying with the idea of moving the group back to washingtonpost.com. But The Post’s pages still don’t let commenters share pictures, start their own threads, and do some other things that make the Facebook page so much fun. But some Post people are working on a new project that seems perfect for the Loser Community, and I’ve already made contact with a member of the team. Editties: The winning and Losing truncated song titles of Week 1125 When I posted the Week 1125 contest four weeks ago, I fretted in the Conversational that “I don’t know how many song titles can lose their beginning and*or end to humorous effect.” That very afternoon, Chris Doyle posted on the Style Invitational Devotees page: “Have no worries!” And indeed, the entries had already started flowing in within minutes of my posting the contest, totaling some 2,400 by the end, from nearly 300 entrants. As I noted in the intro to this week’s results, there was a lot of duplication of titles, as well as of ideas. In addition to “Stairway (or [st]airway) to Heave[n],” many entries called “[B]lack Water” the new state song of California. Very few people didn’t follow the rules of the contest; a few took words out of the middle of the song, and a couple of them used the entire title. I enjoyed the variety of songs used; I didn’t link to them because it wasn’t necessary to the joke, except when the description included a short parody and you needed to know the melody. How embarrassing is it that I got to know (and like) the Bangles’ 1989 No. 1 hit “Eternal Flame” only through Jon Gearhart’s “Eternal Flam”? While lots of perennials got ink in Week 1125, the Losers’ Circle didn’t have All The Same Ol’ People, for once. Even second-place finisher Jeff Brechlin, who has 383 blots of ink (and now an even 50 above the fold), has been entering sporadically in recent years. And it’s only the 11th blot for Inkin’ Memorial winner Tom Panther Mellencamp, though it’s also his second win: Tom won an Inker, the Bobble-Linc’s predecessor, in the Week 907 “naming rights” contest, for “the Washington Redskins Defensive Line Center for Nonviolence.” Meanwhile, it’s only the second blot of ink for runner-up Ed Flynn, whose previous ink was in the Week 1097 contest to “clarify” an actual horoscope; Ed translated “A family member or loved one might wish that you would be a little more relaxed than you seem to be” to “Tell this person to **** ***.” And fourth-place Loser Josh Feldblyum, who’s been entering the Invite now and again ever since his tykedom in 2002, and following us as he’s moved from Maryland to Philadelphia to Louisville, grabs his 25th ink, and fourth above the fold. (There were quite a few unprintable song titles; I include some at the bottom of this column. If you think you might want to complain about off-color humor, please don’t read them.) Bury the hatchet (in my head) at the Loser Brunch June 28 I’ll be at Chadwicks in Old Town Alexandria, Va., at noon a week from Sunday, and Loser Nan Reiner tells me she’s coming with this prize. Have at me. As always, we’re always eager to meet new Losers (or even just Invite fans) and reconnect with the long-timers. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org (click at the top on “Our Social Engorgements”). SINGING THE BLUE[s]: Unprintable entries from Week 1129 Even the no-way stuff had duplication this week. Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come [Home]: Plea from a frustrated Mona Bailey (Neal Starkman, plus similar ones from a couple of others) Feel this Mom[ent]: An ode to MILFs. (Laurie Brink) Sweet Baby Jam[es]: A taste sensation, but what is the source of the sublime flavor? (Jeff Brechlin and several similar) Down in the Ho[le]: Least likely entry to get ink this week. (Roger Dalrymple) [D]ream On: Common, though generally unattributed, song in countless adult films. (Rob Huffman) Into the Great Wide O[pen]: Stedman’s job. (Amy Harris) [Another] Somebody Done Somebody [Wrong Song]: Parents come home early to a suspicious odor. (Jeff Brechlin, who’s just on a roll today) [Rain]drops Keep Fallin’ on My Head: Also known as “The Bukakke Song.” (who else but Tom Witte) ====================================================================== WEEK 1130, published June 28, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1130: What IS that cartoon? Take your pic. To me, a lot of the fun in cartoon captions lies with the variety (Cartoons by Bob Staake for The Washington Post; see bit.ly*invite1130 for the winning captions) By Pat MyersJune 25, 2015 We’re starting off this week’s online Style Invitational with the results rather than the new contest (they’re side by side in print): For one thing, the art at the top of the page comprises the four Bob Staake cartoons whose captions we share today. But also they’re really funny. While many of this week’s winners — especially those for Picture 1, the painter — would be funny in their own right as stand-alone captions, I always enjoy sharing several captions (sometimes a dozen per cartoon) that have widely differing interpretations for a single picture. Picture 4, especially: We have Hitler’s mustache, of course, but also Oliver Hardy’s. Not to mention a hula skirt, Satan’s bangs, tassels from pasties, and a Yorkie hanging from a towel ring. I think this makes the Invite’s caption results that much more fun to read than the big-deal caption contest from The New Yorker, whose editors post three finalists for one cartoon, and then invite readers to vote for the winner. Speaking of! This very week, 30-time Loser Kathy El-Assal is one of The New Yorker’s three finalists. You have till June 28 to vote for her caption here (remember to click “Submit” at the bottom). If she wins, she’ll join Gary Crockett and Jay Shuck in the baby pool of New Yorker-winning Losers. There was more duplication than usual in the Invite this time around (perhaps because I used only four cartoons this time, rather than the five to seven we’ve used in many of our 50 or so past caption contests). Both Picture 1 and Picture 4 drew numerous captions about selfies; and as I mentioned in the intro to the results, Wonder Woman and “the buck stops here” inspired dozens of entries among the 1,500 or so that I received. Lots also about carless drivers (I went with Ward Kay’s dig at Bing) and dozens with “the %#@*& stops here.” (It’s not a problem on the print page, but unfortunately the captions for Pictures 3 and 4 end up far from the pictures themselves online. I suggest right-clicking on the art, then selecting “Open in new tab”; then you can toggle back and forth between cartoon and caption.) Not all that often, a winning caption convinces you that Bob Staake must have had that joke in mind all along (though I guarantee he didn’t). This week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner, Jeff Shirley’s “put it in cursive,” has that rightness. Though Jeff didn’t start entering the Invite until Week 1005, he now is pushing 90 blots of ink (most scored in the past year or so), including 13 “above the fold.” And it’s his second Inkin’ Memorial; the first was from Week 1032, in which he discovered satanic messages in the aggressively wholesome comic “The Family Circus”: F is the sixth letter of the alphabet; assigning the other proper numbers gives you F+A+M+I+L+Y = 6+1+13+9+12+25 = 66! There are 6 letters in CIRCUS. So: FAMILY CIRCUS: 666! Now, look at the hidden message in the members of this “wholesome” family: GrandMa; JeffY Dolly; BARfy; Kittycat; BiLly; P.J.: Peter JOhn; GRanDdad: MY DARK LORD! Jeff Hazle was one of a half-dozen Losers who identified the serene lady in Cartoon 3 as Hillary Clinton, but his timely wordplay was the cleverest by far. Jeff has an especially high above-the-fold ratio, with 11 of his 52 blots of ink finishing in the Losers’ Circle. I do hope that Jeff doesn’t derive too much pleasure from shooting flies dead with his prize. Roger Dalrymple scores with the trick — we always have at least one example of this — of noticing some interesting detail of the picture, in this case that the lady in Picture 3 has breasts identical to her eyelids. (Actually, a few others noted this, but Roger tied them together with the idea of plastic surgery.) By the way, Roger once again will be leading his battlefield tour after the annual Gettysburg Loser Brunch (maybe I should make that “Loser Brunch of Gettysburg,” since you don’t have to be affiliated with the Confederate Army to attend). That outing is scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 16; we usually carpool up there from the D.C. area. Stay tuned for more details. And Danielle Nowlin scores yet another Loser Mug or Grossery Bag by going the pithy route with Cartoon 2, edging out many other entries joking on the pronunciation of the name on the plate. Laugh Out of Courtney: Copy chief Courtney Rukan is back from vacation and sent me a long list of faves for Week 1126: “Among the top four, Roger Dalrymple’s third-place entry made me laugh out loud. Dirty, dirty mind,” Courtney says. Courtney also singled out John Burton’s “Make a PROFIT, Muhammad” (“very clever – and ballsy”); Sylvia Betts’s “do not wipe off the numbers”; Robyn Carlson’s joke about the artist’s two missing ears (also noted by several); Andrew Hoenig’s Weiner joke; Dudley Thompson’s about Mrs. Whistler; Frank Osen’s “Wingdings font”; Mike Gips’s foulmouthed Bert of “Sesame Street”; the doubly credited “hoverbroad” for Picture 3; the Bride of the Invisible Man, by Bird Waring (and also Bird’s “Satan grows bangs”); Mark Raffman’s boob tassel and appendectomy scar; and Larry McClemons’s horeshoe*toothbrush. I can see that if Courtney had my job, she’d spend as much time as I do fretting over what should get ink. What Doug Dug: “All the winners were great,” ace copy editor Doug Norwood agrees correctly. Doug also gave shout-outs to the Bert entry and to Todd DeLap’s on Truman’s middle name; Ward Kay’s Bing zinger; and Doug Frank’s “fade-off Hitler.” There’s just one great unprintable entry this week, but it’s a doozy; see the bottom of this page only if you aren’t going to be upset by callous tastelessness. Encore! Another go at the foreign-phrase pun contest It’s almost a running joke about how reluctant I am to try a new contest that someone suggests, and in 2011 (possibly earlier) I gave the standard reasons to Loser Malcolm Fleschner for why his idea for a foreign-phrase contest wouldn’t work: It would be too obscure, everyone would use the same phrases, etc. Of course, the Week 936 contest was a huge hit. And even though Chris Doyle didn’t remember it when suggesting it recently as a new idea (given that he’s entered perhaps 800 Invite contests, I’ll give him a pass), it produced one of my favorite sets of results. If you’re entering Week 1130, do look at the results of Week 936 so you don’t send the same joke. The top winners that week: The winner of the Inker: Cogito ergo bum: Sudden realization of graduating philosophy majors. (Greg Deye, Kensington, a First Offender) 2. Altar ego: “I do, and so does she.” (Jim Reagan, Herndon, Va.) 3. Après moi le deluxe: My wife’s run off with a millionaire. (Barrie Collins, Long Sault, Ontario) 4. Bon voltage: What you wish a homeowner as the sky grows dark and the wind whips up. (Robert Schechter, Dix Hills, N.Y.) In case people didn’t know one or two of the actual foreign phrases, I embedded a link to a definition or use of each one in the online version. I’ll do that again. You don’t have to do it with your entry; in fact, please don’t embed any links within entries, because when I combine all the entries, the links turn into long strings of garbly text right in the middle of your prose. Anyway, if I can’t figure out the original from your alteration, it’s probably too wildly altered. What counts as foreign? If the expression came from another language, it’s okay, even if it’s also been an English term for a long time, like “alter ego.” So you have lots and lots to use — even the same phrases used in Week 936, if your joke is entirely different. Dine to meet you: Come to the Loser Brunch this Sunday Various Losers and I are heading for Chadwicks pub, near the river in Old Town Alexandria, for brunch at noon on Sunday. Right now, it’s a pretty intimate gathering, and so we can definitely fit in other brunchers. Here’s the pretty extensive brunch menu; the food is good. RSVP to Elden Carnahan so we’ll know how big a table to save. The Scarlet Cartoon A number of people spelled out various profanities that constituted the name in Picture 2, but the Scarlet Letter this week goes to another one for the same picture, alluding to something missing from the man’s body: “Of course this is the Thalidomide Resource Center, you twit.” Thank you, Jack McBroom. Or not. ====================================================================== WEEK 1131, published July 5, 2015 The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over the new contest and results By Pat Myers July 2, 2015 Talk about recycling: We’ve actually done a contest like Week 1131 before! Twice! Sort of. In one of the Empress’s very first contests, Week 550 (March 2004), the E asked for ideas to reuse, singly or in combination, these things “or other disposable household thingies”: Plastic milk jugs; those little rectangular bread bag closures; Washington Post plastic delivery bags; AOL sign-up CDs that come in the mail [remember those?]; coffee cans; packing peanuts; worn-out disposable razors. Week 550 is particularly dear to my heart because of one entry that wasn’t even above the fold: Worried at that early stage of my Empress-ship that I’d be called self-indulgent, I gave only an honorable mention to this work of art by Loser Kevin Mellema — an actual gallery-shown artist — incorporating every one of the materials listed. I forgot how Kevin delivered it to the newsroom, but a Post photographer put it on a Corinthian pedestal for display in the Invite (fortunately on a day we could use color). Kevin plastic milk jug for the face, a disposable razor for the nose, a sheared coffee can for the crown, plastic Post delivery bags for the hair, the middles of CDs for the eyes (this is really where Kevin’s artistic skill is evident; if I had cut those eyes, I guarantee they wouldn’t have had that compelling expression); bread clips for the earrings; and green as well as packing peanuts inside the jug to lend a interesting skin tone. I clearly robbed Kevin of an Inker, although the winner, by Anthony “Bird” Waring, was pretty cool, too: “Stand an empty coffee can on the ground. Prop two chopsticks against the can and a third one across the mouth. Glue a CD covered with duck sauce to the top chopstick. The mouse crawls up a chopstick and onto the CD for the duck sauce. The CD flips over, sending the mouse into the can, trapped by the CD on top. The world beats a path to your door.” But Kevin’s definitely had it over this runner-up from Scott Campisi, even though it contained such lovely sweat socks. And four years ago, in Week 909, we asked you to repurpose some Invite swag, among other things: the lnker, a Loser T-shirt, the Loser mug, a Loser magnet, the FirStink air “freshener,” pantyhose with a run, old National Geographics, a handful of pennies, a charger for your previous cellphone, one perfectly good shoelace, and tattered underwear. By then, obviously, I was no longer worried about being overly self-referential, and Kevin Dopart got an Inker for an arrangement featuring two of them. (I’m glad he didn’t create some tattered undwear for them.) Actually, we did a third recycling contest, but it didn’t work with a list of objects: Week 654 was in honor of Earth Day 2006 and invited recycling of anything except old Style Invitational entries. The results were topped by these four useful ideas: 4. Some people throw away their shredded financial records, and I’ve found you can make them into challenging jigsaw puzzles. Plus, once you finish them, you can sell them to this guy I know. (Russell Beland) 3. The White House could use the old Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, to reassure us about winning the war. (Yoyo Zhou) 2. Little paper circles from office hole-punchers could be tossed at newlywed bureaucrats. (Jay Shuck) And the Winner of the Inker: Use old prisons as office buildings. It’s a nice, secure environment for employees -- and they have restrooms right in their cubicles. (Dave Prevar) For Week 1131, I’m expecting written descriptions of the ideas for reusing the industrial products listed on RepurposedMaterialsInc.com, but it’s certainly fun to show a graphic, if it’s presentable enough. You can send a photo or other graphic as an attachment or as a link to a website where it can be downloaded, but do me a favor and, on the e-mail, say, “see this link,” “see attachment,” etc. That way, if I’m seeing your entry as raw text, which is what happens when I combine the entries into one big list, I’ll know to go back to your e-mail and take a look. Nutwork programming*: The results of Week 1127 *One of the few Week 1127 submissions by Mark Raffman that DIDN’T get ink. It’s no secret to Invite regulars that I watch almost no TV, myself; 26 years of working nights, combined with a reluctance to schedule time to watch recorded shows the next day, have left me totally out of the practice of sitting down on the couch and clicking the remote. Thanks to Netflix, in recent years the Royal Consort and I did fill in a bit of our TV-ignorance vacuum by working our way through “The Wire,” “Sherlock,” “The West Wing” and episodes from a few other series, but still, my knowledge of current TV tends to be secondhand. But as in most Invite contests, superficial knowledge is all you need to get the joke; when your audience is as broad as ours, thoroughly inside humor tends not to work anyway. And I this week’s results don’t require more than the most passing familiarity with the show — and sometimes not even that. Since I asked for spinoffs, not just our frequent “change the title and redefine,” I don’t think I used any entries that were totally unrelated to the content of the original show, such as “As the World Terminates: Reviews the disastrous effects of mankind on the environment.” Because it’s more fun to get a joke that hasn’t been explained to you, but also because it’s no fun not to get a joke at all, I published some of the answers in two ways: In the print version, I first name the show that Kevin’s “Pitcher, Houston Astro” is based on; online, I link to it from the title. I don’t know anything about the viewing habits of Mark Raffman (except that he watches Nationals games), but he certainly went to town in Week 1127, winning the Inkin’ Memorial, a runner-up and two honorable mentions (and there were more entries on my shortlist). Mark has amassed more than 230 blots of ink in only three years, so the corporate lawyer from suburban Virginia is clearly destined for the Invitational Hall of Fame, assuming that we’re both around for that 500th ink. Mark’s juggernaut echoes but doesn’t quite match that of Kevin Dopart, who will mark his first decade with the Invite in October. Even though Kevin’s astonishing ink-snarfing rate has settled down a bit in the past couple of years, he’ll average more than 100 blots of ink in each of those first 10 Loser years. (As we speak, Kevin on his family’s annual vacation in Greece; perhaps he’ll be bringing back some drachmas as a prize.) In much saner realms, but certainly no slouch in the Invite department, Rob Cohen gets his third above-the-fold ink and his 38th blot overall. .Laughed Out of Courtney: Copy chief Courtney Rukan says she liked all the top winners, “as well as the contest’s spirit animal, ‘The Cosby Show: SVU,’ by Bird Waring. She also enjoyed “ERR” (Jason Russo), “Crib Your Enthusiasm” (Mark Raffman), “Open Sesame” Street (Bruce Carlson), “Survivor: Gilligan’s Island” (Warren Tanabe) and Leave IT to Beaver” (Jeff Contompasis). But Rob Huffman wins my heart with the most subtle and deadpan entry of the week (“Jeopardy!” spun off to “Jeopardy.” With Stephen Wright.) It’s so subtle, in fact, that I read over it at first before the “Reservoir Dogs” voice popped into my head. Brilliant!” Next Loser Sighting: Sunday, July 19 It’s at Moose Creek Steakhouse, a.ka. the restaurant at the College Park Holiday Inn. Time TBA at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). They at least used to have a breakfast buffet, and that was pretty good. Right off the Beltway, plenty of free parking, and Ikea is right next door. Have a happy Fourth, everyone! ====================================================================== WEEK 1132, published July 12, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1132: Avocado’s Number — a parody by 4 Losers The guacamole-with-pea ‘controversy’ breeds a quickie collaborative classic By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 9, 2015 It’s an era of celebrity chefs and a food-fad culture in which restaurants try to outdo one another in weird culinary combinations, topping hamburgers with pumpkin-apple chutney or spreading beet puree on a steak. But a week ago, some of the bigger mouths on social media decided that novel food preparations should absolutely*not* extend to adding peas to guacamole. Perhaps it was the tone of the tweet that the New York Times posted July 1 with a link to its recipe: “Add green peas to your guacamole. Trust us.” Maybe people just resent being ordered around by some snotty Manhattanite. Or perhaps the tweeters were once again engaging in that sheepy junior high behavior of piling on because the Cool Kids have proclaimed some hapless target Something To Hate, like Nickelback or the word “moist.” Or maybe people really, really*are* wedded to a classic guacamole recipe and felt a need to protest any alteration to it without even trying the result. Whatever, the Twitterverse swiftly declared the recipe an utter outrage — joined in by @POTUS himself. In fact, in an astonishing show of bipartisanship, he was seconded by both @JebBush and even @TexasGOP . Of course, such an important issue could not remain unaddressed by Loserdom. Marcus Bales, an extremely prolific and clever poet who posts a new poem every day on Facebook — and who just recently got his FirStink from the Invite — posted this poem to the 950-member Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook the next day: *My Mother Said* *I’d like to cut this in a frieze and make it holy: the world is wide, and you should seize the high and lowly equally, and be at ease not being solely offended by what chalk or cheese seems trolled or trolly. Always try what’s offered, please — perhaps, though, slowly — even if they’ve put green peas in guacamole.* Marcus’s poem, which eloquently refused to jump onto the hate-it bandwagon, drew numerous “likes” from his fellow Devotees, along with the usual string of supportive wisecracks that usually follow a creative post on the page. But then the bar was raised. The same day, Barbara Sarshik — one of The Style Invitational’s ace song parodists — posted in the comments thread an anti-guac-pea verse set to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” ): *The President and I agree. We hate the brand new recipe For adding green peas into guacamole. So let us rise up with Barack Against this outrage to our guac. We’ll protest from Pomona to Paoli! Guacamole, guacamole. Guacamole, guacamole.* Then Barbara graciously added a line that must have been music to many a Loser’s ears: “Anyone can feel free to add more verses.” That evening, the amazing Nan Reiner offered up a pro-pea Verse 2 in response: *Nay, I must stand with Ms. Michelle;* *Nutrition-wise, we won’t do well* *To snack on chips and avocado solely.* *To get your kids to eat their greens,* *Each mother knows just what that means:* *You have to camouflage the flavors wholly.* *Don’t get slowly roly-poly!* *Calorie-lowly guacamole.* By the next morning, Mark Raffman — yet another parody winner and a collaborator with Nan on parodies for the Losers’ holiday parties and Flushies awards — had dipped his Tostito into the mix: *In Mexico, they all agree,* *In guac, put not one single pea;* *They’d rather get a bad case of E. coli.* *They’re furious, the hate’s intense,* *They talk of putting up a fence,* *To keep away the recipe unholy!* *Guacamole, guacamole,* *They’d control the guacamole.* Not to be outdone, Marcus Bales — the prolific poet who’d started the thread with his non-parody verse — joined the song with his objection to the traditional recipe: *Cilantro’s really awful, though — Those Mexicans, what do they know? I ask sincerely, not just merely drolly. If they can make it taste like soap, They can’t object to sweet peas — nope, Don’t put cilantro in the guacamole!* *Guacamole, guacamole...* Then the irrepressible Nan came back with another stanza — and in classic Invite fashion, it played off the political headlines: *And then along came Donald Trump (His toupee blowing in a clump) And said, “Beware of cooking Mexico-ly. There’s drugs and rape among that food! (Of course, some Mexican is good.) I’ll stick to ham and cheese with some aioli, Sipping slowly on some Stoli. Keep your lowly guacamole.”* Marcus supplied the last word on this fabulous impromptu compilation: *It seems as if it’s always best To use the democratic test To make the guacamole aproposly. The anti-pea and -cilantro crowd Are both unmovable and loud, So careful what you put in guacamole. Guacamole, guacamole. Guacamole, guacamole.* (Marcus eventually posted an all-Marcus full-length version about the whole kerfuffle. You can see it on his Facebook page .) For what it’s worth, I bet the peas are fine. On my regular lunch rotation is a “skinny guacamole” that I make by chopping up a zucchini, microwaving it till it’s soft (five or six minutes), then mashing it up with an avocado plus the usual lime juice, garlic, onion and hot sauce. It takes about 10 minutes in all to make. It has something like 75 percent fewer calories than the classic mix (and that’s not even counting sour cream) and is so tasty that I’ll eat a bowl of it with a spoon. Soldier: A bill of goods — the Week 1132 contest We’ve done so many fictoid contests by now that there’s even a page of them on Elden Carnahan’s Loser site nrars.org . (That page contains links to the*announcement* of each contest; to read the results, go to Elden’s Master Contest List and search on the week number of the contest you’re looking for; in the *right* column, the week number is a link to the week with the results. Now that Elden is newly retired from A Government Agency We Cannot Mention, perhaps he’ll add the results links to the Fictoid and other theme pages, so you don’t have to go back and forth.) Anyway, as always, the point is to spoof the trivia genre by making up something that sounds sort of like a factoid, but is (a) not true and (b) making a joke. Just (a) is not enough, people. The “military” theme is deliberately wide-ranging. It can be about wars, about military life, people, sites — I can’t see myself saying “But this isn’t the contest” unless there’s no connection at all. Our little dronies*: The results of Week 1128 **A non-inking entry from Jeff Contompasis.* Among the many genres of humor we call for in the Invite, most involve wordplay of some sort. But some are what I lump together as “jokes” — essentially standup comedy writing. That’s where I’d classify Week 1128, our contest for novel uses for one or a swarm of CICADAs, the new pocket-size(ish), low-cost stealth drones developed by the Navy. Contests calling for both creativity and writing tend to generate fewer entries than contests in which you work from a list and combine elements, move some letters around, etc., and sure enough, Week 1128 had perhaps our smallest entry pools this year, though some Losers gushed forth with full lists of suggestions for mischief with the little whirlies. For the second week in a row, this week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner was a runner-up as well (funny how this hardly ever happened back when the Czar and Empress had the entrants’ names in front of them when they were judging). Last week it was Mark Raffman with the TV spinoffs; this time it’s Lawrence McGuire, for his sixth win and 188th (and 189th) ink. Lawrence lives in the next town over from me here in Northern Southern Maryland, and I’ll be going to Waldorf anyway this Saturday, so Lawrence just might see some odd little creature placing a little box on his doorstep. Danielle Nowlin has shown her flair for comedy, as well as life-in-suburbia humor, many times in the Invite during her couple of years with us, and did it to miniature-sushi -winning effect this week, earning her Inks 166 and 167. Meanwhile, Danielle — the mom of an infant and two kidlets — shared this this morning on Facebook: “Note to self: Jokingly referring to the playpen as a ‘baby cage’ while you are setting it up will cause your older children to yell ‘ARE WE PUTTING THE BABY IN HIS CAGE WHEN WE GET HOME?’ while you are in public. #truestory” Note where fourth-place winner Mark Asquino is from! But he’s not just writing from Equatorial Guinea, a peanut of a nation nestled in that corner just below where West Africa juts out. Mark is the U.S. *ambassador* to E.G., which happens to be, per capita, the richest country in Africa, because it has oil. (Its citizens, alas, don’t tend to see the riches.) This is Mark’s 11th ink and his second “above the fold” since he started entering the Invite (now and then) since Week 900. *Laugh Out of Courtney:* Copy chief Courtney Rukan says she found Lawrence McGuire’s winner “hilarious” and added that Judy Blanchard’s “pithy brevity is lovely” in her two inking entries. Courtney also pegged Kevin Dopart’s Seder trick; Mark Raffman’s housefly substitute; Doug Frank’s Santa monitor; Warren Tanabe’s “HICKADA” on little cinder blocks; and the two last entries, Todd DeLap’s jab at the ’Skins and Ken Gallant’s smart idea about what everyone else would (and did) send in. ====================================================================== WEEK 1133, published July 19, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1133: Get your hahas out. And also your ahas. The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 16, 2015 Before I get to this week’s stuff: There’s a*Loser brunch this very weekend, * at noon this Sunday at the Moosewood Steak House, which is the restaurant in the College Park Holiday Inn, which is immediately outside the Beltway at U.S. 1, next door to Ikea. It might be a buffet. RSVP here to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website. We’ve had some fun brunches here in the past; people who live on the Maryland side of the Beltway and points north, here’s a convenient chance to do something Loserly. All are welcome, even you. -- You gotcher VIVO Style Invitational inventory this week: *Verse In, Verse Out. * In an otherwise not-so-great piece in The Atlantic this week titled “Why Do Puns Make People Groan?” — it’s pegged to the current*equivalent* of a groan, the snarky putdown on Twitter, which is now evidently the thing to tweet when someone tweets a pun — the author does cite an absolutely perfect phrase describing humor that’s more clever than laugh-out-loud funny, that prompts “Ah, I see what you did there,” rather than a gut-reaction guffaw: “They’re more about getting an ‘Aha!’ rather than a ‘Haha!’ ” That doesn’t, of course, explain why people should groan or otherwise denigrate puns. I can see why people denigrate*bad* puns, like the pathetically lame ones the author writes himself (“The reactions are the pun-der that comes after the lightning of the joke.” — gawd). Anyway, I just love the “aha*haha” line, which he pulled from, of all things, the title ofa psychology paper whose subtitle is “A Direct Comparison of Humor to Nonhumorous Insight for Determining the Neural Correlates of Mirth.” And while this week’s contest and results don’t center on puns, they do exemplify the part of Invitedom that skews more aha than haha — as opposed to, say, Your Mama jokes. Yeah, so? I*like* aha! Nothing wrong with having to respond with your head rather than your belly. It’s good to have both. And I think you’ll find lots of neural correlates of mirth inthis week’s spelling-bee-poem results , as well as these winning and Losing clerihews of Week 134, from October 1995. Wow, note all the Footnotes to History in the names below — especially figures in the O.J. Simpson case — who get ’hewed; my predecessor, the Czar, valued current-events humor as much as the Empress does. Note that the Week 134 contest does not include Week 1133’s rule (added by request to honor the tradition of the form) that the name must be at the end of the first line, to rhyme with the second line: *Fourth Runner-Up:* *Ross Perot,* jeez, His ears look like boiled pirogis. His voice is as shrill as a barking Chihuahua. It makes me want to turn on “20*20” and listen to Barbara Walters. (Joel Knanishu, Hyattsville) *Third Runner-Up*: *Socrates* Considered drinking antifreeze But decided on another poison, which he sucked up like a Greek-philosopher-Hoover, Which today, of course, we call the Hemlock Maneuver. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) *Second Runner-Up:* *Heath Shuler, *the multimillion-dollar quarterback, was a high draft pick, His greedy holdout made me sick. ThenGus’s star arose, And Megabucks is on the bench, picking splinters and his nose. (Jack Shreve, Kensington) *First Runner-Up:* Anyone who has heard the rock-and-roll singing of action star*Bruce Willis* Knows what shrill is. His whole notes howl, his half-notes warp and waver, But he’s been known to make a lovely Demi semi-quaver. (David Smith, Greenbelt) *And the winner of the Newfoundland lobster trap:* If the presidential race were to be enlivened by the candidacy of retired Gen. *Colin Powell,* He would run real hard and never throw in the towel, But what if his platform is rudely challenged as vague and overly elastic? Would Colin go spastic? (Jerry Belenker, Silver Spring) *Honorable Mentions:* Assistant District Attorney *Marcia Clark*, of variable coif, Tried her case but couldn’t pull it off. While defender Johnnie Cochran “played the card” and “talked the talk,” A silent O.J. “walked the walk.” (Joseph A. Pappano, Washington) Would I be worried if I were*Paula Barbieri* ? Very. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) *Caspar Weinberger *was Ronald Reagan’s secretary of defense. Did you ever get one of those ideas in your head that doesn’t make any sense? For example, when I see Cap on TV, I get this mental picture that I just can’t ignore, no matter what I do, I think: Dustin Hoffman at 72. (Greg Arnold, Herndon) *Christopher Columbus *thought he’d met his acid test: To find the East Indies he sailed far out into the west. “I’ve found them!” he cried at last, his confidence unshaken, He was mistaken. (William Bradford, Washington) When you’ve a name like *John F. Kennedy Jr.* The expectations could be enough to ruin ya Especially if folks expected to hear between yer Lines the voice of John F. Kennedy Sr. (David Smith, Greenbelt) It’s a shame that *Packy* got the boot. Although if he’d asked me I could have told the dumb galoot That it’s foolish enough to screw the girls and write about it in your diary, But to screw the good ol’ boys instead is sheer suiciary. (Mimi Herman, Baltimore) *Napoleon Bonaparte,* in his final St. Helena days, Was beset with cliches. Imagine some wag saying, “Face it, Nappie, you’re through” At last you’ve met your Waterloo. (William Bradford, Washington) Detective *Mark Fuhrman* Displayed sentiments which one would normally expect from a 1930s German . . . (Paul Briggs, Chestertown) Verily, the parking of*Stephanopoulos,* Doth parallel the laws of Darwin articulated after years of study in the Galapagos: When naturally selected, thou has a right to ignore the cars thou hittest, It’s survival of the fittest. (Phyllis Fung, Bruce Feiler, Andy Cowan, Washington) *Colin Powell* Is an entrant’s dream because his last name rhymes with bowel, And his first name Is a homonym for the same. (Joseph Romm, Washington) *And last:* Chuck Smith and poop Go together like sandwich and soup ... (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) --- Pretty clever*and*funny, I say. If the “aha” of poetry contest winners comes from recognizing the craft — the skill and ingenuity involved in forming a perfectly scanning sonnet or limerick or song parody — then the clerihews will provide less of that, since we say that they*don’t*scan well. So there has to be more “haha” to compensate. How to do that? Part of the fun of clerihews is that that they scan so terribly — they’re at heart a spoof of serious poems — but that joke goes only so far; the content has to be funny as well. Also, note the clever ways that the poems rhyme: While they all do rhyme, some of the rhymes come from comical stretches, like David Smith’s “John F. Kennedy Jr.”* “enough to ruin ya” and, most hilariously, Joel Knanishu’s “chihuahua”*“Barbara Walters.” It’s not a clerihew, but Ogden Nash’s breakout hit “Springtime Comes to Murray Hill” comes to mind as the epitome of spoofing lofty poetry with creative rhymes and deliberate meter-flouting. If you’ve never heard Nash read his own poetry, listen to him do this one in his full-blown Long Island Lockjaw accent: *Spring Comes to Murray Hill (1930) * I sit in an office at 244 Madison Avenue And say to myself You have a responsible job havenue? Why then do you fritter away your time on this doggerel? If you have a sore throat you can cure it by using a good goggeral, If you have a sore foot you can get it fixed by a chiropodist, And you can get your original sin removed by St. John the Bopodist, Why then should this flocculent lassitude be incurable? Kansas City, Kansas, proves that even Kansas City needn’t always be Missourible. Up up my soul! This inaction is abominable. Perhaps it is the result of disturbances abdominable. The pilgrims settled Massachusetts in 1620 when they landed on a stone hummock. Maybe if they were here now they would settle my stomach. Oh, if I only had the wings of a bird Instead of being confined on Madison Avenue I could soar in a jiffy to Second or Third. *DITSY SPELLS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1129* **A non-inking alternative headline by Brendan Beary* At least a couple hundred of us know some 50 more words than we did four weeks ago; the only ones on the Week 1129 list of spelling bee words that I’d ever used were “pyrrhuloxia” (the bird on the same page as the cardinal in the field guide) and “minhag” (what determines your choice to stand or sit during a certain prayer in the Jewish service). I’m pretty sure that every word on the list was used in some entry or other. As usual, some people didn’t follow the explicit directions in the contest — “the poems have to make sense with the words’ true meanings; you can’t just pretend they mean something else” — but most people made at least some connection with the actual definition. As in the similar Limerixicon contest (coming next month!), in which you have to write a limerick that features a word from a given sliver of the dictionary, some of the entries defined the word accurately in verse form, but didn’t make much (or any) of a joke while doing so, and so didn’t get ink. All of this week’s inking poems did, of course, topped by four Loserbards who’ve blotted up industrial-size inkwells in Invitational poetry contests over the years. I delete the ID information from the week’s entries before I judge them en masse, but I had guessed that the week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner was by Chris Doyle. Chris, of course, is the No. 1 Loser in History, with a particular specialty in highly structured poetry like double dactyls. But we have lots of good double-dactyl writers. The reason I guessed it was Chris is that the 71-year-old retired actuary* ballroom dancer* soccer player* world traveler was most likely familiar with Iggy Azalea. In previous years he’s given us parodies not just of Frank Sinatra and Patsy Cline songs, but also of Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok.” Hey, this marks Chris’s FIFTIETH win! (Second in the win department: Brendan Beary with 34.) Our Glasgow Bureau, Stephen Gold, wins the books (mercifully easy to ship) with his adorable “ ‘die’ in ‘diet’” verse using “cibarial.” Stephen began Inviting seven years ago in the Limerixicon, and has dropped by with his poems and song parodies to score 47 inks since then — nine of them “above the fold.” I would have been shocked had the brilliantly funny “Under D.C.” parody *not*been by Nan Reiner, who among our Loserbards takes particular glee in writing about local issues; before she retired, Nan was for many years a prosecutor for the D.C. government. Nice touch of Nan — who’s back in Florida tending to her ailing mother — to dress up in a lei to make her selfie video performing the “Little Mermaid” spoof for the word “hooroosh.” And then there’s the consistently delightful Melissa Balmain, whose husband is hoping like mad that people won’t think her “hippocrepiform” poem was about him. Of course it wasn’t — it was a “Dear John” letter, and Melissa’s husband is named Bill. *Laugh Out of Courtney: * The fave this week of copy chief Courtney Rukan was Nan’s parody (“I am a total sucker for Sebastian – and knocks on Metro”), followed by Chris’s I-G-G-Y. She also singled out Mae Scanlan’s terrific limerick for “collutorium” — of all our Loserbards’ poetry, Mae’s reminds me most of Ogden Nash — as well as Chris’s “tartarean* grammarian” couplet. See you next week! ====================================================================== WEEK 1134, published July 26, 2015 Style Conversational: Inside information on the word-in-word contest The Style Invitational Empress discusses the week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 23, 2015 The not totally forgotten Czar of The Style Invitational had been pestering me since May to do another “air quotes” contest. “I always loved that, because of its purity,” he recalled wistfully (he’s always wisting all over the place). “It’s like anagrams, in that you are simply using what is there.” Well, that’s not totally true, since this contest has always asked for a definition or description to go with the word-inside-word, and that’s often what won the ink. (See Jonathan Paul’s definition of “h‘airball’ ” below.) But it’s emphatically true that the four previous installments of this contest have yielded big steaming vats of great ink, and I’m confident there will be at least a few dozen blots more in Week 1134. I don’t want to repeat past jokes, of course, so if you’re going to enter, take a few minutes to read the results in the links below — not exactly a punishment, in my book. Since each week’s column begins with the announcement of the new contest, just scroll down to see the results. The links are to text files on Loser Elden Carnahan’s uber-useful Master Contest List and won’t count against The Post’s paywall, or monthly limit of free articles. *Week 336 (aka Week III), February 2000* . [After the Invitational went on hiatus in the summer of 1999, the Czar brought it back early in 2000 with a Roman-numeral system. This lasted for CLXII weeks, passing through weeks like CXLVIII, until in March 2003 the Czar regained his senses and resumed with Week 496, which was indeed the 496th contest. Elden sensibly went back and gave Arabic numbers to the Roman weeks.] *Week 405 (Week LXXII), June 2001 * *Week 826, August 2009* *Week 1031, July 2013 * For those not inclined to read over those contests, here’s a sampling of the “above the fold” winners and some honorable mentions: As always, you may send in the same word as long as your own description is a totally different joke from the one that’s already inked. **From Week 1031:* * Linke“din”: A thousand .connection requests from people you’ve never heard of. (Mike Gips) M“ale”: What’s inside a guy after a night of too much drinking; fe“male”: What’s inside a girl after a night of too much drinking. (Lela Martin) [I received a complaint about this entry, charging that I thought rape was funny.] Compe“nsa”tion: Fringe benefit entitling one to a multiweek stay at the Moscow airport. . (Yuki Henninger) B“eh”ind: An unimpressive posterior. (Denise Sudell) Au“tomato”n: She looked so hot yet turned out so cold. (Mae Scanlan) **From Week 826:* * Che“mother”apy: When I was a kid, it was cod liver oil and Vicks VapoRub. (Mike Ostapiej) AdChoices ADVERTISING Misc“once”ption: The myth that you can’t knock up your girlfriend the first time you have sex. (Lois Douthitt) Casan“ova”: A guy who leaves a trail of unwed mothers. (Tom Witte) Mi“shear”d: Wait, you said you wanted your hair to look like*Jessica *Simpson’s? (Erik Wennstrom) ‘Alas”ka: A state of regret. -- J. McCain, 16 Blocks Down Pennsylvania Avenue (Jeff Hazle; Brendan Beary) Ab“dome”n: The six-pack 20 years later. (Wayne Rodgers; Mae Scanlan) Dissem“bling”: Why would you think they’re not real diamonds? (Pam Sweeney) **From Week 405:* * M“ick” Jagger: A 60-year-old in spandex. (Russell Beland) T“rent” Lott: A politician who has not entirely sold out. (Mary Lou French; Ted Einstein) S“laughter”: Stop! You’re killing me! (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Con“nip”tion: What Secret Service agents throw if you have just one teensy-weensy little drinky-poo. — Jenna and Barbara B., Austin (Jennifer Hart) H“airball”: What you throw up when you are choking. (Jonathan Paul) Di“agnostic”ian: This doctor is just not sure what you’ve got. (Steve Fahey) Hu“bris”: The belief that one is a cut above everyone else. (Chris Doyle) [Chris has a long list of inking bris jokes.] Ca“nada”: A place where there is nothing to do. (Tom Witte) **Week 336:* * “Linger”ie: The tendency of men to spend hours lovingly perusing each page of the Victoria’s Secret catalogue. (Jennifer Hart) Ap“petite”: A ravenous desire for celery; see Bulimic. (Mary Lou French) A“bra”cada“bra”--That magical way a woman can somehow remove her underwear without removing her outer clothes. (Tom Witte) C“hick”en: Squirrel. (Will Cramer) Drug “DEA”ling: Selling coke to the nice young white guy in the suit. (Elden Carnahan) Dis“man”tling: The process by which a newly divorced woman removes all traces of her ex from her home. (T.J. Murphy) Pan“icky”: -How one feels after accidentally ingesting too much Olestra. (Meg Sullivan) Inaugu“rat”ion: The exchange of one varmint for another. (Tom Witte) ---- If there’s any particular technique that runs through those four sets of results (besides being funny), it’s that the entries tend to be especially fun when the interior word, by itself, is pronounced differently from the same letters in the larger word. That’s because of our general Delayed Gratification Rule of Humor: If it takes your brain a second longer to process a joke, that little bit of “work” increases the humor payoff. *QUEL DUMMAGE!* THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1130 * **A non-inking entry by Kevin Dopart* Speaking of running contests all over again without changing the parameters, because you know there’s just still so much out there: Lots of good stuff to choose from among the 1,700 or so puns on foreign terms that came in for Week 1130, and lots of room to run such short-form answers; all this week’s entries will appear in the print paper as well as online. All the links on the puns should lead you to definitions of the original terms; there are also a few explanations of the entries themselves, as for “In MoCo parentis,” Stephen Dudzik’s zinger at a much talked about local issue . “ ’Sup du jour” is the fourth win and the 15th ink above the fold from Bird Waring (official Loser Anagram: Grr! I Win Bad) of the New York area, who’s been getting ink since Week 455. This gives Bird — I don’t know why he’s called that — his 143rd ink in all. Stephen Dudzik is one of a very small group of Losers who’ve gotten ink in every one of the Invitational’s 23 years of existence — he started in Week 7; he’s now up to Ink 526, with 58 of them winners or runners-up. Stephen might be the only Loser to invite a group of other Losers to his wedding; I saw photos of several Losers wearing something other than silly T-shirts during Steve’s nuptials to Lequan in 2000. Nan Reiner, who’s keeping an eye on her mom in Florida, ends up in the Losers’ Circle yet again, as does Neal Starkman of our Seattle Bureau. They’ll both let me know if they’d like the Loser Mug, the Grossery Bag or a vintage Loser T-shirt. *Laugh Out of Courtney: * Copy chief Courtney Rukan wrote me to say that “all four top entries are great” — who am I to argue? She also especially liked Chris Doyle’s “Honorable Menschen (and Frauen) ” subhed, along with”singling out” about a dozen others: Liberté, égalité, maternité (Stephen Gold); Choreigami (Ben Aronin, Washington); Jindalaya. (Frank Osen); Non compost mentis (Danielle Nowlin); Persona non gratuity (Jim Stiles); Ladenfreude (Amy Harris); Rigor Morris (Jeff Contompasis); Coup de grass . (Marni Penning Coleman); La dolce feta (Sylvia Betts) Sheik semper tyrannis (John O’Byrne) Nom de fume (Pam Sweeney; Larry Neal) Pox populi (Jeff Contompasis) (“This one is particularly funny!”); Lardi Gras (Rob Huffman); Tardi Gras (John Glenn); and Tannenbomb (Emily Davis) *ANOTHER SIDE OF GETTYSBURG: LOSER BRUNCH, SUNDAY. AUG. 18* The annual after-lunch tour of the Gettysburg battlefields will change direction this week to focus more on the town — which the Losers who make the day trip never seem to have time to see. Loser Roger Dalrymple, who lives in Gettysburg and is an experience tour guide, posted this this morning on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook: “Did you know that on Aug. 16 at noon we will dine atO’Rorke’s Eatery and Spirits at 44 Steinwehr Ave., which is at the south end of Gettysburg? ... Afterwards we will be conducting our 6th (i think) bombastic tour of battle-related stuff; this time we’ll be walking through the borough and visiting the college, the train station where Lincoln arrived for the dedication of the new Soldiers Cemetery, the Wills House, etc. You can RSVP to either myself or Elden. Hope to see you here!” Do RSVP to Elden atthis page on the Loser website; though it’s still advertising last weekend’s brunch, it will be updated soon. In past years we’ve managed to carpool; ask Elden. ====================================================================== WEEK 1135, published August 2, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1135: Type A to continue ... — and what are you waiting for? Add to list On my list The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates all over this week’s new contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 30, 2015 And really, Week 1135 is a pretty straightforward contest, not requiring much elaboration from me. But my hunch is that, as with Week 1131, whose results run this week, it won’t draw as many entrants as a typical Style Invitational wordplay contest, or even a poetry contest. Contests like these call for, in addition to imagination, a flair for comedy writing, and the entry pool tends to be made up mostly of the week-in-week-out Losers — call them the season-ticket holders (but they can’t scalp their ink). This particular week, it will be a challenge to avoid — or at least deliver with great panache — the most common, overdone tropes of observational humor; I’m apt to welcome creatively funny, unique ideas of situations that ought to have some time limit, not to mention their appropriate penalty (please try to avoid graphic and*or sadistic violence). Okay, okay, let’s move on. Time’s a-wastin’. (Yet another appropriate Style Invitational motto.) *Refashionistas:* The results of Week 1131 * **One of the few entries by Kevin Dopart that DIDN’T get ink this week.* The Royal Consort, bless his heart, is constantly suggesting contest ideas to the Empress, with about the same success rate as suggesters from the Greater Loser Community (lousy). But I did like the idea of sending the Losers loose on the website of RepurposedMaterialsInc.com with nothing but their naked imaginations and a thirst for ink. Though not many more than 100 entrants reported back, many of them had fairly lengthy lists of cool plans for those rubber sheets, eight-foot tires, ski lift cable and sundry other cool things. (Also uncool things, like purple napkins.) At the Loser Brunch in Old Town Alexandria, Va., in June, the Empress used this week’s second prize as a substitute tiara. (Nan Reiner) Not surprisingly, it’s all familiar names “above the fold” this week. It’s the fourth win and 262nd ink overall for Dave Prevar, who got a single blot of ink back during the Czarist era in Week 339, but otherwise didn’t get going until the Early Empressionist. Matt Monittowon a Camaro last year on “Wheel of Fortune,” but until today he had never won a ceramic outhouse with a little ceramic embarrassed person inside. It’s also Matt’s 70th blot of Invite ink, and seventh above the fold. Mark Raffman and Ben Aronin will let me know whether they want mugs or bags, won’t they? (Also an option for these perennial bigshot Losers: one of the vintage-design Loser T-shirts donated by Loser Since Genesis Elden Carnahan.) *Laugh Out of Courtney: * Copy chief Courtney Rukan was partial to Jeff Shirley’s idea for repurposing boardwalk boards by putting them on the bedroom ceiling and thus “relive some Drifters magic.” Jeff’s entry didn’t spell out the name of the song in question (I link to it in the entry), and I wonder if that made it a bit more fun for Courtney, who does concede that “any old doo-wop references always make me smile.” *Awwww, Bob .... * If you’re one of the 5,000 “friends” of Bob Staake on Facebook , you know that he’ll often share some fascinating insights or various works in progress — his many children’s books, rearrangements to his studio, his technique of creating art with an ancient version of Photoshop. But despite the occasional awwwish shared photo of a tyke reading “The Red Lemon” or “Bluebird,” Bob doesn’t tend to get all sentimental — especially when it comes to his longest-running work relationship, not to mention the lady he tends not to exactly suck up to . So I was just moved to pieces — and reminded how lucky we are to have Bob every week — when I walked out of the gym yesterday evening, checked my phone, and read this Facebook post (I’ve hyphened out the profanities per Post rules): “For 22 [21] years now — rain or come shine ... sickness or health -- from FedEx to fax machine to email -- I have done a WEEKLY illustration for a newspaper called The Washington Post. Ben Bradlee used to illustrate all these articles, but then he started losing it. That’s where I came in -- with badass art director Michael Drew, then with Gene Weingarten, and then with my current editor, the lovely and tiny Pat Myers (I know, because next to 6’3”, DAMN that girl comes off as tiny). Happily, I could retire from drawing stupid cartoons years ago and concentrate on my children’s books — while continuing to draw stupid s[---] for just TWO clients: MAD magazine and The Washington Post. (NOT a good sign, right?) And THAT’s what I’m doing tonight; reading Pat’s manuscript for The Style Invitational; coming up with an idea, getting approval of a sketch — and then going to finish. For a kid who never went to an art class post-high school and instead majored in print journalism and international relations, this bizarre weekly gig has ALWAYS kept me on my journalistic toes. The day will come when I post a portfolio of 26 years’ worth of Staake WaPo art ... but i thank you, Mike, and Pat -- and KNOW that this sort of effusive bulls[---] makes Gene Weingarten run to the hills. I’m right behind you, a-h[---]!” So I got kind of goopy this morning to see this week’s cartoon come in right on time (as always), and know that Bob was moved to make those comments even though I’d rejected his first draft entirely (as less than always). *Please keep in your thoughts ... * ** Two of our most renowned and beloved Losers, Mae Scanlan and Beverley Sharp , both sent me e-mails in the past couple of days, both with their usual cheery, witty, upbeat tone. And with this tone Mae somehow let me know that she would be having surgery today for pancreatic cancer (“I’m feeling okay with this – I just want to get the operation over with, and get home so I can watch Donald Trump behave outrageously at the Aug. 6 debate”). And Beverley slipped in the news that a relapse of her breast cancer had been diagnosed, that she’d had surgery two weeks ago, and that she’d be going through a year of aggressive treatment (“I’m telling you this so that if I have to cut back on my entries, you won’t think it’s lack of interest!”). I hope that Mae’s daughter Mary Pershing will have a moment to give us updates; write to me at pat.myers@washpost.com if you’d like Mae’s address so you can send a card. Meanwhile, Beverley has been given the okay to go on a family beach trip before the treatments start, and even to take a long-arranged trip to Southeast Asia in October with husband Dick Amberg. So why do I think that both Mae’s and Beverley’s entries will continue to bump out yours, just as they have been through this very week? *While I don’t normally endorse political candiates ...* I may have to make an exception in the Virginia Senate race. If anyone in the Richmond area would like to procure a campaign sign, button, etc.., for this candidate , I would so give that away as a prize. *We got our auto- repaired! Just about!* One of the more embarrassing aspects of being Empress is having to admit that The Post’s newsroom e-mail system can’t be counted on to send an auto-reply when you send your entries to the losers@washpost.com “dropbox.” So for the past several months, most of the “auto-replies” you get are actually sent by me (which is why they sometimes arrive hours later). But this past Tuesday, the Real Auto-Reply kicked back in, and has been working since — except when it hasn’t. The IT folks are continuing to work on it. Meanwhile, I’ll try to keep an eye out for entries that weren’t auto-replied to (I can search the Sent Items list) and reply to those manually. If you haven’t heard anything in 24 hours, please feel free to ask me to check that it’s arrived. Handy tip on how to know if you got the Real Auto-Reply or the Empress’s Fake Auto-Reply: The real on will say “Auto reply” in the subject line; the E’s will say just “Re:.” *Remember the assault on Gettysburg! * The annual Loser lunch* day trip to Gettysburg will be on Sunday, Aug. 16 — and this time the tour will take in some spots in the historic town itself, not just the battlefields. See Loser Roger Dalrymple’s pitch in last week’s Conversational, near the bottom of the column here . *You’ll just have to build a plastic hockey rink or something* There won’t be a new contest next weekend: Four weeks from then, the Empress will be in Italy, marrying off her kid, and has learned from at least two experiences that it just doesn’t work to try to produce that week’s Invite from some hotel room with sketchy Wi-Fi and a big time zone difference. There will be a column, though, with something that can be produced ahead of time — either some great entries that weren’t published before, or some greatest hits. I’ll take suggestions over the next day or two. ====================================================================== WEEK 1136, published August 16, 2015 Style Conversational: You’ll have to wait 5 weeks for one of these guys. But you can help plan the Week 1139 Style Invitational contest. If you’ve won an Inkin’ Memorial but never an Inker, you might want one of these regifted guys if you win again. (I’ll send a new headbag for you to glue together.) (Pat Myers*The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 6, 2015 Because I’m going to be in Italy from Aug. 30 to Sept. 8, I need to have the Sept. 6 (online Sept. 3, I hope) Style Invitational done in advance, so that someone just has to click on “Publish.” (The last two times I was on vacation the day the Invite was supposed to post — in California in June 2013 and in England in April 2014 — this did not exactly work. But this time, copy chief*Invite fan Courtney Rukan is going to have my back.) Anyway, this means I have to have a new contest totally prepared before I leave (preferably a week before that), and because there won’t be a full set of results that week (since there’s no new contest this week ), I’ll have room to put up a contest that takes some space to describe. And ta-da! Loser Bruce Carlson wrote to me just the other day to suggest that we rerun one of the Invite’s most unusual contests, dating back to 2000, in honor of the upcoming 64th birthday of the Czar. It was called When We’re LXIV, because there were 64 possible challenges you could take up. This is what the original (Week 348, aka Week XV) put forth: **Formats:* 1. Write a short poem about . . . 2. Write an analogy or metaphor related to . . . 3. Design a slogan or aphorism involving . . . 4. Write a funny sentence beginning with “Did you ever wonder why . . .” with respect to . . .* **Subjects:* A. An undergarment B. NAFTA and its relationship to pending minimum-wage legislation C. A household appliance D. A 19th-century event* **Limitations:* (i) that is written in the style of a famous author. (ii) that contains an unfortunate factual error. (iii) that would absolutely enrage Marisleysis Gonzalez. (iv) that employs a clever double-entendre.* *This Week’s Contest was suggested by Russ Beland of Springfield. It is really 64 contests in one, because there are 64 ways to win. You have to fashion an entry by selecting one from each menu group above. For example, the following takes the path 1-C-(iv): Toast should be made like lovin’* Not half-baked, but aroused, I find* So I use no toaster oven* I prefer the pop-up kind. Make sure you indicate the path you took.* -------- I think it’s a great idea to do this contest again, but of course we would want all new subjects, some new limitations, and perhaps a new format or two. So how about if I choose among Losers’ suggestions? You won’t know until the contest is published which ones I choose, so you can’t get a head start before Sept. 3. I’ve already postedthis invitation in the Facebook group Style Invitational Devotees , and you could also suggest elements right here in the comments thread of the Conversational — after all, that was what the Conversational was created for; what happened was that back then in 2009, The Post’s technology and formats were terrible, and we finally resorted to the Facebook group for interacting (Facebook is still better , but not by as wide a margin). Or you could e-mail me your suggestions at pat.myers@washpost.com. I’ll credit you in some way, but probably not connecting you to your specific suggestion. (Unless a bunch of people suggested the same thing you did.) AdChoices ADVERTISING Footnote: The Czar’s 64th birthday, for all those interested in paying homage (I know there always are because people keep asking me), occurs around the time the results of this contest would run. Even more of a footnote: Marisleysis Gonzalez is Elian’s cousin who served as his mother figure during his stay in Miami. The top winners (there weren’t many overall) of the first contest: *Second Runner-Up:**(A short poem about an undergarment, in the style of a famous author, Allen Ginsberg)* I saw the best buns of my generation clad in bikini-cut briefs. High-hanging models gaunt-cheeked staring from bulimiaed pages of Victoria’s Secret, whose readers intoned impossible pantyhosannas. Who flipped through hip images juxtaposed in slick IPO capitalist layouts, flipping through a dark satin underworld S*M*L*XL, flipping backward and forward mumbling incantations of papercut delirium, a doomed hollow-eyed joyride endlessly seeking out London and France. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park, Md.) *First Runner-Up*:* **(An analogy related to a household appliance that contains an unfortunate factual error)* The vacuum cleaner is the FBI agent of appliances. Its job is to track down, suck up and bag the dirt of society. Then, just like its inventor, J. Edgar Hoover, it spends its off-duty time in the closet. (Susan Reese, Arlington, Va.) *And the winner of the buck grunt call:** **(A short poem about NAFTA and its relationship to pending minimum- wage legislation in the style of Dr. Seuss, that also contains an analogy, an aphorism and a sentence beginning with “Did you ever wonder why,” as well as references to an undergarment, a household appliance and a 19th-century event, while committing an unfortunate factual error, executing a clever double-entendre and including a statement that would absolutely enrage Marisleysis Gonzalez)* Did you ever wonder why The lowest wage is not so high? It’s the fault of Uncle Sam. Am I angry, Sam? I am! It started very long ago With a man named James Monroe Who made us one with other lands --With peons and their outstretched hands. James began the paycheck-steal. An act of Congress nailed the deal. And sired the monster that is NAFTA. (Can’t you hear the Mexicans’ lafta?) And now that the populace panics and panics We bring in bureaucrat budget mechanics! The boys in the press give this barely a mention As one Cuban brat distracts their attention. And now our poor wages NAFTA will gnaw, Which just goes to prove that clever old saw: “Government’s like a bad laundry machine: It goes round and round, yet our undies ain’t clean.” (Mike Elliott, Oberlin, Ohio) Mike Elliott, alas, was last heard from in Week 594, barely into the Empress’s reign, escaping with a mere 13 blots of ink — but two were first prizes and one was a second. Armed Farces*: The results of Week 1132 **A non-inking entry by Stephen Dudzik and I think several others.* I’ve pretty much learned not to panic while judging, and indeed I think this week’s results turned out fine. But Lordy, there was so much lousy stuff (I know not by whom, since I name-check only the good stuff): really lame wordplay, sexist and xenophobic “humor,” and a number of old-saw jokes that people must have remembered from their Army days. But we did end up, as virtually always, with a muster-passing parade of inking entries. It might not be fun to judge a contest in which 95 percent of the entries rot, but as long as the remaining 5 percent can fill the page, the stinkitude of the 95 is entirely irrelevant. In fact, I’m game for a few more fictoid categories, if anyone wants to work up some examples. Meanwhile, today’s victory parade is headed up by someone with a distinct military connection: The helpmeet of Yet Again a Winner Danielle Nowlin is the genialLt. Ryan Nowlin , assistant director of the U.S. Marine Band. I don’t think, though, that had too much to do with her Inkin’ Memorial- (or Inker?-) winning entry, a zingy dig at Congress. Danielle’s entry was so well done that my Copy Editor Reflex didn’t even kick in to note that “Congressional Medal of Honor” isn’t the official name; it’s just “Medal of Honor.” But even I am not so pedantic that I’d knock it off the pedestal for that. Runners-up Nan Reiner and Chris Doyle have hung out in the Losers’ Circle too many times to mention, but wow, what a week for Larry McClemons of suburban Virginia, who really took to this contest: Besides his runner-up entry, he also blotted up three honorable mentions — more than doubling his previous ink total. However, it’s already the second “above the fold” ink for Larry since he started Inviting this year: His first was his debut ink, a runner-up in another fictoid contest. It was this edgy one for fake sports trivia: “After their tragic experience with Lou Gehrig, the New York Yankees passed on a chance to sign Brian Alzheimer.” Another cool McClemons factoid: Larry’s new total of seven inks still places him three shy of his son Steve’s. Nothing like a burning familial rivalry. *Laugh Out of Courtney: * Copy chief Courtney Rukan, a Northern Virginia resident, was partial to Nan Reiner’s first runner-up about Gen. McClellan’s ill-advised plan to get out of D.C. in that direction on a Friday evening. Also, as Courtney points out, “McClellan surely would have selected the wrong time and the wrong route:” Speaking of military history: Let’s go to Gettysburg on Aug. 16 It looks as if the Royal Consort and I can join the Losers’ annual trip to Gettysburg, Pa., about an hour and a half north of Washington. We’ve gone at least twice before, but this time, Loser*Tour Guide Roger Dalrymple is adding some stops in the town itself along with some battlefield edification — and of course a hearty lunch, this time atO’Rorke’s Eatery , where the field trip starts at noon. It would be great to be able to carpool; contact Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ “Our Social Engorgements” page to RSVP and to say whether you need or can offer a ride. Dress is ultra-casual; T-shirts bearing Confederate flags are not advised. ====================================================================== WEEK 1138, published August 30, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1138: The zung remains the same Bill Gates, screen star, in 1995; NBC’s Robert Wright is at left, announcing that new joint venture MSNBC. (Marty Lederhandler*AP) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 27, 2015 Hi, everyone. This is the last you’ll hear from me for at least two weeks and maybe three: Royal Scion No. 1 will be doing the nuptial thing overseas, so I’ll be gone all next week and won’t get back until late on Sept. 8. That means I’ll already be a day past deadline for that week’s Style Invitational (the Week 1136 limerick results, which I’ll judge during the trip), and once I get that out of the way, I’ll probably then finally open my suitcase and get some sleep (yes, I am a cat). But I’m hoping desperately confident that the Invites for both weeks will go up as usual on the next two Thursday afternoons. (Ink-earners will have to be more patient than usual to get their little strips of slightly warped metal.) This week’s contest, Week 1138, is one that, until now, evaded my approximately 600 previous jaunts through the Invitational archives as I looked for successful, timeless contests to repeat. Perhaps it’s because it’s awfully wide-ranging; essentially the challenge is just to say something clever about anyone. And of course, clever observations and epigrams about specific people have found their way into virtually every previous Invite contest. But the Invitational *had* been going strong for close to five years when the Czar posted Week 240, and he didn’t seem to have any problem finding good results. See for yourself. (I’ve added links to a few people and events that haven’t been in the headlines too much since the 1990s.) (After going back and forth, I’ve decided that it’s better to give the subject’s name first, before the zinger, rather than how the 1997 results were presented; the first runner-up below, I think, especially suffered from the format. If a certain joke would work significantly better if the name is listed last, I won’t insist on consistency.) *Report from Week 240, in which you were asked to write elegant insults of famous people.* *Fourth Runner-Up:*He has something John D. Rockefeller and Howard Hughes never had — the ability to be the richest man in the world and boring at the same time. (Russ Beland, Springfield, on Bill Gates) *Third Runner-Up:* Guys like them put the “goober” in gubernatorial. (Sandra Hull, Arlington, on Fife Symington and Jim Guy Tucker ) *Second Runner-Up:* His strong suit appears to be a polyester blend. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon, on Bill Gates) *First Runner-Up:* He doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia, on Woody Allen’s comment that he wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have him as a member.) *And the Winner of the plastic Popeil doughnut maker:* His influence doesn’t spread, it metastasizes. (Phil Frankenfeld, Washington, on Rush Limbaugh) *Honorable Mentions:* He is statuesque. (Jerry Pannullo, Kensington, on Al Gore) The camera used to love her. Now she’s suing for alienation of affection. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge, on Elizabeth Taylor) He displays all the insouciance of a mortician doing the macarena. (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y., on Al Gore) She makes up for being fat by being mean. (Jeffrey Fenster, Bethesda, on Roseanne) He never met a blond, blue-eyed, non-Jewish, non-Catholic, non-handicapped heterosexual German he didn’t like. (Suzanne Fregly, Fort Washington, on Adolf Hitler) (Um, sure he did.) She is an entertainment legend who needs no introduction, but who will insist. (David Genser, Arlington, on Diana Ross) He is Howard Stern without the subtlety. (David Genser, Arlington, on the Greaseman ) I am so glad we have her to tell us what is good literature. Now I don’t have to depend on Reader’s Digest anymore. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, on Oprah Winfrey) Oh, the perennial search for self! (Patrice Kyger, Free Union, Va., on O.J. Simpson’s quest to find the real killer) And he didn’t even have to grow up! (Bob Dalton, Beaumont, Tex., on Bill Clinton’s growing up to be president) The depth of his character was perfectly captured by Mobius. (Bob Dalton, Beaumont, Tex., on Prince Charles) As empty asCapone’s vault . (Bob Dalton, Beaumont, Tex., on Geraldo Rivera) How unfortunate that he did not have the opportunity to make Mother Teresa’s funeral as entertaining. (Bob Dalton, Beaumont, Tex., on Elton John) The ears have been unkind to him. (Paul J. Crystal, Arlington, onRoss Perot ) Pants down, he has been the greatest president of the late 1990s. (Russ Horner, Arlington, on Bill Clinton) How comforting it is to know that each of us, in his deepest, darkest hour of trial, can call for help by speaking a single name. Travolta. (Brian Broadus, Charlottesville, on John Travolta) As an actor, he towers over Herve Villechaize . (Elden Carnahan, Laurel, on Steve Guttenberg) He is such a magician, only he could turn two gold-digging bimbos into cultural icons. (Chuck Snowdon, Arlington, on Donald Trump) He still rocks, but mostly in his chair. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg, on Keith Richards) History will record his mastery of two kinds of timing: good and two. (Philip Vitale, Arlington, on Bill Clinton) He is an inspiration for us all to consider early retirement. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon, on Mick Jagger) ----------- Snide one-liners about famous people are one reason that Twitter Inc. is valued at more than $11 billion. You won’t exactly be the only people out there coming up with zingers about Miley Cyrus or Josh Duggar. Please commune with your favorite search engine. (By “one-liners,” I’m not restricting entries strictly to single sentences. But they should have a certain snappy energy; don’t write a paragraph.) *Ahem, we do not have all day here? * *Okay, okay, here’s a very little about Week 1135. * Here’s one we won’t be repeating. We ended up with some funny ideas for time limits amid a slew of unfunny ones, many of those mining lodes of irked-person humor that have pretty much been strip-mined and then fracked for good measure. As I noted above about Week 1138, I was fine with departing from the standard format for the sake of humor, as for Mark Raffman’s entries about the impatient mother-to-be and formerly corporeal person. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial — but a highly impressive third blot “above the fold” out of only 10 inks in all — for Larry Carnahan of the Virginia suburbs. Larry is not, as I’d assumed, related to Uberloser Elden Carnahan, of the 544 blots of ink, the Losers website, the Loser brunches, the Flushies, etc. Larry’s runners-up: Week 1091: Good idea: Use power tools to keep your car functioning properly. Bad idea: Use power tools to keep your ear functioning properly. And for the Week 987 “Mess With Our Heads” bank-head contest: Head: Rookie Morris gives ground game just what it needs Bank: New Redskins chef makes perfectly seasoned squirrelburgers The runners-up this week are Mike Gips, Mark Raffman and Frank Osen. If you’ve read this far, you’ve read their names too many times to count. Oops, I hit my time limit. See you in September. ====================================================================== WEEK 1140, published September 13, 2015 ‘Style’ is a great name for something with style, but a bad name for ... Style Conversational Week 1140: The Empress ruminates all over this week’s Invitational By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 10, 2015 When Future Hall of Famer if He Doesn’t Screw Up Jeff Contompasis suggested we redo the good-name*bad-name contest, I answered, “You think we can just do it one more time, unmodified?” That was because I had it in my tattered little mind that we’d done this contest several times. But no — I just loved the Week 547 results so much, back in 2004, that I felt that they must be a recurring bit of Invitana. So I was thrilled that I could bring back this contest 11 years later for Week 1140 , without fear of running out of material — after all, the pool of product names (and really, just about any other proper noun) is virtually infinite, and of course lots of them didn’t exist back in 2004. Still, you do want to avoid the jokes from the Week 547 results, even the ones grouped in the introduction as too frequent. (You can still use some of the*names*as long as your joke is substantially different.) *Report from Week 547, * in which we asked for things that an existing brand name would be bad for: The Empress received 462 e-mails [wow!!! that is a LOT] for this contest, many of which contained dozens of entries each [there was no 25-entry limit back then], and almost all of which contained an entry suggesting that Microsoft would be a bad name for an erectile-dysfunction drug. Other entries too common to reward: Cheerios for a funeral home, Next Day Blinds for a laser eye surgery center, and Redskins for a football team. The category of laxatives really got you going, so to speak; the litany of bad names included Outback, Grey Poupon, Jiffy Lube, Chunky, Pump & Spray, Big Brownie Blast, Quicken and, but of course, IBM. *Fourth runner-up:* Rolling Rock is a good name for a beer but a bad name for an insurance company. (Jim Lyons, Arlington) *Third runner-up:* The Chrysler Building is a good name for a skyscraper but a bad name for an SUV. (John Conti, Norfolk, Mass.) *Second runner-up:* Antabuse is a good name for an alcoholism drug but a bad name for a magnifying glass. (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.) *First runner-up, the winner of the cuddly stuffed Athlete’s Foot and Ulcer toys:* Wachovia is a good name for a bank but a bad name for a cemetery. (Michael Cisneros, Centreville) *And the winner of the Inker:*Virgin Airways is okay as a name for an airline but not for a cigarette. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Honorable Mentions: BP is a good name for a gas company but a bad name for a honey company. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Renuzit is a good name for a room deodorizer but a bad name for an acne treatment. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Nine Inch Nails is a good name for a rock group but a bad name for a proctology clinic. (J. F. Martin, Naples, Fla.) Hi-C is a good name for a fruit drink but a bad name for a tutoring service. (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles) Open Pit is a good name for a barbecue sauce but a bad name for a toilet bowl cleaner. (Ann Martin, Annapolis) [her first ink; we didn’t start noting that for several more years] Wawa is a good name for a convenience store but a bad name for an antidepressant. (Dave Komornik, Danville, Va.) Iran is a good name for an Islamic republic but a bad name for an infantry platoon. (Ted Einstein, Silver Spring) Newman’s Own is a good name for Paul Newman’s brand of condiments, but it would not be a good name for his brand of condoms. (Russell Beland) IHOP is a good name for a pancake shop but a bad name for a prosthetics company. (Larry Blue, Potomac; Tom Matthews, Fairfax Station; Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls) Ashburn is a good name for a town but a bad name for hemorrhoid ointment. (Karen Tierney, Ashburn) 3-in-One is a good name for a household oil but a bad name for a religion. (Mike Genz, La Plata) Domino’s is a good name for a pizza place but a bad name for a construction company. (Tiffany Getz, Manassas; Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) Nordic Track is a good name for exercise equipment but a bad name for an affirmative action program. (Larry Phillips, Falls Church; Russell Beland) Target is a good name for a retail store in America but a bad name for a retail store in Iraq. (Jeff Martin, Gaithersburg) Chick-fil-A is a good name for a fast-food outlet but not for O.J. Simpson’s next business venture. (Tom Witte) The Tinder Box is a good name for a tobacco shop but a bad name for an apartment building. (Dean Evangelista, Silver Spring) Twinkies, HoHos and Ding Dongs are all good names for snack cakes, but not for WNBA teams. (Blythe Marshall, Annandale, and Russell Beland [her stepfather]) Taco Bell is a good name for a Mexican restaurant but a bad name for a Mexican phone company. (Dave Ferry, Purvis, Miss.; Dudley Thompson, Raleigh, N.C.) Snickers is a good name for a candy bar but a bad name for a support group. (Briana Payne, Annapolis) First Impressions is a good name for a dating service but not a bungee jumping center. (Russell Beland) Ayds used to be a good name for a diet candy . . . (Paul Styrene, Olney) Kaboom is a good name for a stain remover but a bad name for a high-fiber cereal. (Kelly Wilson, Milwaukee) The Library of Congress is probably too subtle to be a good name for an adult bookstore. (Russell Beland) First Union is a good name for a bank but a bad name for a Boy Scout camp. (Michael Fribush, Burtonsville) Rent-A-Wreck is a good name for a used-car rental company but a bad name for an escort service. (Marleen May, Rockville) Boeing is a good name for an airplane company but not for a mattress company. (Peter Metrinko, Plymouth, Minn.) The Foot Locker is a good name for a sports shoe store but a bad name for quick-drying cement. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) Wanamaker is a good name for a department store but a bad name for a dating service. (Susan Thompson, Raleigh, N.C.) Excalibur is a good name for a security company but a bad name for a tampon. (Jeff Brechlin) Just Do It is a good slogan for Nike but a bad slogan for a suicide relief center. (Jeff Keenan, Severn) Miracle Whip is a good name for a salad dressing, a bad name for Mel Gibson to use formovie tie-in toy merchandising. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon; Elden Carnahan) Ram Cargo Van is a good name for a vehicle but a bad name for a driving school. (Jeff Brechlin) The Swimsuit Issue might be a good name for a week of Sports Illustrated, but it probably won’t work for Hustler. (Russell Beland) Air France is a good name for an airline but a bad name for a deodorant. (Danny Bravman, Potomac) Sizzler is a good name for a steakhouse but a bad name for a rectal thermometer. (Roy Ashley, Washington) Stove Top Stuffing is a good name for stuffing that you cook on the stove, but not for a book on how to get the romance back in your marriage. (Russell Beland) Kleenex may be a good name for a tissue, but it’s an excellent name for a divorce law firm. (Paul Kondis, Alexandria) --- I expect to be making LOTS of Style Invitational Ink of the Day posters four weeks from now. *WE’RE UP TO THE JEEZ: THE GA- LIMERICKS OF WEEK 1136* Judging limericks isn’t really too bad a thing to do while on vacation (my son got married in Italy, forcing me to spend eight days on sun-soaked beaches, visiting historic treasures, ingesting untold thousands of calories a day — none of which, I assure you, came from Kraft boxes). My 129-page printout of some 1,000 five-liners, along with an AC outlet between the airplane seats, let me pass the time in the plane when I wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway (as well as when the Wi-fi decided not to work in our hotel room). The “ga-” parameters allowed for plenty of words and names, including some that were new to me, including “gamboge” (a yellow resin used as a pigment) and “gamahuche” (oral sex). The Style Invitational: So educational we ought to get federal funding. Alas, as in every limerick contest, lots of people didn’t check out (or get the message of)“Get Your ’Rick Rolling,” the Invite’s guide; or the many helpful resources at OEDILF.com , the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, the inspiration for and, I hope, the beneficiary of each year’s Limerixicon. And so there were numerous examples of Not a Rhyme and Not in Limerick Meter. I never checked who wrote any of the following Not a Rhymes: Keillor*failure*sailor; superfluous*garrulous*frivolous; strolling*gamboling; gastronomy*colostomy; bully*sully; gamy*grainy; Gaga*Prima; Butchie*Gucci; gadflies*applies; fantastic*gastric; gambler*yammerer; covet*none of it; Brobdingnagian*galleon; patronize*galvanize. But they did move the judging process along. (If you don’t get why the previous are Not a Rhymes: It’s the last ACCENTED syllables of the two words that need to rhyme; and any unaccented syllables after them have to be identical. So gas-TRON-omy doesn’t rhyme with col-OST-omy, because TRON doesn’t rhyme with OST. su-PER-fluous doesn’t rhyme with GAR-rulous. GAD-flies doesn’t rhyme with ap-PLIES.) The Not a Rhymes shouldn’t be confused with limericks in which a word is pronounced differently in different locales — usually because of different vowel sounds, and sometimes in accents. For example, as a native Philadelphian, I don’t rhyme “pollen” with “befallen”; I say “PAH-lin” and “be-FAW-lin.” But certainly many people do, especially in the South. And I had no problem picking up Kirk Miller’s nifty “a pollen” pun. And, as in every limerick contest, there were many entries that didn’t have (or convey to a first-time reader) the “hickory-dickory-dock* dickory-dock” rhythm that is essential to a limerick. Sometimes, the writer clearly didn’t know the rules: “Elmer Fudd, a hunter of dubious repute* Desired to shoot a long-eared galoot.” “I could only take to gawking* When I saw you out there walking.” “There once was a gambler* Who was an avid rambler.” But more often, a Bad Meter happened because the writer heard the correct rhythm in his own head, because he was accenting the words in his line differently from how a reader would. This is why I beg and beg y’all to have someone else read the limerick out loud, so you can see if the person comes up with the hickory-dickory-dock. This writer didn’t do this with these opening lines: “When music’s what I want to hear* With no MP3 player near.” If he’d asked a friend, the person would surely have read: “When MU-sic’s WHAT i WANT to HEAR.” The writer, however, was thinking: “When MU-sic’s what*I* want to HEAR...” (And no, you can’t just put the “I” in italics, unless the emphasis is relevant to the text of the poem.) Sometimes a line*might* be read in limerick meter, but not necessarily. Take this Line 3: “He must think we’re stupid.” You*could* read it “He MUST think we’re STUpid,” but you could easily (and probably) say “HE must THINK we’re STUpid.” The best solution in cases like this is to use a phrase that will be accented only one way, like: “He knows that we’re stupid”; since you’ll never accent “THAT,” the reader intuitively will emphasize “KNOWS.” I’ve found that the master limerick writers are especially good at finding words whose accents are unambiguous. (Also, you have a little more leeway in Lines 4 and 5, because the reader has already read previous lines in the same rhythm and is more apt to shift the accents himself.) Another thing I really value in limericks is natural syntax: light verse shouldn’t be a chore to read. It’s a great skill to write limericks whose word order is just as you’d talk in conversation (unless weird syntax is part of the joke, of course). I think today’s inking entries all have excellent syntax. Not so much for, say, “Definitions do not constant stay* From their meanings words oft go astray.” Almost never going astray — Invite-quality-wise — are this week’s top winners, all of them hugely successful in the Invite, with great sloshes of ink among them, including limerick and other verse contests. One thing, though: Among them, only first runner-up Robert Schechter was an experienced light-verse poet before starting to enter the Invitational; he found us after hearing about us from the poetry group Eratosphere (and then, bless his heart, recruiting such future Invite stars as Frank Osen, Brian Allgar and Melissa Balmain). Kevin Dopart, Craig Dykstra and Nan Reiner are just very smart, very funny people who took up the challenge of expressing their wit in yet one more form — and mastered it. Meanwhile, we welcome several First Offenders this week, including what might be our first Loser from Belgium. They’ll be getting their FirStink for their first ink, and I hope to follow it up soon with a real prize for their next loss (or even an Inkin’ Memorial win). So what was that limerick with the new-to-me word “gamahuche”? It was a very good one by the clearly British Bob Turvey, who charmingly rhymes “Clinton” and “intern” I would like to define “gamahuche”: It’s a sort of quite intimate touch. When President Clinton Did it with an intern; He said it was not sex “as such.” (I’d have replaced “DID it” with “ca-ROUSED.) Happy New Year to all — catch you in 5776! Oh, by the way: I could judge limericks on vacation, but I couldn’t mail people their prizes. Please bear with me as you await your swag from Week 1135 , in which you were asked to be impatient. Those who got ink in the second go-round of the Week 1133 clerihew contest should have their magnets* FirStinks now or shortly; if you got ink both times, you don’t get squat for Part 2. ====================================================================== WEEK 1141, published September 20, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1141: The principles of banking, Loser-style By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 17, 2015 Yay, my favorite contest! But even I experienced some momentary apprehension about running one more Mess With Our Heads contest, in which we ask you to misinterpret (or wryly comment on) a Post story or ad by writing a bank head, or subtitle. It’s not because we’ve done it too many times (by my count, Week 1141 is the 12th iteration, not counting a few variations); there are always headlines to choose from that are unlike previous ones. It’s more that bank heads themselves — as well as the “headlinese” that this contest often spoofs — may be starting to become an archaic form. Online stories rarely have bank heads, and both main heads and banks are less likely to be written in the word-stingy elliptical style that drops articles (e.g., “the”) and forms of “to be” so that the head can fit in a narrow column or two on the page. These days, even in the print paper, a headline reads more like an actual sentence. Or two. Nah, not to worry. For easy-to-misinterpret elliptical heads, we have only to go to The Post’s home page, which is full of tight head orders (though not bank heads). Just this morning, the lead headline was “Carly Fiorina subdued in victory lap after debate performance.” Bank head crying out to be written? “Envious Trump socks exuberant rival with toupee.” Actually, the ambiguity in that headline doesn’t even rely on the missing “is”; it’s because “subdued” can be a verb or an adjective. The evolution in headlines has caused us to redefine, over the years, what we’re going to count as a headline. I used to say it had to have text under it; after all, it’s a “head.” But it would be a shame to disqualify all those home page headlines or blurbs or refers or whatever they’re called these days. We’ll continue also to allow any heading that has text below: the “jump head” on a print story that continues to another page; a real bank head (they do exist online for those who’ve learned to click on the Special Hidden Methode Button; see this column and the Invite); a headline on a stand-alone picture, but not the caption to the picture. Also, as we have usually (but not always) done, you’re allowed you to use just part of a headline — but not to take just a little snippet, or to take that part out of context from the original head. In my sloppily scribbled-on graphic above, I circled some headlines and parts of headlines that would be okay to use for Week 1141. Then I attempted to put a wide, skinny X over part of it. And on the left, I put an X over part of one: The headline says, “Trump suggested vaccines cause autism. And no one stopped him.” While you may use “Trump suggested vaccines cause autism” (I can’t imagine how), you*don’t* get to use “Trump suggested vaccines.” Some headlines and partial heads that would qualify for Week 1141. The fragment with the sloppy X says “Trump suggested vaccines”; we don’t want you to pull snippets out of context. (Screen shot with scribbling by The Empress) The Invite’s first bank head contest was Week 391 (March 2001), and was suggested by Loser Greg Arnold. That was during the Czarist era, but it was during a three-month stretch during which the Czar was on leave and the Invite was being put out by the “Uberczar” (aka the Czar’s friend Tom Shroder, who was then heading the Post Magazine), who was responsible for the contests and chose the final winners; and by the “Auxiliary Czar” (yours truly), who read the entries and chose which ones would ink, then let the Uberczar select the final winners. The top winners of the 2001 contest, as usual often alluding to then-current events: Fourth runner-up: *Let’s Enroll Our Kids in Shooting Classes* *Frustrated, Michael Jordan Looks to the Future*(Charlie Myers, Laurel) [Jordan was at that time an executive for the Wizards, the beleaguered local NBA team] Third runner-up: *Police Warn D.C. Judge of ‘Hex’* *‘It’s Okay,’ Assures Judge, ‘I Shop at Sax’* (Jean Sorensen, Herndon) [Hecht’s was a Washington department store; Hecht stores are now Macy’s.] Second runner-up:*Croat Hard-Liners Seek Separation in Bosnia* *Cite Career Conflicts, Deny Scientology a Factor in Split* (Ben F. Noviello, Fairfax) [An allusion to the Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman marriage woes] First runner-up: *Buy One, Get One Free* *Latest Pardon Revelation Startles Even Die-Hard Clinton Supporters *(Ervin Stembol, Alexandria) [President Clinton, on his last day of office, offered pardons to 450 convicted criminals, including fraudster Marc Rich, whose wife had made big donations to Clinton’s campaign] And the winner of the festive Economic Report of the President coffee mug:* The Buck Goes There* New Patrons Don’t Know Tipping Etiquette, Exotic Dancers Complain (Sarah W. Gaymon, Gambrills) [Some things need no historical knowledge.] *How do I know you didn’t make up the headline you’re using?* For print headlines, please include the date and page number. For online heads — just make sure you’re copying them correctly; I’ll check them by just searching on the text in The Post’s records or through Google. Still, there has to be an element of the honor system, since some headlines just don’t stick around the Web for weeks on end. *Capitalization:* The Post’s headlines used to be “upstyle,” with major words capitalized, as in a book or movie title. Now they’re “downstyle,” which does remove some opportunities for ambiguity. If the headline is about “peace accords,” you can’t pretend that “accords” are a brand of car. On the other hand, a word that*is* capitalized in a headline — remember, you can use ads -- still tends to work as a joke to mean a common noun: “25% off Jockey” still works with “Pudgy rider makes weight as amputee,” as Pam Sweeney wrote in 2006. *TITLED PUERILITY: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1137* Week 1137 was basically a single joke: Use another meaning of a dirty-sounding expression to refer to something boringly wholesome. How much you’ll laugh at this week’s winners depends on how much of one joke you like to read. I thinkthis week’s results are pretty funny, but I also think you’d have more fun reading 28 of these entries than reading 1,200 of them. That said, the Loser Community did come up with a number of creative takes on the nah-it’s-not-really-dirty-after-all humor. While this week’s three runners-up all have long-term leases on plots in the Losers’ Circle, it’s only the eighth blot of ink — and the first “above the fold” — for Amy Harris of Charlottesville, Va. Amy has been in Loserdom only a few months, though, and I’m expecting lots more from her. One of her neologisms: “Ladenfreude: The collective American cheer when we learned that the Navy SEALs got their man.” Not surprisingly, when we ask for spicy titles, some are going to be *too* spicy — even when they’re jokingly presented as totally wholesome. It reminds me of theresults of Week 1090, in which we asked for poems that used — correctly — words that sounded dirty but weren’t, like “aholehole” and “cockchafer.” The editors ended up pulling most of the poems out of the print paper. This time, I was asked to cut this one by Rob Huffman: “Rim Jobs: The Evolving Workplace of the Grand Canyon Perimeter.” Given that they let me keep “The Joy of Doggy Style” (Frank Mann), “Young, Hot and Wet” (Jon Gearhart) and Frank Osen’s “MILF” joke, I wasn’t going to fight it. But at that point I realized that I shouldn’t run, even online: “Become a Master at Fingering and Tonguing: Etudes for Clarinet, Vol. 6” (Hugh Thirlway) or “A Guide to Digital Intercourse” (previously titled “The White Pages”) from Danielle Nowlin. *EAT HARD ALEE: LOSER BRUNCH THIS SUNDAY AT HEAVY SEAS ALEHOUSE* Loser Brunch No. 180 (!!!) is at a new venue, the Heavy Seas Alehouse in Arlington, just a short walk from the Rosslyn Metro station. I won’t be able to make it this month, but I know that a number of regulars will be there at noon. Remember, all attendees get a genuine Czarist-era Style Invitational bumper sticker, the honorable-mention prize that preceded our Loser Magnets. ====================================================================== WEEK 1142, published September 27, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1142: The mash game The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates all over this week’s contest By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** September 24, 2015 The challenge in this week’s Style Invitational, Week 1142 — to write a Twitter post from a fanciful hybrid of two people — is a new one, for sure. But it’s the scion of a long line of Invite portmanteau*mashup contests, and they’ve almost always been great successes. Today, a look back at some classic mashes from the Invite’s first decade. The first Invitational I could find that called explicitly for combinations of names was Week 54 (1994), “in which we asked you to come up with*“comical names resulting from marriage or other collaborations.” * The contest allowed for company names as well as human ones, as well as chains of several names, but most were about two people. Among the winners (complete list here ; scroll down past the Week 57 contest announcement): *If the daughter of mimeograph magnate A.B. Dick married the son of designer Edith Head, she would probably keep her maiden name. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge; also,Paul Styrene, Olney) If Queen Latifah married Michael Farraday, she’d be Queen Farraday. (Annie, Ben, Sandy and David Tevelin, Burke) If Mama Cass had married John Donne, divorced him and married Alexander Ptolemy, we’d get Mama Donne Ptolemy. (Al Hattal, Potomac)* Here’s one asking for*combinations of two products*, à la the spork(Week 265, 1998, one of the first Invites published online) : *Fourth Runner-Up -- The Slipscoop: A combination bedroom slipper and pooper scooper. No need to stop and bend over; simply slipscoop it up and place-kick it over the neighbor’s fence. Three points! (Sunny C. Doman, Falls Church)** **Third Runner up -- Rogocaine: A cross between Rogaine and cocaine. It grows nose hair. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)** **Second Runner up -- Gromit: Combination syrup of ipecac and tile grout. Makes triumph out of tragedy when you don’t quite make it to the toilet bowl. (Russ Beland, Springfield)** **First Runner-Up -- The F’c’w’le’ha: A combination forecastle (fo’c’s’le), gunwale (gunnel) and halfpenny (ha’p’n’y) I have no idea what it is, I just get a kick out of the idea that no one knows how to pronounce it. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)** And the winner of the Chinese Propaganda Record -- AK-486: A combination of an AK-47 and the RU-486 “morning after” pill. This assault weapon has an automatic-delay firing pin, permitting disgruntled postal workers to rethink their rage. (T.J. Murphy, Arlington)* Week 287 was the*“before and after” game *as on “Wheel of Fortune” and the occasional “Jeopardy” category. This one featured numerous portmanteau names. : *Sixth Runner-Up: Lloyd Bridges of Madison County: A rootless photojournalist and a bored housewife have an underwater knife fight. (Ralph Scott, Washington)* *Fifth Runner-Up: Rembrandt Van Rijn Tin Tin-The night watchdog. (Meg Sullivan, Potomac)* *Fourth Runner-Up: Heimlichtenstein: A small country firmly lodged between Austria and Switzerland. (Sandra Hull, Arlington)* *Third Runner-Up: Darryl F. Zanuck nyuk nyuk-A slapstick filmmaker. (Sue Lin Chong, Washington)* *Second Runner-Up: Roseanne Boleyn: Queen who kept talking after being beheaded. (David Genser, Arlington)* *First Runner-Up: Anais Nintendo Gameboy: The pocket toy you really don’t want to give your kids. (Greg and Kristine Griswold, Falls Church)* *And the winner of the snake wine: Thomas Jefferson Clinton: President who penned the famous introductory lines: “We hold these half-truths to be legally accurate ... “ (Douglas Riley, Reston)* Week 312 asked readers to *combine two works of literature*: *First Runner-Up: “Green Eggs and Hamlet”: Would you kill him in his bed?* Thrust a dagger through his head?* I would not, could not, kill the King.* I could not do that evil thing.* I would not wed this girl, you see.* Now get her to a nunnery. (Robin Parry, Arlington)** And the Winner of the Dancing Critter: “Fahrenheit 451 of the Vanities”: An ‘80s yuppie is denied books. He does not object, or even notice. (Mike Long, Burke)* Week 376 followed up with *TV mashups:** First Runner-Up: “Everybody Loves All My Children”--Sitcom**featuring typical suburban soccer mom. (Chris Shreves, Oak Hill)** And the winner of the Cuban constitution and Chilean handbooks:* *“L.A.P.D. Victory Garden”--Cops show how to plant evidence.* *(Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)* Week 476 was the first of several contests for *portmanteau words;* the two words had to overlap by at least two letters: *Fourth Runner-Up: Estrogeniality: The attribute that compels women to go to the restroom in pairs. (Joy Vizi, Sterling)** Third Runner-Up: Euphemistress: One’s “niece.” (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.)** Second Runner-Up: Nazionist: One truly mixed-up SOB. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)** First Runner-Up: Mulligangster: A hit man who is afforded a second shot when his first is not successful. (Mike Genz, La Plata)** And the winner of the human head replica: Rhinoplasterisk: Indicates that a person’s appearance on a “Most Beautiful” list may have been surgically assisted.**(Meg Sullivan, Potomac)* Week 489, *more name combinations*: *Third Runner-Up: Mr. T.S. Eliot: “I pity the fool, wanderin’ around half-deserted streets, walkin’ on beaches, talkin’ ‘bout peaches, mournin’ his lost manhood. I pity the fool.” (Dan Steinberg, Bethesda) And the winner of the sugar-cookie-scented Eggbutt Horseball: Al Frankenstein’s Monster: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, gosh darn it, I’m a big fat idiot.” (Beverly Miller, Clarendon)* Etc. Note that portmanteaux work best when it’s clear what both components are: If you have to explain it, the rest of the joke had better be wildly clever and funny to compensate. How to check most easily whether your tweet fits? Go on twitter.com and type in the “Tweet” box; the too-long part of the tweet will show up in red. (Well, yes, you would have to have a Twitter account for that, but it can be anonymous; just go to twitter.com*signup to create an account, or a second account if you use a different e-mail address.) . *GIBE TALKIN’:* THE INKIN’ INSULTS OF WEEK 1138* *Non-inking headline suggestion from Chris Doyle, who, yes, has at least most of his entries tossed*every single week* I started off the results of Week 1138 with a glib disclaimer because I*know* that some of these have been uttered*typed*otherwise put forth by someone at some time. In fact, some of them showed up in somewhat similar form on Google. But in those cases that I noticed, the citations were few, not widespread or well known, and*or years old. If you have encountered them before, well, good for you. Do your best to maintain your smug grin for the rest of the day. I would highly, highly doubt that any of the inking entries were consciously stolen. (Though whoever sent me “his emotions ran the gamut from A to B,” the ghost of Dorothy Parker Herself is flattered. Fun fact: Parker’s 1934 comment about Katharine Hepburn’s stage-acting ability didn’t appear in Parker’s review; she’s only said to have spoken it during intermission,) Regular readers of this column and the Devotees page know that 284-time Loser Mae Scanlan has had a rough year, with an unending series of nasty health problems that have had her hopping (best she could) from home to hospital to rehab center to home to rehab to hospital to home — and that’s not a piece of cake for someone whose younger elementary school classmate was John McCain. But through it — and I mean virtually every week — Mae has managed to send in some Invite entries, and sometimes all 25, even when she had to dictate them to her daughter. And they’ve been really good — Mae has gotten regular ink this whole time, especially for the light verse for which she’s renowned, as in this poem using the spelling bee word “vespiary,” a wasp nest: *Persons should be very wary Getting near a vespiary. Do not denigrate the wasp: It can put you in the hosp.* But while Mae is clever as all get-out, she has a sort of handicap when it comes to The Style Invitational: She’s not nasty in the slightest, and she “doesn’t work blue”; in fact, she’s told me that she does the “pastor test” on her entries: If she thinks she’d be embarrassed showing up in church on a Sunday when she’s gotten ink, she won’t send in the entry. But this week’s winner shows how you can get close to 300 Invite inks even without being crass or vicious. And I was just tickled to find out on Tuesday who wrote it. (Here’s the page from a printout of Week 1138 entries with the winner at the bottom. Really, I’m not seeing your names!) I’m not surprised that Mae doesn’t think much of Donald Trump (I personally know only a very few people who do), but I’d forgotten that just a few weeks back, she got ink with this clerihew: *The only way Donald Trump Could be less of a chump Is if he (the whole package: body! shirts! belts!) Were somebody elts.* David Garratt’s second-place quip appealed to the copy editor in me; I only wish I were able to emphasize his semicolon-making-all-the-difference; I just can’t do that sort of textplay in this publishing system. I think that’s what I’ll do graphically in a future Style Invitational Ink of the Day . *Laugh Out of Courtney:* The fave list this week from copy chief Courtney Rukan was topped by Frank Osen’s barb that the most enthusiastic greeting Obama’s gotten lately was from a salmon. Courtney also tagged The Gulf of Mexico just called Bobby Jindal and told him it’s running out of sharks to jump (Phil Frankenfeld) ; that Chris Christie “can fill an arena” (Warren Tanabe): that Trump’s favorite part of the Bible was Chapter 11 (Kevin Dopart); that when Chuck Talks, people listen — to George Stephanopoulos (Doug Frank); and that Kim Davis was not so much Joan of Arc as George Wallace — only not as cute (Duncan Stevens). *A BERRA BOOBOO — AND THE INVITE’S TAKE* In its haste to get out the news about the death of Yogi Berra last night, the Associated Press sent off a wire with the headline “New York Yankees Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Bear has died. He was 90.” Several publications put it right up on their websites. Including, at 2:40 a.m., The Washington Post. Meanwhile, this week the Ink of the Day will feature entries from our Week 271 “Berra-ism” contest (1998). You do need a Facebook account to see it. Unless you follow me on Twitter — hey, there’s a reason right there to set up the account. I’m at @patmyersTWP . ====================================================================== WEEK 1143, published October 4, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1143: Our mug runneth over with parodies Add to list On my list Virginia state Senate candidate Carl Loser (rhymes with "poser") with his new Loser Mug. When he thanked me and sent this photo, I immediately asked how I could get his shirt. (Courtesy of Carl Loser) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 1, 2015 Maybe he was just not in the mood to think too hard; maybe he was angling for a present for his birthday tomorrow. In any case, when I sent the Deposed Czar of The Style Invitational my list of proposed Ask Backwards categories for Week 1143 , he did not, as is his custom, suggest replacing, oh, about 15 of them with 15 of his own. Instead he said, “I have nothing to add except maybe testicle instead of clavicle?” Okay, then he sent me a few more e-mails suggesting more revisions. But still, I’ll take it as validation. And I guess I’ll take the poor schmo out to lunch tomorrow. (I would also take out Chris Doyle, who contributed “Poutine on the Ritz,” “L’Oreal and Hardy” and “19 Ids and Counting,” but I’m not going to Ponder, Tex.) The Czar’s own first set of Ask Backwards categories, from Week 24 (August 1993): *Janet Reno’s shoes * Herbert Haft’s hair * To get to the other side * Lorena Bobbitt or Hermann Goering ***Socks * Don’t ask, don’t tell * Michael Jackson’s face * The inventor of the urinary catheter * It’s the economy, stupid * Heidi Fleiss’s notebook * Just Do It * Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna * Tax and spend * Because he didn’t inhale * Ooo-bop-a-loo-bop-a-loo-bop-boom * Marion Barry, Vaclav Havel and that guy in the Taster’s Choice ad* And the top winners (yes, we had more runners-up back then, usually: the 1990s were not a budget-conscious time for big fat daily newspapers): Sixth Runner-Up: Answer: Socks . Question: Who has also been neutered at the White House? (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Fifth Runner-Up: A. To get to the other side. Q. Why did the chicken enter Dan Quayle’s ear? (Mark A. Hagenau, Bowie) Fourth Runner-Up: A. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna. Q: Name two women whose IQ plus bust size equals 180. (Debby Prigal, Washington) Third Runner-Up: A.Herbert Haft’s hair . Q: What is the only element in the Haft family currently not parted? (Mary Lee Fox Roe, Mount Kisco, N.Y.) Second Runner-Up: A. Socks. Q. What do the Clintons hide when hungry Arkansas relatives show up at the White House? (Audrey Kovalak, Springfield) First Runner-Up: A. Lorena Bobbitt or Mahatma Gandhi. Q. Who are two people whose spouse had a big red dot somewhere on their body? (Joey Zarrow, Herndon) And the winner of the fuzzy moose bedroom slippers plus tickets to a Bowie Baysox game: A. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna. Q. What do you get when you combine Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Madonna? (Jacob Weinstein, Washington) I didn’t have to give a link to remind people who Lorena Bobbitt was, right? The Great Bobbitt Bobbing had taken place in Manassas, Va., in the D.C. area, just a couple of months before this contest. But Lorena and her soon-to-be-ex, John, have continued to provide Invitational fodder ever since. One of my favorite entries ever doesn’t seem to exist online: In 2001 I judged a contest (as Auxiliary Czar) in which people chose a single panel from a Sunday comic strip and write new text for it. Tom Witte chose a panel from the family comic “For Better or for Worse,” in which the wife, Ellie, and husband John are eating dinner; Ellie is holding up a piece of sausage on her fork. In that stunned expression she often had, Ellie says: “I don’t know what it is, but I found it by the side of the road in Manassas.” *Once again, as I note in the directions:* I usually judge this contest by searching through the entries for all the questions for the first answer, selecting the ones I like for a short­list; then going to the second answer, etc. This helps me see duplications and compare similar ideas. But I very well could miss your entry if my search doesn’t land on it. So if you’re writing 10 different entries for, say, “19 Ids and Counting,” and I search for “counting,” I might miss Entries 2 through 10 if you don’t include the word “counting” before them. This is why God invented the copy*paste shortcuts of ctrl-c* ctrl=v. *THE ’RUMP ROAST CONTINUES: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1139 * The novelty of the Week 1139 contest was that there were 64 possible combinations, long form, short form, jokes, poems, songs, politics, shoes. But it was inevitable that most of the space in the results would be hogged by song parodies — both because of their length and because there are*always* terrific entries. And just as inevitably, there will be excellent parodies that don’t get ink: They’re too similar to another parody, or they’re just one too many — we just can’t expect readers to get to the end of a 30-song list, especially because appreciating a parody really requires that you sing along with it (even if in your head), however long that takes; you can’t just eyeball it as you scan the page. Dave Silberstein’s “Everyone’s Drawn to the Loon” didn’t fail to get ink because it wasn’t good; it’s just that it wasn’t as good as the songs that did run. I was going to run just one verse, but the limitation Dave chose was to include all 26 letters of the alphabet, and they weren’t all in one verse. Here’s the first verse (with areally lovely melody , if you don’t know it): Rattles off nonsense designed to inflame, Crowds full of anger, eager to blame. Polls steadily rising since declaring in June -- Everyone’s drawn to the loon. Once again, my choices for the print page favored songs that I hoped the most readers would know, since even the cleverest parodies aren’t much fun to read if you don’t know the tune. Besides Mark Raffman’s winner and Nan Reiner’s and Frank Osen’s runners-up, the parodies appearing in the “fishwrap edition” (as Elden Carnahan refers to it) are Jon Gearhart’s on “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and Mae Scanlan’s on “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” — even though Mae’s two other inking entries are even better, especially the one on “Young at Heart.” *Speaking of Young at Heart: * Mae herself is certainly young at heart — and mind — when it comes to her humor and writing. But her corporeal, 84-year-old pumper has given her all sorts of hassles since the beginning of 2015, And just for the fun of taking on an even bigger challenge, Mae wrote these parodies — and several others! — between bouts of chemo for a misbeheaving pancreas. May the power of mirth and wit brighten her days as hers brightens ours. I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that it was Mark Raffman who’d written this week’s Inkin’ Memorial-winning parody: not just because it was both flawlessly written and so freakin’ funny — “They do rapes! They do crimes! They drink beer with sliced-up limes!” — but because*he won’t stop using “Be Our Guest.”* First there was Week 1029, in 2013, and the contest was for song parodies that described particular movies, and Mark chose “Porky’s” : “See a chest! See a chest!* Tops are coming off with zest!* We’re awaiting an R-rating* When we show another breast!” That won Mark his third Inkin’ Memorial. And then, this past April, Mark had President Obama singing about Binyamin Netanyahu: (“He’s a pest! He’s a pest! With our atom talks he’s messed!”), and that was a runner-up. And now he racks up Bobble-Linc No. 10 (!!!), once again with the backing of composer Alan Menken and (unheard but important for the wit of the parody) Howard Ashman. *A LOSER SINCE THE DAY HE WAS BORN* Two weeks ago we gave away a first-runner-up prize (oh, yeah, that was to Mark Raffman, too) of a “Loser for Liberty” tote bag, courtesy of the Virginia state Senate campaign of Carl F. Loser of the Richmond area, who is perhaps the only current Libertarian candidate to have his owncampaign rap song . Richmonder Jeff Shirley procured a bag and sent it to me, and I e-mailed the Loser campaign to ask how Mr. Loser pronounced his name. The candidate got back to me himself, explaining that while it actually rhymes with “poser,” he doesn’t correct people who pronounce it our way “because I find that they remember the name better.” At first I didn’t explain why I was interested in the Loser campaign and paraphernalia, but I felt guilty and wrote back to fess up. And I told him I’d send him a Loser mug or T-shirt if he’d pose with it and send me a picture. To my great relief, Carl has a great sense of humor and was delighted with his swag. When he sent me the photo above, I immediately wrote back to ask, “How do I get one of your shirts?” I haven’t heard back. Meanwhile, while Mr. Loser lags slightly behind his District 10 Democratic opponent in fundraising, $679,000 to $4,648, we hold out hope that he’ll be able to continue pronouncing his name his own way come November. *COMING SOON: MEET THE PARENTHESES* While the monthly brunches, annual Flushies awards and holiday parties are among the niftiest aspects of the Loser Community, we’re a worldwide operation and so some of you are just never gonna meet these people in person. But who is this Doyle guy who keeps importing vats of ink to Ponder, Texas? Where did they get this (Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.) with all the songs and the silly-prize donations? Starting, I hope, next week, I’ll be instituting a Style Conversational section called “Meet the Parentheses,” in which one or two veteran Losers will introduce themselves in short-answer format. To start off, let’s feature people who are among the top 20 Losers this year in Elden Carnahan’s standings at nrars.org. You guys, please e-mail me responses to these questions. You can answer either straightforwardly or smart-alecky, but if you’re smart-alecky it has to be funny, not tiresome. You are funny people! You can do this. Name, age: Where you live: Your official loser anagram plus a couple of alternatives if you know some: What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? (This is where you can put stuff about your background, occupation, family or whatever you’d like to say. It doesn’t have to be monosyllabic but don’t write a whole page. Let’s say about 100 words.) How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing? What brought you to Loserdom? What are two favorite entries you’d like to share? What’s an example of something you do (or an anecdote about something you’ve done) that confirms your Loserosity? (Another opportunity to be funny and creative.) Also, please send as an attachment a photo of at least 500Kb resolution. Don’t worry, I won’t plaster it across the top of the page unless it’s truly marvelous; a regular photo will go midway down the left side of the page, at a decorous size. If there’s some information you really don’t want people to know, such as your age, prior convictions, etc., no biggie. I was going to start with Ye Olde Chris Doyle, but Chris does make the case that I’ve written about him many times already, as when he scored his 1,500th blot of ink (he’s now up to 1,718). So: the rest of you Top 20s. Send them to pat.myers@washpost.com. ====================================================================== WEEK 1144, published October 11, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1144: Turn bad into good without any effort! By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 8, 2015 As soon as I realized that we hadn’t ever repeated the classic Week 547 contest, I had no worries at all about doing it again 11 years later in Week 1140 — except that I might get too many great entries. Well, that did happen — my “shortlist,” culled from some 2,000 entries for a bad use for a brand name, ran nine pages (out of 168 for the total). But this week’s results are short-form enough that I could share 30 of them on the print page and 40 online, and many are still making me laugh out loud after repeated readings. It’s pretty obvious what made the funniest entries: ones that used a different meaning of a word, or a literal rather than figurative one, to become inappropriate in another context. And, as is true so often, it’s the moment or two that the reader spends to figure out that new context that makes the joke so rewarding and memorable. In almost all the inking entries this week, it was that make-you-think quality that set them apart from, say, Gain or Hefty as a name for a diet plan. And why using a joke-named product, like Arrogant Bastard or Smuttynose beer, isn’t as funny as a plain ol’ regular name. Definitely requiring a moment of puzzling — I hope not too many moments — is this week’s winner, that Facebook would be a bad name for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. (This was also the favorite of my predecessor, The Czar.) It’s the fourth win, but the first Inkin’ Memorial, for Drew Bennett, who won most of his 124 blots of ink in the 2000s and has tailed off in the past few years, wasting his time on such hobbies as being chancellor of Missouri State University-West Plains, getting married, etc. I’m glad to see that in recent weeks, Drew has been properly adjusting his priorities. Currently No. 16 in the Style Invitational standings, anagram whiz (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) is Victim No. 1 in our new Convo feature “Meet the Parentheses.” See below. ( Courtesy of Jon Gearhart* ) Our SoCal Loser Bureau grabbed second and third place this week, with yet another “above the fold” ink for Frank Osen and a welcome return from Jane Auerbach, who made a big Invite splash in the mid-2000s — and even flew out to Washington from Los Angeles to meet the Losers at the Flushies awards — but hasn’t Invited much recently. Now that Jane has upped her ink total to 97 blots, I’m hoping she’ll go all out to reach the 100-ink mark and get that commemorative roll of toilet paper at next year’s awards. And it was a spectacular week for fourth-placer Kristin Rahman, who got three inks today (and several more of her entries made the shortlist). Many of this week’s inking entries went for Ye Olde Sex and Toilette Humour, and it should surprise none of you that many of those many went too far. A string of examples — along with some jaw-dropping tastelessness in other subjects as well, appears at the bottom of this column. (If you don’t like jaw-dropping tastelessness, you will not look down there to read it and then complain about the JD tastelessness.) Sometimes entrants helpfully explain their jokes to me — and it really is helpful, since it lets me more quickly conclude, “Oh, so I*wasn’t* missing anything funny.” If people can’t get your joke without a long explanation, it’s almost always the kiss of death right there. But this Nerdo Entry of the Week, from inveterate (but not invertebrate) biologist Mike Creveling, is so goofily erudite that I had to laugh: “Erysipelas* makes a good name for a painful, blistering, red bacterial rash, but a bad name for a sports team. [*Greek: from erythros (“red”) + pella (“skin”)].” It reminded me of the funnier winners in our 2002 contest “Asterisky Business,” which asked for jokes so esoteric that they had to be explained with an asterisked footnote. *Meet the Parentheses! * **This Week:*(Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) * We’re beginning this regular (or semi- so) Conversational feature — in the labor-saving form of a little questionnaire — with a Loser who’s become an Invite fixture, even though he didn’t get his first ink until 2014. That was an honorable mention in an anagram contest, Week 1051 (“If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” anagrams to “A flunky like you? You’re one cheap pathetic liar”). Very nice, but nothing compared with what followed a few days later: I got an e-mail from Jon containing both the full text of the letter I’d sent accompanying his prize --- and a letter in response *that was entirely an anagram of my letter, using every character.* Just look at ithere! *Your official Loser anagram plus any others you know: * The official one on the Loser Stats list is Jargon Hater, but you could also go with The Organ Jar and my personal favorite, Earth Jargon. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? * Two score and four years ago my parents perpetrated a great travesty on mankind--me. I grew up in the small town of Brooklyn, Iowa, in the shadow of five older siblings. Their incessant teasing and warbling made me both a smartass and a music lover. I learned to play guitar by ear, which was hard on my lobes but not as hard as it was on everybody else’s. After college, I had a big change. A car accident left me paralyzed from the chest down. Good thing I do my best work from the neck up or I’d be bitter. I came to realize the inconvenience of walking had been holding me back from learning patience, understanding and humility, but then I met the Style Invitational Devotees and realized how humiliating humility can be. Now it’s my middle name. (Click here to read Jon’s account of his car accident) *What brought you to Loserdom?* Fellow Loser Kirk Miller knew I enjoyed anagrams and wordplay and suggested I check out the contest in Week 1051, so you can blame him for my first entry. The fact that the Empress honored my debut with ink and invited me to join the Devotees group on Facebook means she deserves the ultimate blame. *What are two favorite entries you’d like to share? * I can’t imagine trying to pick favorites, but as Pat asked nicely, I’ll go with this haiku from Week 1090, a contest for humorous poems incorporating one of the obscure words listed, “clatterfart,” a busybody.: *Expressed through its tale, The clatterfart’s breath takes flight On gossiper wings.:* And more recently, from the contest to make boring books more marketable with spicy titles (Week 1137): *CATHOLIC SCHOOL HOOKERS! *Home Ec Projects Vol. 2: Crochet a Prayer Shawl *What’s an example of something you do that confirms your Loserosity? * Every day I try to come up with at least two entries for the current contest while staring at my Loser magnet collage on the front of my file cabinet. Who’d like to be the next Meetee? If you’re one of the Top 20 Losers in the current standings , e-mail me and answer the questions Jon did, or add or substitute a couple of your own. Also, please attach a photo of 500KB or better. The current queue: 1 person. *ALE, COLUMBIA: THE NEXT LOSER BRUNCH, OCT. 18* Especially if I get a ride, I should be able to come to the next Loser brunch, at noon on Sunday, Oct. 18, at the Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, about halfway between D.C. and Baltimore. RSVP to Elden Carnahan here . Elden and his henchmen try to stage the brunches all around the area; see the plan for the full year at the RSVP page, which you can also reach through the Our Social Engorgements link on the Loser website at NRARS.org . *BAD NAME, BAD TASTE, EVERYTHING YOU’D WANT IN AN UNPRINTABLE ENTRY * *The following entries from Week 1140 range from a wee bit short of usable (under Style Invitational standards) to a full ARE YOU @#*&%^ ME. If you might be offended by tasteless humor, please don’t read the rest of this page.* Hacky Sack is a good name for a footbag but a bad name for a vasectomy clinic. (Jon Gearhart; Jeff Contompasis) Busch Gardens is a good name for an amusement park but a bad name for a nudist colony. (Dion Black) The Limited is a good name for a women’s clothing store but a bad name for a special ed school (Jane Auerbach) Tuna Helper is a good name for a food product but a bad name for a vibrator. (Jeff Shirley) Krispy Kreme works for a donut shop, but not for a sperm bank. (Robert Schechter) Little Sizzlers is a good name for pork sausage but a bad name for child car seats. (Chris Doyle) Redbox is a good name for a movie rental company but a bad name for a tampon. (David Friedman) Otterbox is a good name for a phone case but a bad name for underpants. (Janelle Gibb) Soft & Dri is a good name for a deodorant but a bad name for a dildo. (Chris Doyle) Jack in the Box is a good name for a restaurant but a bad name for a sperm bank. (Dion Black) And the horriblest: Garbage Pail Kids is an okay name for novelty trading cards but an appalling name for an abortion clinic. (Larry Gray) . . ====================================================================== WEEK 1145, published October 18, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1145: Four — all it’s worth The Tour de Fours contest, plus one of the Invite’s most dogged contestants Style Invitational Hall of Famer (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) with Milo (right). Brendan is the subject of this week’s “Meet the Parentheses,” below. (By Terri Griest) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 15, 2015 I concede that there’s no intrinsic oh-neat quality about our annual Tour de Fours neologism challenge: It’s not like, say, the one in which you made up a new word by spelling a real word backward (and usually relating it to the original); or even the classic task of changing the word by one letter. Here, the words simply have to include a totally arbitrary block of four letters; it’s just some way to reduce the scope of the contest from All the Words in the World. Still, our 11 previous Tours de Fours have yielded plenty of clever neologisms every year we’ve run the contest. . Here, as random example, are 10 entries from 2013, for S-A-N-E (I just noticed that the top three winners were all named Christopher): 1.*Senatorpedo:* Cruz missile. “The tea party’s vaunted senatorpedo self-destructed shortly after its launch.” (Chris Doyle) 2. *Snyder sneak:* A football play in which the team owner dives backward while everyone else continues to move forward. Usually used only for short gains. (Chris Damm) 3. *Condé Nasty:* A guide to the places you definitely don’t want to go on vacation. (Christopher Lamora) 4. *Stanes: *An unsuccessful brand of underwear. (Rob Huffman) **Sea snot:* Raw oysters. (Larry Gray)* *Prattlesnake:* A person who spends half an hour encouraging you to let it all out, then turns around and tells everyone what you said. (Kyle Hendrickson, Danielle Nowlin) ** *Buyenas:* Vicious creatures that attack big-box stores in feeding frenzies the day after Thanksgiving. (Ben Aronin) *Bellyjeans:* What you need to change into after too much Easter candy. (Randy Lee) *Congressmensa: *Washington’s most exclusive club — no one qualifies for it. (John Bunyan) And Last: *Inanesylum: *The Style Invitational. (Frank Osen) Note that while there’s no*requirement* that the neologism be a play on an existing word, most of our winning entries are. Also note that six of the 10 are portmanteau words, overlapping two existing words. And there’s even a spoonerism: Randy Lee’s “bellyjeans.” So while we’ve had separate contests for those forms, we’ve had great ink for them in the Tours as well. *Note to Week 1145 entrants:* It’s not necessary to boldface, capi­tal­ize or otherwise highlight the DICE block in your word; the boldface will get lost in transit from e-mail to my compiled One Big List of Entries, and I definitely won’t be capitalizing the pertinent letters in the results. The Head-Messers (and Mses): The results of Week 1141 Mess With Our Heads is probably my favorite of all the contests to judge. (Song parodies are my other favorite, but they require a lot more hours of judging time.) Not only do I enjoy spoofing newspapers and headline-writing in particular (since I used to be paid in U.S. dollars to do it), but I*always*find myself laughing out loud at dozens of entries. Certainly that was true in Week 1141, for which my short­list ran to 120 bank headlines. I noticed that a disproportionate number of the heads used were from the week’s print editions, which meant that a lot of people ended up using the same headlines — often with the same general joke. But usually there was one entry that outearned its ilk for ink. Its ink-ilk. As I’d noted before, I tended to go with heads whose actual meanings were more or less obvious; that way the reader can laugh more easily at how you reinterpret it This one by Frank Osen almost made it anyway, but I cut it in the final trim: Reports suggest Clinton has gained 2 inches since her last run. But how? *Benghazi committee chair wants her nose measured before and after testimony* The story , oddly enough, was actually what the headline says: Feature stories in 2008 described Hillary Clinton at 5-5, but recent ones say she’s 5-7. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that all four of this week’s “above-the-fold” ink blotters are from the D.C. area and (I’m going to assume because I want to) read hundreds of headlines every week in the print Post they subscribe to. Whatever, it was the perfect venue once again for Danielle Nowlin’s fresh, tuned-in humor, giving her a seventh first-place win, 24th above the fold, and her 176th blot of ink — and 177th, 178th and 179th. Meanwhile, it’s the fourth ATF ink for first runner-up Rob Wolf, the 38th overall for the suburban Maryland wrestling coach, for his Exhibit A for How a Peepee Joke Can Be Brilliantly Clever. Duncan Stevens gets his very first trip to the Losers’ Circle with his Palin dig (it also was short enough to go out on today’s tweet linking to the Invite). And it’s Ink No. 80, 10th above the fold, for Pie Snelson, whom all Loser event-goers know as the woman who keeps track of who’s who at the brunches and who gives out so many door prizes at Loser parties. (Pie’s first name is a nickname, by the way, as in Cutie Pie. Her real first name is Crème Brûlée.) *Dug by Doug AND Laughed Out of Courtney (AND the Czar): * Not only did I rob Frank Osen of ink with the Hillary headline, but it was unanimous among my go-to Post editors that the week’s funniest entry was his honorable mention “Name the panda Elvis”* “CIA reveals Bin Laden’s cryptic last words.” Copy chief Courtney Rukan, my former boss Doug Norwood and my predecessor in Invitedom Gene Weingarten all told me (separately) that that entry was their fave. MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) As the second in our series of showing you the people behind the ink blots (see last week’s Conversational for the one on Jon Gearhart), we present Hall of Famer — who’s almost at the doorsteps of the Double Hall — Brendan Beary, who sent in the following, answering the questions I posted on the Style Invitational Devotees page. Brendan, who has won The Style Invitational 36 times, is enormously self-effacing; I, not he, added the links to entries and poems he refers to. *Name, age: * Brendan Beary. Age 53. And a half. People are always surprised; they say I look like I’m 54 already, but no, still 53, I’m just big for my age. *Where you live: * Great Mills, Md., down in St. Mary’s County. I don’t have anything funny to say about that. *Your official Loser anagram , plus a couple of alternatives if you know some:* It used to be “B, A NEARBY NERD,” but at some point it got changed to “RAN BEERY BAND,” which I don’t like quite as much. I just discovered while cogitating on this answer that it could also be “BEANERY BRAND,” and my wife and dogs can attest to the fact that, owing to certain gastrointestinal traits, this might be more appropriate. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as?* What they know of me can be summed up in a single word: “Who?” I occasionally write poetry that gets published elsewhere (sometimes even real ink-and-paper published, but mostly just 1s-and-0s), but aside from that, I’m a spectacularly dull person. Sloths come and observe me when they develop anxiety disorders and need to learn to relax. *How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing?* On the day I looked it up for this assignment, I was at 976 – but that doesn’t count the massive haul I got in today’s results, including the winner, right? (RIGHT??). I’ve been entering since 1996, though the first few years, and these last few years, have been sort of sporadic. Right now I’m just plugging away till I get to 1,000, because that when Mr. Graham said he gets us fully vested in the Post’s pension plan. *What brought you to Loserdom? *I moved to Maryland in 1996, and when I saw how distressingly few fart jokes were in the Baltimore Sun, I started reading The Post. The first time I found the Invitational, I could hardly believe it; it was as if Mad Magazine had managed to sneak into the pages of a real honest-to-gosh newspaper. I loved the air of freewheeling anarchy (as opposed to an air of deliberate introspective anarchy) that it gave off; it was like listening in at the smartass kids’ table at your high school lunchroom. Eventually I overcame my awkward sense of hero worship and started attending Loser events, at which point I concluded: No, it’s more like the smartass table of a middle school lunchroom. *What are three favorite entries you’d like to share? * A lot of what I ink with is verse contests [such as this one ], which tend to run long, so in the interest of brevity I’ll go with some other stuff. *Week 547 (corporate good names*bad names*: No Nonsense Sheer Endurance: it’s a good name for pantyhose; it’s a bad name for an escort service. *Week 580 (combine 2 countries and describe the result):* Netherlands + Fiji = Netheriji – but I don’t know anything about it; I’ve been warned since age 12 not to play with Netherijians. *Week 671 (Hyphen the Terrible):* Trou-droponic: adj. Clintonian. *What’s an example of something you do (or an anecdote about something you’ve done) that confirms your Loserosity? * I go through the entire Wikipedia aggregation of “Recent Deaths” as preparation for the year-end Dead Letters contest. According to Wikipedia, about 3,000 people die every year; can you believe it? This is great for finding obscure people to write elegies for, and I’ve gotten ink in the past with somereally obscure ones , but unfortunately Wikipedia seems to be strongly biased in favor of cricket players and Estonian legislators – two groups that don’t tend to generate a lot of Invitational ink, or at least not as much as they used to. --------- Brendan is pictured on this page with his dog Milo, but it was his dog Otis whom he immortalized in an absolutely lovely poem, one that he read last year at a program of light verse at Catholic University. It singlehandedly disproves any snobbish argument that poems in strict meter, with perfect rhymes, with very funny lines throughout, cannot be *art* of a high order. Here it is in the poetry journal Light. It’s long, but you should take time to read every word. WATCH THE EMPRESS OF THE STYLE INVITATIONAL EAT FRENCH TOAST The Loser Brunch Tour makes its stop this month north of the Capital Beltway: Brunch No. 181 will be this Sunday at noon at Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia, Md., not far from I-95 between D.C. and Baltimore. Losers or just abject fans in the vicinity who’d like to join us (we’re currently at 14 people), RSVP on Elden Carnahan’s Loser website at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements” at the top). Or just use thishandy-dandy link . Drop me a line, too. ====================================================================== WEEK 1146, published October 25, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1146: The Invite’s lode of magnets Some of the first Loser Magnets shown with one of our best prizes ever: a stained-glass magnet box crafted and donated by Loser Peyton Coyner in 2005. (Julia Ewan*The Washington Post) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 22, 2015 Back in the Czarist Era, The Style Invitational’s first 10-plus years — which coincided with the Age of Newspapers With Big Circulations and Big Budgets — the prizes were bigger, too. (Mostly.) The Invitational debuted March 7, 1993, in a revamped Sunday Style section under a new section editor, Gene Weingarten. That same Sunday, Gene also instituted a weekly essay, “Noted With ...” — with a different noun each time. That first week, “Noted With Disdain” was by Gene himself, and was a rant against President Clinton’s Timex Ironman Triathlon, “a plastic digital watch, thick as a brick and handsome as a hernia.” (Here’s a link to it from another paper that printed it and still has it online.) That piece ran on Page F1. And on Page F2 was Week 1 of The Style Invitational, a contest to come up with a new name for the Washington Redskins. The grand prize? “An elegant Timex ‘Ironman Triathlon’ digital watch, valued at $39.” In Week 2, a contest for a new motto for Maryland, the prize was “a huge, tasteless Maryland crab-motif cheezy souvenir” valued at $50. And the inaugural runner-up prize was announced (though not yet shown)): “the coveted ‘Style Invitational’ loser’s T- shirt” — a prize that, in numerous models, would be sent to runners-up until just a few years ago, when I went to mugs and then also tote bags. Two weeks later, the Czar awarded five runner-up T-shirts, but nothing to the honorable mentions. In fact, it wasn’t until nine months later, Week 41, that the Czar announced a contest to create a Style Invitational bumper sticker for the HMs. Three weeks later “Shirt Happens” (by Elden Carnahan) and “How’s My Drivel? Fax 202-334-4312” (by Stephen Dudzik, using the fax phone number for entries) got to be the first of a long series of HM bumper stickers. They were clever, if often insidey (another was “F2 2U2”), but they had a few shortcomings as prizes: 1. They were ugly — plain black and white, with unattractive, amateurish type. 2. They were permanently stuck to whatever you stuck them to. And so, surely also because of (1), nobody ever seemed to use them. 3. They were remarkably expensive for such crappy-looking prizes. Not only did the Czar’s flunky (those were the days) order them for close to $1 apiece, but they also were too long to fit flat in a standard envelope, which meant that The Post was paying something like triple the regular postage. Get inside the noodle of Loser (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.) in the Meet the Parentheses section of the Conversational. (Dave wore this to the 2013 Flushies and later donated it as a prize.) (Nan Reiner) And so, as the Empress-in-Waiting was getting ready to depose the Czar in late 2003, the Style section office manager trooped us both into a meeting and said: We need to stop sending out those bumper stickers. Which turned out to be win-win-win-win: Since Jan, 18, 2004, we’ve been issuing two new magnets (with the occasional reprint) every nine months to a year — all of them colorful, masterly artworks by Bob Staake, and all featuring Loser-supplied slogans. They’re easy to mail, they don’t take up much room, they’re portable, they will usually stick to your car for a while before fading or falling off, and they run us about 21 cents apiece. Meanwhile, if you’d like to have one of the vintage bumper stickers, just come to a monthly Loser brunch , where Pie Snelson will give you one of the hundreds that Elden Carnahan amassed during the Czarist Era, and regifted along with his Loser T-shirts (one of which an Inkin’ Memorial winner or runner-up may request in lieu of the usual prize). So now in Week 1146 , it’s time for two new Loser magnets; as usual, I’ll order 500 of each design that Bob makes (I’ll also be seeking his view on which ideas will work best). Below are the ones we’ve done so far; click on each link to see what it looks like. Often they came not from magnet-slogan contests, but from also-rans for the Loser Mug or Grossery Bag. Wouldn’t they make a great poster, all together? 2004: The Style Invitational Makes Me Gag (Dave Zarrow) The Pen Is Mightier Than the Mind (Josh Borken, repeated for 2005-06 and also 2008-09) 2005: Surely I Jested (Marty McCullen, repeated for 2005-06 and 2008-09) I Empressed (Cecil Clark) 2006-07: Near-Do-Well (Howard Walderman) I’m Ink-competent (Dave Zarrow) 2007-08: It’s a Dishonor Just Being Nominated (Bruce Carlson) Aging Quippie (Tom Witte) 2009-10: Honor Among Dweebs (Lee Dobbins) Certifiably Inane (Edward Gordon) 2010-11: Putting the Rude in Erudition (Craig Dykstra) Mirth Certificate (Kevin Dopart) 2011-12: Sunday Drivel (Tom Witte) Middle-Wit Champion (Tom Witte) 2012-13: Not(e)worthy (Bruce Carlson) Discredit Card (Beverley Sharp) 2013-14: Po’ Wit Laureate (Roger Hammons) Puns of Steel (Jennifer Hart) 2014-15: The Wit Hit the Fan (Jon Hamblin, Bird Waring) Hardly Har-Har (Barbara Turner) As I noted in this week’s Invite, I still have a few weeks’ worth of the current magnets, which (unless it’s your slogan that ends up on the new magnet) I’ll mail to you until I run out of them — unless you e-mail me with a request by the Monday after the results are announced. *Speaking of alternative prizes: * The Post will be moving in December to new offices a few blocks away in downtown Washington, and I’ve been told that there won’t be any room to keep prizes there. So I’m slowly cleaning out the Invite Prize Closet and bringing home boxes of stuff to sort through. And I’m finding a lot of little items that are fun or at least nutty but don’t really merit being second prizes — a number of books, plus various small novelty items. If, in lieu of the prize you win in a certain week (say, if you already have a dozen of the same magnet), you would rather choose *something from the Mystery Grab Bag * — you don’t get to choose, and I won’t put much thought into it either — e-mail me with your request by the Monday after the results are announced. *Twicky tweets: The results of Week 1142* Week 1142 — the contest to write a tweet penned by your creation of a hybrid of two people — seemed like a novel idea. But as soon as I started judging, a lot of the entries sounded awfully familiar. And that’s because we’ve run*several* “Before and After” and portmanteau contests that asked you to combine two names, and then quote the resulting person. I started to comb through the results linked to in Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List , and discovered that not only had we given ink to Marion Barry Bonds saying “The pitch set me up,” (Dave Zarrow, Chris Doyle, 2003), but we had also given ink to Marion Barry Bonds saying “Pitcher set me up!” (Mike Gips, 2012). And in Week 287 (1998), Pollyanna Karenina was described as “someone so annoyingly cheerful it makes you want to throw yourself under a train (Susan Reese). In Week 489 (2003), Pollyanna Karenina “cheerfully threw herself under a train” (Jennifer Hart). And then, in a literature mashup contest, this won first runner-up: Pollyanna Karenina: “Oh, my — isn’t that the most beautiful train?” (Brendan Beary, 2005) If there are let’s-call-them encore jokes among this week’s inking entries, oh, well. They slipped through. Gary Crockett’s “OrangeJulius” gives him his ninth first-place win and 30th “above the fold,” to add to his 250-plus blots of ink. And while the instructions said to “combine two well-known names,” I really didn’t hesitate to bend the rules a millimeter in favor of the week’s cleverest, particularly timely idea. Gary’s entry was also the favorite this week of ace copy editor Doug Norwood. John Glenn’s runner-up was my favorite of several “Trumpelstiltskins” (for the Invite’s sake, do I want this guy to win the GOP nomination?). @JFKanye earns only the third blot of ink for Lela Martin — but it’s her second runner-up entry: She was also a runner-up in Week 1031 for the “air quote” contest: “M‘ale’: What’s inside a guy after a night of too much drinking; fe‘male’: What’s inside a girl after a night of too much drinking. (That entry drew a complaint from a woman accusing me of being a victim-blamer and rape-condoner. ) *Laugh out of Courtney: * Copy chief Courtney Rukan loved David Friedman’s “Swedish Chefferson” (“but I’m a Muppets fiend”). She also especially liked John Glenn’s “Trumpelstiltskin,” Warren Tanabe’s “RonaldonaldReagantrump,” Gary Crockett’s “JackLordByron” and Duncan Stevens’s “GeorgeR.R.MartinLutherKing.” *Blue Bird: * This week’s cleverest unprintable tweet was by Chris Doyle: @MarcAntonyWeiner: The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their boners. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.)* Although once in a job interview, the secretary announced to her boss that “Mr. Pervert is here to see you,” Dave prounounces his name PRE-var. Dave’s 269 inks — all but one from the Empressive Era — place him at No. 24 all time, but local Losers know him best as one of the organizers of the annual Flushies award “banquet,” where he often steals the musical segment of the event with his phenomenal playing on cowbell, clapper and, once, triangle. Here are Dave’s responses to some questionnaire items, including some he added: *What is your official Loser Anagram? *Pravda Diver is better than some other names I have been called. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite (and some who have) know you as?* I consider myself a native Marylander, because it was just a car ride to Washington, D.C. to be hatched. I officially retired this year after nearly 44 years of being a Fed, and I am on two Volunteer Service Agreements with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. My first government job was as a “climbing ranger” for a summer at Devil’s Tower National Monument, Wyoming, and my career continued in ups and downs until I became a biologist at the National Institutes of Health. Eventually I changed gears to the NIH Division of Safety, then USDA, where I became a manager to keep researchers and the environment healthy. *What did your dogs know you as?* Alpha Dog. *What brought you to Loserdom?* I noticed the SI around 1999 after exploring more of the paper beyond the comics. I was over-analyzing the rules and my entries (thanks to being science-oriented all my life) before loosening up at the end of 2003 about the time the Empress ascended to the throne. The SI became stress relief. *Name three of your favorite entries.* One of them is a favorite because I usually don’t get ink in poetry contestst.*From Week 935 poems about disasters: *High life for Romans! Pompeii was for living! None heeded omens of blast unforgiving, Years after quaking, Vesuvius building, Growing and waking to smother the gilding. Heat would benumb this, the masses were punished; Pummeled with pumice, Pompeiians were none-ished. *Week 784: bad endings for a novel: * He had been in a long, slow denouement. He rocked rhythmically on the porch, at once hesitant to turn the next page of his life, yet resolved to face his fate. With a deep sigh and exhalation, he turned the page. The page was blank. The third was picked up by the “Car Talk” guys for their radio show. A friend in Florida told me she heard my name and the joke while driving, and had to pull over, laughing. *Week 685, things to be thankful for:* That dogs don’t know everyone else hates you. *What’s something you do or have done that confirms your Loserosity?* I re-created the now-extinct Inker statue winner prize on my refrigerator, using only Loser magnets and a small paper bag resembling the tiny one that went over the Thinker’s head. Other Losers, I’m waiting to hear from you. ====================================================================== WEEK 1147, published November 1, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1147: Grid expectations with Word ‘Find’ And in Meet the Parentheses, (Nan Reiner, Alexandria) pitches herself some questions A passionate Nats follower, Nan Reiner got to be Fan of the Game on the day this photo was taken a couple of years ago. To those familiar with Nan’s brassy personality, this will come as zero surprise. See “Meet the Parentheses” below. ( Courtesy of Nan Reiner) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** October 29, 2015 I know that we’ve been going heavy on neologism contests lately, but it’s been more than a year since we debuted our word-“find” contest, and — given the thousands of entries and the very good results — I was eager to do it again for Week 1147 . I put the grid together just as I did in Week 1089 , with the aid of an instant word-search (and rudimentary crossword) maker, puzzle-maker.com. You just type in the words you want to include in the grid — for example, if you’re a teacher and want to use the week’s list of vocabulary words — and in no time, you get a PDF of the smallest puzzle that would hold your words in the classic word-search format: with each word embedded in a straight line going straight from left to right (or right to left); or up or down; or diagonally up or down, toward the left or the right. So all the words I fed the constructor appear in the grid in one of those straight-line directions, amid the random letters that fill the rest of the spaces. And once again, I generated those words at random, by clicking at wordgenerator.net. What words were there? Mostly weird ones! *expurge* (i.e., to purge) *waly* (a Scottish interjection of sorrow, like “O woe”!; I knew it from the gorgeous folk song “O Waly, Waly” )* coafforest*(it’s a verb! To convert into a forest) *bookworm* *tue* (the only definition I can find for it as an English word is as an abbreviation for “Tuesday”; not really a word but so what)* plantigrada* (animals that walk on the full soles of their feet, like humans and bears; dogs, horses, etc., walk on the equivalent of the balls of our feet) *disconsolation* *Goldilocks* (in addition to the fairy tale character; a term meaning the happy medium, as in the bed that is not too hard or too soft) *verbarscarus* (a Mediterranean fish) *vire* (an old kind of arrow) *coherently* *stram* (the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs way back when; also to spring or recoil with violence) indistinguishing *fitly* (i.e., fittingly) *dire* *sylvine* (an ore of potassium) *debilitate* *assumptive* Not that it matters, of course, because they’re only 18 possibilities — and not very likely ones — out of the 3.1415926 bazillion words you can “find” by tracing your finger or arrow up and down and back and forth. You*will* find some brand-new words in there. The trick, of course, is to define it in a clever, funny way. If you like, though, feel free to use any of the above words as well. The tricksters in Week 1089 were certainly in top form. Here’s the “above the fold” ink from last year; scroll down in Week 1093 to see all the results. *The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:* *F-12: CRIMEA VISIT:* Term for guests who overstay their welcome, and then announce they own your house. (Mark Raffman) 2.*D-11: NOTIGAN:* The sweater your aunt knits for you, every birthday, every year. (Frank Osen) 3. *F-12: CLINTONHOLE:* A term conservatives use in front of their children while talking about someone they don’t like. (Rob Wolf) 4. *J-8: DANGRY: *Only mad enough to use pseudo-curse-words. (Pam Sweeney) Meanwhile, as I write this column, Imminent Hall of Fame Loser Jeff Contompasis has already typed up and posted a grid on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook that you can copy and use as searchable text. The results of Week 1143: What will deplete the Invite prize closet by 26 items? As*always,* there were lots of clever and varied approaches to the odd “answers” in this latest Ask Backwards contest. It’s the nature of the contest that the entries’ humor tends to come from the writers’ ingenuity in responding to the prompt, rather than as a self-contained joke. (This is why they don’t tend to work asInk of the Day cards.) Also as always, there were many answers with roughly the same idea; sometimes they canceled one another out, and sometimes I chose an entry that had something to edge it past the rest (that something is*not* transmittable via PayPal). Four out of the five members of this week’s Losers’ Circle are habitues (and, while I didn’t do the research, probably are all Ask Backwards vets as well): Runner-up Neal Starkman has his 53rd ink since starting in Week 944, while Bird Waring, who’s been entering since 2002, blots up Nos. 147 and 148. But at another level altogether — you might call it The Stratum of the Ridiculous — are this week’s winner and second-place finisher, who are No. 3 and No. 1 in the Invite all-time standings. It’s the 27th first place for Loser Since Week 7 Tom Witte, and his 1,358th blot in all, while Chris Doyle notches Inks 1,725 and 1,726 — and his 155th runner-up prize. SWARM OF LOSERS TO INVADE VA. NOV. 15 The next Loser Brunch is at a place we’ve been to many times: It’s The Front Page in the Ballston section of in-town Arlington. There’s a buffet and also a Bloody Mary bar. The restaurant is inside an office building, and the last couple of times they’ve set up our long table in the building’s sunlit atrium lobby. And if you come, Pie Snelson will let you have a vintage pre-Loser Magnet Style Invitational bumper sticker. I plan to be there; RSVP to Elden Carnahan here. Everyone is welcome, even the Merely Curious. *MEET THE PARENTHESES* *This week, meet one of the Invite’s most memorable Losers. Nan Reiner not only inks up the joint every time we have a song or verse contest, but she’s become a fixture at the Flushies awards and holiday parties while performing parodies written for the occasion. And under the moniker Kitty Ditty on the Style Invitational Devotees page, Nan often comments moments after a baseball game — in instantly composed limericks.* *(Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.)* “Otherwise known as ‘this [insert glowing superlative here] with all the songs and the silly prize donations.’ ” *Official Loser anagram? * RAN ERNE IN, in tribute to my years as a prosecutor and my natural habitat among the seabirds at the beach. (Alternatives, RERAN NINE or INNER NEAR… sorry, there’s not much you can do with this array of letters.) *Age?* Um… less than 60. And let’s just keep it there, shall we? Playing by “Jewish diaspora rules” (i.e., time everywhere on earth is determined by what time it is in Jerusalem), I will gladly receive felicitations for my 15th birthday on the last day of this coming February. *Where do I live?* For the past 35 years, I have called AN AXED LIAR (Va.) home. I hail from GET CANKER (N.Y.), and in the near future I expect to come to rest in O, NOT A CRAB! (Fla.). But not until at least one or two more Loser events wherein I can inflict song parodies on the not-at-all-unsuspecting assemblage. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know me as? * Pretty much the same. At the tender age of 7, I discovered summer camp. Where it was a tradition to write topical new lyrics to existing songs. And thus the monster was unleashed. Countless school and camp shows, Law Revues, and Purim Spiels later, my parents’ hard-earned investment is paying off, in precious inkblots. The Capitol Steps’ loss is the Invite’s gain. (More on that below.) Also, in no particular order: Tireless denizen of the D.C. attorney general’s office, sometime cantorial soloist, a cappella fanatic, and perpetual cheerleader, among many other things. *How long have I been playing and how much ink do I have?* I entered on a lark in the summer of 2010. Since then, it’s been more or less regular, depending on the contest and what normal people call “life”. I have somewhere north of 250 inkblots. (According to the Omniscient Stats Man, my current tally is 272.) I’d like to make it to 500 someday, if I can. *What brought me to Loserdom? * Retirement. As an attorney for the D.C. government, there was no way I could rev my snark engine – almost totally fueled by current events – in print and sign my name to it. Then, some months after I hung up my government lawyer shoes, a stroke of serendipity cast my eye on Week 877 of the SI. On a lark, I sent in a few couplets, including one skewering the sitting mayor (my erstwhile boss); next thing I knew, that couplet was above the fold, and I had a T-shirt, a stinky tree, a signed column and delightful letter from someone called The Empress, and an invitation to brunch. The Loser drug was too intoxicating – I was powerless to resist! I was hooked. *A few favorite entries I’d like to share?* Well, there are the song parodies… but they’re way too long-form to be included here. (You can find many of them in the results of Weeks 929, 982, 1004, 1074 & 1113.) Equally fun for me have been the light-verse contests, in particular those which had me writing poetry in forms I’d never tried before. To wit (at least to half-wit): *Week 978, Framed Couplets (2 or 4 lines, 9 syllables, first & last rhyme), from 2012:* GOP’ers wail about Barack: “He puts forth a socialistic crock!” Say the Dems, “Well, Mitt and Ann are snobs.” Hey — do you guys have a plan for jobs? (Alas, not much has changed since then…) *Week 1095, TankaWankas (haiku-ish, with 2 more 7-syllable lines), from 2014 – this about “Gamergate,” harassment of women in the gaming world:* Gamer dweebs all say Girls are not supposed to play. Hey, guys: Get a clue. We have learned what we can do With our joysticks, without you. *And Week 1030, cinquains (5 lines of 2-4-6-8-2 syllables), from 2013, in reference to an unfortunately photogenic Member of Congress:* Weiner — “Carlos Danger”! — Rears his head in hubris. Doesn’t need our votes, he needs a New bris. *Something Loserly I did? *Or, rather, something Loserly that got did to me. In 1987, while pregnant with my first child, I played the 17-year-old Japanese ingenue Pitti-Sing in Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Mikado” for a local community theatre. (Which is funny enough in itself, especially for those who know my upper-body configuration un-pregnant, let alone prenatally engorged.) As was my wont – and also my will – I supplied much of the parody material for the updated song reprises in the show. And as luck would have it, two of my fellow players were members of the Capitol Steps. Who promptly approached me about joining the troupe. At that time, though, it was a requisite that all members be employees (or alumni) of Congress, which I was not, so the founders kiboshed that idea. To which I say, in the words of the immortal Calvin Coolidge, “Capitol Steps – you lose!” *And something Loserly I do now?* Traipse through as many flea markets and schlock shops as I can, in search of Objects of Questionable Taste and*or Quirky Amusement for the Imperial prize hoard. You’re welcome. ====================================================================== WEEK 1148, published November 8, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1148: Does counting to 31 make you do this? The Empress ruminates all over the new Style Invitational contest and results Year 22 Rookie of the Year (Todd DeLap, Fairfax, Va.) aims to mortify his school-age children. Todd spills a little about his Loser self in our Meet the Parentheses section below. (Family photo) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 5, 2015 Next June I’ll be participating in a workshop at the West Chester Poetry Conference (near Philadelphia) on light verse and song parodies. The sessions will be led by two award-winning poets who are also “award”-winning Style Invitational Losers -- Melissa Balmain and Frank Osen — while I chime in with Great Imperial Wisdom about What Works. Perhaps we’ll be using some of the winning TankaWanka from Week 1148. And from our inaugural TW contest a year ago, Week 1095 . Last year’s winner, it turns out, sadly, could have been pulled from this month’s headlines as well, as the SXSW expo in Austin recently canceled two panels on harassment in the gaming world because of threats of violence: Gamer dweebs all say Girls are not supposed to play. Hey, guys: Get a clue. We have learned what we can do With our joysticks, without you. (Nan Reiner) For that matter, the second- and third-place entries — oh, goodness, they’re by Melissa Balmain and Frank Osen, respectively — are almost as timely as well (except, thank heavens, for the ebola epidemic): Midterm votes are done: Optimism’s fading fast That the folks who won Somehow will — unlike the last — See that more than gas gets passed. (Melissa Balmain) Runners-up can now choose the newly unearthed First Edition Loser Mug, instead of the current mug or the Grossery Bag. (Design by Bob Staake; slogan suggested by both Chris Doyle and Beverley Sharp ) Sunni on Shia, Russian troops in Crimea, Ebola, ISIS, Worldwide crisis and drama — As per Fox: Thanks, Obama! (Frank Osen) Only Perry Beider’s fourth-place TankaWanka, about Renee Zellweger’s plastic surgery, refers to news that’s already become trivia. Note that the TW form absolutely demands 31 syllables spread exactly 5-7-5-7-7 over five lines, and demands one rhyme. However, the Empress is a wee bit flexible on what constitutes a single syllable: “hour,” for example, could be one syllable or two. And note that — and I’m sure this wasn’t conscious on my part; I’m just seeing it now — Nan’s, Melissa’s and Frank’s poems each had*multiple* rhymes: Nan’s scheme was AA-BBB, Frank’s AA-B-CC, and Melissa’s an even niftier A-B-A-BB. On the other hand, I did realize that I was favoring TWs that ended in a rhyming couplet; only three of that week’s inking entries didn’t have what functions as a two-line punchline. An artfully constructed poem won’t get ink if it’s not witty in its language and point as well. But when I’m trying to choose between two witty, funny sentiments, craft is often the deciding factor. A note about this week’s example: I tend to greatly favor natural syntax over convoluted “poetic” word order. But I thought that Gene Weingarten’s Line 4 was spoofing such awkwardness with “It should right out at you jump!” And it was a single line amid four straightforward ones. In general, though, try for lines that sound like real English. *RAISIN’ BRANDS: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1144* Given that people were already coming up with good entries for this contest while they were working on its progenitor, Week 1140 — repurposing a brand name in an*unfortunate*way — I was sure we’d have plenty of inkworthy entries. This week we ended up with more than 40 blots of ink spread out among almost three dozen Losers — we’ll be draining the rest of the current magnet supply pretty quickly (see the section below for alternatives). Once again, there was a little gray area about what constituted a better use for a name; calling the GOP undercard debate The Who isn’t exactly flattering. But I didn’t use such clever entries as Duncan Stevens’s for a Thayer speech therapy clinic; that’s a deliciously*bad*name for a speech therapy clinic. ​The three Bob Staake Loser Mug designs are all very nice, but only Todd DeLap, of the 51 blots of ink but no 3rd- or 4th-place finishes, gets this one, custom-painted for Dad by 10-year-old Juliet. ( Photo by Todd DeLap* ) I also didn’t use entries in which the sound was significantly different from the original. I didn’t give ink, for example, to Tostitos bedroom slippers (as in “toasty toes”), though I did for Fritos sandals (Ami Greenberg). Among the most frequently recommended repurposings: Jiffy-Pop for a sperm bank, and The Washington Post for the Washington Monument. And whoever began an entry “Kum ’n’ Go is a good name for a convenience store . . .” Oh, no it isn’t. It’s not a good name for anything. (Anyway, too obvious for Invite ink.) It’s the second Inkin’ Memorial win for Frank Mann, but only the second ink ever for Janice Haas, who earned a runner-up prize as well as her Firstink air “freshener” in Week 972 to compare two items on a list: “ ‘Desperate Housewives’ has a cast of many good-looking, complicated, disturbed, egotistical characters who cheat, lie and cover up lies. John Edwards: Cast of one.” I’d love to see a lot more from Janice. John McCooey gets his third ink “above the fold” with his makes-you-think-a-second Fanta entry, and a double credit for fourth place gives a bag or mug to both ATF fixture Larry Gray (10 trips to the Losers’ Circle) and ATF rookie Laurie Morrison. *Laugh Out of Courtney:* “Pop Rocks rocks!” enthuses Post copy chief Courtney Rukan of Janice Haas’s slogan for the Bernie Sanders campaign. Courtney also singles (doubles, triples, etc.) out The Who for the GOP undercard (Steve Glomb), Cialis for the looking glass (Mark Raffman), AMF for your ex (Pie Snelson), FedEx for Ben Bernanke’s memoir (Jaclyn Yamada), Citgo for a dog trainer (Dave Komornik), Southern Comfort hemorrhoid cream (John O’Byrne); the “fabulous kicker” of Lowenbrau for the Invite; and one that “made me spit out my water. Didn’t quite expect that”: Chris Doyle’s Oral-B porn movie rating. *The Unprintables:*The energy drink Beaver Buzz drew many predictable entries, as did the candy bar Butterfingers. But my favorite was this clever one from Paul Kocak: Bona is a great name for a hardwood floor cleaner but an even better name for a human hardwood provider. Also Nunn-Bush (shoes) for a Brazilian wax parlor, from Larry Gray. *LOSERS CAN BE CHOOSERS: VINTAGE PRIZES REEMERGE!* Just a week or so ago, 150-time Loser Howard Walderman, in a sorry fit of decluttering, mailed the Empress a stack of some 60 assorted Loser Magnets for honorable mentions, all the ones for which he had duplicates, dating back to the earliest models. And several Latter-Day Losers have requested a Vintage Waldermagnet in lieu of yet another Wit Hit the Fan or Hardly Har-Har — or even a runner-up prize. (Check out the Week 1146 Style Conversational to see all the magnets.) If you’d like one of these instead of your designated ink, e-mail me before next Tuesday and I’ll see what’s left. But then came the real stunner. I share the Invite Prize Closet with Style Section Staff Intellectual Phil Kennicott, who was clearing out his many stacks of books this past Tuesday in preparation for our office’s move next month; I had the bottom shelf and the floor; he had all the other shelves, which went up to the ceiling. And late in the afternoon, he came over to my desk to tell me what he’d just found: two full cartons of our first Loser Mugs — I think about 50 mugs in all. We had ordered four cartons of “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” in 2009 to replenish the 2007 original shipment, but two of the cartons had gone missing. Two years after that, as we finally used up the remaining two boxes, we issued a new model, “My Cup Punneth Over.,” and in early 2014, the current LOVE*Loser version. So we have yet another options for winners and runners-up: This is a BIG 15-ounce mug, designed by Bob Staake, and the slogan suggested by both Chris Doyle and Beverley Sharp. If you finish “above the fold” and want one of these babies, let me know before next Tuesday. *WHEN THE GOING GETS TROUGH: LOSER BRUNCH, NOV. 15* I’m planning to go the Loser Brunch at noon on Sunday, Nov. 15*[corrected from Nov. 14 earlier],* at The Front Page in downtown Arlington, Va., and as always, I’m eager to meet new Losers or Just Fans as well as to oh-it’s-you with the regulars, in between my multiple trips to the buffet. Regular brunch coordinator Elden Carnahan will be overseas, so e-mail me if you’d like to come, and I’ll tell Other Coordinator Pie Snelson. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Todd DeLap, Fairfax, Va.)* *Todd made his debut in Week 1039, almost exactly two years ago, when we asked people to write things using only the words in the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy; in the midst of the government shutdown, he offered “A resolution for the law’s delay is all we wished. But no. So fly not to the office. — J. Boehner.” Then the hits kept coming, and Todd finally showed up at his first Loser event, last year’s Flushies awards, to get plaqued as Rookie of the Year.* *Just this past week, Todd wrote me to offer a computer program he wrote to check the validity of the word-search neologisms ofWeek 1147 — to make sure the letters in the entries were traceable on the grid. Oh boy, am I going to take him up on that. (Can’t promise him ink, though.)* *Todd responded below — with some alterations — to a general template I posted. Meanwhile, the Loser Community awaits the next subject. If you’re one of the Top 25 in the current Loser standings or one of theall-time top 100 , e-mail me with a bio that answers the questions below or questions of your own. Or you can choose another format.* *Age:* 48 (physical), 14 (humorical) *Where you live: * The D.C. suburb of Fairfax, Va., but I grew up in Central Florida so, technically, I’m “Florida Man”! (Which is usually thought of as something like this , but I always think it should be said like this .) *Your official Loser anagram plus any alternatives:* I’m officially “Added Plot” but I always thought of myself as more an “Addled Top”. But now that you’ve made me think about this, I’m going to request a change to “Do Pelt Dad.” *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? * Husband, Father, Professional Computer Geek, Duke Basketball Fan, Juggler, Science Fiction Geek, Cub Scout Leader, Computer Gamer, Geek-of-all-Trades. I am regularly silly and make excessive use of voices and accents. I am an inveterate whistler. I yell “ly!” at the TV when people should have used an adverb. I put two spaces after a period.   I am the Man of a Thousand Dad-Jokes (“Why do baby ducks walk softly? Because baby ducks can’t walk, hardly!”). *How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing?* I’m at 50 inks and holding (unless this was an exceptionally good week, in which case, 51 inks) in just over 100 weeks. I should make the Hall of Fame in just another 18 years. Meanwhile, I still haven’t won a Loser Mug, which made my 10-year-old daughter, Juliet, feel so sorry for me that she took mattersinto her own hands . *What are your hopes and dreams regarding the Invite?* To get a “Star Wars”-themed gag printed. Thus far, my record is Redskins-esque. *What brought you to Loserdom? * My wife and I used to read the Invite together on Sunday mornings, back before the kids killed the whole “cup of cocoa and peruse the paper” thing. She even got ink (on her*only* attempt) in Week 532, four-word movie reviews (“Never Cry Wolf”: Nunavut is worth seeing.) About 500 weeks later, I was looking for an intellectual activity to keep my brain occupied during my commute. Nothing good presented, so I went with the Invite. Now it’s become a family affair with my son getting his FirStink in Week 1140. *What are two favorite entries you’d like to share?* Week 1077 (Tom Swifties): “Everyone would agree that I am very tall, correct?” the North Korean leader stated unambiguously. Week 1093 (Business Tactics for Squeezing Customers): At the Golden Jade Dragon Restaurant, the first chopstick is free. (It took me over a dozen tries to find a realistic sounding Chinese restaurant name that Google couldn’t find.) Also, there was one from Week 1095, the TankaWanka contest, that didn’t get ink because the poems were supposed to be about something in the news. (But the Empress did note it in the Conversational.): Kirk and Spock agree: There’s no reason to quibble About what they want Because they’re all about that Space, ’bout that space. No tribble. *What’s an example of something you do that confirms your Loserosity?* Large computer databases can be divided into “shards.” I keep calling them “sharts.” This has led to statements like “We can really improve our throughput if we increase the shart-count” and “We’re going to keep that shart in memory.” So far, nobody has admitted to noticing. *Sheez, the guy really IS a geek.* ====================================================================== WEEK 1150, published November 22, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1150: So many ways to say I Lov-ish You The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results Invite phenom (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) mugs for the camera as this week’s Meet the Parentheses Q&A, below. (family photo) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 19, 2015 So many just-right slogans this week for our new set of Style Invitational Loser Magnets for honorable mentions — we clearly have enough workable ideas for years to come. In fact, Bob Staake sent me sketches for seven different slogans, and I could have happily gone with any of them. The new magnets are the latest in a Staake collection dating back to 2004 (see them all in my Week 1146 Style Conversational column), and as in most recent years, we have a horizontal and a vertical — just to challenge the Refrigerator Mosaic skills of Losers-in-Volume. A different company is printing them up for us this year — for a compelling reason: Shortly after the slogan contest was announced four weeks ago, an e-mail came to losers@washpost.com from a new person, a Julianne Weiner. It contained a few slogans, followed by a note from Julianne: She’s a longtime Invite fan, she said, and would love to have her company, Sonic Promotions of Gaithersburg, Md., print the next round of magnets for us. She’d even match whatever price we’d been paying. So sure — but I did tell Julianne I’d have to throw out her entries for this contest. (I never did look at them — for all I know, they duplicated the winners.) We just sent the designs to Julianne yesterday, so they probably won’t be delivered for two weeks. SO: If you are one of the 30-odd (or 30 odd) Losers who got ink this week, you may opt to wait for one of the new magnets (e-mail me before Tuesday at pat.myers@washpost.com with something obvious in the subject line). Otherwise I’ll send you one of our last“The Wit Hit the Fan” or “Hardly Har-Har” magnets. In addition, I still have a stack of magnets from past years, and at least one extra of almost every design since 2004. If there’s a particular one you’d like rather than a current one (or rather than your “above-the-fold” prize), let me know. And for tax purposes, we have recently raised the monetary value of a Style Invitational Loser Magnet from 21 cents to $590,401. Because it is certainly worth more thanthis. It’s not just the fourth win for 150-time Loser Howard Walderman; it’s his second slogan to be used for a Magnet; Howard also did “Near-Do-Well” back in 2006-07. (He also was one of those who offered “My Cup Punneth Over” for the Loser Mug pictured in the photo above.) Howard just regifted me about 60 magnets from past years, but I figure that he’ll still want a “Jest Falling Short.” “Magnet Dum Laude,” meanwhile, wins Rob Cohen his 41st ink or so (Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan is touring Australia and New Zealand and might not have updated them for a couple of weeks); Kevin Dopart scores his 25,378th ink (or so it seems) with his better-for-locals “Dork Losing” (Washington’s Metrorail cars will close right on your arms, and so instead of preventing that, there’s a recorded warning). But it’s the first ink “above the fold,” and just the third overall, for Nancy Della Rovere. Welcome to the Losers’ Circle, Nancy. We’ve run several clever slogans even though they’re not actually good choices for magnets: One of my favorites from the 2001 contest was “Losing: My Religion,” by Mark Raffman; feel free to think what piece of blasphemy Bob would have drawn up for that one (don’t feel free to tell everyone). This year’s “Scratching My Jocular Itch” and an Indian-themed “Mini Haha” would not be something we’d run right above the Washington Post masthead. *What Doug Dug: * In addition to this week’s winner, ace copy editor Doug Norwood also especially liked Nan Reiner’s “I’m So-So Special,” Danielle Nowlin’s and Frank Mann’s “Better Yuk Next Time,” and George-Ann Rosenberg’s “Nearly Beloved.” *THE LOWER-THAN-LOWEST FORM OF WIT: THIS WEEK’S NEW CONTEST * And by that, I mean punning on someone’s name. But yea, verily, we will surely exalt it! Or at least get a few yuks out of it. Week 1150 is a straightforward contest, especially to readers familiar with the Invite’s long tradition of change-one-letter challlenges. While this contest may be the only change-a-letter restricted to people’s names, we did do a broader contest that included names way back in Week 19, in 1993. (Scroll down past the Week 22 contest tosee the results ,, which include “Hillary Rodham Clingon,” “George Tush” and”Arsenic Hall,”) There are also, no doubt, some people’s names sprinkled throughout our numerous generic change-a-letter contests. Fortunately, you all have many people’s names to choose from — and even if you accidentally use the same pun that’s already gotten ink, you’ll probably have a considerably different description. Dang — it occurred to me too late that I ought to have used Week 1150 for a contest with a Washington Post theme, given that — until Dec. 10 — our headquarters are at 1150 15th St. NW. Not a problem, though: We just have to hold on till Week 1301 (K St). Three years — hang in there. We had ink today for both Mark Raffman (of at least 270 blots of ink) and his wife, Claudia (of at least 2). But the Invite isn’t their only brush with WaPo immortality, I’ve learned: They were also both featured in a 1998 article as regular participants in an annual themed potluck*cooking contest; I wasn’t surprised that, for a dish required to “knock ’em dead,” Mark produced “Attack Dogs,” pigs-in-a-blanket with habenero jelly hidden inside the pastry dough. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.) * ***Most Style Invitational Losers, including some of the best, started off with a blot of ink here and there as they entered a series of contests; some of them became more and more successful over the years as they caught on to what we’re looking for and hone their craft of Invite-writing. Then there’s Danielle Nowlin. Danielle got ink on her first try, three years ago this month; then some more a few weeks later, and within three months was getting big splashes of ink practically every week. And at the Losers’ own Flushies awards in the spring of 2014, Danielle inevitably ended up with the plaques for both Rookie of the Year and — as the youngest ever (age 32) — Loser of the Year.* *And that very day — just as we all were marveling at Danielle’s smarts — she said something that made us wonder if we’d been terribly mistaken. Danielle came up to me in the hotel banquet room, with husband Ryan as a witness (as was, unbeknownst to us, a future third Nowlin child), and said, “Next year, we could have the Flushies at our new house.” This past June, more than 50 of us enjoyed arguably the best Flushies ever (and there have been 20), and certainly the one with the friendliest atmosphere.* *As have our Meet the Parentheses volunteers of past weeks, Danielle followed a Q&A template I offered, with some alterations.* *Danielle Nowlin, age 34* **Where you live:* * (Fairfax Station, Va.) most weeks. Occasionally in my credit line, the Empress sends me back to my previous home in (Woodbridge, Va.), where I started writing for the Invite. I left because (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) lives there and the town wasn’t big enough for the two of us. **Your Loser anagram:* * My official Loser Anagram, or “Granola Smear,” in theLoser Stats is “Nailed Linen Owl,” though my name anagrams to lots of fun things (e.g., “Ill-Won Alien Den”). The best possible anagram of my name, however, was pointed out to me when I joined the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page: “All-New Online ID.” **What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? **In my house, people who have never heard of the Invite know me as Mommy. Actually two of them know me as Mommy and the third knows me as Dada, but he has a limited vocabulary. Before these little people showed up and started calling me names, I taught middle school band and orchestra in public school. I chose to be a music teacher because why teach roomfuls of middle school students when you can teach roomfuls of middle school students equipped with noisemakers? [One of the best moments of the Flushies was when Danielle picked up our Loseaphone, a “horn” that wasn’t much more than a plastic tube with a funnel on the end, and trumpeted out a fanfare. — The E] **How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing? **As of this writing, I have 180 inkblots since late 2012. My inkwell has been temporarily drier since that third kid showed up and forced me to trade some of my late-night writing time for late-night sleeping time, but I still play regularly. (In fact, Danielle got two inks today for magnet slogans: Better Yuk Next Time and Punderachiever.) **What brought you to Loserdom? **I found the Invite shortly after moving here from Ohio and subscribing to the Post in 2010. I was initially under the impression that people who got ink came up with their hilarious ideas instantaneously after reading the contest description and were able to formulate their thoughts into properly scanning limericks at will, so it didn’t occur to me that I would ever be able to enter. I finally jumped in the pool when I had a “lightning bolt” thought hit me for Week 995’s Ask Backwards: Answer: Wikipedia Jones. Question: Which neighbor does Encyclopedia Brown find it impossible to keep up with? That entry didn’t make it in, but one of the three or four others I sent in with it did — online only. I REEEEEALLLLY wanted to see my name in print, so I entered some more contests and the rest is history. (I’ve since learned that people who get ink are ones who spend time writing entries, but you’ll never convince me that some of the regulars can’t in fact formulate their thoughts into properly scanning limericks at will.) **What are two favorite entries you’d like to share? **One entry I still know by heart was the second-place limerick in Week 1033 (Fa- words): Shaping cookies like books? Oh what fun! Call them “bookies,” and when they are done, Eat ’em up…Drat! Or not! Guess my oven’s too hot Set at Fahrenheit 451. My husband’s favorite entry of mine, which I wish he would quit quoting to people in polite company, was an online-only honorable mention in Week 1029 (song parodies describing movie plots), the only time I ever entered a song parody contest. *Movie: “Sally Hemings: An American Scandal”** To “White Christmas”* I’m dreaming of my black mistress You know, the one I’m glad I own. Oh, her soft lips glisten, I can’t help kissin’ My dear Sal when we’re alone. I’m dreaming of my black mistress; Who says you can’t buy love outright? May she be free (but just at night) And may all our children pass for white. **What are some of your all-time favorite Invite entries from other contestants? [This was Danielle’s own question]** For sheer virtuosity: Chris Doyle’s double dactyl from the letters of JFK’s name: Fiddledy diddledy Johnny F. Kennedy Hero at thirty-three, Hat in the ring. Idol, Lothario, Egalitarian, Rake or a leader? Joker or king? For still-laughing-out-loud-about-it factor: From the contest to dumb down a literary passage: John Donne: “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Loser Mike Ostapiej: “Ding dong. It’s for you.” *What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? *The most Loserly thing I did for a contest was for Week 1039 (write something using only the words from Hamlet’s soliloquy). I bought a package of printable magnet paper and made my own set of magnetic poetry so I would be able to manipulate the words without worrying about using a word too many times or accidentally deleting any. I played with the words on a cookie sheet all week. For my efforts I did not get any ink. The most Loserly thing I did otherwise was to host the Flushies at my house, including providing Doody Darts (turd-shaped things with Velcro on them I won as a second-place prize) to be used as category selectors for the trivia game. Ya know, like any good hostess. ====================================================================== WEEK 1151, published November 29, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1151: Here, we’ll spell it out for you Style Invitational contestant Roy Ashley poses in front of a movie poster in Madrid, October 2015. (Photo by Inge Ashley*Photo by Inge Ashley) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** November 25, 2015 Dave Prevar gave me the book “Dear Asshole” — hey, nobody’s reading this column except people who won’t go all aflutter reading a book title — a while back at a Loser brunch ; it has 101 perforated pages with fake-handwritten notes on them, ostensibly for tearing out to put on someone’s windshield, the refrigerator at work, an offending tattoo, etc. As I mention in the introduction to Week 1151 of The Style Invitational, I didn’t think I could use it as a prize but thought it had contest-fodder potential. What I didn’t note explicitly in the introduction was that I found the book really lame, if it’s supposed to be amusing. As in the example I cited about the restaurant patron, the rants aren’t witty; they’re just strident and grating. “The only thing you are an aficionado of is how to be annoying”? Yeah, speaking*of.* Maybe it’s*not*supposed to be amusing; maybe it’s just for people who want to vent. I was amazed to see that this book from 2011 is ranked around 1,500 on Amazon’s list of top sellers. That’s a very high number even for a new book that isn’t by a famous author; Gene Weingarten’s collection “The Fiddler on the Subway,” 2010, is currently at No. 244,000, and even his “Old Dogs” photo book, which always sells better in the Christmas season, is around 30,000). Anyway, this contest demands more than the wordplay we treasure and reward so frequently in the Invite. You actually have to write an imaginative, funny gripe. We’ve run several rant contests in the past, but they’re usually making fun of the ranters; we ask people to complain stupidly about things they misunderstand or are unduly upset about, like the “letter to the editor” in which J.J. Gertler is shocked to see The Post endangering the Republic by publishing column after column of “Classified” information. I didn’t give a length for the rant, but I’m expecting to give ink to entries that range from a couple of sentences to a longer paragraph. Not a one-liner, not a whole essay. Fortunately, there’s lots of writing ability among the Greater Loser Community. Not to mention lots that they’re irritated about. *AS THE WORD TURNS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1147* **Dave Prevar’s alternative headline for the change-a-letter contest Week 833, but really more appropriate for this one* Our second annual neologism contest based on a word-search grid proved once again to provide more than enough clever entries and definitions, with lots of variety though some surprising duplication (“golygon” or something close was used in several entries about Gomer Pyle’s geometry class). And not one person sent me a clipped-out page from the paper with various words circled, announcing that he’d solved the puzzle. The task of checking the entries to confirm that their letters were all adjacent inside the grid, in whatever direction, was taken off my hands entirely by Loser Todd DeLap, who wrote me soon after I announced the contest that he’d worked up a computer program for just this purpose. Rather than follow his long list of directions to download and install the program, I asked if I could just send him a list of words — something he did for me yesterday morning, mere hours after I finally sent him the 50 or so words on my short list. Todd found only one mistake — and it was my own mistyping. Todd also noted that I’d failed to include any of*his*words on the list. So I’m hugely grateful to Todd, even if I don’t express gratitude with Invite ink (on the flip side, I don’t express irritation or anger with a*lack* of Invite ink; it’s comforting to know that I can’t do either of those even unconsciously). Many of this week’s 41 inking entries by 29 Losers (36 entries in print) were just clever new words, while some — including the winner, “Barbiest Ken” — were also pretty amazing finds in the grid. And then there was Kevin Dopart’s “BTFXPBLKJQ,” which was not so amazing a find. Kevin wangled a runner-up out of that one, as did the more conventional but equally nifty entries from Nancy Della Rovere and Ann Martin. Nancy, who didn’t get her first ink until Week 1135, now has two runners-up in two weeks; her “No Cigar” slogan for the new honorable-mention magnet got her a Loser mug. Don’t get spoiled, Nancy. Plus, I hear that there will be some nice new magnets very soon without your idea on them. Meanwhile, it’s the 11th ink above the fold for Ann Martin, of a total of at least 72 blots (Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan decided to stay a little longer on his Australia*New Zealand expedition, so the stats might not be totally current), while Kevin’s ink totals now require exponents. And Jestin’ Jeff Shirley nabs his third Inkin’ Memorial and saunters further past the 100-ink marker. *Rank and Foul **(Jeff Contompasis’s suggested title for the unprintables; he often sends in headings for this department, even though Conversational ink counts for zip in the standings):* Given that Kevin Dopart’s “semensa,” especially with the play on “spunk” in the definition, got actual Invite ink (online, not in print), I guess I could have also gone (online) with Jamie Martindale’s “pantiforest: the ‘before’ picture at the bikini waxing salon.” But not with this one, which surprised me not one iota that it was by Tom Witte, except that this most pithy of entrants doesn’t ususally use extraneous words like “slang for”: K-3: Eelnog: Slang for semen. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (ROY ASHLEY, WASHINGTON) * *(I met Roy at my first Loser event ever — a brunch in the summer of 2001 — and he and his wife, Inge, are among the most reliable attendees at Loser functions. At our most recent brunch, they brought an excellent solar waving Buddha that will surely be a future Invite prize. As with all the bios in our Meet the Parentheses series, Roy modified my Q&A template as he wished.)* **Age: **Psalm 90:10 says “The days of our years are threescore years and ten”, hence the saying that after age 70 you’re playing with house money, which I have been doing for three years. **Where you live:** Grew up in North Adams, Mass.; I’ve been in Washington since 1966. **Do you have any comments on your official Loser anagram, “Horsey Lay”? **Neigh. **What brought you to Loserdom? **I read and enjoyed the Invitational for a couple of years, and decided to enter in Year 3. **What do like about the Invite? **I enjoy it if a friend says he*she enjoyed my entry, but I also like meeting the other Losers — I probably wouldn’t enter nearly as often if Inge and I hadn’t met so many really nice Losers at brunches and parties. **Some favorite entries?** *Week 120, bad analogies:* “From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and ‘Jeopardy!’ comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.” This was my first ink, and it happened to be in a contest whose results keep showing up all over the Web as “Actual Analogies and Metaphors Found in High School Essays.” A teacher I know told me that a colleague came into the teachers’ lounge eager to share the bad writing. the teacher saw my name and then explained. *Week 487, Bad writing about sex: “*Oh, Chad, Chad, rip my bodice!” implored the middle-aged librarian who had let down her bun and removed her glasses. *Also from Week 487:* Clem led the way to the haystack, and soon Bobbie Sue forgot all about that half-eaten possum-and-tomato sandwich . . . **What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? **I am a sucker for all-you-can-eat buffets. When visiting my daughter, Susanna, at St. Louis University nursing school, I made a reservation for us at supposedly the best buffet in town, at one of those revolving rooftop restaurants. Brunch hours were something like 11 to 3; We arrived before noon, and I proceeded to load up on the raw bar offerings. When I returned to refuel, I was furious to discover that all the good stuff had been removed — there were only rolls and butter. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that the food was all still there — our table had rotated away from the main serving area. **What else? ** In 2008 we were staying in a hotel in Missouri, and of course I had to check the Invite results, for which I had to use the hotel’s computer in the lobby that night. For the contest that week, people sent in their own pictures to illustrate any of five given captions. In one, Jeff Brechlin had Photoshopped a classic nude painting to make it look like a bondage picture. As I was viewing it, the night clerk rushed over to me: “You can’t look at porn in the lobby — if the police came in now, they could shut us down.” I didn’t think it was worth explaining, so I tucked my pervy tail between my legs and left. **What are your Invitational goals?** I’d like to get 500 points — about 150 more — and be in the Hall of Fame, but there are so many talented people entering now, and they prevent me from getting ink. I guess I’ll have to put out contracts on quite a few Losers. You know who you are. **Do you have any decent stories? **When I was 12, my father took me to Boston to see the St. Louis Browns play the Red Sox, and I saw Satchel Paige pitch in Fenway Park. True. ====================================================================== WEEK 1152, published December 6, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1152: Even if you first succeeded ... The Empress revisits The Style Invitational’s revisiting contest Loser (Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.) has won The Style Invitational four times, but he says the celebrity in this picture is the tree. See our Meet the Parentheses section below. (Family Photo) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 3, 2015 Style Conversational: Even if you first succeeded ... The Empress revisits The Style Invitational’s revisiting contest The Style Invitational has been doing second-chance contests like Week 1152 for almost as long as there’s been something to look back on: The first one was in Week 94, Jan. 1, 1995, and it invited readers to enter any contest from Week 1 through 93 with “an answer you may have thought of after the contest deadline was over.” The results contained entries to 17 different contests from 14 people. I know this because for the past several years, links to the Week 94 results — and all others — can be found on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org. But no such website existed in 1995, three years before the founding of Google. The Invite itself wasn’t even online until well into 1995 (The Post has since gone back and put up old Invites and many other old stories from the archives). It wasn’t until Week 54 that the Invite even started accepting e-mailed entries, judging from this announcement that betrays a little fuzziness about e-mail vs. websites: “This week the Style Invitational goes on line. You can submit entries through the Internet at this address: losers@access.digex.net.” So the entrants in Week 94 most likely either had to remember their favorite Style Invitational contests of the preceding two years or had saved paper clippings. The situation was probably the same, at least for most contestants, in 1997, 1998 and maybe even 2001. What weirdos! Just after the Empress took over the operation at the end of 2003, she was able to refer Week 538 entrants to the index of 100 previous contests atwashingtonpost.com*styleinvitational, the same automatically compiled index that we use today. It wasn’t till 2005, though, that we started limiting the contest pool to those from the previous year, rather than Of All Time. Now that the old contests are so much easier to access, though — both through washingtonpost.com and, usually more completely, with art, through PDFs on Elden’s list — maybe we should have a contest to reenter contests from 1998 or whatever. *General guidelines (though often broken) for retrospective contests: * Short entries are more likely to get ink than longer ones, BUT I almost always run a couple of lengthy entries as well, especially song parodies. This is both because I want to provide an interesting mix of contests and because so many worthy parodies — often the most impressive work of the year from the Losers — lose out on ink the first time around because of space limitations. Also, caption contests and others involving graphics are unlikely to ink; we might reprint one cartoon in the results, but it takes a lot of space when there’s also the new contest on the page. And if a contest requires a long explanation for someone to understand the entry, that’s also a big strike against it for this contest. (I try to limit the descriptions to what’s really pertinent: For example, for Week 1118 I would say “‘Breed’ two racehorses from a list we provided” and not bother to explain that it was a list of 100 names of horses nominated for last year’s Triple Crown events, that the limit was 18 characters, etc. In the early days of the Invite, there was a rule against resubmitting an old entry; I dropped that condition when I took over. My predecessor, the Czar, thought that was a big mistake because my judging could prove to be inconsistent. And perhaps it has; a few resubmissions have indeed gotten ink. But in general, that’s because I didn’t have room for them the first time around. And there’s always a chance that you’ll get ink with an entry that someone else — or several someones-else — sent the first time around, and went inkless. Unfair to the first people? Arguably. But as long as the entry (or one like it) didn’t already run, I won’t disqualify it just because it was submitted earlier, even if it reveals some inconsistency on my part. Readers will enjoy the humor — what’s it to them if it had been submitted by someone else; I’ll save untold hours of research into my entry archives; and whoopee, you get a 20-cent magnet that that first person didn’t. But don’t, of course, send an entry that you*know* someone else submitted earlier; on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, and in the Yahoo e-mail group Losernet, contestants sometimes share their “noinks,” and come on, I know that none of you would be such a cad as to consciously steal them. *THE TIGER OF TANKA: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1148* If you belong to theStyle Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, you’ll see numerous posts from someone who writes under a pseudonym and whose profile photo shows a woman wearing a tiger costume, her face covered by striped makeup. That would be Nan Reiner, a huge fan of the Princeton Tigers and a huge ly good writer of verse that plays off today’s headlines. And so I wasn’t shocked in the final stage of judging Week 1148 — the part where I search through my e-mail to find who wrote each of the inking entries — that over and over, Nan’s name kept showing up. This week’s Inkin’ Memorial gives Nan her 13th Invite win, and an amazing 41st ink “above the fold” among her 280-some blots of ink. On the other hand, it’s just the 10th blot for the less Invite-addicted but clearly talented first runner-up Perry Beider, who gets our Ecumenically Tasteless Holiday Pack: the ugly white “Jewjitsu” T-shirt and the Christian jelly beans (“Red is for Christ’s blood). And the Losers’ Circle is filled out as is often the case, with zings from Beverley Sharp and Gary Crockett. I was going to reluctantly self-censor First Offender Michael Rolfe’s TankaWanka about Germaine Greer, so I’m glad I consulted first with copy chief Courtney Rukan and ace editor Doug Norwood, who both thought saying “lop off your penis” in this context was all right even in the print Invite. However, I thought the following two very good TWs were better suited for the Conversational: *National Knee Day (October 22)* He told her, “Well, jeez, Today’s in honor of knees. To show my respect In a manner that’s correct, I’ll say: Get down on them, please!” (from the often saucy Brian Allgar) And this one from the usually highly decorous Matt Monitto, who shows that today’s world can drive anyone to bad language (especially if it’s a foreign one): The Paris attacks: Mankind’s resolve never cracks. We stand and issue A response to this crisis: “Va te faire foutre, ISIS.” *FAVORABLE CURRY: THE NEXT LOSER BRUNCH, DEC. 13* I can’t wait to return to the buffet at the sun-splashed London Curry House in the spit-spot Cameron Station section of Alexandria, Va. We’re having our first Loser Brunch there, and while I know it’s a crazy time of year, I hope many of you will join me. RSVP to Elden here . We’ll start at noon, as soon as the restaurant opens; I’ll need to leave by 1:30. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (LARRY GRAY, UNION BRIDGE, MD.) * *In his 4 1*2_years with the Invite, Larry has spent a lot of time hanging around the Losers’ Circle; he’s won four Inkin’ Memorials and six runners-up. His first ink was a neologism from the recession era: “Sellulose: Superabsorbent substance that sucks value from whatever it touches; commonly used as home insulating material in the past decade.” While Larry lives way out in the middle of nowhere, close to the Pennsylvania line, he’s come down for several Loser events and joined us on at least one of our annual Gettysburg day trips. As usual in our Meet the Parentheses series, Larry modified the Empress’s basic Q&A to answer what he felt like answering. Maybe all the Losers should participate in a political debate.* *Age:* 50-mumble *Where I Live:* The bucolic outskirts of Union Bridge, Md. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? *Larry. What? Oh, you mean, “What do they know about me?” Well, as a young’un I aspired to follow in the footsteps of noted naturalist and keeper of the Wild Kingdom, Marlin Perkins, and I studied hard so that I could sell Mutual of Omaha Insurance. No, wait ... I attended West Virginia University, where I majored in wildlife management. I graduated just after the election of that great environmentalist Ronald Reagan, who apparently believed that “preserving wildlife” meant “making spotted-owl pickles.” Result: I never found a job working with the woodland critters. I got the last laugh, though; I rode the Ronnie wave and landed a job with the Defense Department. (From one kind of Predator to another.) Now, I spend as much of my time as possible acquiring expensive wood and reducing it to sawdust; playing a game called Whackdammit (which more coordinated people call “golf”); and making sounds come out of a guitar that should never be permitted in a civilized society. *Closest Brush With the Famous:* See photo. It was taken in Mount Victoria Park in Wellington, New Zealand, and I’m perched in the tree from “The Lord of the Rings” under which Frodo and Sam spent their first night as they fled the Shire. That tree is a celebrity. *What’s Your Loser Anagram?* My official Granola Smear is “Ay, Grrrl, Ay!” but if I could use my full name (with middle initial) I’d be “Crawly Avenger.” Who wouldn’t want to be “Crawly Avenger”? *When Did You Start Losing?* I submitted my first entries (and scored my first ink) in Week 923 in 2011. So far, I’m at somewhere north of 75 official blots plus a few unofficial mentions in the Conversational. *What’s Your Favorite Ink?* My favorites tend to be submitted by others, but here are two of my own that I’m particularly fond of: *Week 949, analogies:* “A hand on a Bible is to a politician’s honesty as truck nuts are to a driver’s virility.” Week 955. pair a word and its anagram: “Has-been banshee: Roseanne Barr.” *Proof of Loserosity:* None needed. But I can give it up any time I want to. Really. ====================================================================== WEEK 1154, published December 20, 2015 Style Conversational Week 1154: All God’s critters got a place in our choir The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results 74-time Loser (Ann Martin, Falls Church, Va.) reconsiders ordering the Texas-size pork dinner. She (Ann) is the subject of this week’s Meet the Parentheses, below. (Photo by Lucy Martin) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 17, 2015 Don’t you love Bob Staake’s art for Week 1154 ? He sent me four totally different sketches and took me about 0.3 nanoseconds to opt for the “Abbey Road” parody. Even if the Feline Four’s faces don’t look very catlike, the tails are all you need. I should always give an extra week for song parody contests. I don’t see any reason why that can’t be a regular thing. I figure that I’ll be getting numerous parodies set to tunes from “Cats” or other animal-themed songs, although any well-known (or, for the Web Invite, at least linkable) song is welcome. Remember, though, that your lyrics have to be about — or addressed to — animals; it can’t be something like this fabulously clever (if very partisan)seven-minute medley of “Cats” songs about the GOP candidates. Do tell me what song you’re parodying! The results of this contest won’t be posted till Jan. 14, but hopefully there will be some to share at ... *THE LOSERS’ POST-HOLIDAY PARTY: SATURDAY, JAN. 9, RESTON, VA. * Many thanks to Loser Couple Mark and Claudia Raffman for their quick, merciful and generous offer in response to my plea in last week’s column for someone to host this season’s Loser party, which since 2010 we’ve been holding after New Year’s in hopes of avoiding conflicts with all those other seasonal events. I hope that if you’re on the Invitational’se-mail list , you received an invitation around 7:30 a.m. this past Tuesday. I know that some people didn’t get it, and that some people did get it but the link to RSVP didn’t work for them. We’ll send it out again after the first of the year, but don’t wait for that, even though it includes Craig Dykstra’s nifty graphic. Here’s the text: *Do Your Revel Best: Party With the Style Invitational Losers* Yes, you are so goshdarn fun to be with that you’re invited to the *Style Invitational Losers’ Post-Holiday Party* Saturday, Jan. 9 6:30 to 10p.m. At the home of Mark and Claudia Raffman Reston, Va. It’s a potluck -- Mark and Claudia will put out the plates, utensils, napkins, ice, etc., and some soft drinks, and we bring the rest. Spouses and other handlers are welcome. What to bring: Anything to eat and*or drink. If we end up with 17 cheese plates, we’ll be having cheese. If you really want some particular thing, bring it. Dress: Please do. (In any manner.) Reply to Pat Myers, Empress of The Style Invitational, and she’ll provide the address and further information. (I’m not messing with links here: Reply to pat.myers@washpost.com.) Need a ride or want to carpool? Let the Empress know and she’ll see what the Loser Community can do. Or post a request on the Style Invitational Devotees page. With malice toward none, With parody for all. ------------ So far I’ve heard from about 20 people, including some who’ll be attending their first Loser event, but also from such Invite Legends as Chuck Smith. And I was heartened to hear that Mark Raffman will be working once again with fellow Stellar Loser Parodist Nan Reiner — who’ll be flying up from Florida for the party — to create some songs just for this event. It’ll be hard for them to top their duets at the two previous Loser parties, at the homes of Stephen Dudzik and Craig Dykstra, but they somehow always manage. And Loser Steve Honley, a professional musician, has volunteered once again to accompany them on keyboard. So I hope that you — yes, even*you* — come to your party with your meal-offering or sin-offering. I’ll be there in one of my assorted tiaras — either that or the pumpkin-pie hat prize that the winner didn’t want. If you’re not one of the regular Loser, brunch attendees, or Devotees, I’ll likely chat with you a little by e-mail before giving you the address and other party details. *WE’RE TERRIBLE WITH NAMES*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1150* **A non-inking entry by Danielle Nowlin* When I decided to do this contest to change one letter of someone’s name and describe the result, I knew that we’d have lots and lots of great ink four weeks later. And we did. But between those two moments, I wasn’t sure. I don’t have an exact count — I’d have to do it by hand — but the entries to Week 1150 definitely numbered in the thousands. Seventeen of the entrants hadn’t entered an Invite contest before, at least for the several years I’d been keeping lists of new people. Yay!! But man. Page after page of lame entries. I’d check off one name on two pages of the printout, comprising 50 entries. Some were just lame-lame; many others came up with funny names with less funny descriptions: I didn’t think joke justice was done to such funny monikers as Cookie Mobster, Doobie Howser, John Elvis Bush, Matt Damn, Run-Tin-Tin, Sinfeld, Madeleine Alright, Addle, Sinfeld, Vladi­mir Pupin ... But, as I repeated have to remind myself:*It doesn’t matter how many bad entries there are. It only matters whether there are enough good ones.*And of course there were. I’m running 47 entries, and there are others that Losers should use again for next December’s retrospective contest. Jeff Brechlin is the author of probably the best-known single Style Invitational entry, the “Hokey-Pokey Sonnet,” which won the Invite back in 2003 and lives on ubiquitously on blogs and social media, occasionally with his name attached . But Jeff also has close to 400 blots of Invite ink, and this week marks his 14th contest win. Jeff hasn’t been entering often in recent years, so it was especially fun to see his name pop up with “Napoleon Blonaparte.” Which still makes me crack up. Our other Big Jeff takes the second spot with “Jugs Bunny” as a name for Jessica Rabbit . It might be coincidental that Jeff Contompasis and family actually own pet rabbits, presumably fluffier than Jessica. And the Losers’ Circle is rounded out by Double Hall of Famer Chris Doyle and longtime Loser J. Larry Schott, who recently relocated from Florida to West Plains, Mo. — also, weirdly, home to Loser Drew Bennett. Something in the Ozark water? We do have a First Offender this week — Beth Karp of Portland, Ore., with “Tinderella” — and it was exciting to see the return of 236-time Loser Christopher Lamora, who’s moved back to the D.C. area from L.A. Week 1150, Bad Porno Names Division: The Unprintables We did run Frank Osen’s “Bashar Al-Asswad” this week, even in print; as I argued, of all the people in the world to call a vulgar name, Assad will draw the least objection. But I didn’t think these would past the Taste Police checkpoint: Alfred Itchcock: The director liked his leading ladies a little too much. (Chris Damm) Andy Warmhol: [oops, can’t share what I came up with here] (Arnold Berke) David Lee Froth: Rick Santorum’s favorite rock singer. (Chris Doyle) Dick Trace: A detective who specializes in solving sex crimes. (Tom Witte) Lyndong Johnson: Carried a bigger stick than Teddy Roosevelt. (Rob Huffman) *Meet the Parentheses: (Ann Martin, Falls Church, Va.), previously (Ann Martin, Bracknell, England) * *Ann decided to dispense with the Empress’s Q&A template, though she ends up answering most of the questions in it. Want to be next? If you appear somewhat regularly in the Invite these days, or are one of the top 100 or so ink-blotters of all time, the E hopes you’ll introduce yourself to the Greater Loser Community. Your current position in the queue: 1 — i.e., I have no bios left to run. For inspiration and guidance, take a look at previous weeks’ Style Conversationals at washingtonpost.com*styleconversational , and then write to me at pat.myers@washpost.com.* I am a Washingtonian born and bred, and a Post reader from my youth up. I can’t remember when I first became aware of the Style Invitational, but I was amused and mystified by it, holding(Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) in awe and puzzling overthe Ear No One Reads . It took a long time to think that I, too, might submit something. First Ink came in the days of the Czar (“Open Pit is a good name for a barbecue sauce, but a bad name for a toilet bowl cleaner”). I am a teacher of Latin and German and whatever else you’d like me to have a go at. At one point I discovered that the mother of a student in my middle school Latin class was … the Empress of The Style Invitational! I hoped I could parlay this into increased success, but the Emp never cut me any slack; all my attempts at Classical jokes involving Ganymede or the ablative absolute case fell flat. I did my best to infect the rest of my family: my brother in Wisconsin now has his Fir Stink, and my son, daughter and son-in-law have submitted entries. Fortunately I come from a depraved family. Eventually I even entered the thrilling realm of Loser Brunches – which I could rarely attend because I am always ringing the bells at Washington Cathedral around noon on a Sunday. (Let me know if you want to learn — e are starting a new course in January.) One time, I cleverly got around this by inviting the gang for an early brunch near the Cathedral and then taking them up to the tower. It was at least half an hour before they were thrown out. (I also was a member of the U.K. Loser branch for six years when I taught Latin near Windsor Castle.) My other hobby besides ringing is solving, and occasionally setting, British cryptic crosswords , in which the clues often contain anagrams (hence my preference for anagram contests). My favorite of my own clues (not using anagrams): “Why tin cups might be appearing in ‘Hamlet’ ” (10 letters). This experience has proved a handicap when I write clues for the Invitational’sbackward crosswords ; I keep forgetting to make them funny instead of precise. I qualified three times for the Times of London’s crossword competition, but never came near to the top finishers (the kind who time their eggs by how long it takes to solve the daily puzzle). I’m having a great time getting to know my fellow Losers. Keep the cheesy puns coming. Oh, the tin cups in “Hamlet”? Well, obviously the answer is “For tin bras.” --- Hope to hear from you soon, both with your entries and with your RSVP. ====================================================================== WEEK 1156, published January 3, 2016 The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** December 30, 2015 Happy holidays, all. For the third time in four weeks, The Style Invitational’s schedule was moved up to publish on Wednesday instead of the usual Thursday — which, combined with some extra-Invite obligations, made for even more blunderations than usual. Thanks heaps of bunches to the eagle-eyed Losers who alerted me immediately to a “check date” note that wasn’t supposed to print but did last week, and to various other mistakes that I was able to fix before the print paper went to press. Our Week 1156 contest for obit poems — I’ve been running these contests every January since 2004 — produces consistently great stuff.. Part of the fun is providing a mix of the best-known past-tense people and the more obscure. In the interests of today’s rush schedule, I’ll link to my comments in Week 1105 Style Conversational for guidelines about what we’re looking for in an obit poem. And you can see last year’s winners here. By the way, if you are in any way confused by Bob Staake’s cartoon about Madame Claude: The pink “meat” swinging from the hook at the Paris charcuterie is the especially shapely bottom half of a woman’s torso. It’s a biting commentary on the degradation of sex work. *THE WHOLE SCHMEAR: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1152* As I mention in the intro tothis week’s results , I got tons of great material, as always, from our annual retrospective contests, with the vast majority of the past year’s Invite challenges represented among the entries. But there’s only so much room, and only so much that a soul can take in at once. There weren’t all that many *entrants,* but more of them sent full cards of 25 entries than in a typical week. This will always be a contest to draw a higher proportion of regular Losers, both because it requires diligent research and because so many of them — clearly — were eager to resubmit entries that some idiot failed to award ink to the first time around. (In some cases, they were right. A number of this week’s inking entries had been sent earlier in some form, though I believe the “above the fold” entries are all new.) But we did end up with a First Offender — yay, Al Larsen — and two people who got just their second ink — including one of the runners-up. I had lots of fun judging the entries — it’s much less taxing to consider a variety of contests all at once, and more important, they were good. I remembered a lot of the entries from before, because I’d put them on my shortlists for those contests. (I almost gave ink to one especially good clerihew about Justice Scalia, until I checked and saw that it had gotten ink the first time! It had run three weeks after the regular results, in Week 1139 , so Mae Scanlan might have missed it. ) I ended giving ink to entries from 19 contests (a couple of the song parodies could have gone to any of two or three). Next year, I’ll remember to ask people to remind me briefly what the contest was, as in the way I indicate it in the results. Among the parodies — a number of which were robbed of ink once again in the interest of variety — Matt Monitto’s “Tomorrow” tune and Mark Raffman’s “Uptown Funk” made the print page. I especially enjoy seeing parodies of contemporary songs , since they’re more of a challenge to fit witty words to — and also because it’s important that the Invite not act as if an entire generation’s worth of music doesn’t exist. The Invitational will soon, inshallah, celebrate its 24th birthday, and I’m thrilled that many of us have been along for the whole ride. But we don’t want to ossify. But some of the very best ink of the week went to parodies and poems that ran only online, for space reasons but also because they were set to tunes that readers weren’t likely to be able to sing along with without the link. A very clever Your Mama*Yoda joke makes the first win ever (though he’s had three runners-up) for Gregory Koch, bringing him to 21 inks in all. Gregory first started getting ink in the Invite in 2011, when he was a freshman at the University of Connecticut; now that he’s graduated, he’s come down to work in the D.C. area, and showed up at our December Loser brunch in Virginia. Also breaking into the Invitational at the same time was another college freshman,*from* Connecticut but attending Elon University in North Carolina: A philosophy major but a theater kid, Matt Monitto immediately proved himself brilliant at writing parodies of show tunes. This week’s second place is Matt’s 75th blot of ink starting with Week 902 — and his fifth runner-up in addition to three outright winners. But it’s only the second blot of ink at all for Michael Weiner, for a pun that really did make me laugh out loud. On top of that, I think Michael sent just that one entry, for Yoplait as the name for a New Jersey kids’ gym. I hope to see lots more from him. And Rob Cohen hits the Losers’ circle for the second straight week, with his Mess With Your Heads bank headline. I’m looking forward to meeting Rob for the first time, at the ... *LOSERS’ POST-HOLIDAY PARTY, SATURDAY EVENING, JAN. 9* For which it is not too late to RSVP. Schmooze with some of your favorite Losers, munch the potluck food, and sing along with Master Parodists Nan Reiner and host Mark Raffman, who, I believe, are collaborating on a new number about the Invite, set to a medley of familiar tunes played by Loser Steve Honley at the keyboard. Nan is flying up from Florida just for the event, while Mark is coming down from the shower upstairs. The festivities start around 6:30; please contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com to get directions Chez Raffman. We’re currently up to about 35 people. *WON TOO MANY? ALTERNATIVE PRIZES * If you’re in that terrible situation of having won so many Invite prizes that you’re rolling in duplicates, e-mail me shortly after you get ink and let me know if you’d rather have an alternative. If you’re a winner or runner-up, you can choose a vintage Loser T-shirt as an alternative to the Inkin’ Memorial, Grossery Bag (just a few left, though), Love*Loser mug or This Is Your Brain on Drugs mug, a vintage or regular magnet, or something from my Mystery Bag. Magnet winners can ask for an older-model magnet — there are at least 20 designs — until I run out of the stash. Happy New Year, all, and dang, we made it to 2016. ====================================================================== WEEK 1157, published January 10, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1157: Wishing you grid luck The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over (eww) the week’s new contest and results 275-time Loser Mark Raffman in front of his magnetic rap sheet . Mark introduces himself in this week’s “Meet the Parentheses,” below, and he’s hosting this weekend’s Loser Post-Holiday Party. (Selfie by Mark Raffman) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 7, 2016 I ran The Style Invitational’s first backward crossword —“Haven’t Got a Clue” — in December 2006, using a solution to a daily puzzle that had appeared a little while before in The Post and I’d chosen at random. The Post subscribed to the crossword’s syndicate and had already paid for the rights, so I didn’t bother to contact the writer, Paula Gamache — until I received an angry e-mail from crossword constructor Vic Fleming, castigating me for disparaging the work of one of the best constructors around. (I’d said the original clues ranged from “ooh-clever to ah-that’s-funny to nothing-special. This week: Make all the clues ooh-clever or at least ah-that’s-funny, even the little words.”) So I wrote to Paula to make up, and not only was she gracious, but she even weighed in with her favorites among my choices, and went on to choose two other puzzles for me. And I’ve continued to run a backward-crossword contest at least once a year, sometimes twice, since it always draws lots of entrants and lots of good results. Most of the time I used crosswords provided me by Bob Klahn, owner of the CrossSynergy syndicate, who sometimes created a puzzle just for the Invite, and who has a few Invite inks of his own. A couple of times we’ve had a twist in which we shaded out some letters in the solution, so that not only could you create your own clues, but you could create your own grid words as well. That’s what we did last year. But given that The Post just installed Evan Birnholz in the plum post of constructing the big crossword that runs every Sunday in the WP Magazine andonline, I was delighted that for Week 1157, he agreed to let us use one of his own, smaller puzzles featured on his website, Devil Cross . (Evan isn’t putting up any new puzzles there for now, so he can devote more time to his Sunday gig, but you can look at more than 60 earlier ones there.) *If you’re entering this contest (especially if you’re new to the Invite): * Keep in mind that we’re running a joke contest, not a puzzle contest; and the goal isn’t to put together a doable crossword. In fact, I probably won’t be running a clue for every word in the grid (while I well might print three varying clues for the same word — whatever’s the funniest). I did make a whole separate set of clues one year and invite people to try to solve it, but it was a big hassle and almost no one bothered anyway. The best way to get an idea of what we’re looking for is to look at some of our many past Invites. You’ll notice that extreme brevity isn’t that important, since we don’t have to fit a clue in for every word. And we don’t use the crossword convention of ending a clue with a question mark to signal that wordplay is involved; with us, that’s pretty much a given. However, the clue should be of the same part of speech as the word; if the word is a noun, the clue is in noun form; if it’s a verb, the clue would begin “to” or have “-ing.” Here are some links to old results (scroll down past the new contest to see the results): Week 691, the first contest (a text file) Week 953, 2012 Week 1052, 2013 *Hey, wait, this contest doesn’t even NEED a grid, right? * Absolutely true. It’s just a novel, eye-catching format. If it’s easier for you just to make a list of all the words and work from there — sounds like a good plan to me. In fact, I can almost guarantee that some altruistic Loser out there will compile such a list within a couple of days and post it on the Style Invitational Devotees page in Facebook, right under the link to this week’s Invite. By the way, given that so many people out there will be writing clues for 25 of the words in this puzzle, there’s a strong likelihood that one or even many other entrants will make the same joke you did. When this happens, I’ll either double- or triple-credit people or choose the one with the best wording. (If four or more people sent the same entry, I’ll toss it, or run it and credit no one in particular, something I’ve done extremely rarely,) Note that the clues, however lengthy and full of wordplay, are all American-style rather than British-style: They’re definitions or synonyms, and they’re of the same part of speech that the words are: i.e., if the word is a noun, the clue is in noun form; if it’s a verb, the clue would begin “to” or have “-ing.” British-style clues are very different, often being a non-definition sentence that includes an anagram of the word in question. Please use American-style clues. *THREES: A SMALL CROWD — THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1153* Boy, I don’t know if we should run this contest again in the same format: comparing two things that have the same three-letter abbreviation. Week 1153 didn’t draw a whole lot of entries, and so little of what came in was very funny, even in a wow-is-that-a-crazy-wordplay sense. (“Kounter Productive Attitudes is a tech company, maybe it insures gentry, the Korean Peoples Army sent injuries, and the Karen Peace Army is for insurgency.”) Maybe it was just that it was a busy season and people didn’t want to keep clicking on Wikipedia links of “TLAs.” But it seemed that even the wiliest wordplayers were stretching awfully hard. I’m happy with today’s inking entries, but also happy that we have a nice big crossword grid on the page, as well as a sizable Solar Buddha. (That thing is great, by the way — it’s on my desk right now, nodding and waving away, even on a very gray day. And it’s about as big as your hand. Thanks again to prize donors Roy and Inge Ashley.) Chris Doyle wins the contest for the 342nd 51st time, for a total of 36,782 1,748 blots of Invite ink. Recent Fixture Jon Gearhart gets his third runner-up prize and an honorable mention that might push him up to the 50-ink milestone. Jeff Contompasis edges ever closer to the 500 inks that will spring open the combination padlock that secures the portal to the Hall of Fame, and Jeff Shirley adds a 15th piece of runner-up swag. One entry that was going to get ink was this one by Kevin Dopart: The Kalamazoo Public Library and the Korean Peasants League: The second believes that Weeding Is Fundamental. Pretty cute pun, I thought. But, to my total surprise, it was viewed with alarm by several editors, and killed. They were concerned that it would sound like mocking of Asian accents. I argued that it’s R’s and L’s, not R’s and W’s, that get blurred in an Asian accent — and that the Asian aspect didn’t even factor into the joke , that it’s just Librarians vs. Farmers— but no go. Later I asked Loser* Style Invitational Devotee Diane Wah, who’s of Chinese descent, what she thought about it. Diane offered that “I think it’s just very funny and not at all offensive,” and on further thought, said, “The humor is all the more delicious because the R*W switch can be seen as a jab at those who play on the R*L switch.” But it’s not at all irrational, in this time when there’s so much widespread “shaming” on Twitter, etc., for something that people have decided to take offense at. I can see why The Post wants to avoid such accusations, however unfounded. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to persuade someone otherwise when someone decides to label you a racist, rape-enabler, etc. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) * *Mark has been a ubiquitous presence in the Invite Losers’ Circle ever since he First Offended in August 2012 with a Way to Tick People Off: “When you’re on jury duty, bring a daisy into the deliberation room and start to pull out each petal while saying ‘Guilty . . . not guilty . . .’ ” Since then, he’s gotten ink almost every week, in all kinds of contests, most brilliantly in song parodies — leading to 276 blots of ink , including 10 first prizes — in just over three years. You can meet Mark and his wife, Claudia (also a Loser), at their home this weekend as they host this year’s Loser Post-Holiday Party (see section below for last-minute details).* *As with the Losers we’ve profiled earlier, Mark modified a suggested Q&A list to fit his humor needs.* *Mark S. Raffman* *Age:* Old enough to know better. *Where you live:* Reston, Virginia. We moved from Maryland in 1993, so by now I’m quite comfortable with “y’all” as second person plural. *Can you improve on your official Loser anagram, “Frank Farm, Ma”?* No, but I’m thinking of changing my name to Lord Damp Nut so I can get a different anagram. *What brought you to Loserdom?* Though I had been enjoying the Invitational for 20-plus years, I didn’t enter until my kids left home and I no longer had a captive audience for my ridiculous jokes. *What do like about the Invite?* I enjoy a fresh challenge each week, and having an excuse to clear the mind. And there’s the validation; I’ve gone from being just a dweeb to being a Celebrity Dweeb among friends and colleagues who read the Invitational. *Some favorite entries?* I seem to have made a second career writing song parodies to “Be Our Guest,” taking on adolescent movie fantasies (”See a Chest”), Bibi Netanhayu (”He’s a Pest”) and the Trump campaign (”He’s Obsessed!”). But my favorite all-time entry was from Week 1108 — a fictional valentine that was too blue for the ’Vite but won a Scarlet Letter here in the Conversational (so be forewarned!). *For the postman:* Not rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail Can keep away my favorite male So here’s a love note for the hunk Who each day stuffs my box with junk *What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? *When my kids were young, we used to compose group limericks on long car trips, each person taking the next line. We found there are a lot of words for poop, and even more words that rhyme with those words. *What do you do when you’re not composing Invite entries?* I practice law, play blues harmonica in an oldies rock band, and watch a lot of hockey with my favorite Caps fan, my wife, Claudia. Last year I wrote a screenplay that nobody will ever read, and if this year goes according to plan I will write a musical comedy for the same audience. *What are your Invitational goals?* I’d like to be the youngest, sexiest member of the Loser Hall of Fame.*[The “youngest” part isn’t gonna happen unless Brendan Beary is banished for using limerick-enhancing drugs and Jeff Contompasis quits the Invite with 12 inks to go. The other element is still in play. — The E]* *Do you have any decent stories?* I had one line to deliver at my wedding, and I muffed it. Also, I once held a door open for Al Gore (then Vice President), but did not recognize him. It’s a good thing the Empress judges our entries anonymously. *What is your favorite color?* Oh, um, uh, aaaargh ... ------ *LAST CALL FOR LOSER PARTY RSVPS: * Now that you know Mark from his bio, wouldn’t you like to sneak a look into his medicine cabinet? We’re up to 52 guests for the Loser Post-Holiday party this Saturday evening, Jan. 9, at the Raffmans’ house in Reston. There will be numerous Names People Recognize in attendance — Jeff Contompasis, Nan Reiner, Elden Carnahan, Mae Scanlan, Roy Ashley, Barbara Turner, Chuck Smith, Danielle Nowlin, Rob Cohen, to name a few — along with people who are attending their first Loser event, including some just-fans. And of course I’ll be there too. There will be brand-new song parodies! It’s a potluck; bring whatever you like. Contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com for the address. -- *OOH, REMEMBER WOULD-BE SEN. LOSER? * A few months ago we gave away a campaign tote bag emblazoned “Loser for Liberty,” promoting the campaign of libertarian Carl Loser for a state Senate seat from the Richmond, Va., area. We even sent him a Loser Mug. Well, he didn’t win. But Loser (rhymes with “hoser”) did get himself back in the news this week, when he was charged with assaulting a police officer by rolling up his car window on his hand “after debating a speeding ticket,” according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch . But he’d already had amug shot in the paper. ====================================================================== WEEK 1158, published January 17, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1158: Not every dog song had its day The Empress ruminates all over the Style Invitational animal-themed song parodies Despite the contents of his cranium that he advertises on his sweatshirt, Loser (Edward Gordon, Austin) is an active member of Mensa. He’s featured below in Meet the Parentheses. (Courtesy of Edward Gordon) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 14, 2016 Week 1158 marks the third time we’ve done a contest in which we show you some unambiguous objects and you show us that*nothing* has to be unambiguous if you try hard enough. The first was in Week 421 , in October 2001; while I didn’t ascend to Empressness for another two years, I happened to have judged while filling in as Auxiliary Czar. Among the winners (all of them are here ): *A. Butter stick with a pat knifed off: *Carving the very special Thanksgiving Tofu Turkey. (Jennifer Hart) Corporate Headquarters, Land O’ Lakes Inc. (Kelley Hoffman) *B. Hypodermic needle: * ** This magical beast can turn from horse to monkey. (Russell Beland; a runner-up) *C. Keyhole: * This image was submitted as a centerfold photo for the Taliban Monthly Review, but was rejected for its prurience. (Gene Gross) What old keys dream of at night. (Chuck Smith) Transamerica Pyramid meets Goodyear Blimp. Transamerica Pyramid wins. (Richard A. Creasy) Hitler wearing a clown nose. (Jean Sorensen) *D. A die, one of a pair of dice: * A prostitute in Lego Land. (Chuck Smith; a runner-up) After hours of persistent twisting, Charlton Heston’s Rubik’s Cube meets an untimely end. (David Moore) Captain Hook appears to have had trouble getting his ice out of the tray. (Russell Beland) After the tragic accident with the trash compactor, there were only 100 Dalmatians. (Jennifer Hart — that week’s winner) *E. A Chinese restaurant takeout container, with the little metal handle: * Purse by Givenchy (shown actual size): $3,500. (Leslie Hughes; Jennifer Hart) The attache case of Condoleezza Rice. (Russell Beland) The Social Security lockbox. Once you dip into it, you want to do it again an hour later. (Russell Beland) *G. Roll of toilet paper standing on end: * Christo wraps the Washington Monument. (Stephen Dudzik) Though it proved quite effective, the new masonry prophylactic never became very popular. (James Noble) It would take centuries for early man to realize that it would work much better on the curved side. (James Noble) A confused marshmallow who is wearing a yarmulke AND holding rosary beads. (Jennifer Hart) Then we did it again in 2009, in Week 819 , with a teapot, Christmas tree, mailbox, paper clip, hair comb and push pin. Among the winners: ** *Comb:* The one thing that drove Mr. Centipede nuts: his wife’s pantyhose draped over the shower rod. (Brendan Beary) — A giant hot dog fails to hide behind a white picket fence. (Vic Krysko) *Mailbox: * It’s a mailbox without a post, signifying that people don’t get The Post delivered anymore. So it’s a visual metaphor for the death of print journalism. I’m pretty sure this is right, because I got the answer from Wikipedia. (Brendan Beary) The most successful invention of Albert Gore Sr. (Tom Lacombe) So you get the idea. Usually I ask Bob Staake to make his cartoons somewhat ambiguous, to allow for a wide range of interpretations in the captions. A contest like this makes you think a little harder. *WE’LL HAVE FAUNA, FAUNA, FAUNA: THE PARODIES OF WEEK 1154* Oh, wow. There were so many clever, well done, really interesting parodies — and sources — in Week 1154, our contest to write a song to, for, about — and I also took “by” — cats and other animals. It was relatively easy to choose entries for this Sunday’s paper; the limited space and my inability to provide links to the melody excluded both long songs and less well known ones. The 13 songs in the print invite comprise the four winners plus Pizza Rat (to “Yesterday”), “Benji’s at the Vet’s,” the two to “Be Our Guest,” the “Fox-Gnus” ditty, the centipede song to “One singular sensation,” the cat songs to “Tonight” and “You’re the Top,” “My Ken-L-Ration” — plus, to make it fit perfectly, “Soft Kitty.” But there were*so*many songs that I had marked “Web” — not for the paper, but certainly deserving. And finally, last night, when I was expanding the print Invite for the online version, I had to face the reality that a lot of people’s finely crafted, ingeniously clever creations were going to get bupkis. So in the coming days I’ll be using the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group to post Jon Gearhart’s multi-verse story song culminating with “You picked a fine time to jolt me, juiced eel”; Melissa Balmain’s play on “The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends,” featuring the Elephant and the Donkey; Kathy Hardis Fraeman’s song about Internet “dog shaming”; Gary Crockett’s about laser pointers to “I Saw the Light,” and other gems. I judged the entries first for the humor in the lyrics, and the creativity and originality in their ideas, and whether the humor stayed fresh and interesting through the length of the song. After that, I considered how well they parodied the original songs, and I aimed to include a mix of music genres, though the final results do mostly consist of the show tunes and ’60s-’70s songs that reflect the age and interests of most of our parody contest entrants. I did post on the Devotees page a fun parody of Lana del Rey’s“Summertime Sadness,” called “Reindeer Sadness” andsung on video by new Loser Nathanael Dewhurst. And I don’t hear much country music; the beautiful George Strait song “Amarillo by Morning” — which I will now and forever link with Drew Bennett’s “Armadillo, I’m Warning” — was new to me. The whole song didn’t hold together enough for ink, but my cat, Joey, and I could certainly relate to the opening lines of Judi Levy’s parody of Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” : Where is my cat when I need him the most? He’s lying around on The Washington Post. Judi’s rhyme, by the way, improves on Powter’s, which is “most”* “lost.” Many of our winning parodies over the years have had better rhyming than the originals, which can get away with “near rhyme” because the music compensates, and because the assonance of vowels is often more prominent than the rhyming of consonants. (And because precise rhyming is just more clever.) It’s the fourth win and the 51st (and 52nd) blot of ink for the Glasgow Loser Bureau, i.e., Stephen Gold, who over the years has inked with a series of brilliant song parodies, limericks and other verses, among other entries. No one who attended last Saturday’s Loser Post-Holiday Party and heard Nan Reiner and Mark Raffman sing a series of holiday song parodies they co-wrote will be surprised that each of them ended up in this week’s Losers’ Circle for the umpteenth time. Meanwhile, Duncan Stevens might have gotten his first ink back in Week 970, but it’s just recently that he’s caught fire Invite-wise, soaking up ink every week for something like two months straight, in a variety of contests. So that lifetime total of 24 blots should be turning into a vat before long. One tack that didn’t work for me: I know that the Invite often rewards edgy, irreverent humor. But I’ve never taken to sick humor about cruelty or suffering. I’m sure it was just an effort to be outrageous, not sincere, that prompted various Losers to include parody lyrics fantasizing about the gratification of drowning, hanging, or pulling the claws out of an irritating cat, burning animals alive, seeing them shot, etc. Ugh. (As an aside: I’m convinced that the it’s asick-comedy shtick, not real political opinions, that Ann Coulter uses as her stock in trade. Just: “What’s the most outrageously nasty comment I can possibly make?”) *BAGGING IT, FOR NOW* I have just one Grossery Bag left, the runner-uptote bag with the “Whole Fools” logo . Meanwhile, I have a bunch of Mug 1.0 — the brain region design with the slogan “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” — that we discovered when moving offices last month. So for now, future runners-up may opt for either that mug or the LOVE*LOSER mug — or choose one of the assortment of vintage Loser T-shirts of past years, some of them gently used and regifted. Or a Mystery Prize from my Bag O’ Little Stuff. *Meet the Parentheses: (Edward Gordon, Austin)* *Ed Gordon has been entering the Invitational, on and off, from various locations, since Week 422 (back in the Czarist era) and fairly regularly now. He’s acquired 61 blots of ink in the process, including a win and five runners-up. As with our previous subjects of Meet the Parentheses, Ed modified the Empress’s basic Q&A template to answer what he felt like answering.* *Have you been getting a fair amount of Style Invitational ink recently, or are you one of the top 100 or so all-time Loser? Introduce yourself to the Greater Loser Community with a short bio. E-mail the E at pat.myers@washpost.com; your current waiting time in the queue: 0 minutes. I am out of bios.* *Age:* I am so looking forward to the ad nauseam parodies of Beatles songs next September. *Home:* Yes, I’m an ex that lives in Texas — both my wives were good house keepers, and they kept them. I was raised in Marblehead, Mass. I’m proud to be a Magician — had I gone to nearby Salem High instead of Marblehead, I would have been a Witch. *Official Loser Anagram:* My Granola Smear is Good Nerd, given to me somehow in the days before Facebook. Works for me, for it is appropriately nebulous and vaguely complimentary. *What compelled you to start entering the Invite? * I was working for a federal consulting firm — a “Beltway bandit” — in the D.C. area back around the turn of the century, and my wife and I would sit around the house on Sunday and read The Post, rather than cleaning. I thought the SI was a support group for the certifiably inane (more on that later), and so I entered, and got an ink. After I moved to Fort Lauderdale, it was a while before the Internet found me and I started entering again. I think I wasn’t credited for two of my entries: a parody of a “BC” comic strip, and another to some individual named Magnum Steel or something like that.*[Ed is referring to this runner-up entry in Week 700. from 2007, for campaign slogans. We don’t have records from back then of entries that didn’t get ink, so we’ll take his word for it that he sent entries much like these.]* *Favorite entry:* By far, it’s the one that saves me from being in contention for Most Cantinkerous: the magnet slogan “Certifiably Inane,” which won me a sketch by Bob Staake. I think I would have gotten more ink over the years if I’d been willing to embarrass myself more; my recent ink for suggesting “Beanie Babies” as a good name for a Jewish preschool didn’t go over well at the synagogue. *Proof that I’m a Loser: The Empress spent a whole week trying to teach poetry to me by e-mail, and failed.* *What do people know me as outside of the SI:* Well, a high school friend still calls me “Mr. 5-by-5,” for my svelte physique. I’m a retired software engineer, and have done more than my share of teaching Anonymous how software security is ripe for the intrusion. Now I write books that nobody reads; I intentionally use titles that are so terrible that people won’t pick them up. *What do I want to be when I grow up:* Besides Chris Doyle, a foot taller. ====================================================================== WEEK 1159, published January 24, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1159: You’re darn tootin’ it’s a game contest It’s hard to outdo an actual family fart game, but I have faith in you No Loser offered a bio for our Meet the Parentheses feature, so instead we’ll show you, um, Sheldon. Donated by uber-prize-giver Cheryl Davis, he goes to this week’s first runner-up, Christopher Lamora. (Cheryl Davis) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 21, 2016 Unfortunately, we’ve given out the Doggie Doo game (at the Loser party, after the original winner declined it), because that might have been the only extant game to be worse than “Ewww, Who Tooted?” Doggie Doo consists of a large plastic dachshund into whose mouth you shove Play-Doh-like “food,” then vigorously pump a bulb to propel it out the other end. Especially because it did not work. (Video here of the Empress, the Royal Consort and donor Nan Reiner trying to make it work.) This week’s contest, Week 1159 , is pretty wide open: It can have topical humor; it can be a really stupid idea; it can be nifty but impractical; it can be cerebral. It doesn’t have to have a board as such, but it shouldn’t be something that would be called “sports” or be on a large scale. “Board-type game.” Don’t bog down into a complex scenario; remember, at bottom, you’re telling a joke. Jokes can be long if they’re fun to read; they’re tedious if they’re not. Writing in a conversational, story-telling style helps. *AI-AI-AI, WHAT A CONTEST! THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1155* When Kevin Dopart suggested this “Vowel Movement” contest — complete with title and clever examples — I went right for it, because it had so many elements of successful Style Invitational contests: an almost infinite pool of source material (books, movies, plays, TV shows), and the opportunity to play on those sources in wholly different ways. And of course it was in the alter-the-word genre that Losers never seem to tire of. In the contest, Week 1155, you first deleted all the vowels from the work’s title, then added vowels to the remaining consonants — whichever ones, as many, and in whatever location you liked. After I posted the contest four weeks ago, a discussion ensued in theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook group over what would constitute a vowel, but I don’t think it ended up being much of an issue. More of an issue was that a sizable number of entrants — or maybe just a few entrants who submitted a lot of entries — didn’t heed the instruction to alter the vowels “to create a new work”; they just used the altered title as some phrase to be described. Given that the contest encompassed books, movies, plays and TV shows, “a work” could be a lot of things. But not one like this: “Raging Bull”→ “Arguing Bill”: Though Congress is supposed to do the latter, they usually do the former. Compare that with: “Raging Bull” → “Rouging Belle”: In this sequel to “Beauty and the Beast,” an aging Beauty tries to regain her self-esteem through lip gloss. And with: “Raging Bull” → “Rug on Gay Bill: The Hair Club for Men documentary. (None of these got ink, but the second and third at least followed the instructions.) I was blessedly saved from the slog of vetting the entries — making sure that none of them gained or lost consonants as well as vowels during the alterations — by Loser Todd DeLap, who wrote to the Empress with an unsolicited offer of a computer program he’d devised to check this very thing. Hot dog! On Monday night I sent Todd a list of several dozen pairs of original plus altered titles, without the descriptions or the entrants’ names (which I didn’t know at this point, either). Then I went ahead and made my choices, hoping they’d pass the Todd Test, and started looking up the names of their writers. The next morning, Todd sent me back a list of six “problem children”: Animal Farm → Namely a Loafer (too many L’s) Lady and the Tramp → Lardy and the Trump (added a consonant, R, not a vowel) Lady and the Tramp→ Lordy, End “The Trump!” (ditto) The Sting → Thirsting (ditto!) War and Peace → War on Peace (dropped a consonant, D) Roger & Me → Our Ego Ruined ’Em (extra N and D — that one, of course, was easily solved by replacing the ampersand with “and”; it got ink for Ellen Ryan). Todd added: “Nice to know I made the short list.” At that point, I decided to see who’d written the “problem children.” And the first one, “Namely a Loafer,” was by . . . Todd DeLap. “You didn’t use this program you devised FOR YOUR OWN ENTRIES?” I replied. *Todd: “Yes, I did. I think I did. Okay, I’m pretty sure I did.* *“* *“Okay, I didn’t. But that is because I suck. I truly suck. I really, really suck. What’s worse is I didn’t even recognize that [“Namely a Loafer”] as one of mine. Okay, well, at least I got a good story to tell, a story of my total suckitude.* *“(* heavy sigh *)”* It was another entry on my short­list that Todd did recognize as his own; it didn’t get ink either. Loser. I really had no idea, until I checked, of who’d written which entry. Except for this week’s winner. I would have been mildly surprised had it turned out to be anyone but Chris Doyle: virtuoso wordplay (“Much Ado About Nothing” turned into “A Much-Eyed Booty in a Thong”) combined with a a juxtaposition of high and low art. A classic Style Invitational entry. Also devilishly brilliant was Christopher Lamora’s second-place entry of “The Interview” → “The Nature View” with its double-entendre about photographers out to “shoot the North Korean cuckoo.” This entry is Exhibit A of the trick of making the altered title reflect theplot of the original . That’s 237 blots of ink for Christopher, who’s back Inviting and back in the D.C. area after a West Coast hiatus, when he was heading the L.A. passport office. Howard Walderman gets Ink No. 152 with his D.C.-friendly “Ennui Hill,” and George-Ann Rosenberg — who played the Invite a few times many years ago, then popped up this past year to ink up the joint week after week, grabs the final spot in the Losers’ Circle. I don’t know if you’d call it “unprintable,” but I don’t go for ethnic stereotyping, even if it’s supposed to be complimentary: “ ‘Jeopardy’ → ‘Jew Parade’: One particular group tends to dominate a game show that requires knowledge and intelligence.” Nah. Okay, this one is unprintable: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” → “Smells Like Tuna, Sport”: Nirvana’s tip to adolescent males. (Chris Doyle, who sent that in as a Conversational-only entry.) *SAVE THE DATE: THE FLUSHIES! SATURDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 21* Whoohoo — we didn’t even have time to start our annual fretfest about when and where the Flushies award “banquet” will be* will it cost too much* will we have enough people* will they throw us out etc.: At this month’s Loser Post-Holiday Party, 15-time Loser and mcedo prize donor Robin Diallo offered, unsolicited, to host a Loser event at the horses-and-all spread in Anne Arundel County, Md., where she’s finally settled down after zipping around the world (including in Malawi, Manila, New Dehli, Dakar and Kabul — I know this because she’s sent entries in from each of these places) for the State Department. Robin even has a llama. We chose this date because (a) we’ve traditionally held the Flushies in May; and (b) it worked best for Nan Reiner to come up from Florida (where she plans to relocate permanently after many years in the D.C. area) — and she writes all those song parodies for the occasion. And can sing them. The cost will be minimal because it won’t be catered; we’ll just bring stuff to eat and drink. May is usually the nicest month of the year weatherwise in the D.C. area. Robin’s house is out in the sticks in Lothian, Md., about 15 miles east of the Beltway, but we should be able to organize some carpools, as we did to Reston, Va., for the party*chez *Raffman. And she says that “of course” we can pet the horses, and spit back at the llama. *MEET NO PARENTHESES* I’ve had no more volunteer Losers to supply bios for this column’s “Meet the Parentheses” contest. In reply to my last-ditch plea on the Devotees page, someone suggested that we spotlight the Empress of The Style Invitational. I thought: ugh, haven’t I already bored everyone already? But I do remember that my predecessor, The Czar, once hated all the entries one week, and decided to fill the page by answering questions that people had sent in. So if there’s anything you want to know about me, e-mail me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll see what we get. But really, it’s the Losers whom I’d like to introduce to readers. Write to me if you’re a regular or longtime Loser and would like to tell about yourself. ====================================================================== WEEK 1160, published January 31, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1160: Top o’ the mourning! The Style Invitational Empress on the week’s new contest and results More than 3 inks per year of age: 79-time Loser — and 3-time winner --(Matt Monitto, Bristol, Conn.), this week’s Meet the Parentheses subject. See below. (By Tom Monitto) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** January 28, 2016 As sure as taxes, this year’s obit-poem contest, Week 1156, yielded hundreds of tributes and, um, “tributes” (maybe just “butes”) for those who died in 2015 (As well as for Robin Williams, who died in 2014, and .  . . Ray Charles, d. 2004.) How do you write about someone’s death for a humor contest? This week’s inking entries — as well as dozens of other very fine ones — display a variety of tacks: 1. *Choose someone who’s pretty anonymous who died in an ironic or stupid way,* but stop short of being gleeful or saying that the person deserved to die. This strategy was used especially frequently this year, with fruitful results — Kathy Fraeman’s Inkin’ Memorial winner for the woman who fatally adjusted her bra holster; David Friedman’s for the burglar who got caught in a chimney; Nan Reiner for the burglar on the lam who was the victim of an alligator; and Brendan Beary’s for the man who died when the condom machine he was trying to rob exploded. In most of the cases, the person’s name wasn’t even used. 2.*Keep the tone light and warm and skip the nastiness while also avoiding being saccharine. *This is a challenge for regular Invite entrants, who on other weeks can win valuable interesting prizes with deftly wielded daggers. One frequent strategy is to make some wordplay on death that's related to something the person was famous for saying or doing or being; the majority of this week’s inking entries are good examples of this tactic; Brendan Beary’s “passing” play, in reference to Garo Yepremian’s least stellar moment in the 1973 Super Bowl (see the video in the link in the entry), seems inevitable only because Brendan thought of it. 3. *Or at least choose an indisputable villain.* Stephen Gold could be as nasty as he liked to mark the death of “Jihadi John,” while wisely not spelling out the man’s horrific deeds, or wishing the same for him. 3. *You might talk only about the person’s life, not his death.* I’m thinking about Melissa Balmain’s rumination on Pet Rocks, the creation of the late Gary Dahl; and Brendan Beary’s little dialogue between Omar Sharif and Barbra Streisand on the reaction to their onscreen romance in “Funny Girl.” But almost all the inking entries referred to the person’s death. 4. *And as always, using a light-verse form *— strict rhyme and meter, sometimes bent for humorous effect; as well as natural, readable syntax — reminds the readers that we’re out to be both gentle and witty. All four of this week’s “above-the-fold” winners are renowned in the Invite for their poetry ink. It’s the second win, but the first Inkin’ Memorial, for Kathy Hardis Fraeman, a musical-theater buff whose parodies are the cream of her 74 blots of ink, 12 of them in the Losers’ Circle. Stephen Gold just won the Week 1154 parody contest on animal themes; that one, for Cecil the Lion, could have been used for this contest as well. And Nan Reiner once again scores multiple poetry ink with her amazing long-line verses. But it’s first runner-up Brendan Beary who’s the unassailable Invite Obit Odist: Since I started running this annual contest in 2004, a few weeks after starting this job, Brendan has had, by my count, 45 obit poems published: In Week 643, there were*eight.*In Week 748, there were*ten.* Four have won the contest, and that many more were runners-up. And while of course I marvel at his ink this week, my favorite Brendan Obit Poem is this one for Fred Rogers from 2004 (Week 539) — one of two Mister Rogers entries that brought him ink. I can’t say I’m brokenhearted To find out that he’s departed. You laud his life and wipe a tear; Not me — he ruined my career. I should have left him years ago; He never let me change, or grow! I had to play some half-wit babbler; I’d done “Streetcar”! “Hedda Gabler”! Now I’m typecast, just some joke, All from those stupid lines I spoke. So mourn his passing if you choose, I’ll lie in the sun and snooze, And wake to arch my back and hiss: “Yo, Fred Rogers: Meow meow THIS.” — Henrietta Pussycat , Pittsburgh *REDEFINE PRINT: FINISHING OUT THE DICTIONARY IN WEEK 1160* This week’s contest — the last of the genre unless we can come up with a twist on it, or if we think we can mine the same lode yet again — is straightforward, and in this week’s introduction I link to the two sets of results that contain P- through Z-words, the section of the dictionary we’ll be using; if you’re entering this contest, be sure you’re not sending in the same joke (though you could send an alternative definition for the word). While I regularly speculate on joke definitions for obscure Scrabble words, I think you have a better chance of getting ink in this contest if you play on a fairly common word; if the reader isn’t familiar with it in the first place, it’s not as funny to see it misinterpreted. (We do have a perennial contest for the other type, when I list weird-sounding words from the Oxford English Dictionary and ask people to make up definitions; we ought to do that one again soon.) *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (MATT MONITTO, BRISTOL, CONN.)* *Matt has been wowing Loserdom since his freshman year of college with his amazingly accomplished song parodies, as well as a wide range of other entries (including this week’s). And while I’m sure he values his three Inkin’ Memorials more, Matt also scored a Camaro and a bunch of student loan payments with the grand prize in “Wheel of Fortune” in 2014. We’ve had the delight of meeting Matt in person during the THREE times he’s driven all the way to Washington to come to the Losers’ annual awards funfest, the Flushies: twice from college in North Carolina, and last year from back home in Connecticut. We hope he can make it back on May 22!* *About me:* Age: 24 going on 11. Located in an unorthodox state of mind, usually in a body in Bristol, Conn., also the home of ESPN and of ESPN. Part-time community theater actor, part-time freelance sportswriter, full-time snarker. *Official Loser Anagram (aka * *Granola Smear): * “Man Tit Motto,” which I suppose would be “Now: lactose-free!” *What brought me to the Invite:* I heard a few Invite entries on “Car Talk,” including Week 672’s road signs and Week 736’s “make the Car Guys laugh.” I then forgot about the Invite for a few years. During freshman orientation at Elon University, while a small group of us were being given the “don’t drink and drive” spiel, I said, “Because you can’t spell ‘felony’ without ‘Elon.’” No one laughed. A few weeks later I stumbled on the Invite again. I sent in one entry for Week 902,it got printed, and I kept going. Being a philosophy major, I found plenty of time to attempt to come up with entries (emphasis on “attempt”). *Proof I’m a Loser:* My introduction on “Wheel of Fortune” included my three Invite wins. *Favorite entry: * Excepting song parodies for length (Week 1011’s American*“Major General,” Week 1101’s Peter Pan*“Defying Gravity,” and Week 1152’s “expel Muslims”*“Tomorrow” are highlights), my favorite entry is probably my third win, the Week 1033 “fa-” limerick. I came up to it while turning into a church parking lot where I was about to play Jesus at a Vacation Bible School. *A physicist*humorist, Nell, Had a comedy show where she’d tell Of her spreadsheeting gaffes–| It drew thousands of laughs Because farce equals math times Excel.* My other wins also have odd stories: I came up with my Week 1009 winning entry a few seconds before sending them in, and my computer crashed the day I was going to send in my Week 935 poems; I was able to rewrite the winner with a new fourth line. On the Devotees Facebook page, Ward Kay mentioned that a computer crash is usually a sign of a good entry. He was right. Thanks, Ward! *What do you do outside of the Invite?* I act in community theatre shows whenever possible, and also do some freelance sportswriting, where the concept of printability is even more important. I spend far too much time reading at bookstores, and not nearly enough time reading at bookstores. And I sing all the time – in the shower, driving, in line at the grocery store, testifying before Congress, etc. *What do you want to be when you grow up? * **Well, “up” may be tricky, as I’m 5-foot-3 and was often used as an armrest by fellow students. *NEXT LOSER BRUNCH: SUNDAY, FEB. 7, NOON, AT KILROY’S* I should be able to come to brunch at one of the regular places on the Loser rotation. It’s still at noon, but the Kilroy’s buffet is all breakfast food these days (but a less costly $12). For drivers, it’s conveniently right off the Beltway at the Braddock Road exit near Springfield. RSVP to Elden Carnahan from the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). As always, we’re always eager to meet new Losers and even those who are just Invite fans, as well as get together with the Usuals. ====================================================================== WEEK 1161, published February 7, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1161: What better match than Politicians + Lies? The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and crossword-clue results Above and below, pages from “The Trump Coloring Book” by M.G. Anthony, this week’s second prize. Pencils in red, white, blue and unnatural yellow not included. (Post Hill Press ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** February 4, 2016 We’ve done an impressive series of bogus-trivia contests over the years — most recently about the military, in Week 1132 — but I’d forgotten about Week 739, a contest for lies about politicians. That contest ran in late 2007, which meant that candidates Clinton, Obama, Edwards, McCain and Romney were already busy throwing the misinformation around, but before the advent of Sarah Palin, who otherwise would surely be all over these results. And, of course, while Style Invitational contestants have beenmocking Donald Trump since Year 1 in 1993, it wasn’t yet mocking Trump the politician. Somehow I think we’ll be hearing about him a bit inWeek 1161 . Here are the Week 739 results: *4.* Little Johnny Edwards’s dog was killed when it ran into the back of the ambulance they were chasing. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) *3. * LBJ’s mother used to pick him up by his ears. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis) *2. *John Edwards’s campaign has released documents proving he now pays well below the average rate not only for his haircuts, but also for his weekly manicure, pedicure and mango-avocado-yogurt facial peel. (Larry Yungk, on vacation in Bangkok) *And the Winner of the Inker: * The venue for JFK’s visit to Germany was changed from Hamburg on the advice of his speechwriter. (Joel Knanishu, Rock Island, Ill.) But wouldn’t he be in a yacht? (From “The Trump Coloring Book,” Post Hill Press ) *Lying Low: Honorable Mentions* Vice President Cheney’s prolonged absences from public view reflect times he has checked into Bethesda Naval Medical Center while shedding his exoskeleton. (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) In addition to fear itself, FDR was terrified of circus clowns. (Barry Koch, Catlett, Va.) Kay “Bailey” Hutchison got her nickname from her father’s favorite cartoon character, Beetle Bailey. (Steve Fahey, Kensington) Hubert Humphrey named all his pet cats Bogart. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich is the secret love child of Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. (Randy Lee, Burke) As a child, Winston Churchill once told a teacher, “Yes, m’am, I am tardy, but tomorrow I will be on time, and you will still be ugly.” (Jeff Brechlin) Mean Mr. Mustard — or maybe “Here comes old rat-top ...” (From “The Trump Coloring Book,” Post Hill Press) In 1989, to prevent voters and political opponents from associating him with America’s enemies, Barack Moammar Castro had his name legally changed to Barack Hussein Obama. (Mike Fransella, Arlington) Joe Biden once held his breath for 12 seconds. (Ira Allen, Bethesda) Though James Buchanan was the only bachelor president, he had a deep platonic relationship with rookie White House reporter Helen Thomas. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Al Gore may not have invented the Internet, but he did invent a great electronic storage application for Internet porn. (Ralph Scott, Washington) Bill Richardson has the most cleavage of any presidential candidate. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) As a kid, Steny Hoyer was never teased about his name. (Randy Lee) Rep. Tom Tancredo once rode in a taxi driven by an illegal immigrant -- and he gave the driver a tip. (Horace Labadie, Dunnellon, Fla.) Mitt Romney has never spent more than $1.50 for a haircut, as he has been bald since 1958. His current “hair” is a plastic cast made from a bust of Ronald Reagan. (Steve Fahey) Lincoln was the first president to wear briefs. (Russell Beland) Walter Mondale made an interesting comment on Nov. 14, 1983. (Jeff Brechlin) Newt Gingrich was named for the New Testament. (Randy Lee) When he was living in Indonesia, Barack Obama was enrolled in Hadassah. (Bruce Alter, Fairfax Station) Stephen Douglas used the line “I know you are but what am I?” four times in his debate with Lincoln. (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) Ron Paul has a secret love child, Rudolph, or “Ru.” (Roy Ashley, Washington; J. Larry Schott, Gainesville, Fla.) Dennis Kucinich only seems short because his wife is 8-foot-4. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) Because of the troubles with subprime mortgages, the Romney campaign has yet to be able to work out its purchase of Iowa. However, they’re close to settlement over New Hampshire. (Cy Gardner, Arlington) Hillary Clinton has amassed a huge campaign war chest from monies freed from the accounts of Mrs. Sese Seko merely by paying administrative fees of only a few thousands of dollars US. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn) Sen. Larry Craig has just announced that after leaving office he will be the national spokesman for a campaign to raise awareness of Restless Leg Syndrome. (Dale Hample, Silver Spring) Dennis Kucinich took steroids as a third-string high school quarterback, but they were placebos. (Kevin Dopart) Early in their marriage, Dick and Lynne Cheney decided that if they had a son, they would name him Anakin. (Dale Hample) Hillary Clinton has submitted entries to The Style Invitational 13 times since 1996, but has never seen ink. (Chuck Koelbel, Houston) ---- So once again, you can choose from any politician of any era to lie about, but I’d imagine that most people will go with the current crop. And as above, the point of the untruth is to make an ironic or satirical point, not just say something that’s just wrong for no satirical reason — something thatcertain fake-news sites do with disturbing frequency . *HA CROSS PUNS: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1157* I’ve been filling in crosswords most every day lately, and while I’m no super-speedster like some in the Loser Community — I usually fall in the top 10 to 20 percent on the New York Times leaderboard for its late-in-the-week puzzles — it’s become a lot easier for me to pick up on the wordplay clues sprinkled throughout them. But if you don’t do such puzzles — including Evan Birnholz’s Sunday crossword for The Washington Post Magazine — some of the clues among this week’s inking entries could mystify you. In fact, Evan has started a blog, CrossTalk, in which he discusses his Sunday puzzle each week and explains some of the clues. And here’s our own explainer for the trickier entries in Week 1157. *BEAT: Follows “A: Get up” on a forgetful person’s to-do list *(Frank Osen). This one was explained by the punctuation in the clue — one reason it worked well at the top of the results; it might get people in the necessary frame of mind. *FARMS: Rejected terser, saltier title of Hemingway’s novel (hyphenated) *(Duncan Stevens) . Recasting “A Farewell to Arms” to “F Arms.” This was the most interesting of numerous “F arms” entries. *RELAY: When you truly can’t eat just one * (Barry Koch) As in the famous slogan for Lay’s potato chips. *REAR: Talk like a pirate again *(Danielle Nowlin) Re-“ar.” *ONTO: He rides with the One Ranger *(Selma Ellis) (T)onto* (L)one Ranger *LOBE: Stud’s hangout * (First Offender Donald Ramsey). As in the stud of an earring. *FARMS: A long-distance girlfriend* (Chris Damm). A far Ms. *EKE: The middle of a weekend *(Kevin Dopart) WE EKE ND. *OMIT: Nike’s new yoga-wear slogan: Just __ __* (Ben Aronin) “Just Om it” *PLESSY: X + Y = P. Solve for X*. (Todd DeLap) P less Y. *BERG: What Dan Snyder told Kirk Cousins not to do *(Mark Richardson) Be R.G. (the beleaguered Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III) *ESSEX: The most contorted position in the Kama Sutra* (Peter Boice) “S” sex *SIDING: Contributing something to Thanksgiving dinner *(Kevin Dopart) Bringing a side dish *SIDING: In Barcelona, the answer to “Does that bell make a sound?”* (Jeff Shirley) “¡Sí! ¡Ding!” *EYESORE: Gloomy donkey’s ugly brother* (Brendan Beary) As in Eeyore from “Winnie-the-Pooh.” *ARGUE: What pirates say in a cussing match *(Jon Gearhart) “Arg You!” (Yeah, I know, two pirate-talk jokes. So sue me.) *BEAT: What Miss Philippines did to Miss Colombia, and what Miss Colombia should have done to Steve Harvey* (Danielle Nowlin) Because he announced the wrong Miss Universe winner. *FATES+WEIRDO: The word “SO” in Comic Sans *(Kathy Hardis Fraeman) The widely detested font has a Fat S and a Weird O. *SIRED: Fourth choice at a sperm bank *(Andrew Hoenig) Sire D. *ERIES: Drunken Clevelanders might see two or three of these *(Duncan Stevens) Blurred vision in seeing Lake Erie. ** *STOLEAKISS: Item on an expensive call girl’s price list *(Ward Kay) Price for a kiss: a stole. *TETE: It was on the cutting edge in 1789 *(Beverley Sharp) “Tete” is French for “head.” After reading through the thousands of entries, I shared a not-very-shortlist with Evan and asked for his favorites. His faves, “in no particular order,” included only one of today’s “above the fold” entries, Duncan Stevens’s F-ARMS. Evan also cited ONTO, with the One Ranger; PLESSY as “fully of pless”; WEIRDO as the Yankovic blood type; SIDING for Thanksgiving; SIDING as Si! Ding! (and also one that didn’t make my final cut: SIDING, “agreeing with Mr. Vicious,” by Dave Komornik); ROBS for the Rob Schneider dig; ARTFORMS as a sentence meaning “(stuff) happens” (plus the non-inking ARTFORMS, as “The Garfunkel, the Carney, the Linkletter ...” by Barry Koch); ERIES for the drunken Clevelanders; UNCLEREMUS as to remove the cleremus (there’s a good example of an inking entry that wouldn’t work at all as a real crossword clue, but is laugh-out-loud funny); TETE as being on the cutting edge in 1789; and PORN as a job in which openings are filled (though he didn’t think that was printable — we do recommend that Evan not use such clues in his own puzzles). Evan added: “And I’ll still offer my own (for no prize potential at all....was just having fun): SIRED: Your majestied.” I judged this contest by searching on each word through all the entries, anywhere from 20 to 100 for each word. And I had NO idea, not even a guess, who’d written any of them until they were already chosen and put on the page, at which I looked up each one up with a search through the e-mail. As always happens when everyone’s working from the same word list, there was a lot of duplication. If there were too many that were essentially identical (ABUSE as 10 minutes of sit-ups, etc), I didn’t run it; other times, I decided that one entry was in some way better than similar ones. With his eighth first-place win and 491st blot of Invite ink, Jeff Contompasis heads into the final nine steps to the Hall of Fame Big Door Knocker. Which leads me to think I’ll be able to induct him in person at ... *THE FLUSHIES AWARD LUNCH* POST HUNT WEEKEND: MAY 21-22* As I mentioned earlier, this year’s Flushies — the Losers’ own awards “banquet”*songfest*toilet paper toss — will be at the country home of Loser Robin Diallo on Saturday afternoon, May 21; like last year’s festivities, it’ll be a potluck with negligible extra cost. And also like last year, it will fall the day before the Post Hunt, the huge , spectacular gathering in which thousands of people race to solve a series of diabolical brain teasers dreamed up by the team of Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten and Tom Shroder. So out-of-town Losers can take in both events. Save the date! *LOSER SIGHTING THIS SUNDAY: JOIN US FOR BRUNCH * Bid farewell to Loser Nan Reiner before she relocates permanently to Florida, and meet Loser Josh Feldblyum as he visits from Philadyelphia at this month’s Loser Brunch on Sunday at noon, at Kilroy’s, one of the regular spots on the yearly brunch rotation; it’s right off the Braddock Road exit on the Beltway. There’s a $12 breakfast buffet plus a regular menu. RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). Everyone is invited — we’re always eager to meet new Losers and even Just Readers. Currently we’re a pretty cozy group; it won’t be one of these Big Event brunches. We can all chat. *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (David Friedman, Arlington, Va.) * *David First-Offended in 2009, but almost all his 26 blots of Invite ink have been scored in the past couple of years — most recently and notably in last week’s obit poem about the burglar who got caught in a house’s chimney, which had perhaps the single best line in the whole contest: Christmas stole the Grinch.” As with our previous Parentheses, David adapted the Empress’s Q&A template to answer whatever he liked.* ***If you’re one of the top 25 or so current Losers or are one of the top 100 or so all-time, the E would be happy to have you introduce yourself to the rest of Loserdom. E-mail her at pat.myers@washpost.com.* ** *Where you live:* All over the U.S. So far I’ve represented Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia in the Invitational, but none terribly well. *Do you have any comments on your official Loser anagram, “A Farm Dividend”? *Not now, but something may come up eventually. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? *Lightning Jack, Rambling Awesomeness (or ‘Ramble’), The Juggler, or Lawyer Dave. To elementary school students, I’m “MISTERDAVID!!MISTERDAVIDCANI....” *What do you do when you’re not composing Invite entries? *Underemployed as a lawyer and occasionally underemployed as a visual*performing artist or teacher. Vocationally arguing, throwing things, scribbling, and being the center of attention. *What brought you to Loserdom?* In 2009, I sketched “Dennis the Phantom Menace” for the comic strip mash-up challenge before realizing the contest just wanted a title.*(The title and description did get David his first ink.)* I went on to lose at other things until a far more talented Loser’s challenge caused this relapse. *Closest Brush With the Famous: *I was “The American” of a busload of college students hired for prom security where Prince William went to university. Had more fun getting nearly locked in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History while touring the entomology lab filmed in “The Silence of the Lambs” with my family. Better stories, fewer injuries, and the curator didn’t hit anyone with a bottle. *Some favorite entries? *Even though they didn’t get ink: *Week 1111: Song title parody for store names:* “Steers in Heaven” steakhouse; “Bohemian Wraps ’n’ Tea” sandwich shop.* Week 1149: What to do for Lawyer Appreciation Day:* Become the affect of their objection. *Week 1142:* Tweet from a celebrity mash-up: Anne Frank-Lloyd-Wright: By combining utility and obscurity, even a simple attic can bring entire families together. *What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? *Within months after performing in what turned out to be a DUI stop training video for Maryland police, I acted in an international television station’s documentary about LSD. Beltway traffic isn’t the only thing that terrifies me about local driving. *What are your Invitational goals?* Having never placed in the top five, I’m hoping someday the E m p r e ====================================================================== WEEK 1162, published February 14, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1162: 42 giraffes and 21 ‘Screams’ later ... The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results Loser and pack mule (Duncan Stevens , Vienna, Va.) with Loser-in-Training Simon. Duncan supplied this week’s Meet the Parentheses bio; see below. (FAMILY PHOTO) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** February 11, 2016 Washington Post writers were admonished this week by management to “respect our readers’ time” and write shorter articles. If the Empress really gave a hoot about her readers’ time, she wouldn’t ask them to write elaborate song parodies in return for a 2-by-3-inch scrap of metal with a cartoon on it (if that). But if for no other reason than to send you to work more promptly on (or at least laugh at) this week’s Style Invitational, she’ll try to show a little more self-discipline. When the entries started coming in forr Week 1158, I got a few gripey notes that Bob Staake’s artsy, shaded drawings of seven everyday objects were harder to misinterpret than the stark doodles he’d done the first time we did such a contest , back in 2001. But they didn’t seem to deter the 200 or so Losers who entered this time around, and who revealed their minds to be warped in many different directions. Still, I’m glad that this contest, like all our caption contests, offered a choice of pictures to work with: When 200 people are looking for something funny in a single simple picture, a lot of them are going to have the same general idea. At least 21 entries — probably quite a few more — evoked Edvard Munch’s iconic “Scream” painting in the description of the electric plug; and the mottled shading of the peanut in Picture 4 prompted 42 entries mentioning giraffes — giraffe-moth hybrids, giraffe larvae, giraffe slugs, giraffe seeds, giraffe coffee beans, giraffe testes, giraffe scrotum, giraffe goiter, giraffe sperm, giraffe poop, giraffe wearing camouflage, a boneless giraffe, filet of giraffe. I ended up going with Kathy Hardis Fraeman’s giraffe in the snow, which imaginatively incorporated the negative space of the picture. Melissa Balmain, who’s an award-winning poet and editor of the light-verse journal Light , often blots up her Invite ink in various verse contests. But her family-focused humor has also served her well in a variety of other ’Vites; this Inkin’ Memorial — for seeing a flashlight battery and the positive-side “+,” and thinking of Fisher-Price exorcists — marks her seventh contest win and 81st blot of ink, all since Week 941. (Hmm, I’m thinking we’d want to Meet These Parentheses, no?) Meanwhile, longtime Loser Edward Gordon gets Ink No. 62 and his eighth “above the fold,” while Bruce Niedt (also a published poet ) gets just his sixth ink but a second trip to the Losers’ Circle. But the milestone news is for Really Longtime Loser Roy Ashley, who this week smears his shirt pocket with his 350th blot of ink — scoring with an entry that didn’t interpret Picture 5 as anything but a paintbrush, but did so in a very funny way. *AREA NEWSPAPER STEALS FROM OTHER PAPER, CALLS IT ‘HOMAGE’* I adore the Onion — the proliferation of totally craven, unwitty fake-news sites only puts the Onion’s pointed, almost always perfectly aimed satire into sharper relief. And I wasn’t surprised that so many in the Loser Community were able to produce Onion-quality and Onion-toned headlines in our Week 794 contest back in 2009. The Onion has been through a number of changes since then; most notably, it had to fold its print edition, and recently was bought (this is true! not the Onion!) by the Spanish-language broadcast network Univision. But its satire of both Great Issues and Quotidian Life continues to use the form of deadpan straight-news newspaper articles, complete with headlines. If you haven’t read a lot of Onion heds, I strongly suggest you go to TheOnion.com and sample a variety of them. As with this contest, the actual articles aren’t necessary, though they’re often worthwhile. Our first Onion contest, by the way, was inspired by a fascinating cover story in The Washington Post Magazine. If you have the time — trying to be respectful of it here — it’s worth the read. *A little thing I wanted to address ... * My requests on datat to include with entries has varied over the years, as I’ve started different systems to keep track of Losers’ addresses. Some years ago I’d told the regular entrants that they need not include their mailing addresses week after week, since I’d already entered them into a database. But these days, when I look up Losers’ entries before I send out their prizes, it’s handy to have the address right there, so I don’t have to go to another list. Not a yuge deal, but in a week in which I’m sending out 30-plus letters before the post office closes (I’m talking about you, backward-crossword), it does help me out to have the address right there on the e-mail every time. Actually, now that I’m hand-writing the envelopes rather than making labels (this actually saves me time), I’ve managed to memorize the street addresses of a bunch of Recidivist Losers. But I still need to double-check the Zip codes. (I promise I won’t stalk your house.) *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (DUNCAN STEVENS, VIENNA, VA.) * *Duncan got his first ink back in 2012, in Week 970. But it’s been just the past few months that he’s emerged as a Loser Phenom, winning prizes so often — including this week, for his 30th blot of ink — that the Empress knows his street address by heart. She’s still looking forward to meeting him in person, however, since he hasn’t appeared yet at a Loser event. As with our previous Meet the Parentheses contributors, Duncan adapted a basic Q&A template.* *Age: *Evidently not old enough to know better. *Official Loser Anagram (aka Granola Smear):* Unscented Vans. Though I’m also partial to Nuns Dent Caves and Nuns, Vets Dance. *What brought me to the Invite:* I had been enjoying the Invite ever since I moved to D.C. and started subscribing to the Post in 2000, but I would glance at the contest, think “hey, I should enter,” and almost never get around to it. But last summer I said to myself, “Self, this is lame. You like wordplay. There’s a lively wordplay contest in your paper every week. You have no excuse.” So I started sending in entries more or less every week, and I found that a lot of contests that I had never thought to try — like neologisms or snarky notes to “glassbowls” — were a lot of fun once I put some effort into them. *What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? * I’m a longtime Ultimate Frisbee player, and it’s a tradition (though a waning one) that each team makes up a friendly cheer for the other team at the end of the game. I’m the designated cheer-person for our team, and I’ll often do a song parody or limerick, like this one for a team called Fifi’s Nasty Little Secret: We got on the phone with our scout, Who said “Fifi’s great, there’s no doubt!” But the whole NSA Was listening that day, So now Fifi’s secret is out. I also sometimes spoof hymns for my church choir: “Jesus Christ is risen today*Man, that guy won’t go away.” *Favorite entries:* I was proud my long parody of the Sesame Street song “I Love Trash!”; it was about the movie “Wall-E.” Some of it got ink in Week 1029 : Oh, I move trash! After centuries of mankind’s excesses, They’ve left me to clean up their messes, So I move trash! I’m a robot compactor of unit class Wall-E, I clean up the residue of human folly; At night I sit back and rewatch “Hello, Dolly!” By day I go out and move trash! (the whole thing is on Facebook here ). *Some non-inking entries I was similarly proud of:* *For Week 924, fake facts about U.S. history:* Before Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 plane was shot down in Soviet airspace, his last words to his CIA handlers were “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” *For Week 1041, answers to questions posed in songs:* Q. Does anybody really know what time it is? (Chicago) A. At the sound of the tone... *For Week 1142, tweets from a hybrid of two people:* Nikita Khrushchevita: Don’t cry for me, Soviet Union* The truth is I never left you* I gave long speeches* Till you were woozy* And at the UN* I banged my shoesies. *How about favorite Invite entries by other contestants? * Beanie Babies is a good name for stuffed animals, but a bad name for a Jewish preschool. (Edward Gordon) Post headline: Doesn’t get any easier for Virginia Bank head: Tyke to be told there is no Easter Bunny (Mark Raffman) Name the panda Elvis CIA reveals Bin Laden’s cryptic last words (Frank Osen) Fake facts about U.S. history: As a community organizer in the Windy City, young Barack Obama walked down eight roads before someone called him a man. (Jonathan Hardis) *What do you do when you’re not composing Invite entries?* I’m an attorney at the FDIC, where I worked with famed Loser parodist Barbara Sarshik before she retired. I sing tenor in the choir at my Episcopal church in downtown D.C., where I also serve as treasurer, bread-baker and homeless-breakfast cook. I also play Ultimate Frisbee, and dabble in improv comedy. When not doing those things, I’m often playing with my proto-Loser six- and three-year-olds, who wish the Invite involved more Sesame Street and Thomas the Tank Engine. *Do you have anything else to say for yourself? * 1. When I was 4, I went to see “Peter Pan,” twice. There’s a point when Tinker Bell gets sick and the audience has to clap to make her better, so the second time I started clapping long before she got sick. Preventive medicine, you know. 2. I’m descended directly from two Civil War Union generals, one of whom was the other’s son-in-law. 3. As an attorney in private practice, I once helped represent the natives of Bikini Atoll in their (unfortunately unsuccessful) attempt to get compensation from the U.S. government for the irradiation*partial obliteration of their native islands. *What is your favorite color?* Blue. No, yellow. ====================================================================== WEEK 1163, published February 21, 2016 Style Conversational: Where the elyts meet The Invitational Empress talks about the Week 1163 backwards-word contest This sign was just won by Week 1159 second-placer Chris Doyle -- what a nice decoration for his new home in Denton, Tex. But many more prizes lie in wait at the Empress’s palace, Mount Vermin. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** February 18, 2016 I was prompted todo this week’s contest upon receiving an urgent message from my predecessor, the deposed Czar of The Style Invitational, from his dacha in Yekatrinburg: “Contest idea! Take any word or name, spell it backwards, new definition. Urabus — a mobile urology clinic. . . . This is a naturally good idea.” I didn’t disagree, but explained (as I often do) that, oh, we’ve done that one, repeatedly. But then I checked Ye Olde Master Contest List and discovered that “repeatedly” meant once in 2004 and once in 2006. We’re not changing it at all this time around, but I’m counting on (a) the fact that the dictionary has a lot of words in it and (b) we’re allowing names, too, and one or two have emerged over the last 10 years or so. I remember getting the suggestion for this contest back in 2004, my first year of Empressing. It was from Richard Grantham, the Australian word whiz who’s a big part of Anagrammy.com and its Anagrammy Awards competition, which has been showcasing astonishing anagrams (including some from the Loser Community) since 1998. And my introduction to Week 545 (my 10th contest) expressed the same immediate conviction that the Czar just did that this one would be a sure winner. AdChoices ADVERTISING I think the results of both Week 545 and the follow-up, Week 684, bear that out. (Not to mention that the Empress remarked on the “thousands of entries” each time; this is a contest that more readers are likely to try, because in just a minute or two you can think of*something*. I love hearing from new contestants.) What guidelines can we glean from the inking (and non-inking) entries for these contests? One is that if you’re going to do a name or term that’s on everyone’s mind right now, you’d better write a very original, clever definition, or it will end up in the “too many” pile. On the other hand, back then there was no 25-entry limit, so maybe some of the repetition wouldn’t have occurred had several Obsessive Losers not sent me lists of 200 entries. Second, the backwards-word has to be reasonably pronounceable. Third, there has to be some relationship between the original and backward words. This quality is common in all our neologism contests, but I made it a requirement for this one. And because of that, it’s going to be hard to make an effective joke if you use an obscure word or name. Finally: No. Although I’ve been known to stretch the parameters of a contest a bit to allow for some hilarious entry, if your word isn’t totally backward — if, oh, just a couple of li’l ol’ letters are out of order or missing — it’s no good. Don’t even ask. And check your spelling! I’m looking forward to using a series of inking entries in Week 1163 on my Style Invitational Ink of the Day page on Facebook. *GAMES OF GROANS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1159* **a non-inking alternative headline by Nan Reiner* As a contest requiring writing (even a couple of sentences) , the Week 1159 contest for novel board or parlor games drew relatively few entries. And a few of these were put forward earnestly as actual plausible games, rather than jokes. A couple of people put forth page-long descriptions of how the game would work. Quite a few entries were allegories for the presidential campaign or some other mockable situation, and not surprisingly, many titles for the new games were plays on real ones. Such as this week’s brilliantly concise winning entry, “Klu: Mr. Black did it. Game over.” And Mr. Black did it this week: Dion’s first win knocks him off the Most Cantinkerous list at NRARS.org — the list of high-scoring Losers who’ve never ended up with the top prize; with 64 blots of ink, including seven runners-up, Dion had made it up to No. 4. The three runners-up are all veterans of the Losers’ Circle: It’s Chris Doyle’s ridiculous 158th runner-up, Mike Gips’s 16th (in addition to his seven wins) and the fourth from relative newcomer Jon Gearhart — who now, with 56 blots of ink but no win, moves up to No. 6 toward Most Cantinkerous. *JUST TOO GAMY: THE UNPRINTABLES* We might get some blowback on Bird Waring’s inking entry for “Doin’ Time,” particularly the “prag” reference, which I used instead of “prison bitch.” (Maybe I should have gone with “special friend.” But these two I’ll run just here. The first one, by Kevin Dopart, is very good satire, but just too graphic and upsetting: Whac-an-Infidel: You’ll be headed for a night of fun when the Great Satan’s spawn pop up and you have just 30 seconds to decapitate as many you can with a plastic sword. Easily reattachable heads means each round can start without delay. Upload videos of your best games to YouTube. Had Jeff Contompasis not designated this one “ ’Verse Only,” I might have run it. I’m glad Jeff cares more about his reputation than I do: Aunts in the Pants: From the makers of Taboo, it’s the game that brings families unacceptably closer together. *BULLETIN FROM THE PRIZE BUNKER * I spent a whole afternoon last weekend making*some* progress in returning an upstairs room at Mount Vermin, the imperial palace, back into a reasonably presentable space, rather than the “Hoarders”-eligible sprawling mess it had been since I had to empty a decade’s worth of gewgaws from the Invitational Prize Closet two months ago and bring it all back to my house. I wouldn’t say that I have the perhaps 100 individual prizes (in addition to Inkin’ Memorials and mugs) perfectly sorted, logged in, etc. But they’re at least consolidated in boxes and I know what’s here, mostly. Some of the prizes are substantial; many of the items are little novelty things, not really at the level of what I’d give to a second-place winner even of the Invite. And some of both kinds, I’m embarrassed to say, no longer indicate who gave them to me (or possibly even to the Czar before me). I would very much like to send the little stuff out to people who’d opt for a random Mystery Prize rather than a magnet or whatever else they won in a particular week. So if you get ink regularly and have enough of the usual prize you’d get, e-mail me to say you’d like a Mystery Prize, and I’ll send you that instead. Let me know as soon as possible after the results run, and no later than the Monday afterward. *Also: If you’ve donated a prize that I haven’t sent out yet (not the ones in the past few weeks; those I’m on top of), let me know and I’ll make sure that your name is attached to it. * I*probably* know, but ... (Some of these prizes were left at my house during the times the Royal Consort and I hosted the Loser Post-Holiday Party, in 2010 and 2013.) Also: Remember that Inkin’ Memorial winners may opt for an Inker, the previous, chronically fragile first-place prize. I have two unscathed ones plus one more that is okay except for a missing, broken-off base. (Really, is it all about that base?) Also: If you’re a winner or runner-up, you can opt for either mug or for a genuine Loser T-shirt, which we produced in many versions over the year. A couple dozen have been regifted to us by previous winners; some are brand-new and the others are very gently used. Almost all are size XL; there might be a couple of L’s. (We don’t have any more of the “My Cup Punneth Over” mugs, the one that we used between the versions we have right now. Also, we’re out of Grossery Bags: I’m vacillating on whether to order more of them.) In any case, if you’re a runner-up, I would like to hear from you by the Monday after the contest runs, about what you’d like me to send you. I don’t want to have to ask; for one thing, I tend to forget to until Tuesday, when I mail prizes from the newsroom. *‘MEET’-LESS THURSDAY * No “Meet the Parentheses” this week, since no more Losers have stepped up with a Q&A bio. If you’re one of the Top 25 or so in the current Loser standings or one of the all-time top 100 or so, e-mail me with a bio roughly in the form of our previous Meet the Parentheses (see previous Conversationals at washingtonpost.com*styleconversational ). Or you can choose another format, but talk to me about it first. ====================================================================== WEEK 1164, published February 28, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1164: Can you do an NPR A-B-C? The Style Invitational Empress ruminates daintily all over this week’s contest and results Lanky as Honest Abe, (Roger Dalrymple, Gettysburg, Pa.) once again invites us up for brunch and a tour. See Meet the Parentheses below. (By Bob Dreyer) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** February 25, 2016 I don’t watch much TV, but I listen to the radio almost nonstop, and I’ve been an NPR junkie for decades. On weekend mornings — both Saturday and Sunday on D.C.’s WAMU — I’ll usually catch at least part of “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me.” And I’ll always find myself laughing out loud at something or other. The very funny Peter Sagal hosts the hourlong show out of Chicago before an enthusiastic live audience, offering up a variety of ways for his three panelists — a rotating roster of writers and comedians — to get in lots of quick, sharp quips; I’m especially partial to the brilliant Mo Rocca. Listeners get to call in to play as well: “Wait Wait” might be the only big contest with less valuable prize swag than The Style Invitational; winning listeners get NPR eminence Karl Kasell’s voice on their voicemail. The show (see all sorts of clips and transcriptshere ) starts off with a news quiz with both serious and offbeat questions about news of the past week, and there’s a gimme bit where a caller has to guess the last rhyming word in a limerick. But most of the segments are various multiple-choice guessing games, one of which we’re ripping off honoring in Invite Week 1164 . *This is going to be a hard contest *because an entry can’t just be a quiz question; it has to be a quiz question that’s interesting and even funny. First of all, you have to find an interesting fact to ask about; while “Wait Wait” uses recent news items, I’m opening it up to all sorts of trivia (though recent news might still work best). And then — and I think this will be the harder part — you have to write two interesting *wrong* answers. The “Wait Wait” writers do this very well, and I have a hunch that I’ll be appreciating their work more and more as I begin to grimace in despair over a slew of boring and*or unfunny entries. But you know, it’s*fine* if there’s a slew of boring and*or unfunny entries — because the only ones that matter are the good ones. And I’m confident that the Loser Community will yield the dozen or 15 terrific multiple-choicers that will fill the Style Invitational page four Sundays from now. *Yes, of course *you need to tell me which of your choices is the right answer! In fact, I’d like you to cite a source for your Amazing but True fact, preferably one that I can easily look at. Please don’t embed links in the middle of a sentence, because it will turn into gibberish when I combine everyone’s email into one big text file for judging. This would be a good format for entries: Question: A. xxxxx B. xxxxxx C. xxxxxxx ( correct answer is B; I saw it on the New York Times’s website last week) (link to Times story) I’m of course excited that “Wait Wait” panelist Roxanne Roberts agreed to help out and weigh in on the finalists. I’ve worked with Roxanne in The Post’s Style section ever since she started as a copy aide in the 1980s, then as she put on high heels night after night covering big-ticket social events as Style’s “party reporter,” and then for her many years as the co-writer (with Amy Argetsinger) of Style’s gossip*celebrity column, The Reliable Source. In recent years Rox has been able to live a marginally saner existence as a reporter on everything from power grabs at the Kennedy Center to the planning that’s already going on for the next Inauguration. Most recently she covered the Scalia funeral. And of course she regularly jets out to Chicago to do “Wait Wait.” So I’m delighted that Roxanne has given her blessing to Week 1164 and that she’ll weigh in on the finalists. And maybe — it would be many months from now — I can persuade her to give the winner one of the amazingly gorgeous and intricate Christmas cookies she makes every year. *FAUX-WORD MARCH!* THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1160* *(Non-inking headline suggestion by Beverley Sharp)* Our contest for new meanings for existing words brought forth some 1,700 entries, of which only 1,500 or so stank. Which means that even though I gave ink to more than 50 entries from Week 1160, perhaps 150 others were inkworthy as well. Did all 25 of your entries make my anonymous short­list only to get bupkis? Maybe! The only names I checked were those for the inking entries. So go ahead, overestimate yourself out. The entries I received fell into three types, two of which I used. Most retained the pronunciation of the original word, but made you think of different meanings of the word (“scatterbrain” as a stage direction) or make you think of a different word with the same pronunciation (“yo-yo” as a greeting between friends). The second type is the opposite: You have to change the pronunciation so that you’ll be evoking different words with the same spelling (e.g., “pageant” as “page ant”; “Testicles” as a Greek philosopher). The second type is more of a challenge for the reader, but perhaps more rewarding for the investment of a second or two to figure it out. Because I stated in the directions that the definition “shouldn’t be a cynical interpretation of the word’s actual meaning,” I tossed that third type, the “Devil’s Dictionary”-type definitions, for which we’ve had several contests already. These included such otherwise worthy entries as “Trickle down: when the indigent get the effluent of the affluent” (Kel Nagel) and “Sleep: Most common object lost by adults” (Robyn Carlson). As I’d advised in the Week 1160 Style Conversational , fake definitions for obscure words probably wouldn’t be as funny as fake definitions for familiar words, because the reader can’t say, “Ha — I never thought of those letters as meaning *that*!” So a play on “vernalagia” or “tarantism” isn’t going to work as well as a play on “Oregon” or “stud poker.” Frank Osen, the Losers’ current Loser of the Year, marks his 12th win. Because Frank has been playing the Invite just a few years, all those wins were for the current Invite trophy, the Inkin’ Memorial. So this time I’m going to send him my last intact Inker, the paper-bag-headed “Thinker” statuette that the Empress gave out from 2004 until she couldn’t find any more and had to switch trophies in 2012. I have one more Inker after that, courtesy of Loser Christopher Lamora, who gave all six of his back to me; it’s just missing the base. Meanwhile, runners-up Howard Walderman and Danielle Nowlin are familiar denizens of “above-the-fold” territory, but it’s the second trip to the Losers’ Circle, and the 16th blot of ink in all, for Joanne Free, who gave us “scatterbrain.” I’m glad I bought more stamps last week — I’ll be sending prizes to, I think, 35 Losers among the 51 inking entry. *What Doug Dug* and *Laugh out of Courtney:* My copy-editing colleagues hadn’t been weighing in lately with their faves because they’d been working on other projects. But this week Doug told me he especially liked all four top entries plus Andrea Dewhurst’s “pothole,” the two different “testicles” entries (by Mark Raffman and First Offender Thor Rudebeck) and Mark’s “twist.” Courtney says she was “tickled” by Frank’s winner; her other faves were “typeface” (Ben Aronin), “paleontology” (Danielle Nowlin). *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (Roger Dalrymple, Gettysburg, Pa.) * *Roger is one of several members of our Gettysburg Loser Bureau (along with Marty McCullen, Bill Collinge and Christina Courtney). Over the years, he’s come down to the D.C. area for many Loser events, but Roger’s most notable, Loserwise, for arranging — every year since 2008 — a Loser brunch and then leading a several-stop tour of the Gettysburg battlefields, to explain the fateful events of the unanticipated three-day fight in July 1863 that turned the tide of the Civil War. This year’s brunch*tour, as Roger notes below, won’t be in authentic midsummer heat.* *Age*: 67, but i don’t feel nearly that old. More like 65. *Where you live:* Gettysburg is our retirement home — Pam and I moved up here in 2001 from the D.C. area after I spent 34 years with the Department of Defense, mostly in arms control. Gettysburg has the benefits of being near family (okay, that’s a mixed bag); a college with a lot of cultural programs that get us out of the house now and again .. oh, and some history that happened here. I’ve given a lot of tours of the battlefields and other landmarks — including, for several years, a tour following the annual Loser brunch. (See below.) *What would someone be surprised to learn about you? * I’m an accomplished liar. I often throw semi-outrageous statements at family, friends, coworkers, etc., just to see if anyone calls me on them. Normally, they don’t. And now, a bunch of guys at work think a particular candidate for public office has an IQ of 63. Also, Loser Dave Prevar was my classmate at Landover Hills Elementary School. (We reunited through the Invitational, a few years later.) *Your official Loser anagram: * “Elderly Program.” Hmph. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as? * Opa (I have five grands), Husband (46 years and counting), Dad (two fine sons who, I do not believe, know I am a Loser), Retiree, Volunteer (Habitat for Humanity, Ruth’s Harvest, Road Scholar, ESL, etc.) and an inveterate smartass. *How much ink do you have; how long have you been playing? *I have 95 inks, including a couple of wins, but I’ve been doing this forever, something like 15 years. I’ve always been glad that Pat doesn’t print our “inking average”; mine would be ridiculously low. I’ve always wanted to be Loser of the year, but people who are actually good at this keep getting in my way. I do already have a draft of my acceptance speech. *What are your hopes and dreams for the Invite? *To meet the Czar would be awesome. However, so far, he’s avoided every event I’ve attended. *What brought you to Loserdom? * I just kind of bumped into it in The Post; I mailed in my first entry on a postcard. (Pam and I used to create our entries together: I would do the first draft and she would tell me how lame it was.) I found that I enjoyed slipping one past the goalie now and again, and still find it bizarrely rewarding to see my name in print — it’s funny how many friends and family and even a few strangers have seen my name in the contest. One young lady even asked for my autograph, but declined to pay for it. *Some favorite entries you’d like to share?* One of my first inks was when the Czar was still on the throne: for a contest for bad job choices, my entry was “Superman: Kryptonite salesman.” (The Czar disqualified but cited my idea for Bill Clinton: internist.) Much more recentlyin Week 1126 , the caption for Drawing 3: “Joyce regrets that the same doctor did her eyelids and her breast implants.” *So what’s in store for this year’s Gettysburg Loser Brunch and Tour? * First of all, the Losers — a record 17 — who sweltered through last year’s heat-of-summer event will be happy to know that this year we’ll be gathering on Sunday, Nov. 13. for lunch at one of our many eateries. For this year’s tour, we’re thinking of walking the Soldiers National Cemetery, then driving over to visit such famed battle sites as Little Round Top, where Chamberlain saved the Union left flank, and perhaps the bloody angle, where Pickett’s charge was repulsed. But with a bit of notice I’d be happy to add or substitute sites of particular Loser interest. *So if you’re an accomplished liar, what did you lie about in here? * Well, technically, I don’t dream about the Czar. ====================================================================== WEEK 1166, published March 13, 2016 The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results (Frank Mann, Washington), this week’s Meet the Parentheses subject, selfie-poses in front of a poster by Gary Taxali, who designed the cover of the album “@#%&*! Smilers,” by Frank’s sister. (Selfie by Frank Mann) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 10, 2016 Welcome back tothe contest we’ve been calling Questionable Journalism since 2005. It goes back a lot further, though: In Week 254 (1998), the Czar of The Style Invitational introduced a contest called, God knows why, Double Jeopardy. It was suggested by Jacob Weinstein of Los Angeles, who went on to accumulate 36 blots of ink — and an amazing five wins — until disappearing from the Invite a decade ago. Jacob got several of those inks in that first contest but not for any of its successors, headlined “Sentence Us to Death” and “Deform of a Question” before we settled on, for some reason, its current title. When I realized last weekend that we hadn’t done this contest for well over a year, I asked the members of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook if they’d like to offer some examples from that’s day’s Post — since the Week 1166 restricts the sentences to papers from March 10-21, tipping them off to the contest topic wasn’t going to matter. There were several funny suggestions;you can see the thread here along with the complete results from 2007 (if you haven’t joined the group, go to on.fb.me*invdev and ask to join and I’ll wave you in; in return, the Devotees will anagram your name every which way). For further inspiration in Week 1166, here’s a sampling of winners and runners-up from 10 previous contests. If you want to see the complete sets of results, go to Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List and search on the week numbers below (or the word “questionable”); then look at the right column three or four weeks down to find the link to that week’s results. (Nonsubscribers to The Post: The links on the list don’t count toward The Post’s monthly limit of free articles.) *Line from The Post:**Great legs in a short skirt make me melt.* *Question it answers:* Hey, Pillsbury Doughboy, why won’t you work with Tina Turner? (Jean Sorensen, runner-up, Week 254, 1998) A.*We gain information, via photons, of distant objects.* Q, How does Al Gore challenge the notion that he is too wooden and remote, and that he lacks vision? (Russell Beland, winner, Week 415, 2001) A.*I know I have to get up in the morning and put my underwear on first and my pants on next.* After receiving some helpful advice on the subway today, how will I change my dressing regimen tomorrow? (Marc Leibert, winner, Week 561, 2004) A.*To some, the smell is an unpleasant mix of volatile organic compounds (including benzene and acetone), mostly given off as gas from the vinyl and other plastic materials, plus adhesive and sealers.* Q, What’s it like to be in an elevator with Cher? (Brendan Beary, runner-up, Week 621, 2005) A.*I feel for the guy.* Q, Ms. Hilton, what do you do upon entering a darkened room? (Kevin Dopart, winner, Week 667, 2006) A.*They must also not appear partisan.* Q. In addition to being partisan, what’s expected of a U.S. attorney? (Russell Beland, winner, Week 706, 2007) A,*Adjö, Saab.* Q. Can you really type with your eyes shut? (Jeff Contompasis, runner-up, Week 847, 2009) A.*“We’re working our way happily and steadily through the process of production.”* Q. What did the mechanical engineer reply when his mother-in-law said, “We hope you’ll soon make us proud grandparents”? (Cathy Lamaze, winner, Week 962, 2012) A.*“I think it’s a shame. The whole process of buying a record was so special.”* Q. What was Mark McGwire’s reaction to baseball’s latest steroid suspensions? (John Folse, winner, Week 1053, 2013) A.*Will begin to wane on Wednesday night.* Q. What was the phrase that persuaded the Weather Channel not to hire Elmer Fudd? (Beverley Sharp, Week 1099, 2014) *FAQ about the Q: If you’re entering Week 1166 * *Can I quote a question to answer with my own question? * Yes, a question is a sentence. *How about a sentence fragment? What’s that vague “most of a sentence” supposed to mean? *Yes, you can use a fragment (a phrase that doesn’t have both a subject and a verb); see Beverley Sharp’s quote above from the weather forecast. By “most of a sentence,” I mean that you don’t have to include “Jones said” or even a sizable part of a long sentence, as long as you’re not just excising a few words. Certainly don’t cobble together disparate words within a sentence to make it say something else. That said, sometimes there’s humor to be found within the attributions and other seemingly throwaway words; for instance “Jones said” might originally refer to Quincy Jones, but you could direct your question to Geraldine Jones. Russell Beland, who was for many years the Invite’s No. 1 ink-blotter — and an ace at this particular contest — told me he prided himself on figuring out how to incorporate those in-the-way elements into a funny entry. *How about capitalization and punctuation? * You have to leave it as it is, except that you may omit the quotation marks in a quote. You can’t add punctuation either, though a sentence doesn’t have to have quotation marks for you to use it as a quote; see Kevin Dopart’s “I feel for the guy” above. (Of course, if you’re omitting the beginning words of a sentence, you should capi­tal­ize the beginning of “your” sentence.) *Can I use a headline? * No, because the directions say “not a headline.’ I know someone’s going to send me headlines anyway. *How about a photo caption?* Yeah, that’s okay. *How about the sentences that appear on The Post’s home page online? *All right. See next paragraph. *I don’t get the print paper, and I didn’t even buy even the $19-a-year super-deal digital subscription to The Post. How can I do this contest if I get to read only 20 free articles a month? * Find a few really long stories and use them. Use the sentences on the home page. Also, articles shared through Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t count against the paywall. Give them a try. Or, you know, subscribe. *I do subscribe. But why are you forcing me to look at every story in The Washington Post for the next 11 days so I don’t miss the very best sentences for this contest? *Go take a nap or something, Mr. Contompasis. *ONION RINGERS*: THE HEADLINES OF WEEK 1162* **A non-inking alternative headline suggested by both Chris Doyle and Mark Raffman, and possibly others* Clearly a lot of you really*get* the Onion and its headlines. I was going to say “unparalleled headlines,” but I think we made it to the same plane in Week 1162 . I read through 135 straight pages of nothing but one-line hea dlines, and culled a short­list of well over 100 entries. After finishing the print version of the Invite, I was planning to run more headlines on the Web, but then realized that I’d already included 42 heads. I expect to see some wuz-robbed entries in our yearly retrospective in December. We ended up with a good mix of the news-satiric and the everyday-events-satiric, juxtaposed as they are in the Onion itself (as well as an online publication can do it; the Onion folded its print edition a few years ago). Some of them would no doubt be great sources for actual articles, but the Invite doesn’t have the format for that. Anyway, the headlines are funny in themselves, and often the stories in the Onion often just reiterate the joke that’s already told so pithily in the headline anyway. (One thing that’s not a hallmark of the Onion is the pun headlines. So for once, I mostly ignored the numerous pun entries.) Neal Starkman’s ISIS tote bag — I read it just as my local NPR affiliate had started its pledge drive — showed that you can indeed do a printable ISIS joke. It’s the third win for Neal, and his 57th blot of ink overall. Second place, though, goes to a new name to me: Mark Briscoe. Mark had just eight blots of Invite ink, and only one them was during the Empress Era — in 2005. But I’m delighted he’s back; among those eight blots were a contest win and two-runners up. And now he’s 4 for 9 “above the fold.” (Early ink from Mark, in a contest for cynical takes on sweet sentiments: “Every dog has his day. Of course, his day consists of smelling other dogs’ butts.”) Filling out the Losers’ Circle are edgy headlines by a couple of Invite big shots, 200-time Loser Lawrence McGuire and Virtually at 500 Jeff Contompasis. *Amor of Vincent:* The Invite was edited this week by super copy editor Vince Rinehart, whom I hired decades ago for the Style copy desk — home of the pun headline in the 1980s — in part because of a cover letter consisting largely of fish puns. So of course I asked Vince for his faves, and not surprisingly he kind of liked Megan Durham’s grammar joke: “I just got to the copy editor headline, and have to change my pants now.” After he freshened up, Vince also cited Art Grinath’s Chipotle joke, Bruce Niedt’s weather forecast, and ink from two First Offenders: Brian Finch on Chris Christie’s “I Participated” trophy, and Michael Ginsberg’s “Schindler’s List on Ice.” *The Onion might run these, but we wouldn’t: * The Onion has always been very edgy with its satire, sometimes considerably edgier than even the Invite. In any case, I wasn’t going to run these admittedly clever entries: Abstinence-Only Group Kicks Off ‘Who Doesn’t Love Hand Jobs?’ Ad Blitz (Brendan Beary) And even edgier: Scalia Very-Late-Term Abortion 79 Years After Birth Enrages Conservatives (Jeff Brechlin) And with that, let’s ... *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (FRANK MANN, WASHINGTON)* ***Frank first dipped his toe in the inky Invite water in late 2012, but it’s the last couple of years that he’s amassed most of his 42 blots of ink so far, including two wins and four runners-up. Like our previous Meet the Parentheses subjects, Frank used the Empress’s basic Q&A template, adding and deleting whatever he wanted.* *About me: *Age: mathematically speaking, there are three 19-year olds living inside me. Residing in Glover Park, whose pronunciation is still TBD (does it rhyme with “clover” or “lover”?); DEA lawyer; former TV reporter; brother of Aimee Mann (hush hush, keep it down now). *What brought me to the Invite:* Visited a museum and learned about these things called newspapers. Read one and realized this was a way to make a lot of money. Actually, I started sending in entries hoping to get my name in the paper and make all my ex-girlfriends regret dumping me. *Proof I’m a Loser:* Alfred E. Neuman is still my hero. *Favorite entries:* The super-dumb ones. Like Week 1046, in which we crafted a word or phrase containing the letter block SANE (in any order) and then defined it. I wrote: “Mouse anus: Where one can easily fit every good justification for the government shutdown.” I’m also proud that I pushed the WaPo envelope in Week 1137 in the contest for spicy titles for boring books: “The Joy of Doggy Style: 50 Cute Outfits for Your Poodle.” *What do you do outside of the Invite?* Practice guitar; annoy people by playing guitar; ruin perfectly good dinner parties by whipping out my guitar in lieu of socializing; read Thomas Pynchon novels and Samuel Beckett plays and pretend I understand them. I also made two 48-hour films — short films, 5 or 6 minutes, that you have only 48 hours to write, cast, shoot and edit — that were politely applauded during their premieres and never shown again. Here they are: “French Toast” (I’m the “French chef”) “48 Hours to Nowhere” (a western featuring a rubber duck) *Who do you want to be when you grow up?* Walter Mitty. *Do you have any decent stories?* As a TV reporter in Baltimore, I did a live broadcast from the Great Blacks in Wax Museum. While helping the photographer drag in the cables, we accidentally sawed off Marcus Garvey’s index finger. Hoping the curator wouldn’t notice, we placed the severed digit out of view, but he noticed it right away. Something tells me he wanted to give us the finger, just not the one we amputated. I also spent an entire morning chatting with Gilligan, the Professor and Mary Ann, and I interviewed Barbara Eden at Elvis’s grave. And people think my*sister* is some big deal. ====================================================================== WEEK 1167, published March 20, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1167: Make a difference! The Invitational Empress shares the best of the compare-and contrast contests By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 17, 2016 Happy Irish Cliche Day, everyone. Before we get to this week’s contest and results, I wanted to share a song along this theme by the great, hilarious a cappella group Da Vinci’s Notebook — which just happened to feature 20-time Style Invitational Loser Paul Sabourin. It’s called“The Irish Drinking Song.” And do check out Da Vinci’s several albums, such as my favorite, “Brontosaurus” ; they’re full of brilliant parodies and other funny songs that hold up amazing well after more than a decade even though they’re full of topical humor. *WE BEG YOU TO DIFFER: OUR WEEK 1167 CONTEST* This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1167 , seems so daunting: How many ways*can* someone compare — with humor — a pair of items from that list (even if it’s one of the longer ones)? The thing is, though, that we always have that fear when we do a Spit the Difference* Same Difference* Etc. contest — and we’ve done so many that Keeper of the Master Contest List Elden Carnahan has sorted them onto their own page — but the combined wits of the Loser Community always make it work. (Should combined wits be called Knit Wits?) Here are some of the best compare-or-contrasts from the Invitational’s history, starting back in 1996. *From our first of these contests, Week 155, called Comparison Shopping:* * Runner-up: The difference between a bowling ball and the devoted followers of Pat Buchanan:* *One tries to knock over white, red-necked things, and the other tries to recruit them. *(Andy Glendinning) *Winner: The difference between a bowling ball and the devoted followers of Pat Buchanan: A bowling ball requires an opposable thumb.* (Chuck Smith) The Czar liked the results (and ease of construction) of the contest so much that he repeated it 14 weeks later: Week 169: How about this makes-you-think entry from Ted Weitzman, whose pseudonym Paul Styrene was grandfathered in for a few years after The Post’s no-pseudonyms rule came down: *First Runner-Up: What is the difference between a chain saw and Directory Assistance? 500.* (Paul Styrene) Then again, Week 199: Here’s a wuz-robbed honorable mention: *What is the difference between a genuine Pickett slide rule and an ethics lecture from Newt Gingrich? The slide rule gives answers to three significant digits; the lecture only requires one. * (Greg Arnold) The winner of Week 276 (1998): *What is the difference between the human navel and a 1998 VW Bug? In the case of the navel, most people would rather have an innie. In the case of the Bug, most people would rather have an Audi. * (Russell Beland) First runner-up from Week 402: *The difference between intimations of mortality and performance anxiety: With intimations of mortality, you’re concerned about going too soon.* (Art Grinath) First runner-up from Week 466 (2002): *The difference between poetry by Yeats and a Wall Street Journal editorial: Poetry by Yeats waxes allegorical, whereas a Wall Street Journal editorial waxes Al Gore.* (Milo Sauer) First runner-up from Week 563 (2004): *The difference between the next Redskins season and Ivory Soap: With the soap, at the end the owner will end up with a ring. * (Chuck Smith) Honorable mention from Week 628, showing that we were plenty crude back in 2005 as well: *How the 400-meter dash is like Deep Throat’s throat: Both have been the venue for many climactic finishes. * (Jeff Brechlin) The winner of Week 697: *The difference between a prescription for Levitra and a Mini Cooper convertible: You hope the prescription will keep women from saying, “Ooh, that little thing is sooo cute.” *(Dave Komornik) HM from Week 738: *“American Gothic” and Lindsay Lohan’s handbag: One represents the American Farm; the other, the American Pharm.* (Tom Witte) Winner of Week 821 (2009): *A Buckingham Palace guard is like third base at Nationals Park: Just stands there and watches visitor after visitor go by.* (Dan Ramish) Winner of Week 883: *The difference between a dental appointment and a Real Housewife of D.C.: For one you use a phone to make it; the other uses a moan to fake it.* (Craig Dykstra) Winner of Week 934: *The difference between a toilet brush and a tattoo of Joe Biden: One’s a bristly Number Two tool; the other’s merely the depiction of one.* (Rob Huffman) Runner-up, Week 972: *Beethoven: Roll over. John Edwards: Heel.* (Brendan Beary) Winner of Week 1022: *The difference between a 23-year-old Geo Prizm and a vacation in Pyongyang: If you find yourself with a 23-year-old Geo Prizm, you chose the wrong career. If you find yourself on a vacation in Pyongyang, you chose the wrong Korea*. (Mike Gips) Winner of Week 1063: *A Fleetwood Mac reunion vs. the Arizona legislature: One will have you singing “Don’t Stop”; the other will have you screaming, “Don’t! Stop!” *(Dave Letizia) And the winner of our most recent of these contests, in which we used items from the previous contests: *A $4 haircut and the Redskins’ offensive line: With one, three snips and you’re out; with the other, three snaps and they’re out. *(Jaclyn Yamada) And that, dear Loser Community, is why I have faith. Note the various forms in which these jokes are presented. I’ll take any of them, though I might end up condensing them to save space. *DINE WITH THE LOSERS: SUNDAY AT NOON, BRION’S IN FAIRFAX* I’ll be partaking of the buffet at Brion’s Grille in Fairfax, Va., this palmy Sunday at the Losers’ monthly brunch. Want to join us? Anyone is welcome — Losers or just Invite fans. Witty repartee might or might not be on tap; more likely it’s sitting, eating, chatting, eating, throwing the occasional muffin ... RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org, the Losers’ own website; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” *LOSERCULTURE!!* The Royal Consort and I have tickets for the April 2 matinee of“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md. — which happens to feature 14-time Loser Marni Penning as Mae, the sister-in-law, as well as some ofD.C.’s best-known professional actors . The explosive Tennessee Williams classic runs March 30 through April 24; we got discount tickets through Goldstar.com. *READ THIS BACK FOR US*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1163* **A non-inking headline by Brendan Beary* This elegantly simple neologism contest — just spell a word or name backward and define the result — once again produced a slew of entries, many of them very good ones: The 40 entries that got ink today were drawn from a shortlist of almost 200. The other 160 worthies might well have included yours; I checked the names only on the entries I ended up running. The inking entries this week provide a nice mix of topical and timeless humor, of the very pithy and the less pithy. There were surprisingly few cases — well, maybe not that surprisingly, since you could use any word or name in existence — where I chose from many definitions of a particular back-word. Some were so close I gave credit to two writers; in others, I chose my favorite. For REDYNS, however, I ran two entries with different approaches: First Offender Francis O’Donnell made the best of several cases to use that as the new team name for the Washington football team, while Todd DeLap’s more personal dig against the beloved-nahhhht team owner earned him a runner-up. Brevity is often an asset in telling a joke, especially in a contest for witticisms. Francis’s somewhat lengthy entry didn’t feel too long to me because it was broken up into several short elements. This one, on the other hand, did: “REDYNS. adjective, being deliberately dismissive of or completely oblivious to public perceptions of one’s words or actions on multiple occasions or in multiple circumstances; being repeatedly scornful of most concepts of common decency.” Or this one for KNUBED: “adj., vb. condition of a false statement or outright lie that becomes generally accepted as true after being conclusively refuted due to continual repetition; to so entrench that false statement as popular belief through repetition.” Sposta be a joke, not a legal contract. Another drawback to some entries were back-words that were close to impossible to read, or at least didn’t look like words: ELBATALUCRIC, GNIMRAWLABOLG. While you can of course patiently read it backward, you can’t really read it forward, let along grasp the joke. But so many entries were very fine. I wouldn’t be surprised if some got ink this December in our annual retrospective contest, which invites you to enter or reenter any of the previous year’s contests. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial but the fifth ink “above the fold” among 31 blots for writer-editor Ellen Ryan; Her word QARI was used in an earlier backward-words contest — alas, Iraq has been in the news a long time — but she had a fresh new definition. I’ve met Ellen a number of times at Loser events, but hadn’t realized until recently (or had forgotten) that she’s the sister-in-law of Ubiquitous Loser Jeff Contompasis. Todd DeLap, who didn’t start Inviting till Week 1039, grabs Ink No. 58, his third above the fold (along with the “Wanna Rub My Butt” barbecue apron. Jesse Frankovich — who got his first ink many years ago but only recently returned by storm, with ink almost every week — blots up Inks 39 and 40 and his choice of mug or Loser T-shirt. And Kevin Dopart, blah blah. *ELBAT NIRPNU!: Martian warning meaning “don’t read these if you have any taste”* Many unprintables this week, even if spelling them backward makes them a*little* more subtle. (Not enough.) I won’t use all caps so they don’t unduly call attention to themselves. Remotsuc: Important part of phone sex company business plan. (Jeff Brechlin) Noparts: Anatomical problem-solver. (Ivars Kuskevics) Sir Otilc: Forgotten Knight of the Round Table was a popular ladies’ man who found many a “Holy Grail.” (Jeff Shirley) Smutorcs: Per Tolkien, shriveled and hairy things that throb excitedly after watching porn. (Jerry Pohl) Lana: You know that girl; she’s the one who’s up for anything. (Craig Dykstra) Sucum: To die with a mouthful. (Diane Wah) Redic: To get back in-… (Tom Witte) Suna: The lowest social caste, also known as “the unshinables.” (Tom Witte) Tom also enclosed an entry that I couldn’t even bring myself to list here. When I post this column on the Style Invitational Devotees Page on Facebook, I’ll include it in the thread of comments. See you Sunday! ====================================================================== WEEK 1168, published March 27, 2016 Style Conversational: Easy as A, B or C ‘Wait Wait’s’ Roxanne Roberts weighs in on the Style Invitational quiz questions By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 24, 2016 “risky, imo.” That was the prognosis last month, via Google Chat, of The Czar of The Style Invitational , the Empress’s predecessor and continual sounding board, when I broached the idea — suggested by the Royal Consort — of doing a contest in the mold of the multiple-choice quiz questions on NPR’s “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me.” “this calls for a lot of clebberness,” the Czar continued in the idiotic lowercase-and-stupid-spelling format that we’ve used for decades with each other while instant-messaging. “of course you only need ten.” right, I concurred in similar failures of capitalization. Then the conversation turned to whether the term “bucco-genital” was too spicy for The Post, even in a quote from a 1926 sex advice manual that was being given away as a prize (upshot: It was deleted from the print Invite for Week 1162, ran in the online version, got zero complaints). Anyway, one thing the Loser community has in abundance is clebberness. Many, many entrants in the Week 1164 contest knew just what we were looking for: a multiple-choice question about a Ridiculous but True news event (we also allowed for historical or general trivia), along with two wrong answers that were entertaining in their own right — either because they were ridiculous but marginally plausible, or because they made a good joke. Even the Czar agreed, lauding 20 of the entries I showed him and selling only a few short. But one neat part of the “Wait Wait” contest was the chance to hear from my longtime Style section colleague Roxanne Roberts, who’s been a regular Waiter for years, and perhaps the highest-scoring panelist on the show’s news quiz. On Tuesday I sent Rox a list of 27 entries, all of which I’d researched online to check against contemporary news stories. That afternoon she came over to my desk with a printout marked with her favorites — but wait! wait! She also had highlighted four entries that she remembered from the show itself, one of which she remembered answering recently. “Wait Wait” posts a number of transcripts online, but I was striking out trying to search for specific questions through either Google or the show’s own site, and so I couldn’t see if the Loser versions might be the same as (or even — gasp — inferior to) the Wait. So I dropped those entries from the Invite itself and share them below, after lauding the winners and Losers. Unfair? Just bad luck? Either way, it’s the life of a Loser. *Opinion from the Roberts court: Roxanne’s favorites * “My entirely unscientific and arbitrary favorites are based not on the weird-but-true answer because the entire Internet exists because of weird-but-true and I’m mad at Bill Gates for thinking of that first. No, greatness lies in the twisted fake answer that sounds real (aka lying), which ‘Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’ has transformed into to a respected art form. So my personal favorite is #23 [Kevin Dopart’s question about the date 11*11*11], based on C: ‘Most like a fence, according to Donald Trump’s Veterans Day remarks at the New York Military Academy’ – a perfect mix of the topical and the absurd, not unlike the GOP presidential campaign. And my second is #21 [Duncan Stevens’s entry about the East Chicago, Ind., election], because the world would be a better place if dogs were elected to public office.” The Empress liked those entries, too, obviously, but as usual, her results varied when it comes to the tippy-top of the list, where she gave the ink to four others. It’s the fifth win and 83rd blot of ink for Larry Gray of Middle of Nowhere, Md., who — just as I’d chosen his Burger King entry and looked up who’d written it — messaged me urgently on Tuesday afternoon re Week 1164. Whuh-oh, was he suddenly ashamed of his joke about onion rings? No, he was suddenly ashamed of a different entry, submitted back on March 6: *Why have badly needed repairs to the crumbling road infrastructure in Brussels, Belgium, been delayed?** ** A: The city's legislature has been paralyzed by a particularly vicious and sometimes violent lobbying war between the concrete and asphalt industries.** ** B: The discovery of unexploded WWII ordinance has prompted one Belgian politician to claim that they've uncovered secret terrorist bomb caches.** ** C: The construction plans for a number of key road tunnels were apparently eaten by mice.** **Answer: C.* **So yeah, that would have been extremely unfortunate, considering. So we’re glad it worked out for Larry otherwise. Duncan Stevens, one of this year’s Invite phenoms, should be able to get a sort of weird radio job if he tires of his current federal-lawyer gig: He scored not just the second-place International Barf Bag but also three honorable mentions out of the 21 inking entries in this week’s results — and there were more on the shortlist. Today’s ink bumps his total to 35, five of them “above the fold.” And filling out the Losers’ Circle are frequent squatters Lawrence McGuire and Kevin Dopart, the latter of whom has been asking for honorable-mention magnets lately, rather than the runner-up mug or vintage T-shirt; it’s rumored that he plans to assemble them into some Garment of Shame. And here are the entries on the topics that Roxanne remembered from the show (and you know, if it turns out that Rox was remembering something similar but not*exactly* this topic — well, that’s why we’re glad we’re not handing out prizes of monetary value in this contest): *A chunk of hard whale vomit sold for $16,700 at auction last year because:* A. A diamond ring was visible inside. B. It was wanted for use in perfume. C. It was once owned by Herman Melville. *Answer: B (bbc.com) *(Dave Prevar) *What action did some women in China take to ward off men who kept ogling them?* A. Bought stockings that simulated very hairy legs. B. Carried blow-up male dolls by their side to pretend they were escorted. C. Aimed laser pointers at them to zap their lecherous eyes. *Answer: A.(chinasmack.com) * (John McCooey) [there’s a little question whether this product was ever marketed, anyway] *Officials at Britain’s ancient Salisbury Cathedral have relocated a 20-foot-tall statue because: * A. The headless Anne Boleyn was frightening children. B. People were walking into it while texting. C. The nude depiction of Winston Churchill was deemed inappropriate. *Answer: B* (Reuters) (Frank Osen) And Rox remembers answering this one herself: *What made it easier for Escambia County, Fla., police officers to find and arrest Donald “Chip” Pugh on DUI and other charges?* A. He was the Escambia County chief of police. B. He had sent a mug shot of himself, saying the one on the wanted posters didn't look very good. C. He started a “Help Me Avoid Arrest on My DUI Charge” Kickstarter campaign.* Answer: B (cleveland19.com) * (Yet another one from Duncan Stevens) (Today’s headline was a non-inking hed suggestion by Jeff Contompasis) *PUTTING THE ERR IN ‘ERUDITE’? THIS WEEK’S CONTEST* I’ll admit it — I’ve been wary of repeating Asterisky Business — a contest that requires specialized knowledge to understand the punchline of a joke -- though I’ve gotten numerous requests for an encore. For one thing, my mantra is that explaining a joke is a good way to kill it. I do see the humor in telling a joke that’s ridiculously specialized, and also in a dull explanation that explains something else more: that the teller is an incorrigible nerd. But a whole list of dull explanations? But Washington has so, so many highly educated people — several of the instructors at my gym have graduate degrees — and the Loser Community is even more overrun with them than the general population. Last week on theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook page, I posted the results of Week 485 and asked whether we should give this contest another go. Lots of Likes. (Along with endorsements like this from biologist Mike Creveling: “I thought some of them dragged on. But I like to read long tedious passages with big words.”) Finally, I — yet again — consulted the Czar; he’s the one who ran the contest last time. I showed him the results (once again via Google Chat): Czar: okay, i f[very much] LOVE these results. i would count this among the great contests. ... the winner is fabulous, as is the first honorable, the one about latin. i love how convoluted it is. Here’s the winner, by Seth Brown: George Bush: Who's* on first? Ariel Sharon: Me?* George Bush: No, the guy on first base. Ariel Sharon: Me? George Bush: You are on first? Ariel Sharon: No, I'm asking you. Me? George Bush: Who? Ariel Sharon: Wait, you mean that fellow over there? George Bush: So he* is on first? Ariel Sharon: What are you talking about? There are no girls on this team. George Bush: So who's on first? Ariel Sharon: Me? *In Hebrew, the word meaning "who" is pronounced "me"; the word for "he" is pronounced "who"; and the word for "she" is pronounced "he." Here’s the first honorable mention: Physicist 1: What's new? Physicist 2: E*h* *In physics, photon energy (E) divided by Planck's constant (h), is the frequency, expressed as the Greek letter nu. Okay, people, let’s go for it — worse comes to worst, we can run more Wait Waits. One issue that will inevitably arise:*“That’s* not obscure! Every literate person knows*that!”* Okay, fine, you can feel smug once or twice four weeks from now. There’s no scientific standard for joke nerdiness; I’ll ask around about some of the entries, probably, but will mostly go on my gut; although I can spell better than you can, I’m probably not as well educated; I finished my higher education after four years and three summers when you could get into the University of Maryland by paying $25 to the person who came to your in-state high school a few months beforehand. No essay, nothin’. I’d say that jokes requiring knowledge of a foreign language, or those using technical, academic or otherwise specialized terms that don’t usually appear in newspapers, should work. *Important note! *Your erudite joke doesn’t have to be a bad joke! In fact, I fervently hope for all truly funny jokes. Listen, if you can explain the punchline of a joke and still make the reader laugh, that is a good joke. *Other important note! * YOU HAVE TO THINK OF THE JOKE YOURSELF. We’re not interested in running the funniest nerdjoke you ever heard. This is true for every Style Invitational contest. I see that a couple of years ago, The Post’s Health and Science blog ran some “Popular Science readers’ favorite science jokes” ; I liked this one: “I was going to tell a joke about sodium, but Na.” Not quite erudite enough for this contest, though. Asterisky Business reminds me of one of my favorite Steve Martin standup bits , where he pretends to be telling a joke to the plumbers in the audience: “This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler maintenance job and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom 7-inch gangly wrench. Just then, this little apprentice leaned over and said, “You can’t work on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom-inch wrench.” Well, this infuriated the supervisor, so he went and got Volume 14 of the Kinsley manual, and he reads to him and says, “The Langstrom 7″ wrench can be used with the Findlay sprocket.” Just then, the little apprentice leaned over and said, “It says ‘sprocket,’ not ‘socket’!” ====================================================================== WEEK 1169, published April 3, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1169: Beary picking, and a too-early goodbye Longtime Loser Jan Verrey, in one of the tinfoil hats she made for trivia parties. A friend remembers complimenting Jan on her “Elizabeth Taylor eyes”; Jan’s reply: “Bite me.” Jan died this week; see below. (Eileen Shankle) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** March 31, 2016 (Click here to skip down <#report> to the reminiscences about the late Jan Verrey) *** *In an even more brazen than usual exploitation of Loser loyalty, I’ve invited each of the five people who’ve scored 1,000 blots of ink to judge a Style Invitational contest in commemoration of that big K. The first Loser to reach 1,000 was Russell Beland in 2006, and I think it was his own idea that judging Week 664 would be a fitting reward. Chris Doyle and Tom Witte inexplicably declined the fabulous opportunity, for no monetary compensation, to read through more than a thousand pathetic attempts at humor to tweeze out a few dozen that were less so. But in January 2014 Kevin Dopart jumped at the chance to — for the first time since he began Inviting in the fall of 2005 —*not* enter the contest, but to judge it: it was his idea in Week 1055 to ask for neologisms in which K’s were added to or subsituting for the letters in an existing word. I was mildly surprised that Brendan was interested in judging Week 1165 , and he agreed to it as soon as I asked. And it was his own suggestion to follow Kevin’s lead and do a neologism contest with B’s instead of K’s (his first idea was to require BB’s but decided that was too limiting). As I note inthe introduction to today’s results , I sent Brendan a list of all 1,200 or so entries, with no clue who’d written what — it’s the same type of list that I use myself every week. It wasn’t until the Invite was posted online today that he got to see who’ll be friending and unfriending him on Facebook. I asked Brendan to share some thoughts on this week’s entries and on judging the contest in general. (I see that he encountered a lot of what I term screediness.) “First I want to say I’m a little disappointed. “Knowing that I’d be judging the contest, I spent all of about five minutes actually thinking about it: What would be the commonly repeated entries that*tout le mobbe*would all submit, with varying degrees of cleverness*incoherence in the definitions? “Clearly, there’d be ‘bonerous’ (painfully, challengingly hard), ‘bestes’ (a man’s very, very closest friends), ‘banal sex’ (I didn’t think of a definition for that one, so sue me), ‘the Pubic Wars’ (ditto), and more just like them, right? If I drummed up those in five minutes, then other Losers –some with well-deserved reputations for funnily filthily edgy neologisms – would get those and more with a week to work on it… “ …er, not so much. The four listed above were all goose-eggs. “Sure, there were plenty of good entries – clever constructions I’d have never come up with, nicely wry and sly definitions that worked on multiple levels, and a few laugh-out-loud ones. (And while it didn’t win, worthy of special note is [Gary Crockett’s] “In the beginning, Bob created the heavens and the earth.” It’s goofy, it’s just a little itsy-bit trespassing the contest instructions to “change a word, phrase or name” (in the same way that Putin is just a little bit trespassing in Ukraine (or Syria (or your mama))), but sometimes audacity needs to be rewarded.) “And yes, there were repeats: about a skazillion riffs on ‘Bashington,’ Tolkien’s lost classic ‘The Bobbit,’ ‘Billary,’ ‘babeball,’ ‘Faceboob,’ and a few others, but so many were depressingly… tame. Tepid. Torpid. Where was the edginess? Were we becoming… respectable? Conventional? Banal (in the non-edgy sense of the word, that is)? “And while we’re on or near the topic of ‘Billary,’ let’s talk about the other elephants and asses in the room. Yes, we’re all suffering election fatigue over a campaign that’s been going on for three years and is going to seem like another three years over the next seven months. But ... still: Oy. Oy and double-oy. So much anger and rant and screed in some of these entries – sure, trying for topical humor is a good idea, but just dropping a ‘b’ seemingly at random into the names of this candidate and that candidate (and especially THAT candidate, if you take my meaning), and launching into a diatribe -- this is supposed to be a humor contest, remember? Unless you’re Lewis Black, anger plus rant plus screed doesn’t equal funny! Lighten the buck up! “(It was at about the time when I reached this mental state while reading the list, that I posted that thingie on the Style Invitational Devotees page about Mr. Bezos not paying Pat enough for doing this job. If I had to try and face this task week in and week out, and be sociable, and welcome newcomers, my tiara-topped head would’ve been in the oven long ago. She must be on some reeeeeaaaally good meds, and there’s no way they can be cheap. (Well, yes there is: We could live in a first-world country with a sensible health-care system. But work with me here.)) “Well, before I turn into Mr. Crankypants here, I’ll shift gears here and talk numbers . Beautiful, bland, non-judgmental numbers. “All told, there were approximately 1,200 entries for the contest – not a yuge amount, but probably more than would’ve yielded from a poetry contest, which Pat had first suggested. And since they’re quick little bada-boom-bada-bing one-liners, I got to dole out 50 inks, which was the main reason I preferred a contest like this – I don’t expect to get another chance like this (unless I somehow fall out of Pat’s favor and she needs to punish me). So as long as Daddy’s handing out the candy, he’s gonna dish out LOTS. “So, knocking out the skazillion repetitive ones, and doing a first cull, the initial 1,200 or so was cut down to about 160. And yes,*of course* all of yours survived the cut; in fact, I actually had that one of yours – you know the one I mean – making it into the paper, but you know Pat with that whole column-inches thing, as if the paper were a tangible physical object – I mean, really. So she’s the one who cut it; I thought it was hilarious. A nice, nothing-to-be-ashamed-of, 52nd-place hilarious. Maybe 53rd. “All in all, it was a fun experience, but maybe not as much fun as I thought it would be. Were it not an election year, maybe it would’ve been great fun – a huge, madcap laff riot of sublime immaturity, resulting in episodes of coffee laughed out noses onto expensive electronics; and underwear, trousers, skirts, and seat cushions ruined from laughter-induced bladder failure. I know you can do it. Leave your rants at the door, and I’m sure you have it in you. “But I still just can’t believe that no one came up with ‘bonerous.’ ” ---- Given that most of the Usual Suspects got ink from Brendan this week, I don’t think it’s much more than coincidence that this week’s “above the fold” entries are all by people who aren’t (yet) regular denizens of the Losers’ Circle. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial and 16th ink overall from Ivars Kuskevics (it’s Latvian), who’s also scored two runners-up since he started Inviting in Week 1001. We’re still waiting to meet Ivars in person; hopefully he can make it to the Flushies on May 21. And Lee Graham, Brendan’s second-place finisher with “barbinger,” got his Fir Stink for his first ink just three weeks ago for his Onion-style headline “Trump To Drop Presidential Bid After Encounter With Younger, Prettier Country.” Lee now wins the Sorry, the insult to Indian culture commissioned by the Empress and created by Barbara Turner from several old Loser T-shirts. We*really* want to meet Lee at the Flushies, wearing the Sorry. For one thing, we don’t know if Lee is a Mr. or a Ms. We hope that a Loser Mug makes it intact to Michael Rolfe in South Africa as he scores his fifth blot of ink and his first above the fold (or maybe he’ll opt for a vintage Loser T-shirt, which might not shatter into pieces in transit), while David Silberstein ups his ATF yield to a win and two runners-up in just 14 blots of ink — an impressive ratio. What Doug Dug: The faves this week of ace copy editor Doug Norwood included all the top winners plus “the Pabst is prologue” (Gary Crockett), “Borsche” (Christopher Lamora, Lela Martin) and “ne’er-do-bell” (Chris Doyle). Sad news about one of our funniest Losers: *WELL, THAT BITES: JAN VERREY, 1944-2016* She had just 16 blots of Style Invitational ink, but Jan Verrey left a large and indelible mark on the Loser Community — one we’ll always treasure — with the great sense of humor, sharp wit, salty language and generous heart that she shared at Loser events and with personal friends among us. A picture of Jan barking out “bite me!” should appear in Webster’s in the entry for “feisty.” A lifelong D.C. area resident, a member of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s staff, and for many years a freelance transcriptionist, Jan died Monday night of congestive heart failure at a hospital near her Alexandria, Va., home, just past her 72nd birthday; she’d had health problems for some time. A public funeral is not planned, but a memorial service may be held later this spring. Jan’s ink, which dates mostly from the Invite’s first decade, included this one for stupid questions — “What does the A in UVA stand for?” — and one for ideas for absurd art installations: “Five million yards of gold lamé are used to sew an evening gown for the J. Edgar Hoover Building.” I visited Jan’s apartment several times for New Year’s parties, and rode to a Loser party with her in Jan’s bright purple PT Cruiser that looked like an eggplant on wheels. (We got lost.) I heard about her passing on Facebook, where there were many posts on her page from friends who knew her from a community similar in many ways to the Losers: They’re AOL Triviots, veterans of chat rooms focusing on trivia games, some of which date back to the days of dial-up. Like the Losers, the Triviots also put on in-person social events, and Jan played host to several “Capital Bashes” — at which the making and wearing of tinfoil hats (like the one in the photo above) was a perennial activity. I asked the friends and relatives who’d posted on Jan’s page if they’d share some reminiscences for the Conversational, and several wrote to me with stories that made me laugh out loud. Here are just a few. *From longtime friend Amy Bobchek (her subject line read “best story ever”): * I’ve often repeated this story she once shared with me: For her 16th birthday, her dad gave Jan a cherry-red Pontiac GTO convertible. One summer evening, with her boyfriend and a half-smoked bag of pot in the car, she took the GTO joyriding on the George Washington Parkway. She said, “We were going so fast I could feel the G-force making my cheeks ripple.” When they were inevitably pulled over — and they quickly ate the remainder of the, er, evidence — the police officer asked how fast she thought she was going. Although she knew it was over 90 mph, she said, “I don’t know…maybe 60? 65?” The officer looked at her quizzically and said, “Miss, you were going*eleven* miles per hour.” I’ll miss Jan for the rest of my life. *From longtime Loser Sandra Hull:* So many of Jan’s stories were great because of the way she told them. Animated, punctuated by funny voices and gestures, always with an underlying tone of amusement over how absurd life is. She was a born storyteller. The one I remembered that made me laugh out loud yesterday morning as I brushed my teeth and nearly aspirated some Sensodyne toothpaste was about how she was in an emergency room for something or other that required a pelvic exam. During the procedure, it became clear to all the attending personnel just how tense she was when there was a loud cracking noise. She had broken the speculum. Not with her hands. Aside from the obvious comedy and feat of strength that story conveys, it also paints an accurate picture of Jan: vulnerable, yet stronger than she knew. And not afraid to laugh at herself. *From fellow Triviot Anna Priscilla: * Jan and I attended the Simon and Garfunkel concert at the MCI Center in 2003 after dinner at Tony Chang’s. We paid a lot for the tickets — I think $180 apiece — and Jan really got into the concert, standing and singing along with a lot of other people. The people behind us, however, grumbled for her to sit down and be quiet. When I told her what they said, she said (in a bit of a loud voice) that she paid a lot of money for her ticket and was going to do what she damn well pleased. *From Brooksanne Cline, who posted this on Facebook: * When I lost the sight in my eye, It was obviously a very hard time for me. Jan sent me a big can of Hershey chocolates, with a simple note that said BITE ME! *From longtime From longtime Loser Tom Witte, writing from California, where he’s on vacation: *Jan liked that I enjoyed eating and drinking a lot, like her. I think she had one Loser brunch at her apartment, but I was also there for some smaller gatherings, and I also went out to dinner with her once — one of those Argentinian all-the-meat-you-can-eat places. Many years ago, when she was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack, I looked at the wires and machinery on her and remarked that she looked like a carburetor. Despite her invitation, I didn’t bite her. ------ I’ll post something on the Style Invitational Devotees page as soon as I hear about arrangements for a service. Thanks to all who shared their memories of the unforgettable Jan. ====================================================================== WEEK 1170, published April 10, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1170: Rerun for the Roses The Style Invitational Empress on this year’s foal name contest — and what was that winner with rabbits and backpacks? Kentucky Derby contenders Mohaymen, left, and Nyquist (seen here near the end of the Florida Derby; Nyquist won) may be tough “breeding” challenges in this week’s Style Invitational. (Matthew Stockman*Getty Images) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** April 7, 2016 Yay, it’s horse name week! If Week 1170 is much like the 21 previous years of Style Invitational foal-“breeding” contests, I’ll be facing a lot of work but very little worry — because the results are always fabulously clever. In fact, even the work part has become far easier now that Loser Jonathan Hardis, for the second year, will be sorting the entries for me with a computer program he devised that spares me from having to look at each entry twice: I used to search through thousands of entries, over and over, to find those that bred Horse No. 1with Horse 2, Horse 1 with Horse 3, down to Horse 100 — and then ended checking up Horses 15 and 42 and 85 (and every one between) with Horses 1, 2, 3, etc. Now I can start looking at each new horse and instantly skip over the matches I’ve already seen. If you’ve entered this contest before — and thousands of Losers have over the years — you probably know the drill, and what we’re looking for. If you’re new ... well, I was going to write up a big description of the process, the strategy, etc. — but why reinvent the horseshoe? Just take a look at my Style Conversational for Week 1118 , which was last year’s horse contest. As I’ve been doing ever since I’ve limited the list of horses to 100 names rather than the some 400 in the full list, I’ve included the horses who top most prognosticators’ lists of Kentucky Derby favorites (though they inevitably will change over the next four weeks) — just because it’s more fun to watch the race and root for “our” horses among the 20 starters. And this year, some of those horses have what you could charitably call “challenging” names for this contest — chief among them the undefeated Nyquist and the previously undefeated Mohaymen, whom Nyquist just trounced in last weekend’s Florida Derby. I’m hopeful that some enterprising Loser will come up with some clever offspring for at least one of them. The idea for our horse contest came from Loser and serious horse player Mike Hammer back in 1994. He noted that often, racehorses’ names reflect those of their parents, or at least their sires: War Admiral was a son of Man o’ War; Seabiscuit was the son of Hard Tack, who was the son of Man o’ War. Sometimes a horse’s owner acknowledges that a foal also has a mother, and incorporates the dam’s name as well; this year’s nominee Awesome Speed is the product of the love match between Awesome Again and Speedy Escape. Okay, that wasn’t exactly clever — but that’s what*you’re* here for. You could see the 1,000-some names we’ve given ink to over the past 21 years — not to mention those from the spinoff “grandfoal” contests — by searching down Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List for “foal,” then clicking on the link for the results a few contests later. Or just take a little easy inspiration from these randomly chosen gems from the past decade. And they’re all honorable mentions rather than “above the fold”; the bar is high in this contest, every year. Achilles of Troy x Tug o’War = Heel and Tow (Mark Eckenwiler, 2006) Clued In x Reporting for Duty = Colonel Mustered (Pam Sweeney, 2007) Daddy Rabbit x Revenge Is Sweet = Lucky Human’s Foot (Andrew Hoenig, 2008) Rocket to the Moon x Gluteus Maximus = Tang N Cheek (Barry Koch, 2009) Beethoven x Lethal Combination = OD to Joy (Steve Price, 2010) Major Art x Humble and Hungry = Art Major (David Smith, Barbara Turner, 2011) Boat Trip x Holy Highway = Rowed to Damascus (Jonathan Paul, 2012) Now and Then x Python = Intermittent Viper (Jeff Contompasis, 2013) Scotland x Harpoon = Plaid the Impaler (Roy Ashley, 2014) Tough Customer x Punctuate = Tough, Customer! (Mark Richardson, 2015) *ASKMASTERS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1166* *(*Non-inking headline by Tom Witte)* As with the ponies, our perennial Questionable Journalism contest — in which you quote a sentence from The Post and write a question that (in a sillier or snarkier world) it could answer — always produces more great material than I’ll be able to share. This week’s results are as funny as always, with a healthy mix of the topical and the timeless. For this contest, which I’ve judged at least 10 times, I often like “answers” whose real context is clear — because it makes the twist to a new context clear as well; if it’s a big change in meanings, that’s going to enhance the humor. For example, Jeff Contompasis’s quote about the shower doors is obviously from some dry ol’ home care advice column — which makes you laugh out loud when Jeff turns it into a story of unrequited love (or at least “love”). And among the “above the fold” winners this week, Brendan Beary’s “community is anticipated to be sold out” was clearly froma real estate story, and Mark Raffman’s wordplay on “ground game in South Florida” was playing off either an unrelated campaign story or one about football (it was indeed about Marco Rubio ). But sometimes, even a sentence for which you have no idea of the original context can fuel a great joke — as in this week’s winner by John Hutchins, who used a sentence no one else did. And what is it really that “carries reports about such topics as rabbit farming and domestically made school backpacks”? Not the product-placement State of the Union address, but a North Korean government website that also mentioned that the DPRK could take out Manhattan with a hydrogen bomb. Here are some more sources of potentially puzzling sentences. *A. Sometimes their bottom halves were nearly the full width of the runway.* — Not obese pilots (Kimberly Baer) but a fashion show featuring the weird designs of Rei Kawakubo *A. “I just grayed out or blacked out a little bit.”*— Not a minstrel show but University of Virginia basketball coach collapsed during a game *A. When the angry words darted over my head as I worked on my coloring book, I barely heard them.* — Possibly not really Ben Carson at the debate (Frank Osen) but the writer remembers her parents fighting when she was a child *A. Virginia was a little bit quicker, a little bit sharper, and a little bit more athletic.* — Not a perky intern (First Offender Jim McCormack) but UVA beats Miami in basketball ***A. Plus, they have a food source with the Potomac River nearby.* — Not Mitch McConnell’s suggestions for where D.C.’s poor should eat without food stamps (Chris Doyle), but a pair of ravens seen nesting in D.C. *A. A reporter for the Midland Reporter-Telegram described the spectacle as “a spaghetti of writhing angry reptiles” that emanates “a strange dense smell with an evil vomit-like edge to it.”* — Not a description of the local bar association luncheon (Mark Raffman, with another self-deprecating lawyer joke) but of a rattlesnake roundup in Texas ***(This sentence, as well as others from the same article, was used for numerous entries, several of them about Trump rallies and GOP debates — like Frank Osen’s about “the dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum reverberating all around you”).* ***A. It is very messy to clean them out.* — Not the clients of divorce lawyers (another Raffman joke) but Heloise on bagless vacuum cleaners *A. Both are repugnant, both dangerous and both deserving of the most unreserved condemnation.*— Not the opinion of a stripper’s breasts by a hypocritical clergyman (Mae Scanlan) but Charles Krauthammer on both the hecklers at Trump rallies and the menacing behavior of the Trump camp *A. Do you have houseplants? You can sprinkle some in them.* — Not handy toilet substitutes (Jeff Shirley) but uses for coffee grounds *A. Other requests included chocolate mousse, berries and a three-foot piece of bacon. —*Not suggested words for poop (Ann Martin) but some second-graders’ favorite birthday foods *A. I wanted to give you the feeling of walking through a garden when all the flowers start to bloom. —*Not explaining why I released a bunch of bees at your wedding (Dave Prevar) but the White House florist about a state dinner *A. We don’t think of the organ as an intimate instrument.* — Not the views of polygamist wives (Kate Cross) but, duh,an article about an organist ***A. “The swivel feature on this model is a nice bonus.”* — Not billionaires choosing which candidate to buy (Jesse Frankovich) but a designer talking about a chair for a child’s room *A. Today, that hill is a mountain.*— Not the result of Kim Kardashian’s surgery (William Kennard) but theuphill battle to sell a certain very costly drug *A. Just think about how clapboard siding works.* — Not a trick “to delay, y’know, happy endings” (Brendan Beary) but, well, how clapboard siding works. While all three runners-up this week are frequent visitors to the Losers’ Circle, Inkin’ Memorial winner John Hutchins (of the State of the Union with the backpacks) got his first blot of Invite ink just four weeks ago, and his second last week. John’s based in the D.C. area, which makes me wonder where he’s been all these years. Ditto for newbie Kimberly Baer, who was a First Offender just last week with “bumpkin pie” and submitted several inkworthy entries for this contest as well. In announcing this contest, I had specifically stated that headlines were off limits as sentences — because we have another perennial contest for that, “Mess With Our Heads.” Which is the only reason this one gets no ink for Duncan Stevens: *A. Wizards fail to heed advice, still pull out win* Q. Can you summarize the plot of every Harry Potter book? *LOSERS ON THE RIVER: NEXT BRUNCH, ANNAPOLIS, APRIL 17* The brunch buffet at Buddy’s Crabs and Ribs, right near the Annapolis City Dock, is once again the site of a Loser Brunch. I don’t think I can make this one, but I’ve been there several times and it’s a friendly place in a historic district that’s great for a sightseeing walk afterward. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Loser website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). And do write in — in blood, please — Saturday afternoon, May 21, on your calendar for the Flushies, the Loser Community’s (but open to all) annual “banquet,” this year a potluck at the little farmy place of Loser Robin Diallo in Lothian, Md., about 15 miles south of Annapolis. And you can bring the family — there are not just horses to pet, but baby goats as well. And Elden Carnahan. As always, there will be awards for Loser milestones; song parodies written for the occasion; and plenty of time to meet the Losers whose work you’ve always admired. And Elden Carnahan. The Losers will also be assembling a team of participants for theannual Post Hunt extravaganza the next day — and for the first time ever, it’ll be held indoors, at the Washington Convention Center. We’ve come very close to winning! ====================================================================== WEEK 1171, published April 17, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1171: Our compliments to The Jeff Hall of Famer (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) tells us how he’s blotted up 500 inks Among Jeff Contompasis’s many talents: shaking his head so that a ball on a string lands into a cup. Nose Aerobics Basketball was a Loser prize. (Yes, Jeff suggested we use this photo.) (M.K. Phillips) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** April 14, 2016 (Click here to skip down <#report> to the Empress’s discussion of this week’s new contest and results) Except for a couple of minutes each Thursday, when I’m writing up the Conversational and check to see how many blots of ink that week’s top winners have, I don’t tend to follow the Loser Stats, the jaw-droppingly comprehensive set of Style Invitational ink standings that’s been maintained and enhanced by Loser Elden Carnahan since Year 1 in 1993, now atnrars.org. And so it slipped my mind that for weeks, Jeff Contompasis had been baby steps away from the Hall’s doorbell — and boom, he hit the magic 500-ink mark three contests ago. If Jeff tooted his own horn about it, he didn’t toot it to me. Anyway, we’re delighted that Jeff is now Haller No. 11, with eight wins and 34 runners-up among his 502 blots of ink. As he notes below, he’s not one of those people who decided to enter the Invite and immediately started inking up the joint; in each of his first four years, his ink total was in the single digits (his first was in a contest for right-leaning humor: “The difference between a conservative commentator and a liberal commentator? One is called a conservative commentator; the other is called a commentator”). But then, clearly, The Obsession struck, and the chemical engineer was entering a full “dance card” of 25 entries a week, and scoring in just about any kind of contest I threw out there. Meanwhile, JefCon — as he’s often called on theStyle Invitational Devotees Facebook group — became a beloved Invite celebrity with his “Is it just me, or ...” nerdy musings, like: “Is it just me who finds the concept of do-gooders and evil-doers inconsistent? Wouldn’t it be better if there were do-evilers? Or maybe good-doers?” While he’d avoided it for some time, Jeff agreed this week to do a “Meet the Parentheses” bio. And after I saw his Devotees post about all the polishing he’d done on an entry that was a single crossword clue, I also asked him to write about the process of being A True Loser. MEET THE PARENTHESES: (JEFF CONTOMPASIS, ASHBURN, VA.) *Age:* A few months younger than Sandra Bullock, but she’s held up a lot better. Bob Staake, who’d met Jeff at a book reading, drew Jeff for the ScrabbleGrams contest Jeff suggested. Jeff goes all nerdy in telling about that contest in his “Meet the Parentheses” bio today. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) *Residing in *Ashburn (or Bun Rash for the anagram fans out there), in D.C.’s outer suburbs. Before that, Southern California after having survived growing up in the rough-and-tumble affluent suburbs of Boston. *What brought me to the Invite:* I moved from California to Virginia in 1996 and started subscribing to the fishwrap edition of The Post. There was this funny contest in it and upon reading the results, I said, “I can do better than this.” Note: My First Ink finally came in 2004. *Proof I’m a Loser:* I was once pulled over for going through a green light. Although colorblind (I prefer the term Daltonian-American*), I knew that wasn’t right. I went to court after obtaining photographic evidence that the light was staggered, and the clerk-magistrate dismissed the ticket and requested my license. Then he noticed that my stated residence did not match the one on the card. “Did you move?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered. “More than three weeks ago?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered. “That’s a $25 fine.” Snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. **John Dalton published one of the first papers on colorblindness and had the condition himself.* *Favorite entries:* Anything not involving bodily waste. I say this knowing that my Ink No. 500, the multiple-choice question à la “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me,”referenced camel urine . On a more serious note, I do have a most memorable entry from Week 893, which asked for a humorously witty story in 25 words or fewer. This contest happened to run during a family health crisis in late 2010. While sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, I tried to distract myself by writing something — and I figured that if I could laugh, even in that time and place, over my one-line, updated telling of “The Manchurian Candidate,” the joke had to be pretty good. It won the Inker: Hanoi, 1969: General Nguyen asked the colonel, “How can we use the prisoner to defeat America from within?” Ha replied, “I have an idea.” — “The Wasillan Candidate” *Favorite recurring contest:* Ask Backwards . There’s a reason why it’s been run over 30 times. *Least favorite recurrent contest:* Joint Legislation. If you need a pronunciation guide to get the joke... *What do you do outside of the Invite? *If people didn’t already know, I generate many of the anagrams of Loser names posted at Elden Carnahan’s nrars.org site. I’m a Disney trivia expert specializing in the history of the US-based theme parks. Also, I have two rabbits, Irene and Lily, who wear a cowboy hat and a kicky beret while we explore various urban legends as the MythBunsters. *Who do you want to be when you grow up? *The copy editor for Scrabble Grams. *Do you have any decent stories?* During Easter services, my daughter Emily was being fidgety. I gave her a pen so she could draw on some scrap paper. Suddenly I noticed that she’d started playing connect-the-dots with the musical notes in the hymnal. And just when as the priest intoned, “Do you reject Satan?” I shouted, “No!” to my child. It was around then I took up snake handing. *What would someone be surprised to learn about you?* I have never owned or even used a firearm. *Your official Loser anagram:* Enjoys Office Tramps. I rather like the fact that the letter “J” is hidden inside a word. Myopic Fan of Jesters is also a favorite along with about 80,000 other permutations. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know you as?* Rap Master SquigglyB rendered as the German character*Eszett,* or ß. It’s just one of the many ways I maintain my unlimited supply of street cred. *Anything else to say for yourself?: * I was Loser of the Year for Year 18, but because of a delay in scheduling the Flushies awards, I ended up holding the LoTY trophy for the shortest length of time of any recipient. I am the William Henry Harrison of the SI. *Jeff’s “So You Want to Be a Hall of Fame Loser” appears farther down this column.* Meanwhile, the Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results: . MUSICAL ’GATES: THE WEEK 1171 CONTEST Theresults of our Week 970 “tailgater” contest were classic. The winner: Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part; I read Dave Barry books, and you read Sartre. (Michael Drayton , 1563- 1631* Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) So in a tailgater, you quote a line from a poem, then add your own, rhyming line to make it a funny couplet. And this is what we’ll be doing as well in Week 1171 , in which you have to quote from a song rather than a spoken-word poem —*you’ll still be forming a rhyming couplet,* even if the second line of the*song *doesn’t do that: It’s not — or not necessarily — the second line of a song parody; it doesn’t have to follow the tune. **Can* it match the tune as long as it rhymes?* Sure. Will that make it a funnier entry? Possibly. Duncan Stevens’s examples for this contest are all at least somewhat singable with the original tunes, and I thought they were all very good. *Please check the lyrics you’re quoting;* don’t just guess — I can’t use your line if it’s not really from the song. I haven’t decided whether I’ll be attributing the original line to the writer, as we did in Week 970, or just the title of the song. In the online Invite, I’ll do my best to include links to the lyrics or a performance of the whole song, for context. I know I’ll love to have a wide variety of song genres in the results. *Is it a problem if the song isn’t well known?* Probably not that much; my guess is that many readers didn’t know all the poems in Week 970. It’s certainly not the same with a song parody, in which if you don’t know the tune, the joke just dies. But a recognizable line in a new context can indeed be a potent source of humor. *What counts as “a line” of a song? *I’m going to be flexible here. If two short lines can be read as one long line, that’s fine with me for the purposes of this contest. *Does it have to be the first line of the song?* No, you can use any line. *Should you add your name to the line you write, right within the entry *— like the examples at the top of the Invitational? NOOOOO, please don’t. I greatly prefer to judge the entries blindly, without seeing the entrants’ names. It would take a long, long time to delete the name from every entry — it’s long enough taking the name off every email. And if this contest inspires you to write a full-length song parody, be my guest; you can share it on the Style Invitational Devotees page after the results run. SOME LINKAGE MAY OCCUR*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1167 *(*Non-inking headline by Tom Witte)* My judging of this perennial contest was made far easier this year with the help of Loser Jonathan Hardis. Jonathan offered to use a program he’d devised to sort all the entries by each of the 18 phrases I listed in Week 1167 , for you to compare, contrast or otherwise connect. Given that the Losers phrased their entries in every conceivable format, I didn’t think he’d be able to do it without a ton of work, but Jonathan shot back the list I’d sent him (I’d deleted all the names and other non-entry material) within a few hours. And just as he’d helped me do (and will do again) in the horse-“breeding” contest, I was able to see all the “Hillary’s emails” combined with “the last Cheeto in the bag,” and then all the “Hillary’s emails” with “tiny hands,” and so on. So I could then select my favorite among several similar entries, or occasionally credit two people. I chose the 18 phrases almost at random from a long list that I crowdsourced from the Style Invitational Devotees a few weeks ago. I didn’t rigorously ensure than no single person had written two of the phrases, but I’d be gobsmacked to discover that anyone got ink this week by comparing two items that he’d suggested. It’s the third win and 75th blot of ink for Mike Ostapiej, who’s been following the Invite from both San Diego and his current base in South Carolina. Kathy El-Assal, whom we met at a Loser brunch last year when she was visiting Washington from Wisconsin, gets Ink 35 and her fourth ink “above the fold.” Kristen Rahman — whom I recently took out for a milkshake in return for a contest idea (I am soooo magnanimous) — gets her choice of mug or shirt with her dig at Apple’s production practices. And Danielle Nowlin saunters for the — yeeks — 27th time into the Losers’ Circle. *What Doug dug: * The faves of ace copy editor Doug Norwood this week: the Cheeto*tiny hands “orange mess” by First Offender Paul Totman — the first ink ever from Alberta? — whose analogy was my favorite of numerous similar entries; the “official server” for buffet*emails, for the second ink ever from Hildy Zampella, also the best of several “server” entries; and the mildly risque “big plow” with the mildly risque “tiny hands” by Gary Crockett. SO YOU WANT TO BE A HALL OF FAME LOSER? *Jeff Contompasis tells how it’s done — or at least how he did it.* *How to go about it. Step 1. Enter.* That seems obvious, but one should not summarily dismiss a contest by saying “That’s too hard.” Even one good entry is enough because so many others give up thinking it’s too hard. There are a number of different contest types and the Master Contest List at nrars.org already has many of them categorized. Several perennial contests offer exceptionally good examples to guide an ink-thirsty contestant. Horse names are run every year and the prior years’ results reveal common elements such as names with puns of common phrases and homophones. My favorite contest, Ask Backwards, is supposedly based on Jeopardy! and its “Answers and Questions” format. However, it’s more like Johnny Carson’s recurrent Carnac routine, so watching some videos of those segments provides a good background. *Some contests are “crank and grind” efforts.* The epitome of this is the three-letter abbreviation contest. There is an extensive list at Wikipedia where all permutations are covered. If a range of four starting letters is given, that yields 4 x 26 x 26, or 2704, abbreviations to look at. Brute force won’t get very far — believe me. I’ve tried. Go for abbreviations you recognize and see what surprising other things share those initials. *Some contests require finesse.* Poetry and song parodies come to mind here. There are online resources available with rhyming dictionaries and just about every song imaginable has its lyrics stored somewhere though many transcriptions are not quite accurate. Read potential poems aloud and attempt to sing potential songs to a karaoke version of the piece. For pretty much every contest, if you have time,*let your entries sit around for a few days.* Then go back to them; it’s surprising how a cold reading reveals flaws and inspires better wordings. You don’t get any advantage in the judging from sending in your entry early anyway. *If you’re stuck, try lateral thinking.* Don’t write an entry. Try to come up with a Revised Title or Honorable Mentions section name. You’re still thinking about what the contest concerns without being focused solely on writing a joke. Inspiration comes from the weirdest places. On the opposite extreme are*things that destroy entries.* *Screed kills.* Genuine anger seeps through and poisons humor. That’s another reason to let entries lie fallow: with distance, a knee-slapping joke that skewers some much maligned figure suddenly sounds more like a cheap shot. Another common humor reducer is *the circular reference.* Defining a new term by using the same word almost always ruins the entry. Try to substitute a synonym that doesn’t sound strained. Remember there are*other ways to get ink.* Some Losers supply the runner-up prize. Others try to come up with a new contest, or a new variation on a previous contest. I’ve only created one truly novel contest exclusively for The Style Invitational. That would be the Tile Invitational, which is based upon the ScrabbleGrams puzzles that appear in The Post. Here’s the origin story: I was looking at the printed solution to a ScrabbleGrams puzzle one day, and it had given CANOLA as the best yield for the seven letters NOCALAT. Well, I have two degrees in chemical engineering, and so I saw OCTANAL, which everyone knows is the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry’s name for octyl aldehyde or, more commonly, caprylic aldehyde. How dare they not accept it! From then on, I started noting six-letter solutions and tried to come up with better seven-letter neologisms complete with funny definitions. And it took a year before I finally persuaded the Empress to use it as a contest. As with so much of the Invite, obsessive persistence pays. --- And of course, it also pays to be naturally funny. And Jeff just might be funnier than you. ====================================================================== WEEK 1173, published May 1, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1173: The Steal Invitational A Loser gets a book as a present — and finds his own Invite entries inside Actually, they are genuine Style Invitational entries (from 1999), as are lists on five other pages of this ripoff book. Those first two are by Malcolm Fleschner — who’d been given this book as a gift. The others are by Chuck Smith, Russell Beland and Jennifer Hart. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** April 28, 2016 Happy May, folks. If you’re on the Empress’s email list (i.e., if you get a notice on Thursdays when The Style Invitational goes online), then within a few days you’ll be getting an invitation to the 22nd annual Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual awards* lunch* songfest. This year’s festivities — taking place Saturday afternoon, May 21 — will be a potluck in the neatest venue yet: RK Acres, the home*mini-farm of Loser Robin Diallo in Lothian, Md., in southern Anne Arundel County. And so in addition to the usual Loser-schmoozing, toilet paper roll-awarding, parody-singing, and of course hearty eating, you and your offspring are invited to pet the horses, miniature pony, baby goats, and even llamas. And not pet but gaze upon various birds including a peacock. I’ve just seen the lyrics to one of the song parodies penned by Loser Nan Reiner — who’s coming up from Florida for the festivities -- and they’re fabulous. (If you’d like to join an ad hoc OK Chorale during the afternoon, let me know.) Robin would like us to keep the number of guests to about 60 (plus a few stray kids), so be sure to RSVP quickly once you get the invitation; we’d love to see not just the Loser Event regulars, but also Losers from the Invite’s early years, as well as those who’ll be meeting their fellow Losers for the first time. You don’t even have to have earned ink. (If you’re not on the mailing list, contact me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll make sure you get an invitation.) THE STEAL INVITATIONAL Here’s a letter that I’m drafting up to send to the publishing house Zest Books. (Or perhaps The Post’s legal department would rather send something. We’ll see:) *Dear Zesters:* Hey, llosers! Robin Diallo’s llamas will welcome you personally at this year’s Flushies awards potluck May 21 — watch for the email invitation. (Courtesy of Robin Diallo) *I run a contest called The Style Invitational. It’s the humor*wordplay contest that has appeared weekly in The Washington Post since 1993; we’re currently on Week 1172.* *This week I heard from a longtime Style Invitational contestant in California named Malcolm Fleschner. Knowing his fondness for wordplay, Malcolm’s in-laws had given him The Weird World of Words by Mitchell Symons and published by Zest in 2015.* *Malcolm paged at random through the various tidbits about words and expressions – and then did a double take: On Page 131, he saw the headline “Genuine Metaphors Taken From English Essays” – followed by two pages of clever similes … but not from English essays: They were prize-winning entries (by adults) in two different Washington Post Style Invitational contests, from 1995 and 1999. And the first one – the devilishly funny, perfectly crafted joke about “my brother Phil” – was by Malcolm himself. And what do you know – so was the second one. With no credit, of course.* *Malcolm continued to page through the book – and how about that: On Pages 46 and 47 was a two-page list of “Wonderful New Words.” The introductory paragraph reads:* *“Every year, The Washington Post holds a neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words. The 2013 winners were:”* *What followed was a list of sometimes verbatim, sometimes tinkered-with entries lifted from Week 266 (1998), with no credit to their authors, and certainly no permission from The Post to run them. (Here are the original results; one of the words, “Frisbeetarianism,” is not from The Style Invitational; I believe it’s from a George Carlin routine.)* *But nooo, Mitchell Symons doesn’t stop there! Turn the page to Pages 48 and 49 and we have this:* *“The Washington Post also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here were 2013’s winners:”* *Here, what follows are two pages of entries – with some very bad additions – from Style Invitational Week 278 (1998), also without any credit to their authors or, of course, permission. The bad additions are words like “caterpallor” and “decafalon,” which, of course, are not one-letter changes from “caterpillar” and “decathlon.” “Bozone” was lifted from a 1987 Washington Post feature story, “Lost in the Bozone.”* *Actually, Mitchell Symons is not by far the first person to use these particular lists of entries; in fact, they’ve been circulated by e-mail and the Internet just about as long as there have been e-mail and the Internet (I’m sure that’s where he saw them, not bothering to ask if he could include them in a commercial book). And when I see someone post one of these lists on Facebook or on a little blog, I’ll often follow up to clarify where**these jokes came from, that they’re not really by high school students, or whatever. I even wrote a story in The Post about it, in conjunction with The Style Invitational’s 20th anniversary in 2013.* *But you know, it really takes it to a whole new level of shamelessness to steal this work and put it into a book that’s put up for sale. And that the “author” even says that two of the lists are from The Washington Post – and hadn’t asked The Post for permission to print them! If he had, he would have been quickly set straight about when they had run, what was and wasn’t from The Post, and what didn’t even match the contest description.* --- What’s not in the letter is what I think Zest Books should do to make things right; I’m leaving that to The Post’s lawyers. But this sort of thing just steams me: You can’t just lift someone else’s published work and publish it yourself without permission, even if you (kind of) say where it came from. And while there’s not really a difference legally, it’s one thing to share a list of Invite jokes on your Facebook page, and another to put it in a book that you’re selling. The thing is: If Mitchell Symons had called The Post and asked if he could include some of our neologisms , I would have let him! In fact, another author of a similar book a few years ago (I’m kicking myself because I forget all the details, including the author’s name and the title of the book) got hold of me and asked for permission to use one of these lists. After we talked, she ended up quoting entries from several Invitational neologism contests — all of them crediting the contestants who’d written them. She also explained to readers what the Invitational was and included our Web address. I’m all for sharing the Invite far and wide — but only with proper credit, and with recognition of the writers. So we’ll see what Legal says. PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD NAME: THE WEEK 1173 CONTEST In huge opposition to the Week 1169 acrostics whose results run today, here’s a super-easy contest that should be fun for readers as well. I know it will, in fact, because it was fun last time. I’d actually worked up this contest having forgotten we’d done it seven years ago; I’d actually narrowed it to food names after the Long-Deposed Czar of The Style Invitational suggested I do a contest in which you change the brand of*any* product. I went ahead with it anyway because in the long list of examples I’d already worked up, none of them duplicated any of the many inking entries of Week 841. Here are the results of that contest from 2009. They’re not otherwise online on washingtonpost.com, but they appear as a text file on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List . Here they are in a format that’s slightly easier to read. Note that both brand names and generic types of food were used — and we’ll do that again this year. *Report from Week 841,* in which we asked you to alter slightly the name of a food or dish and describe the result: Those who tend to find the Invite a bit too abstruse and highbrow get a break this week. A lot of the names submitted (often by many people) were funny in a juvenile way but gained nothing from their descriptions. That menu includes such specials as Yucky Charms, Drool Whip, Slime-Jims, Shredded What, Shrimp Skimpy, Bad Thai, Bananas Fester, flunk steak, meat loathe, buffalo wangs and fatzo ball soup. For this they went to graduate school, a lot of these people. *The winner of the Inker:* Jumbo lump carb cakes: Also known as doughnuts. (Dave Zarrow, Reston) *2,* the winner of “The Pop-Up Book of Celebrity Meltdowns”: Reader’s Digest Condensed Milk: When you’re yearning for something white and treacly. (Larry Yungk, Arlington) *3.* Cheaties: Breakfast of Champions With Asterisks. (Mark Richardson, Washington) *4.* Steak Tata: Raw ground udders. (Tom Murphy, Bowie) *Fare Too Middling: Honorable Mentions* Notdog: Gourmet North Korean sausage. (Kevin Dopart, Washington; Peter Jenkins, Bethesda) Seven-Lawyer Dip: Chips sold separately. Not intended for intravenous use. Void where prohibited by law. Provided “as is” without any warranty of any kind, expressed or implied . . . (Pam Sweeney, St. Paul, Minn.) Pol Pot Pie: A low-cal Cambodian dish. Serves hundreds. (Rick Haynes, Potomac) Chucky Charms: The cereal that’s magically malicious! (Judy Blanchard, Novi, Mich.) Offalafel: A paste of chickpeas and pancreases. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) Bunt cake: Made from a light, soft batter. (Kevin Dopart) Chick in de Van: KFC to go. (Judy Blanchard) Sole food: Cobbler. (Ron Nessen, Bethesda) Bean crud: Tofu under a more honest name. (John Shea, Lansdowne, Pa.) Pecking Duck: Poultry that’s perhaps a little undercooked . . . (Sneha Kannan, Cambridge, Mass.) Moo Goo Bed Pan: The orderlies switched the trays again! (Larry Meyer, Washington, Va., a First Offender) Egg Phew Young: A summer dish traditionally made from Easter eggs discovered months later. (Kerry Humphrey, Woodbridge) Wussabi: Really mild horseradish paste. (May Jampathom, Oakhurst, N.J.) Shiksabob: Pork, shrimp and cheese on a skewer. (Judy Blanchard) Margarrhea: Tequila mixed with Triple Sec and prune juice. (Dion Black, Washington) Prime Ribbon: The diet roast beef platter. (Carolyn Eskew, Leesburg, a First Offender) Spleenda: No-cal giblet substitute. (Judy Blanchard) Coquilles Saint Joan: Flambeed scallops. (Jane Pacelli, Annandale) Stir-fly: A popular meal in North Korea. (Rick Haynes) Dulce de Lecher: Hooters’ new dessert item. (Ed Gordon, Georgetown, Tex.) Belgian Awfuls: A phlegmish dish, similar to Crappes Suzettes. (Michael Fransella, Arlington) Half-Baked Alaska: A crusty, sweet, insubstantial traditional dish that removes itself prematurely from intense heat. (Mike Gips, Bethesda) Porn Flakes: With a surprise in every box. (Jeff Seigle, Vienna) Mike Like’n Ike: That famous fruity flavor is coming out in new rainbow colors (not available in all states). (Craig Dykstra, Centreville) Fellini Alfredo: Pasta with dream sauce. (Rick Haynes) Faux gras: Spam. (Patrick Mattimore, Gex, France) Hostess Hos: A guilty pleasure. (Craig Dykstra) Kid Knee Pie: One of Jeffrey Dahmer’s favorite desserts. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) Prize Nobel Peas: Grown in the White House garden. You can pick them even before they’re ripe. (Dan Ward, Springfield, a First Offender) Lemon harangue pie: “You didn’t beat the egg whites long enough, and the oven’s too hot, and you’re slopping the filling out the sides . . .” (Lois Douthitt, Arlington) Limbaugher cheese: So vile you just listen to a wedge of it and gag. (G. Smith, New York) Honeycrips: Apples the whole gang will enjoy. (Peter Metrinko, Gainesville) BACKRONUMBS: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1169 Well, that was a hard one. Making an acrostic, or “backronym,” from the full title of a book, movie, etc. — describing it in a phrase or sentence whose words began with each letter of the title — produced a lot of entries for which the best I could say was “Well, that does spell out the title.” (Some, such as at least two entries that spelled out “Ghandi,” didn’t reach even that standard.) But several dozen of you did manage to produce clever acrostics — and some of them were even funny. It just proved to be more of an “ooh, clever” contest than a “bwahahaha” one. This week’s Losers’ Circle includes some relatively unusual names, Invite-wise: It’s only the 10th ink for Kurt Stahl of Frederick, Md. — but his plea to author George R.R. Martin to get another “Game of Thrones” book done already is his second win: In 2012 Kurt won an Inker, the predecessor of the Inkin’ Memorial, with this entry for Week 959, a contest to move a TV show to a different channel: “ ‘The Amazing Race’ moves to Fox News and becomes a show that chronicles the many adversities white people have overcome throughout history.” Our Glasgow, Scotland, Loser Bureau, consisting of Stephen Gold, blots up Ink No. 56 (and 57) this week — not to mention a Number Two Pencil complete with a blob of plastic poo on its eraser end — with his acrostic on “Psycho,” the best of a veritable shower of “Psycho” entries. Stephen also got ink with his zippy description of “The Ten Commandments” that, like Kurt’s and like Hildy Zampella’s third-place entry, was one of the few long-title acrostics that weren’t a slog to read. Hildy’s vision for a “Hamilton”-style “Marriage of Figaro” is just her third blot of ink — and the first “above the fold,” but she also scored last week in the two-items-from-a-list contest. Hildy gets her choice of Loser mugs or a vintage Loser T-shirt. And rounding out the ATF agents is regular denizen Jon Gearhart, who scores his fifth runner-up prize and his 62nd blot of ink overall. (Huh, I hadn’t realized till just now that Jon is still on the Losers’ “Cantinkerous” list — the most frequently inking Losers who’ve never won a contest; he’s in fifth place, well behind 85 Inks and Barely Counting Kyle Hendrickson.) In addition to the people who based their entries on a misspelled title, some other people misunderstood what we were asking for: Instead of using each letter of the work’s title, these people came up with words matching only the first letters of the title, like “The History Boys”: “Teaching homosexual broadmindedness.” And then there was one that I almost let slip in: RAY: Rhythm and Use. (Tom Witte) That would have been a uge mistake. Welp, it’s time to get cracking on those 3,900 names — results next week. So watch for that Flushies invitation — hope to see you there on May 21. ====================================================================== WEEK 1174, published May 8, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1174: Suddenbreakingnews! Empress stampeded! Multiply this many entries by 44 and that was the field for the Week 1170 horse name "breeding" contest. (Pat Myers*The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** May 5, 2016 Happy Kentucky Derby weekend! I’ve watched the Derby on TV almost every year since I was a horse-crazy 6-year-old in 1965 (winner: Lucky Debonair), but for at least the past dozen years, I’ve especially enjoyed rooting for “our horses”: those whose names were used in that year’s Style Invitational foal-naming contest. This year, 15 of the 20 horses scheduled to start this Saturday (plus one alternate) are ours; i.e., their names made my list of 100 Triple Crown nominees (out of almost 400) offered for “breeding” in Week 1170. And 12 of those 15 are featured among thisweek’s inking entries . Among the five horses that didn’t make the list of 100, I remember not including Trojan Nation because ... because he can’t breed with that thing on? No, actually I left him off because there was a strong chance that the best entries would be unprintable. And once I chose Mo Tom, I didn’t want to also use Tom’s Ready. There were so, so many clever entries this year, sent by more than 300 people, including at least 20 Losers entering the Invite for the first time. If you enlarge the photo above of the printout of the first few pages of the 220 that comprised this year’s field, you’ll see how many inkworthy ones are right there — and I could honor only about one entry for every four pages. My first pass had 256 horse names, and I probably left some worthies off that list, too. Well, that’s racing luck. But if past years are an indication, the competition will narrow quite a bit for the grandfoals in Week 1174. Usually the entry pool decreases by a third or more — which still gives me lots of great entries. The 57 names you’ll be using is relatively few compared with past years’ (it’s the smallest grandfoal list since 2009), but I’m confident that you’ll mine plenty of unique gems. (If you don’t feel like writing up a list of names to work with, you can copy one from Neal Starkman’s post in the comment thread under the Invite on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page.) Suddenbreakingnews helped First Offender Mark LeVota get runner-up ink in Week 1170. The 18-character colt is the only one of our “above the fold” horses who’ll be running in the Derby. (Charlie Riedel*Associated Press) I noticed that the vast majority of this year’s winners featured funny puns rather than the other main approach to foal name humor, which is having the second horse modify the first to produce the result, as in Jesse Frankovich’s Mohaymen x Bar None = Mohaypeople. Two years ago, all four “above-the-fold” entries were of the second type: Toast of New York x General A Rod = Toast in New York (Jim Stiles) Best Plan Yet x Cut the Net = Best Pla_ Y__ (Pie Snelson) I Earned It Baby x Undertaker = I Urned It Baby (Pam Sweeney; Gary Crockett) Russian Humor x Constitution = What Constitution? (Roy Ashley) I realized after publishing this week’s results that one of this year’s funniest pun names, Mighty Moses x Big Squeeze = Let My Pimple Go (Ellen Raphaeli; Larry Gray), was also one of last year’s funniest pun names: Help From Heaven x Royal Squeeze = Let My Pimple Go (Jeff Shirley). Racing luck can go both ways. This was the second year that my judging of this contest was made so much easier — and I’m sure better — with the help of Loser Jonathan Hardis (who, yay, got some ink). I was able to send Jonathan a single e-mail containing the combined 334 e-mails sent in for Week 1170 — *that* process, something I use every week, was worked out for me by Loser Steven Papier — and a few hours later, he returned to me the alphabetically sorted list you see a small fraction of above. At the risk of coming off as lazy, I’m going to link to the Style Conversational column I wrote about last year’s foal contest: It explains (a) my judging method in general, including how the final cut often comes down to what makes me laugh rather than just what’s really clever; (b) how the grandfoal contest differs from the first round; and (c) how greatly Jonathan improved my process with his sorting program. (His offer to explain the technical details to interested nerds still stands. Guy is a prince.) Especially if you’re new to this contest, take a read here. This year’s rose-blanketed victor and lost-by-a-nose runner-up are both regular visitors to the Invite’s Losers’ Circle: It’s the eighth Inkin’ Memorial win for Danielle Nowlin, and the 25th finish “above the fold” for Pam Sweeney, who, although her 257 blots of ink encompass all kinds of contests, has amazing success with both the foal and grandfoal contests: she’s finished in first place*five* times in horse contests alone. But it was straight to the (almost) top for First Offender Mark LeVota; not only was Suddenbreakingnews x Twenty Four Seven = PlaneStillMissing! his first ink, but as far as I can tell, this was the first time he’s even entered the Invite. Along with hisFirStink for his first ink , Mark gets his choice of Loser mug or Loser T-shirt. As will Pete Morelewicz, who’s gotten ink 13 times but not since 2011. Nice to have him back. Among this year’s clever entries that didn’t make my short­list because they were sent by four or more people: Hawk x Benediction (or Ten Blessings) = Bird of Pray; Matt King Coal x Can’t Remember = Forgettable; Economic Model x Miles of Humor = Laugher Curve (do we have a seriously wonky Loser Community or what?); Mooose x Exaggerator = Mooooose; Hawk x Ten Blessings = Birds of Pray; John Q. Public x Rated R Superstar = John Q. Pubic; and, from like everybody: Rated R Superstar x Stradivari = Sex and Violins. Were there unprintably crude entries this week? Duh. See the bottom of this column for some horses that wouldn’t be permitted inside any decent starting gate. *DID YOU GET YOUR FLUSHIES INVITATION? * The guest list is filling up fast for this year’s Flushies, the Loser Community’s 22nd annual awards* lunch* songfest — this year it’s a potluck at the home*farmlet of Loser Robin Diallo on Saturday afternoon, May 21. Robin even invites you to bring the kids and pet the farm animals. Organizers Elden Carnahan & Co. are asking for a big $5 a person to cover costs. I’ve read the lyrics to one of the parodies written for the occasion by Nan Reiner, and it is boffo. (If you’d like to join an ad hoc OK Chorale to sing in harmony, email me.) If you’re on the Empress’s email list, you should have gotten the invitation this past Monday. In any case, you can see it here. All Losers and just plain Invite fans are welcome, up to the maximum of 60 or so, but If I haven’t met you already, I’ll probably get back to you to chat you up a bit before telling you all the logistical details. *HORSES OF AN OFF COLOR: THE UNPRINTABLES* Swagger Jagger x Big Squeeze = Queef Richards (Dan Harvey) Cupid x Emoji Man = Raging Heart-on (Randy Lee)* And all from Tom Witte:** *Mohaymen x Big Squeeze = Mo Hymen Perfect Saint x Big Red Rocket = Saint Peter (I would have run that, perhaps as “St. Peter” so as not to repeat “Saint”) Annals of Time x Big Squeeze = Anals of Time Giant Trick x Big Squeeze = Giant Dick Mohaymen x Cherry Wine = Flohymen ====================================================================== WEEK 1175, published May 15, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1175: Sorry, ‘arbitrary’ is a 14-point word The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and the new entry thing In Style Invitational Week 1175, we want you to make up a 13-point word and define it. Cleverly, of course. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** May 12, 2016 What happened was that I forgot to run this contest on July 13, 2014. That would have been the first week — three months after Mark Raffman suggested, complete with great examples, what would become Week 1175 — that The Style Invitational would run on the 13th of the month. Mark had e-mailed me with the suggestion two years ago, but I was on vacation in England at the time, and I just let it fall too far down the page on my “Invite Ideas” Google Doc. Then, this week, I rediscovered Mark’s suggestion, and I didn’t feel like waiting till Thursday, Oct. 13. It’s a totally new excuse for a neologism contest, which is something I’m always in the market for. The sum of 13 points seems as good as any, and if this contest pans out (highly likely) we could do it again with a different total. So, two years later, Mark can finally get his contest suggestion prize — ice cream with the Empress. It might be kind of melty by now, though. I added these clarifications to the contest instructions after two questions came up on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page: Nah, you’re not limited to the number of tiles for each letter that are available in the actual game — you can’t use the words in Scrabble anyway. (That’s even part of this week’s rules — no words that are in a Scrabble dictionary are permitted.) And no, you don’t incur 50 extra points if your word has seven letters or more. SUBMIT! SUBMIT! OUR NEW ONLINE ENTRY SYSTEM Last week, a day or two after I posted the inking foal names from Week 1170, I got an email from a regular Loser. At first, he told me, he was going to complain that I’d failed to credit him for an entry that was identical to his own — but then he noticed that he’d written the wrong week number in the subject line of his email. Which meant that it wasn’t sorted into my Week 1170 folder. This accident can’t happen anymore now that you’ll be sending entries not by email, but by filling out a form on a Post website. There’s a different website for each contest, so you won’t even have to give the week number on the form. You will, however, have to give me your postal address, something that makes it a lot easier for me to send you a prize. The short-form URL should always be subpl.at*inviteXXXX (as in Sub Platform). This won’t count against the number of articles a week that non-subscribers can access online. The email submission system, which the Invite has been using, at least as an option, ever since Week 55 in 1994 (before that, the choices were snail mail and fax), presented a number of irritants over the years, in addition to the wrong-week-number risk: For many years there was no confirmation that an email was received; then there was one, but it might show up hours later, the next day, or not at all. Then we switched email systems and, for an embarrassing amount of time, the auto-reply wouldn’t go out for someone’s second submission — even if it was the next week. And all kinds of problems presented themselves when entrants included links in their entries, or attached a photo. On my end, sorting the emails and compiling the contents of all of one week’s emails (for the horses, I had 334 of them) into one searchable list, and then deleting all the entrants’ identifying material so I could judge the contest blindly, can take me hours. So I’m truly thrilled that the Sub Platform, The Post’s new system for online submissions, has been adapted to work for the Invitational. With a single click, I’ll be able to hide all the Losers’ ID data, then make it all reappear when it’s time to announce the winners. All the week’s entries — and no other ones — will be on a single page. I’ll be able to tag certain entries for the short­list. And you’ll be able to easily attach photos or other graphics, in case we have another photo contest. While I’m able to shut down the website at midnight on the deadline day, I won’t do that; I’ll continue to accept the occasional late entry if there’s a problem getting it to me on time. Still, some wrinkles are sure to present themselves; Invite contests are so varied and complex that it’s hard to anticipate everything. But the Web developer I’ve been working with, the delightful Sruti Cheedalla, is eager for feedback and has been amazingly responsive to all my concerns. So let me know if there are problems. (You can always reach me at pat.myers@washpost.com.) There’s one issue I did anticipate: *How should you submit alternative headlines and honorable-mention subheads?* In addition to regular entries for a week’s contest, I also take suggestions for the headline that will go atop that week’s results, as well as for the subhead that precedes the honorable mentions. Under the email system, I’ve asked for those submissions to be on separate emails, with something in the subject line to identify them. This way I could keep those entries in the folder with the rest of the week’s stuff, but I wouldn’t have to look through everything to find those dozen or so emails with the “revised titles,” as we used to call them. Now that there’s no email with a subject line, we need a new system. Until we come up with something more elegant, here’s the plan: *Simply include the phrase “revised titles” in the body of your entry,* for both headline and HM ideas. When it comes to choose them (always after the regular judging), I’ll just search for “revised titles” and read what’s under it. (Once again, this new system begins with this week’s contest, Week 1175. For the “grandfoals” contest of Week 1174, please continue to send them by email to losers@washpost.com.) *ZING, ZING A SONG: THE WEEK 1171 TAILGATERS* As was ourfirst tailgaters contest — to pair a line from a classic poem with a rhyming line of your own — the Week 1171 song-lyric variation was lots of fun to judge, with more funny, clever entries than I could reasonably use. (Contest suggester Duncan Stevens has already collected*his* ice cream.) Using pop songs doesn’t offer as much humor as poetry tailgaters do in terms of juxtaposing a lofty-sounding first line with an earthy second one — when the*first* line is “She got a big booty so I call her Big Booty,” it’s hard to get any farther earthward. But it offers a much wider pool of familiar lines to most readers, and in many cases the couplet can function as a singable mini-parody. (And there’s still the lofty*earthy tack especially when the music is lofty, like Brendan Beary’s “When you’re weary, feeling small* Don’t whine to me while I’m watching basketball.”) As usual in song-themed Invites, the entries were weighted heavily toward songs from the late 20th century, though there were also folk songs, children’s songs, patriotic songs, old-timey songs, show tunes, and at least some from the Non-Old-Fart Era — many of them from several dozen Eleanor Roosevelt High School students who did this as an English class assignment. (First Offender Charlie Dawson is from this group, which their teacher entered in a single package.) It’s always fun to find YouTube clips for the songs; check out the amazing performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” to induct George Harrison into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and thechorus girls singing “We’re in the Money” in the movie “Gold Diggers of 1933” is a riot. How exciting to learn that this week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner hadn’t been seen in the Invite since Week 8! (It was an honorable mention for creative tabloid headlines: “Napoleon’s Penis Found in Rectangular Pastry!”) Several Losers had played off the 1922 song “Carolina in the Morning” to refer to North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” but Jesse Etelson’s interior-rhyming couplet was the classiest of the bunch. Meanwhile — and this happens with blind judging — Mark Raffman ended up with both the No. 2 and No. 4 spots in the Losers’ Circle with his takes on the Beatles’ gross-out lyric and the Doors’ dumb one. And Beverley Sharp provides a handy Donald Trump theme song. (Hmm, might there be another campaign-themed parody contest in the works, like our2008 classic ?) *To Impress Kress: * Our regular Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood has been off for a few weeks, so I asked his fill-in Steve Kress, for his faves: Steve agreed with Jesse Etelson’s winner, and also singled out Barry Koch’s “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention;* On votes, I trail, it’s true, but I’ve got plans for the convention!” (“clever response”) as well as Chris Doyle’s “I am woman — hear me roar * The toilet seat is up once more” (“funny response”). *You Can’t Say That on the Radio: The Unprintables* Well, there was this: I love him , I love him, I love him. And where he goes I’ll follow, I’ll follow I’ll follow. (Peggy March) He’ll always be my true love, my true love, my true love. And when he comes I’ll swallow, I’ll swallow I’ll swallow. (Michael Rosen) And then there was the entry that Jon Gearhart wrote before April 21 — and included in his entry just to share his bad luck: And if the elevator tries to bring you down (Prince, “Let’s Go Crazy”) Just take the freaking stairs, you lazy little clown! Jon’s timing was blessedly lucky. Prince, of course, died in an elevator. IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO FLUSH! FLUSHIES-ON-THE-FARM, MAY 21 We can still squeeze in a few more people for this year’s Flushies, the Loser Community’s own awards lunch and songfest, this year on the little farm of Loser Robin Diallo in Lothian, Md., in Anne Arundel County. It’s a family-friendly potluck, with pettable ponies, goats, llamas, chickens, etc. (To see the invitation and to RSVP, go to NRARS.org and click on “Our Social Engorgements.”) And hopefully we can get a team together for the spectacularly spectacular Washington Post Hunt the next day. There’s a podcast about this year’s event, featuring as usual Gene Weingarten, Dave Barry and Tom Shroder. I will be singing in a choral concert that day, but I guarantee that those guys will pose with you for a selfie if you tell them you’re from the Invite. ====================================================================== WEEK 1176, published May 22, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1176: You can’t Flush without water ... The Farm Flushies are on despite the rain forecast—and you can still pet the animals Rain or shine, Loser Robin Diallo's horses are among the animals ready to greet the Losers at Saturday's Flushies. It's not too late to RSVP! (Robin Diallo) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** May 19, 2016 Bad news: Chance of rain: 90 percent. Good news: Robin and Khalil Diallo have both a barn and an actual human-house. So not only will the Loser Community enjoy its 22nd annual Flushies awards banquet (in potluck form) and songfest safe from the elements, Robin says we can go into her barn — or even drive to it — and pet the goats, chickens and various other fauna at RK acres, her little farm in Lothian, Md., in Anne Arundel County. She just suggests that you not wear your best shoes — and that when you take them off when you come into the house, you might not want to be wearing your most holey socks. If you care. The Diallos — Robin is a 15-time Loser and notable prize-donor — are welcoming some 60 of us for the entire afternoon, from noon to about 6, so that we can take time after the structured festivities and lunch to tour the grounds and commune with the horses, llama, sheep, peacocks and sundry other fauna. And of course there’s always a chance that sunshine could make an unscheduled appearance. (Well, that would be a 1-in-10 chance.) Meanwhile, I’ve just printed out 55 copies of each of three custom-written song parodies — actually two parodies and a poem — that were written by Loser Extraordinaire Nan Reiner with contributions from other LEs as well. They are fabulous. And emcee Kyle Hendrickson has prepared a second edition of his Loser Jeopardy game, which he debuted at last year’s Flushies, at Danielle Nowlin’s house in Virginia. I’m delighted to report that the Loser of the Year, the Rookie of the Year and possibly some Other Things of the Year will be in attendance to be showered with honors as well as with precipitation, as will our newest Hall of Fame member, Jeff Contompasis, and Double Haller Brendan Beary. Nan is coming up from Florida just for the Flushies and Sunday’s Washington Post Hunt, while Matt Monitto is coming down from Connecticut for same. And as usual there will be lots of veteran Losers as well as some who’ll be joining us for the first time. And Mae Scanlan will be our keyboardist. The presentations, songs, Jeopardy, Empress-heckling, etc., will start around 2 p.m. and run for an hour or so. Before that we’ll schmooze and eat, and afterward we’ll do more of the same. While we hit the 60-person mark in RSVPs earlier this week, there were some late cancellations, and so**it’s not too late to decide to come * *and to tell Flushies Pooh-Bah Elden Carnahan. (elden.carnahan (at) gmail (dot) com.) He’s asking each of us to pony (hahaha) up a big $5 to cover miscellaneous expenses; you can pay him at the event. I’ve also promised Door Prize Queen Pie Snelson that I will be bringing ten (10) pieces of miscellaneous crap to be wrapped up and “awarded.” And I just may, finally, regift to Robin the amazing carved-wood ashtray she sent me as a possible Invite prize (not EVER) from the Philippines, featuring a carved-wood life-size erect phallus. The Philippines was just one of the many places around the world from which Robin has sent us prizes: As a State Department diplomat, she’s reported to us from Malawi (the famous mcedo penis cap), Senegal, New Delhi and Kabul. And be sure, at the Flushies, to wish her well on her next posting, this fall: She’ll be the public affairs officer in Baghdad. For a year. For the second time. *EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR YOUR DEAD LINES* Once in a while I remember that there’s a holiday a couple of Mondays from now and I’ll give you an extra day to file entries. It’s more of a tradition, though, than a necessity: Back in the early days of the Invite — we started in 1993 — a lot of people needed to get back to the office fax machine to send us their entries. John Hutchins, who’s one of those people who show up and immediately start blotting up ink after ink — his first ink was for Week 1162, then Week 1165, and then at least once in six of the seven weeks since — displayed his acute Invite affliction when he suggested, in rapid succession, three different contest ideas, all of which show promise. This one, Week 1176, should allow for a variety of good joke-writing; I’m optimistic that the results will be perfectly lively. *THE NEW ENTRY SYSTEM — REALLY, IT’LL BE FINE * Last week the Invite shuffled into the 21st century with a Web-based entry submission system, rather than the old e-mails. And after tinkering with a few things, I can report that it seems to be going well. Some things we discovered after posting the debut contest for this, Week 1175 : -- The URL (Web address) we gave in the print edition was hard for some people to read; one person wrote to me that subpl.at*invite1175 looked exactly like subpl.at*Invite1175 (capitalization matters in these abbreviated URLs) and he couldn’t get it to work until his wife noticed the dot over the i. So from here on in, it’ll be subpl.at*INVITE1176 etc. — At least one person was irked to have to fill out his address in a form each week (not everyone has auto-fill), and someone else was concerned that some non-U.S. addresses might not work in the form. So I switched the address part to an open box where you can copy in your address. (This after I used two other inappropriate formats; I’m learning ...) But if people continue to send me addresses without the Zip code or even the name of the town, I’m going to have to go back to the form. — At least one person lost his entries because he closed out the page, or turned off his computer, before submitting his form. I do strongly suggest writing your entries on a Word document, email, etc., and then copying them over to the Web form; really, it’s good to do that for any site where you’re submitting comments. — I’ve gotten some nice bribe propositions in the comment field. Please feel free to let me know if you have any other problems or suggestions; some things I can fix myself, and Sruti the Web developer has been marvelously responsive and helpful for things I can’t. Email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. YOU WERE REALLY BRONCIN’! THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1172 Using the song “American Pie” for Week 1172, our latest word bank contest, worked just as I’d hoped: The Losers — especially a few of them — went to town combining words from the classic song’s multi-verse lyrics into jokes, funny dialogues, and even limericks and double dactyls. And while of course this is true to varying degrees to our readers, I think that many of us will quickly remember the original context of the words, and so catch the humor of how the Invite entry used it in a totally different way. This is why it’s best to use well-known writing for a word bank contest — in the past we’ve used the Gettysburg Address, “Hamlet,” “The Cat in the Hat” and the Book of Genesis — rather than, say, that week’s Invitational column (we did that, too). Some people didn’t seem to understand that we run a humor contest; they sent some lovely haiku and other musings; I have a feeling they’re gonna hatethis week’s results . One person cited various phrases in the song and “defined” them in his or her own words; I have no clue how the person got that idea that this was the contest. I wouldn’t have been able to have done this contest without the help of Gary Crockett, who was one of several Losers who offered to validate the entries with a custom-designed computer program. (See the bottom of this column for Gary’s description of the program, complete with some of the code.) This past weekend I sent him a list of 42 entries, and Gary promptly returned a list of nine that didn’t pass, with the invalid words marked in red. One of them was a long dialogue between God and Satan over who should get John Lennon, and whether a Rolling Stone was due imminently; that one had so many extra uses of “him,” “the” and other words that it was clear the author hadn’t read the direction that you couldn’t use a word more frequently than it appeared in the song. But most of the others were easily remedied by dropping the word or making another simple change, and some are among today’s inking entries. And the Losers would have had a much harder go of it had not Loser Todd DeLap not, immediately and of his own volition, assembled a word list specifying the number of times that each word appeared , Todd compiled his list the very morning that I posted the Week 1172 contest, fast enough for me to link to it in The Style Conversational a couple of hours later. At least Todd got ink today; although Gary got to see that one of his entries had made the short­list, it didn’t make the final cut. While runners-up Danielle Nowlin, Mark Raffman and Jeff Shirley are ubiquitous denizens of the Losers’ Circle, it’s the first win — indeed, the first appearance at all “above the fold” — for Mary Kappus, who gets her eighth blot of ink with her Inkin’ Memorial win, a tour-de-force description of the “quartet” of presidential candidates (before Ted Cruz had dropped out). Brilliantly funny stuff; I especially enjoyed “the Pink-oh” and, in reference to Cruz’s taxation philosophy, “no levee.” *Kress Has Fallen for ... * Steve Kress, who has the copy-editing duties for the Invite for the past few weeks, singled out three honorable mentions this week as his faves: Chris Doyle’s lament of a woman with 10 children in eight years, “He was into rhythm and I got the blues” (“This one made me laugh, and it was very well constructed … not a single awkward phrasing in the whole thing”; Jeff Shirley’s account of “the space people” coming down to mess with “my ‘can’ ”; and Kevin Dopart’s dig at opera: “Music of the Met: People die singing, and they take a long, long time to do so.” “This one is just plain snarky, so it was right up my alley,” Steve says. *Foul your mortal soul ... * An unprintable by Steve Honley: “The last gym I was inside was James,” said the good-looking man to the sweet teenage boy. Okay, people — see you Saturday! *OF NERDULAR INTEREST: HOW GARY CROCKETT VALIDATED THE WEEK 1172 ENTRIES * *I asked Gary if he’d like to share How He Did It:* What I did could be done with any number of programming languages, but there’s one called Python that’s very convenient to use for this kind of thing, and is becoming a common choice as the language used for introductory programming courses. I started by taking Todd DeLap’s word list and reformatting it so that it was a single list of comma-separated words, with each word appearing as many times in the list as in American Pie, rather than using the numbers from Todd’s list. I did that reformatting with a simple Python program, probably about a dozen lines of code (I didn’t keep it around). Then I wrote another Python program that repeatedly prompts for text to be tested and for each word in that text looks for it in the list, modifying the list as it goes along so the “used a word too many times” error will be caught. It spits out the same text in lower case except for words that are invalid, which it outputs in upper case. There’s a little more fiddling to deal with punctuation, upper*lower case, etc. Here is the whole program, except with a shortened version of the word list: AmPieWords = [ “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “a”, “about”, “above”, “adjourned”, “admire”, “again”, “ago”, “air”, “all”, “all”, “all”, (and so on for the rest of the words in American Pie...) “you”, “you”, “you”, “you”, “you”, “you”, “you”, “your”, “your”, “you’re” ] def standardize(word): ret = ‘’ for c in word: if not c.isalpha() and c != “’”: continue c = c.lower() ret += c return ret.rstrip(”’”) wordList = list(AmPieWords) for line in sys.stdin: outLine = ‘’ wordList = list(AmPieWords) line = line.replace(’-’, ‘ ‘) for word in line.split(): word = standardize(word) if word in wordList: outLine += word + ‘ ‘ wordList.remove(word) continue else: word = word.replace(”’”, ‘’) if word in wordList: outLine += word + ‘ ‘ wordList.remove(word) continue outLine += word.upper() + ‘ ‘ print(outLine) ====================================================================== WEEK 1178, published June 5, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1178: We’re collecting! The Style Invitational Empress talks about this week’s contest and results Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson, with the assistance of Latin teacher Ann Martin, announces Loserfestium Pittsburghium at last month’s Flushies. Details below. (Denise Sudell) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 2, 2016 I got an email last night from one of the best Losers losing today, with an idea for a new contest. I replied the way I often do: I immediately showed him the results — very good ones — of that very same contest, this one from 1994. The Loser countered: “Just because something has been successfully done in the past doesn’t mean that it can’t be completely screwed up when tried again.” I told him that we actually would be redoing an old contest this very week. And: “Tell you what: If my apprehensions about that one prove foolish, we’ll do this one too.” So for Style Invitational Week 1178 , lay on those funny ideas for collective nouns; see what else you can come up with besides the 40 or so that already got ink. And you know, if there aren’t enough to fill the page in four weeks — since they’re just one line long, that’s quite likely — I betcha anything I’ll have some political song parodies from Week 1177 (whose deadline, remember, isn’t till June 13). THE STEEL INVITATIONAL: LOSERFEST IN PITTSBURGH, AUG. 25-28 (NEW DATE!) In last week’s Conversational , I mentioned that Kyle Hendrickson had announced that he had once again donned the miter of Loserfest Pope, reviving the tradtion of arranging a weekend-or-so field trip for the Greater Loser Community. And this time he and his cardinals have settled on Pittsburgh. While it’s not exactly Paris, I went to Pittsburgh myself a few years back for a similar weekend with relatives, and found plenty to do — especially in the eating department. The schedule of activities is still in the early stages, so if you have suggestions, you get to weigh in. Kyle has set up a neato website,loserfest.org, (amazingly, that domain was available!); click on the various categories and see the ideas for activities and restaurants, and leave your name so you can stay in the loop. While he’s scheduling four days of Loserfest, you don’t have to stay the whole time (I probably wouldn’t). The Megabus that leaves from Union Station is a pleasant six-hour ride (it makes a stop at West Virginia University) that leaves you off right downtown, and is in­cred­ibly cheap; when I went, I paid something $10 one way and $20 the other. There’s also Wi-Fi on the bus. So as long as there are at least a couple of other people there with cars, you should be able to take the bus. In past years, Loserfests have taken place in places as far-flung as Las Vegas and as unflung as right in D.C. Obviously, the ones you can do in a day trip tend to have more people. If history is a guide, this would be a small group, fewer than a dozen people. But big fat fun. *THE SIRE NEXT TIME: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1174* Even with horse names like “Autocorrect: Nose,” “__itm_re” and “¯\_(ツ)_*¯,” the inking entries from the Week 1170 foal-“breeding” contest proved a fertile crop, producing — as our spinoff contest has for a decade — a crop of funny, very clever grandfoals. As usual, the entry pool was much more manageable this second time around — about half the number of entries and entrants — with not as many new Losers; we have just one First Offender this week. But there were still a whole lot of entries, and I was still helped immeasurably by the efforts of Jonathan Hardis, who once again used computo-magic (plus some plain old free labor) to convert a raw document containing hundreds of emails into an alphabetically sorted (by parent name), anonymous list that I could eyeball without laboriously searching through all the mixes of each name (twice) and culling a short­list. So after choosing this week’s winners, I was especially tickled to discover that Jonathan’s “Kar Krashian” was among this week’s four “above-the-fold” winners. It’s the 49th (and 50th!) ink for Jonathan, who is steadily gaining on the 73-ink total of his sister and fellow MIT grad, Kathy Hardis Fraeman. Meanwhile, it’s the sixth win, and 86th overall, for Larry Gray, for the perfectly crafted combination of Autocorrect: Nose with Señor Moment to produce No Sé. And what an imaginative take on Hanukkah Lewinsky x Gimme Another O from Ben Aronin; it’s Ink No. 78 for him, and his 14th above the fold. (Did Ben’s entry mystify you? Click on the link I added.) And oh, look at that — it’s Danielle Nowlin! Because when isn’t it? Among the entries that I checked off until discovering that they’d been submitted too frequently: Sandra Buttock x Significant Udder = Dairy Air Gimme Another O! x Let My Pimple Go = Let My Pimple Goo Desitin x Ham Somebody? = Oinkment Señor Moment x Sphinxter = Old Giza Desitin x Hanukkah Lewinsky = Rash Hashanah As always with the grandfoals, almost all the foal names*don’t* incorporate all aspects of both parents’ names; ooooOoooo, for example, references both Hanukkah and Gimme Another O!, but not Lewinsky; Jonathan’s Kiss Me Cait x Nascarf = Kar Krashian gets “Cait” (-lyn Jenner, stepparent to Kim Kardashian), and NASCAR, but not “kiss me” or “scarf.” But Larry’s winner comes mighty close: No Sé (Spanish for “I don’t know”) is both a play on “nose” and of the idea that autocorrect “doesn’t know” what you’re trying to say. Obviously “Senor” gets in there, and also the idea of “senior moment,” of not knowing some word or fact you’ve always known. But getting in every element of both parents’ names won’t necessarily earn it ink. There was one combination I noticed that covered everything but suffered from clumsy punning: Bing Cosby x Hanukkah Lewinsky = Cherries Jew Bully. *Horses of an off color: The unprintables* Just this minute, I got the word that Pam Sweeney’s “St. Arbucks x Yuge Pianist = Moby Dick” passed the Taste Police to be allowed in the print edition; I hadn’t been all that optimistic, although of course I think it’s perfectly fine and a great joke. For the parade of bodily functions and orifices in the horses below, however, I didn’t even bother to try: Yuge Pianist x TheTenSuggestions = The Dickalogue (Rob Huffman) Hanukkah Lewinsky x Ham Somebody? = Candlestick Pork (Dudley Thompson) Apocalypso x Hanukkah Lewinsky = Labia Menorah (Dave Zarrow) IM the Walrus x Hanukkah Lewinsky = WhiteMatter Custard? (Rob Huffman) Gimme Another O! x Dyquick = Death Becums Her (Bill Verkuilen) Hanukkah Lewinsky x Gimme Another O! = ChristmasIsCumming (Bill Verkuilen, who’s on a roll here) Significant Udder x Sphinxter = Cowabunghole! (Stephen Dudzik) Sphinxter x Thrust But Verify = Cornhole Knowledge (Roy Ashley) ====================================================================== WEEK 1180, published June 19, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1180: A DIY repaneling project The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results Last weekend's comics, like this one from Saturday, were full of promising lines to be taken out of context. This week's contest invites you to do the same over the next 12 days. (June 11, 2016; King Features Syndicate) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 16, 2016 Hey, how did Chris Doyle know about this contest ahead of time and could write the line on the Week 1180 example? He’s not credited as suggesting the contest; my husband is. Whuh-oh, is my husband Chris Doyle? Is that why he has 1,700 blots of Style Invitational ink? Nah — I did meet the peripatetic Chris a couple of times at Loser events many years ago when he was in the D.C. area, but I didn’t make him live with me. (The Royal Consort is surely the only person on Earth, as well as several nearby planets, who could endure that.) I merely posted my plan for the contest a few days ago in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, now nearing 1,100 members. I asked the Devs whether they thought it would be a good contest; they did. And I posted a few random lines from various comic strips over the weekend — including the one from “Zits” about the dead squirrel — and asked for cartoonable examples. I went with Chris’s. Since people couldn’t use any strips dated before today, the Devotees weren’t gaining any advantage by knowing about it in advance. (Still, if you enter Invite contests, or think you might want to, it’s still useful to join the group and check out any discussions about the contests — there are also lots of unrelated humor posts — because the Losers often share helpful hints, word lists, even computer programs for checking your work. Some of them also, after the week’s results run, share their favorite “noinks,” entries that should have gotten published at the top of the list if there were any justice to be found in this miserable world.) *Tips for entering Week 1180: * -- No, the line you think of doesn’t have to fit in the same space as the original line; I’ll just be running the entries as lines of text. *EXCEPT:* I do hope Bob Staake will illustrate one entry four weeks from now, either the winner or one of the runners-up. And that particular entry will probably have to be short. So if you’re craving to be Staaked, make sure that at least one of your entries would make a workable cartoon. And while your line doesn’t have to be comic-strip-terse, it also shouldn’t be a really long sentence or a paragraph, totally out of character with comic strips. — *Does it have to be one single line? Could it be two very short ones? *Sure, I don’t care.* * We are in the market for funny. ---*Should your entry include the line of dialogue that you’re replacing?*Sure, that would be great.* * But I don’t expect to run both the original and yours in the results, so if the humor comes from the*change* from one to the other — if the reader would have to see both versions to find the line funny or clever — it might not work. --- *Should I attach a photo, Snipping Tool clip, etc., of the original?*I wouldn’t mind!* * The Post’s online comics page, washingtonpost.com*comics, contains links for the previous two weeks of comics; so since your window is 12 days, you’ll be able to sit down on June 27 and have the material from whole contest window available to you. On the other hand, *I*won’t be judging for a good week after that, and so might have to track down the cartoons from the early days. (I will save the print Style section for the next 12 days, so I won’t need them for comics that run in the paper.) The online entry form, subpl.at*INVITE1180, now has a place where you can “upload a photo here!” It’s set to allow for as many as 25 uploads, but I’d bet that you’d be risking some problem if you put a whole lot of photos on a single entry. Just send another entry. — *Should I draw the comic myself with my hot graphix skillz?*Feel free, but I probably won’t be able to use it.* * And if you do, you MUST also include the text in the regular entry field. — *I’m not a subscriber and I’ll exceed my number of free page views! *Email me at pat.myers@washpost.com* *** and I’ll forward you an email through which you should be able to sign up for a digital subscription to the whole Post — which is putting out 1,000 pieces of “content” a *day —* for the absurdly low $19 a year. I’m paying something like that every*month.* *DRAWING A BLANK: IF YOU CAN’T GET THE ENTRY FORM* For several hours this past Tuesday, and for about 17 minutes on Wednesday, Losers clicking on or typing in the subpl.at* Web address to enter the Invite got nothing but a blank white screen. Because we like to add excitement to our lives — well, it certainly added it to mine when a reader wrote to me on Tuesday asking if she was insane. (Diagnosis: still inconclusive.) The good news is that Web whiz Sruti Cheedalla immediately went into action, got other people involved, and told me eight minutes later that all was fixed. Evidently there was a hacking problem — something involving the shortened URLs that we use to create easy-to-type addresses; someone was using the software to create his own malicious URLs. Then Wednesday around 1 p.m., it happened again. But this time, the Web people were immediately notified by an alarm they’d created the day before. And 17 minutes later, all was well. SO: IF you encounter a blank screen instead of the entry form you’re going to get, please go get some ice cream and try again in a half-hour. This, too, shall pass. I think. (FYI, sub.pl*at refers toThe Post’s newish Sub(mission) Platform. *A MATTER OF LAUGH AND DEATH*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1176 * **A great alternative headline that didn’t fit in print, submitted by both Jesse Frankovich and Tom Witte* I was hopeful but not totally optimistic about Week 1176 , a contest suggested by Newbie Phenom John Hutchins for funny things to include in various people’s obituaries. In fact, at last week’s West Chester Poetry Conference, Frank Osen — that would be the 254-time Loser Frank Osen — told me that the contest was one he couldn’t get his mind around. Uh-oh: if Frank’s mind won’t wrap, what will Joe Loser’s do? But all panned out fine, and I don’t think it was even all that morbid. (I hope readers agree.) And even Frank blotted up an honorable mention. It’s the fifth win — and Ink No. 132 in all — for Drew Bennett, a retired Marine colonel who now is now a college president in West Plains, Mo. (which is oddly an Ozark hotbed of Loserdom, now that 60-time Loser John Schott also has ended up there). Over the years, Drew would often precede his entries with some godawful little verse beginning “O Empress, My Empress”; now he has to put them in a separate field on the entry form — which means that I just now discovered the following: Oh Empress, My Empress... Is this read by a computer or are these words for your eyes only, Should I write this for you or for Hal so lonely. Drew is not also an English professor. Other Loser Phenom Duncan Stevens, last week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner, takes second this week — in one of several blots of ink — with his cute auctioneer joke that would make a great one-minute skit. Loser Since Year 1 Bruce Alter grabs No. 115, his 13th “above the fold”; but it’s just the 15th ink — though his second above the fold — for Stephen Litterst up in Delaware. (I wonder if they did dance at Bob Fosse’s funeral.) *What Doug Dug: * The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, my former longtime Style colleague who recently won an award for headline writing from the Society for Features Journalism (for a story on teaching children manners, “Don’t Let Your Little Dickens Become a Scrooge”): Doug singled out both Your Mama jokes, by Jon Gearhart and Beverley Sharp; the crossword enthusiast couple buried two across and six down (up-and-coming Hildy Zampella); and Frank Mann’s joke about convicted gift-taking pol Bob McDonnell. This morning, Doug added one: “Sitting on the train, I was reminded of the Metro announcer entry, another favorite.” That was Roy Ashley’s obit for “Mr. Jrzbzzg” who “grmmphled on Drccssday.” Just one unprintable to share, but it was sent by both Steve Honley and Jon Ketzner: “Linda Lovelace went down for the last time today.” *LOSERFEST 2016: PITTSBURGH* Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson reports that he drove up to P-Town with Uberloser Elden Carnahan to scope out fun things to do on the last weekend of August, and came back with lots of ideas, many of them involving food. Check out the various options and other stuff at loserfest.org, and sign up for updates. *NEXT LOSER BRUNCH, SUNDAY, JUNE 26* It’s at noon at the overflowing buffet at Paradiso Restaurant on Franconia Road, just off the Beltway between Alexandria and Springfield. I might have a conflict (I should know in the next day or two) but I’ve been to Paradiso brunches many times; bring a huge appetite! RSVP here . ====================================================================== WEEK 1181, published June 26, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1181: At least this election offers lots of parody material Parody whiz and theater buff Matt Monitto wore his costume from a local production of "1776" in the video he made of his "Alexander Hamilton" parody. See bit.ly*invite-hamilton. (Screen shot from his video) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 23, 2016 Hey, we have 2,400 words of Style Invitational today with Week 1181, with 16 fabulous song parodies about this election season — and that doesn’t count the rest of Matt Monitto’s “Hamilton” parody, which you should definitely catch on video . So honestly, I’d rather you spend time reading (and listening along with) them than using up your time on this page, and so I’ll try to control my yakking here. As always, judging the parody contest was time-consuming but a thorough blast — there were so many clever, witty, funny songs (I didn’t count the entries, but there were 181 separate submissions, some with many songs) from a variety of song genres. YouTube is always open on my computer during the whole judging period, and I listened along with clips to every song used that I didn’t know intimately; some were totally new to me. I happen to be very familiar with all the songs for today’s inking entries, but that certainly hasn’t been the case every year. The only bad part of judging this and other parody contests is that I can’t possibly run even half of the inkworthy songs. To enjoy these parodies as a reader, you can’t just eyeball them as if you’re reading paragraphs or lists of jokes; you really do have to listen to them in your head (or with your ears), line after line. Several people sent me huge, full-length parodies that matched the originals — often rock or rap songs — line by line (sometimes using many lines from the original song to show how well it could be applied to the current season). They were often well done and imaginative, but they should really be performed, not read; not only don’t I have the space (if I want readers to read anything else), but honestly, they become a bit tedious to just read. People who sent me these, you should record them! Share them on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page, where I’ve been sharing non-inking but fun parodies for the past several days. I’ve read that the Major-General’s Song from “The Pirates of Penzance” is the most often parodied song in English. I have no idea whether that’s true, but I can tell you that I’ve received multiple Major-General parodies in just about that every parody contest I’ve run. But I very rarely give them ink, because they rarely are funny and clever enough to justify their substantial length. And they need to at least match the cleverness of the 1879s original, which holds up as funny light verse even today. Nan Reiner dressed up all Yankee Doodle for the several Week 1177 parodies she recorded. See bit.ly*invite-myturn for her runner-up effort, and you’ll see the others as well. (Screen shot from her video) I got an MG parody this time from one non-inking Loser who appended this comment to his own effort: “The lyrics don’t really fit the melody and rhythm, but no one remembers Gilbert & Sullivan anyway.” Well, fortunately Matt Monitto does, and he gives a clinic here on how to Major-General, filling the 12 lines of eight beats each with zingy wordplay in almost perfectly natural syntax, with no contrived re-accenting of words, and with flawless and clever rhyming. When I got to the penultimate line, “My Donald-centered plans have left the voters in excited states,” I groaned a little, thinking that this wonderful song would end anticlimactically with the predictable “United States.” But nope — Matt gives us a punch line: “So soon I’ll be the president and run these Disunited States.” Meanwhile, Matt, who’s been doing a lot of community theater at home in Connecticut since graduating from college a couple of years ago, borrowed his costume from “1776” to record himself doing his “Alexander Hamilton” parody ; he sure does Miranda right. One good thing going for Major-General in the Invite is that people know the tune. Which made it suitable to run in the print Invite, which of course has no links to help readers with the melody. I used that criterion as well in selecting the three runners-up; while of course *some* people won’t know “Let It Go,” “Smile” and*or “My Way,” I can at least hope so. (Only two honorable mentions fit on the page along with them, First Offender Maria LeBerre’s “Donny Boy” and Stephen Gold’s take on “My Favorite Things.”) Like Matt, runners-up Nan Reiner and Barbara Sarshik are bulwarks of the Invite parody canon, each of them delivering several spot-on songs this week. But it’s the first parody ink for Jerry Birchmore, and also his first “above the fold” out of his 14-blot total. Jerry lives in the D.C. area, but I don’t think he’s ever come to a Loser event; I hope we’ll meet him soon. *FEELING SOLENOGLYPHOUS? SINK YOUR TEETH INTO WEEK 1181* It’s the third go at our contest for poems using words plucked from this year’s National Spelling Bee. In combing through the play-by-play of the 39 rounds that once again couldn’t bring either of the two final competitors down, I aimed for words that weren’t difficult to explain, and ones that a Loserly-minded poet might work into some verse form of another — and manage to make it funny. It’s worked in the past: We first did the bee-words in Week 716; the results are here (scroll down past the Week 720 contest). Here’s the winner, classic Brendan Beary: **Acariasis, a mite infestation:* * I’m sad to say my grandpa Zacharias is, Alas, no more. The doctor has suggested The cause of death was likely acariasis; With tiny parasites he was infested. The wee arachnids he indulged with bonhomie, For piety was one of his delights; Remembering the book of Deuteronomy, He loved the Lord his God with all his mites. Then we did it again a year ago, in Week 1129 : This is Chris Doyle’s winner, a double dactyl: **EPITHALAMIUM (EP-i-tha-LAME-ium), a song composed for a wedding:** Higgledy piggledy Iggy Azalea Rocks out her wedding to Nick in July, Rapping her vows in an Epithalamium: “Beg for it, baby, from I-G-G-Y.” Okay, it’s not a contest for Your Mama jokes, but there’s plenty of fun to be had. Note once again the rule that you have to use the word in its real meaning, as above. You’re free to use whatever form you like, as long as it doesn’t go over eight lines. As in almost all light verse, the use of “perfect rhyme” rather than “near rhyme” makes it much more clever. The Czar of The Style Invitational, who did me the favor of writing this week’s example, said that if he were running this contest, he’d insist that the spelling bee word be made to rhyme in the poem, as his “ptyalism* nihilism.” But he’s not; it’s nifty to do that, but not necessary; I’d certainly have hated to toss Chris’s double dactyl above, for example. *LOSERFEST CONTINUES TO FESTER! AUG. 25-28 IN PITTSBURGH * Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson has busy digging up avariety of offbeat activities (between the procession of restaurants) for the Loser Community’s field trip; he’s arranged for a special rate at the Omni hotel right downtown. The Royal Consort and I will be going up on Friday; you can see that there will be plenty to do if you make it a shorter trip. Megabus has a line that goes straight from Union Station to downtown Pittsburgh for a variable but usually dirt-cheap price (when I used it, it was $10). For more info, see the website Kyle set up atloserfest.org , and sign up here to be notified of updates as plans develop. *LOSERS IN PARADIS(O): BRUNCH THIS SUNDAY* I have to be elsewhere this Sunday, but the huge, delicious buffet set up at Paradiso awaits the Losers at noon as they’ll gather at this regular spot on the brunch rotation. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ website, nrars.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). ====================================================================== WEEK 1182, published July 3, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1182, brought to you from dart.edge.orbit The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over the What3Words contest and a big vat of collective-noun ink. And Loserfest! "stud.help.nest" is the code assigned to one of the myriad 3-meter squares that form the footprint of 1301 K St. NW, The Post's headquarters. The grid of squares appears when you zoom way in. (Screen shot from what3words.com ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** June 30, 2016 Hello, everyone. Aren’t you glad that, just in time for the three-day weekend, I’m giving you something you can waste massive amounts of holiday time on? Yay for Week 1182 of The Style Invitational . I’d heard about the What3Words project on the radio recently (the tFhree-word addressing system has been adopted by the Mongolian postal service) and then Longtime Loser Doug Frank wrote to me to suggest a contest. And while I’m not sure what will come of it — I confess that both our Artist for Life Bob Staake and the Erstwhile Czar of The Style Invitational were highly skeptical — I remain hopeful and even optimistic that we’ll have a bunch of interesting finds to share, and that Loserly wit and creativity will come into play. What3words.com has lots of explanatory matter, from the simple to the technical, on how the address system was developed, how it’s already being used, and how its creators hope it will be used. It’s a .com, not an .org, because it’s being marketed to businesses for delivery systems as well as a way to get a custom three-word address (e.g., “best.pizza.here”) that will duplicate the real one. But the map is free for all to explore, and was designed to be accessible to just about everyone in the inhabited world; it will work on a smartphone without an Internet connection, which is what a large fraction of the global population has these days. The system is based on latitude and longitude coordinates, but makes them easily used by humans: As the W3W website puts it: “People’s ability to immediately remember 3 words is near perfect, whilst [they use British English] your ability to remember the 16 numbers, decimal points and N*S*E*W prefixes that are required to define the same location using lat,long is zero.” Working from an oversimplified news feature, I’d originally written in the Invite that the 57 trillion 3-meter squares covering the planet were assigned three-word codes at random from a list of 25,000 common words. This was wrong on two counts. First, it turns out, the assignments weren’t quite random; the longest words are saved for the most remote areas; “cornbread.prolifically.shimmies” is off the coast of Antarctica. And the developers even took pains to ensure that similar combinations — for instance, the same three words but in different order — would land at great distances from each other, so that someone sending a package or fire truck could easily see which was the desired address. (Meanwhile, my own Zip code has a Holly Road and Holly Drive in different neighborhoods; I’m hoping that no one plays with matches on either street.) "stud.help.nest" as it appears on the Esri map on What3Words; you don't see the grid of individual squares, but you might get detailed more outlines of buildings. (Screen shot from what3words.com) Second — and this occurred to me past midnight last night — 25,000 words in every possible combination and order, even if the words are repeated within a combination, are not enough to make 57 trillion unique three-word codes. Having no faith in my math skills, I asked (without explaining why) on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page how many three-word combinations would come from a 25,000-word-list. Yes, it was 1:07 a.m. By 1:10 a.m. I had several respondents — Doug Frank (who, having suggested the contest, knew what was up), Tim Livengood, Alex Jeffrey, Alex Blackwood, Dave Letizia among them — providing answers, and after I clarified that the total should include repeated words, the told me the answer was simply 25,000 cubed, or a mere 15.625 trillion. So I did some more research and found out that the 25,000-word list was the smallest of lists in at least nine languages being used; the largest (I’m presuming English) is 40,000. So for 57 million combinations — the number of squares on the planet — how many words do you really need? At least 38,485, said Alex Jeffrey. And if you have a list of 40,000, how many possible combinations? “That’d give 64 trillion.” And that is why you could conceivably type in 7 trillion word combinations and not find a single valid one. But it’s okay, because the search box will provide helpful alternatives. Not all the areas that are assigned codes are actually mapped in detail, but a code typed into the search field on the map will tell you the location. This was true of “empress.banished.forever,” which is actually (and appropriately) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and not so “near Ribeira Grande, Azores,” and it’s totally fine to use such a code for this contest. How precise do you need to be with your discoveries? Well, not very — as long as the wording of your entry doesn’t imply otherwise. For instance, The Washington Post is located in the huge office building One Franklin Square (1301 K St. NW), which takes up almost the whole block on K between 13th and 14th streets, and is quite deep as well. And while The Post doesn’t occupy the whole 13-story building, it does actually cover the whole footprint on the seventh and eighth floors, along with parts of several others. And so it’s totally precise to say that any square in that building belongs to The Post. But: Suppose you found a code in the building that was perfectly fitting for the sports section. Unless you know where in the building the sports department is, you can’t announce that the sports section is situated at wordA.wordB.wordC. But you can say, for example, that the sports section *ought to*move to that square. When Bob Staake found hidden.cave.dinner, the map noted the Central Park Zoo, but it didn’t say if that spot was actually a bear cave or just a parking lot. So “at the Central Park Zoo” is fine, while “the grizzly bear enclosure at the Central Park Zoo” isn’t. Also, you can be more general, maybe much more general: You could just say “In New York City,” for example. But my hunch is that that the cool-coincidence factor will be a lot more interesting in more specific places. It’s hard to anticipate all the questions that people will have with this contest. My main aim, of course, is to provide interesting discoveries to share — especially ones that are funny and*or reflect creativity. I expect that I’ll have to make a few rulings on unforeseen issues in the next few days; the best way to see updates is in the comment thread on the Invitational that posted at the top of the Devotees page. If you have a pressing question and absolutely don’t want tojoin the Devotees (we’re almost at 1,100 members) email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. *A SOVIET OF COLLECTIVE NOUNS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1178* *(a non-inking entry by Chaz Miller of Silver Spring, Md.)* I couldn’t do a count on the number of individual entries in our Week 1178 contest for collective nouns, or “terms of venery” (I could do the count very easily if I made you send in your entries one at a time, rather than all on one form, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t much want that). Suffice it to say that I received 331 submissions — close to twice what I get in a typical week — and that of those submissions, a whole lot of them contained 25 entries. So “thousands” is a conservative way of putting it. As you can see from this week’s results, most of the inking entries involve some sort of play on a existing collective noun (or unit of measure; I wasn’t going to be rigid here when I needed the funny). So, so many entries didn’t seem even humorously like a group or even a quantity (“a curiosity of scientists,” “a steep of Tea Party members”) that I’d often go through 100 or more entries before finding some good ones. But that’s why The Post pays me dozens of dollars every single week to show you the 52 best rather than just letting everyone share on the website. It’s the fifth win, and 119th ink in all for Dudley Thompson, whose wife, Susan, also got ink this week (for Ink No. 39). Dudley’s “two square meeters of Mormon missionaries” made me laugh out loud — a tall order for this judge this past week. The cuddly dust mite goes to David Kleinbard for his 15th ink “above the fold” — which is especially great because David happens to have a cuddly Junior Junior Loser named Eli. It’s just the ninth blot of ink for Jack McBroom, but his second runner-up entry; and then there’s Jeff Shirley, who might as well have carpeting laid on his continual turf in the Losers’ Circle. *YINZ WANT TO GO TO PITTSBURGH? LOSERFEST, AUG. 25-28* Speaking of collective nouns, I just learned that “yinz” is a regionalism for the second-person plural, the Western Pennsylvania equivalent of the Southern “y’all” and the Mid-Atlantic “youse.” or “yas.” Which makes a bit of sense of Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson’s name for the activity-filled (and belly-filling) Yinzburgh: Loserfest 2016. The Royal Consort and I will be heading up to join the Losers on Friday, Aug. 26 (someone has to put out an Invitational on Thursday), but will still be able to see an election-themed show by the Second City troupe at the O’Reilly Theater, visit Fallingwater, and hopefully even get to roll around in something called Knockerball if only for the photo-op. You can take part in whichever items on the “fungenda” (presumbably a portmanteau of agenda and fungus) appeal to you; you buy your own tickets. But all the information, including the Loserfest room rate at the Omni, is at loserfest.org Make sure you click on the Drivels page to fill out the form so that you’ll be on the emailing list and will be kept current on the plans. *YINZ RATHER JUST GO TO FALLS CHURCH? LOSER BRUNCH SUNDAY, JULY 17* It’s at noon at Grevey’s just outside the Beltway, in a shopping center at Arlington Boulevard (Route 50) and Gallows Road. Not a buffet, but you can get either breakfast or lunch food, both tasty. Sports are on the TVs. I’ll try to go, especially if some new people would like to meet the Losers. RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). Happy Fourth, all — maybe I’ll see you somewhere around congratulations.fingernails.desk . ====================================================================== WEEK 1183, published July 10, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1183: Ooh, wouldn’t that make a nice Invite trophy? There are exactly 29 Inkin’ Memorials left. Then we’ll need something new. The Style Invitational appears in the print Washington Post in black-and-white, so it didn't make sense to show the Illumibowl there. Here's this week's second prize. (Illumibowl.com) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 7, 2016 Actually, the photo above is of a full-size toilet (or several of them) beautified courtesy of the Illumibowl, a little box that might have also been called the Headlight; I’ll be giving it away to the second-funniest person in Week 1183 of The Style Invitational. So no, it wouldn’t be the best choice for a Loser’s bookshelf, and so I’m now thinking up other ideas for a first-place trophy to replacethe Inkin’ Memorial when I send the last of them away, probably in January. The Inkin’ Memorial — a.k.a. the Bobble-Linc — made its debut in Week 966, in 2012. It replaced the Inker, which I instituted when I ascended to the Empress-ship in Week 536 more than eight years earlier (before that, there was no trophy; the special gag prize went to the winner). I hadn’t planned on it — the supply of cheapo “Thinker” bookends had suddenly dried up when I did my annual surfing of wholesale-kitsch sites to find the best price for the next 50 boxes — which meant that it was a bit of a scramble to come up with something fitting, cheap, and available in quantities of at least 100. But after a night of Googling, I did find a bobblehead of the Lincoln Memorial statue, and bought up the entire supply from Bobbleheads.com — all 15 of them. And evidently there were no more to be had anywhere. But after some negotiation in the ensuing weeks, Bobbleheads Honcho Warren Royal agreed to commission a new Lincoln from a (but of course) Chinese manufacturer, if we would buy 200 and he’d keep the other 50. Anyway, even if Warren were interested in doing that all over again, I think it’s better to get a new first-place trophy. It’s not just that Abe has had an unfortunate tendency to arrive at the winner’s home, well, decapitated (the Royal Consort, who’s repaired a number of them, suggested I send a little tube of superglue with each trophy). It’s that some Losers have had the rotten luck to win a whole lot of them: Since Week 966, Kevin Dopart has won six, Chris Doyle eight, Brendan Beary and Mark Raffman 10 each, and Nan Reiner*thirteen.* Not surprisingly, they’ve all asked me to stop sending any more of them. Nan arranged hers in the field of a little baseball diamond along with a designated hitter before calling off the Lincs. So come January, I hope to be offering something as Invite-appropriate as the Inker and the Inkin’ Memorial. I found something that I think would work really well, but will welcome suggestions. The current guy cost us about $12 apiece. The Inkin’ Memorial has served us well as a first-place trophy for more than four years. Meanwhile, I do plan to commission very soon a new Grossery Bag for runners-up, since we’re out of the Whole Fools tote bag and its predecessor, (Al)most Valuable Player. I think I’ll use one of other the inking entries from the 2012 contest for bag ideas, Week 964, which supplied the first two versions. And I’m down to about a dozen Loser Mugs — between the “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” and LOVE*LOSER designs — and so hopefully I can get the money for a new mug order as well. They’re all, in my opinion, great little prizes — even the magnets are. But I’m also happy that none of these prizes is of significant *monetary* value. Because otherwise, disgruntled non-inkers might start complaining of being robbed financially, rather than just being unappreciated by an incompetent judge. And you can imagine what can follow from that. (My robotic answer to kvetchers: If the Invite is no longer fun for you to play, please don’t play.) *HONESTLY, WHAT’S TO SAY ABOUT WEEK 1183?* Well, let’s see: Week 1183 should be a wide-open contest, since “honest” has a lot of meanings, and I’m willing to consider any observational humor that’s funny and clever. I’d think there’d be some similarity in content (not format) with our contests that asked contestants to translate a quote in the newspaper into “Plain English,” such as this entry by Russell Beland in Week 729: Quote: “And — let’s be honest here —” PE: “And — let me sugarcoat this a little less than usual — ” Note that I said “roughly in the form of ...” If a slightly different format results in a better joke, go for it. *The BACcalaureates*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1179* *(non-inking headline by Jeff Contompasis)* The Week 1179 contest was to come up with any three-word A-B-C phrase (or ACB, BAC, or any other arrangement). In general, I found that I preferred the phrases that could conceivably be used as an ABC abbreviation, such as Gary Crockett’s “Business Class Alternative” (you could imagine an airplane ticket labeled BCA) or Duncan Stevens’s legalistic Collective Boinking Agreement Ed Gordon’s “BAC” as textspeak for ancient times, or “before advent of cellphones.” But I also got a kick out of just-three-words phrases like Amanda Yanovitch’s “ ‘A Bear!’ (Crunch.): The final line in Quentin Tarantino’s new Goldilocks film,” and this one by Kimberly Baer: “Affairs, Being, Confusion”: How fifth-grade wiseacre Ethan Splunk responded when asked by his geography teacher to name three states. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial, and just the 10th blot of ink overall, from newcomer Chris Damm, who proposed Cot And Bagel as a term for a cheapo bed-and-breakfast. I was delighted to meet Chris in January at the Losers’ Post-Holiday Party, to which he’d driven all the way from West Virginia, and am similarly pleased that Chris gets props after going inkless with a slew of song parodies in Week 1177, some of which were great but whose length and repetition didn’t work as songs-to-read. Melissa Balmain has two kids*and* teaches college students, so I’d be shocked if she turned down the fabulous grandpa-shaped electronic bubble fart machine that Chris Doyle didn’t want. Her “Aryan Battle Cry,” of course, has only gotten better in the past week in a wider context. Meanwhile, Jon Gearhart picks up his seventh ink “above the fold” as he barrels past the 75-ink mark, and the legsome Gary Crockett (“don’t send me any more stuff”) snags his 32nd ATF ink as he lopes toward 300 blots of ink. There wasn’t a lot of Scarlet Letter fare this week, but there was this unprintable from Alex Jeffrey: Bactrian Abortion Clinic: Because a camel’s gotta hump. We have used “abortion” in Style Invitational a few times in the past 23 years (“a PROLIFERATION of abortion protesters”). Alex’s entry wasn’t going to be one of them. *COME HAVE BRUNCH WITH ME AND THE LOSERS, JULY 17* This month’s Loser brunch is on Sunday, July 17, at noon, at Grevey’s pub just outside the Beltway in Northern Virginia. It’s typical brunchy-lunchy food (they’ve dispensed with the buffet). I’m always eager to meet new Losers and reconnect with the regulars. RSVP on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”) . *LOSERFEST CONTINUES TO FESTER* Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson continues to enhance the slate (or coal?) of activities for this year’s Loserfest field trip, to Pittsburgh Aug. 25-28 (or parts thereof). The Royal Consort and I plan to go up on Friday. Check out Loserfest.org to see what’s in store, and to sign up. ** ====================================================================== WEEK 1184, published July 17, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1184: Notes from the funny page The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over the Week 1180 comics contest Agnes was talking about rap songs, but as Loser Jesse Frankovich realized, her description was much more appropriate for something else. (From “Agnes,” June 20*By Tony Cochran; distributed by Creators Syndicate) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 14, 2016 I admit that I’m much less of a regular comic strip reader in recent years; as I read more and more of The Post online, I’ve fallen out of my old routine of rushing eagerly down the stairs in the morning and, after a momentary scan of all the section fronts, turning to the back pages of Style to scan my favorites. But I made up for it — as many of you must have — by perusing 12 days’ worth of the several dozen strips and panels not only from the print Post, but also from the many extra strips it offers online . All in the name of Style Invitational Week 1180, whose results run this week. Unlike the Week 392 contest in 2001, in which we were able to use a whole color page to print comic panels with Loser-written substitutions (unfortunately, that page isn’t online), this time we had to do something more text-centered. So I offered two options: to add dialogue into the strip, although I wouldn’t be able to run more than two pictures in the results; or, in the style of our recurring “Questionable Journalism” contests, to take a line out of context and supply a question that it might answer. Most of the inking entries. including half this week’s “above the fold” ink, were in this form. Which allowed this week’s results to be full of jokes playing off the news, especially — surprise — the election season. In general, an entry was more likely to get ink if the line it played off was*not* witty, because the Loser’s own line ended up being just the set-up line; the punch line was really the comic writer’s. For instance, several people sent this line from “Agnes”: “It sounded like Minnie Mouse reading the additives on a German can of Spam.” Great line! And so to say “What was Sarah Palin’s last speech like?” or “Tell me about Yoko Ono’s latest album” comes off as anticlimactic. Another example would be the cartoon at the top of this column. While I didn’t give it ink, I marveled at how well “Agnes” creator Tony Cochran seems to know the Invite. Booyah! (In fact, yet another “Agnes” line, “I can’t write an epic poem about colon noise,” was used by too many people who supplied a question like “What would no self-respecting Loser ever say?” ) *Not for the Mini Page: Unprintable comic lines* We’ll start with mild; had Jeff Contompasis not designated it “’Verse-Only,” I’d have thought it printable: I smell a trick. (Frazz, June 24) Not surprising, since Your Mama is home. I was thinking of running this one as a picture, with new words in Jeremy’s balloon, but worried that it might be seen as making light of sexual assault: Jeremy would say instead: “Mrs. Robinson, I didn’t agree to THIS.” (Rachel Bernhardt) Then was have this fabulous, Scarlet Letter-worthy one from Jeff Shirley: “I was going to be in your posse.” (“Agnes”) In your dreams!...oh wait, you said “posse.” And finally we get to whoaaaaah territory, from Roy Ashley: “Let me know when you’re ready to be licked clean.” (the in­cred­ibly wholesome “Red and Rover”) What signals the end of a truly Happy Ending? *WE’RE DINE OUT HERE: COME BRUNCH WITH US THIS SUNDAY* I just heard from new (and repeatedly inking) Loser Hildy Zampella that she’ll be coming to her first Loser event, this Sunday’s Loser brunch — don’t make her just sit around with me. It’s at noon, conveniently at Grevey’s sports pub just off the Beltway in Merrifield, Va., in a shopping center at Arlington Boulevard (U.S. 50) and Gallows Road (Va. 650). The menu is typical brunch*lunch fare. If you get off at the Route 50 Beltway exit, be sure to get over immediately to get off at Gallows Road or you’ll pass it. RSVP to Elden Carnahan on the Losers’ website,nrars.org ; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” And it’s not too late to sign up for Loserfest, an extended out-of-town weekend, this time in Pittsburgh. Check it out at nrars.org as well, or directly at loserfest.org . I’m going to that, too. *WRITE IT IN: THE WEEK 1184 ALTERNATIVE-CANDIDATE CONTEST * Not that I agree with the sentiment personally. But this year, soooo many people are lamenting the choice between two people they can’t stand, or at least think would be a terrible president, and so it seemed the perfect time to bring back our 2008 contest asking for more preferable candidates. Last time, at the suggestion of Loser Brendan Beary, I listed 16 possible candidates, and asked for explanations why any of them would make a good president, and*or to choose two for a ticket. The results, while fairly funny, were somewhat strained, which is why I’m letting you choose*anyone* or*anything* this year. Still, this is a contest that loves playing on multiple meanings of words and phrases. Here are the Week 782 results: Frequently noted: The rock doesn’t change its position every time the wind changes, and that Sweeney Todd and Britney Spears’s hairstylist would both be good at making drastic cuts. 4. Vinko Bogataj, the “agony of defeat” ski jumper from “Wide World of Sports”: People won’t mind watching him screw up the same way, over and over again. (Mary Ellen Webb, Fairfax, a First Offender) 3. Benedict Arnold: Hey, he’s really only flip-flopped on one issue. (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) 2. the winner o f the McCain and Obama gargoyle statuettes: The Firefox browser: If the stock market ever crashed, we could simply restore the previous session. (Bryan Crain, Modesto, Calif.) And the Winner of the Inker Benedict Arnold: Now here’s a candidate who has really fought for change in American government! (Rick Wood, Falls Church) Dork Horses: Honorable Mentions *A moss-covered rock:* Though he presents a tough exterior, time has smoothed his rough edges. And he’s a firm supporter of the environment (or firmly supported by the environment). (Alli Peterson, Newark, Del., a First Offender; and thanks to all the students at the Charter School of Wilmington who’ve been entering the Invitational week after week) At least we’ll know which direction we’re headed. (Mary Ellen Webb, Fairfax; Meredith Brown, Wilmington, Del. -- a First Offender) Moss Rock is solid in times of crisis, he’s clearly the true environmental candidate, and his campaign anthem is one of the best songs ever written. -- B. Seger (Brad Alexander, Wanneroo, Australia) *A dish of tapioca pudding:* With the coming depression, who better to serve on America’s bread lines? (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.) *Ex-president James Buchanan:* You’re not going to find any skeletons in Buchanan’s closet. Aside from Buchanan, that is. (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) Not only does he not get involved in other countries’ imminent civil wars, he doesn’t get involved in our own. (Bryan Crain) He won’t be having any sordid affairs with nubile young women! (Christopher Lamora, Arlington) *Krusty the Clown: Who better to follow eight years of Bozo? (Mike Ostapiej, Tracy, Calif.)* *Bert from “Sesame Street”:* Orientation aside, his monogamy is impressive -- 39 years with the same partner. (Tristan Axelrod, Brescia, Italy) It’s time, after all these years, to have a man of letters in the White House. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney; Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) Although he is from outside the Beltway, he somewhat resembles the Washington Monument. (Dan Colilla, Washington, Pa.) *The Orange Line train from New Carrollton:*It’ll repeat the same messages to the same audience every day and they’ll still come back for more! (Rick Haynes, Potomac) V*inko Bogataj, the “agony of defeat” ski jumper from “Wide World of Sports”:* He’s arguably the world’s greatest roll model. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) He’s a down-to-earth kind of guy. (Ed Conti, Raleigh, N.C.) *Benedict Arnold:* He’s shown great flexibility in adjusting his views to reflect changing political realities -- and he’s provided useful assistance to our oldest and staunchest ally in the Global War on Terror. (M.C. Dornan, Scottsdale, Ariz.) *Emily Litella:* Because, deep down, most of us would be kind of curious to see flea erections. (Russell Beland, Springfield) Because she asks the questions we need to hear, like: “What’s all this we hear about parasailin’ being good for vice president? Sure, hanging from a kite and being dragged by a boat may be fun, but is it prudent?” (Bruce Alter, Fairfax Station) She’s opposed to the whore in Iraq and our young soldiers being maimed by exploding IUDs. Why are we sending our troops to an Iraqi whore anyway? What’s wrong with American whores? (Bird Waring, Larchmont, N.Y.) *Sweeney Todd:* No rubber chicken at HIS fund-raising banquets! (Peter Metrinko) *Britney Spears’s hairstylist:* Sure, he blows a lot of hot air, but I’ll bet he’s pretty knowledgeable about domestic affairs. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) Managing the budget of a country with a huge deficit will be no problem for this candidate: He’s used to doing a lot with nothing. (Beth Baniszewski, Somerville, Mass.) A true populist: He’ll give the top half and the bottom half the same treatment. (Jay Shuck) *Cartman:*When mortgages fail and countless families declare bankruptcy, we will want a leader capable of jumping at least three homeless people at once. (Sean Dolan, Wilmington, Del., a First Offender) *A 49-cent goldfish from Wal-Mart:* Because it’s time for a new bag of carp in the White House. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Vote Goldfish: You know he’s in the tank for you. (Bruce Alter) *Chuck Smith of Woodbridge:* Look at his success in foreign policy: He’s already had a Czar and an Empress wrapped around his finger. (Marc Boysworth, Burke) I can see Dale City from my house. As for foreign relations, I’ve traveled to Mexico, specifically Cancun, and experienced a bad hangover on the plane ride back. I’ve often been quoted in The Washington Post. I am an expert on natural gas, as I am lactose-intolerant. I have been drug-free for many years, more if you don’t count stool softeners. I am no stranger to torture, as I have attended a Celine Dion concert. Court records of my teenage years are sealed. And I once sold something on eBay. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) TICKETS *Tapioca pudding*goldfish:* One is old-fashioned, plain, lumpy, pasty and white, the other new and unknown, with limited experience swimming in a small pond, suddenly thrust out in the world in a goldfish bowl, unable to hide. Just right for the GOP. (John Bunyan, Cincinnati) *Moss-covered rock*Benedict Arnold:* Both the rock -- it’s no rolling stone -- and Benedict Arnold take a firm anti-revolution stance. (Pam Sweeney, St. Paul, Minn.) *Goldfish*Bert:* As Sarah Palin reminds us, “We must not blink.” Here are two candidates who never will! (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park; Steve Offutt, Arlington; Dan Ramish, Vienna) *Benedict Arnold*James Buchanan:* Our counterintelligence efforts will vastly improve under two people who know what it’s like to play for the other team. (N.G. Andrews, Portsmouth, Va.) *Goldfish*Chuck Smith:* The 49-cent goldfish, you have to wonder if there’s a lot a life left in it, and Smith constantly gets his name in the paper for saying silly things. Not the most endearing “qualities” per se, but that doesn’t seem to matter. (Christopher Lamora; Brian Cohen, Potomac) See you Sunday, I hope! ====================================================================== WEEK 1185, published July 24, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1185: Can you get blots of ink from some literal ones? The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over (ew) the new contest and results The uncannily clever winner of Week 77 in 1994 — the only Invite ink ever for Dennis Goris. In this week's contest, you could try a combo like this, but your odds of ink are long. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** July 21, 2016 I was inspired to do the Style Invitational ink blot contest of Week 1185 when I was combing the 649-ink oeuvre of Hall of Famer Jennifer Hart for a week’s worth of Style Invitational Ink of the Day graphics (the latest term for them is “social cards”). And among Jennifer’s 14 first-place entries wasthis one from Week 148, the third and most recent Invitational contest to interpret any in a series of ink blots. That contest was labeled “The Rorschach of the Crowd IV,” but there seems to have been no III. Those contests ran in the pre-Internet years of 1993, 1994 and 1996, and The Post doesn’t have them online. But I dug up some PDFs of what seem to be microfilm, and share them here (I’m also sending copies to Ur-Loser Elden Carnahan so he can post them on his indispensable Master Contest List.). The blots for Weeks 30 and 77 are at left; there’s a link to the ones for Week 148. Those contests were all put up by my predecessor, the Czar of The Style Invitational , who wasn’t deposed by the Empress until 2003; they ran during the flush newspaper years when it wasn’t a problem to put seven runner-up prizes and a giant horse costume on your expense form. *WEEK 30, SEPTEMBER 1993 * *Report from Week 30, *in which you were asked to interpret any of four Rorschach ink blots. AdChoices ADVERTISING Disturbing results. Thousands of entries, many of them too crude to publish — even for the Style Invitational, which traffics proudly in subliminal poopy jokes. The things you saw in these innocuous blots! And you were unnervingly synchronous: More than a dozen of you turned Blot C upside down and saw “Ross Perot in a pith helmet explaining his economic program, using Richard Nixon hand puppets.” Frankly, it weirded us out. +Seventh Runner-Up: (Ink Blot A) Brain surgery by corkscrew, a money-saving procedure under the Clinton health plan (Patricia Smith, Fairfax Station) Our first ink blot contest, in the pre-Staake Year 1. Results are in the column. (Blots and cartoon by Marc Rosenthal for The Washington Post ) +Sixth Runner-Up: (Ink Blot A, upside down) Bill Clinton’s Harley, with training wheels (Ken Wood, Columbia) +Fifth Runner-Up: (Ink Blot C) Minnie Mouse at the gynecologist (Wendy Borsari, Washington; also, Dave Zarrow, Herndon, and Heidi Moore, Alexandria) +Fourth Runner-Up: (Ink Blot D) J. Edgar Hoover, playing “I’m a Little Teapot” (Sue Davis, Beltsville) +Third Runner-Up: (Ink Blot D) The avenging angel of clubbed baby seals (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) +Second Runner-Up: (Ink Blot D, upside down) A rabbinical student flexes his muscles for the much-coveted Mr. Tel Aviv trophy (Matthew J. Peterkin, Washington) +First Runner-Up: (Ink Blot C) “I can’t keep going and going and going. My feet are killing me!” (James H. McDonough, Indian Head) And the winner of the two-person horse costume: Bob wasn’t credited for these blots from 1994, but that’s his first Loser T-shirt shown above them. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post ) (Ink Blot C) Disney horror! Mickey Mouse spotted carrying two severed heads! (Steven King, Alexandria) *Honorable Mentions:* *Ink Blot A:* Carmen Miranda on a bad fruit day (Dan and Lecia Harbacevich, Stephens City, Va.; also, Claire Timms, Fredericksburg) Dogs’ spit-in-the-cup contest (Ann Hall, Fort Belvoir) The Mayan god of panhandlers (Gregory Dunn and Karen Wright, Alexandria) Two Bavarian beer drinkers with big hangovers (Barbara Kallas, Washington) *Ink Blot B:* Socks found “sleeping” on Pennsylvania Avenue (Bob & Lisa Waters, Andrews Air Force Base) Socks, after 10 minutes in the dryer (Lynne DePaso, Herndon) (upside down) Olive Oyl on the cotton-candy weight gain plan (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) Garfield the Sailor Man (Bill Myrons, Crofton; also, Adam Hirschfeld, Annandale) (upside down) Lani Guinier, cheerleader (Joyce Small, Herndon) The Tasmanian devil at ballet class (Beth Tucker, Manassas) *Ink Blot C:* (upside down) The Big Bad Wolf polishes off that first little piggy (Mike Thring, Leesburg) “Attack rabbit” as seen by Jimmy Carter (Stu Segal, Vienna) New, non-threatening Tailhook convention logo (Robin D. Grove, Washington) (upside down) Bob Dole (Elizabeth Rangan, Dayton, Md.) *Ink Blot D:* (upside down) The director of “Roseanne” backs the star into her chair through hand signals (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) A Lamb-Chop-skin rug (Dan and Lecia Harbacevich, Stephens City, Va.) Cabbage Patch roadkill (Katherine Struck, Columbia) --- The second go at the ink blots was in Week 77, in September 1994. By then we had a new cartoonist, some whippersnapper in St. Louis named Bob Staake. . *FOR WEEK 77, 1994:* *Report from Week 77,* in which you were asked to interpret Rorschach blots. Many of the better entries utilized more than one of the blots. One of our favorites was by Noah Schenendorf of Gaithersburg, who said all six blots, taken together, represented “works of modern art by Desmond Howard, for which Redskins GM Charlie Casserly paid millions.” Third Runner-Up: (Blot 3) This ultrasound view of the female abdomen shows that storks really are involved in human reproduction. (Steve Dunham, Fredericksburg) Second Runner-Up: (Blot 1) What [The Symbol Known as Prince] intends to name his first son. (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church) First Runner-Up: (Blot 6) It was not until deeper excavations on Easter Island that the colostomy bags were discovered. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) And the Winner of the Two Frogs Playing Pool: Halloween in Georgetown (See illustration at top of page) (Dennis Goris, Alexandria) *Blot No. 1* A chandelier made from the spines and vertebrae of politicians. (Richard E. Brock, Adelphi) Major league baseball owners have resorted to genetic engineering to produce replacement players. Initial attempts have been unsuccessful. (Kurt Larrick, Burke) The common wishbone, redesigned to meet federal safety standards. (John J. Kammer, Herndon) *Blot No. 2* Marilyn Quayle comes face to face with the Devil. (D.J. Dohahey, Reston) The controversial Shroud of Mary Tyler Moore. (Gloria Federico, Springfield) *Blot No. 3* The Cowardly Lion after cosmetic surgery. His doctor misunderstood when told the lion wanted little tucks around his eyes. (Ann M. Burton, N. Bethesda) Dan Quayle’s Zero Population Growth Plan involves Air Force fighters destroying stork habitats. (Earl Gilbert, La Plata) The June Taylor Dancers performing “Swan Lake.” (Larry Gordon, Potomac) *Blot No. 4* What Madonna wears to church. (Susan Davis, Beltsville) A reflected image of a decapitated buffalo, next year’s Bills logo if they lose the Super Bowl again. (T.L. McBride, Upper Marlboro) *Blot No. 5* (Upside down) Opus, bound and gagged. (Stu Segal, Vienna) (Upside down) A rear view of refrigerator repair men building a human pyramid. (Marta Graffy Sparrow, Springfield) Mickey Mouse checking Stan Laurel for head lice. (Doug Burns, Falls Church) The ill-conceived Mighty Morphin Power Penguin. (Mike Thring, Leesburg) *Blot No. 6* The jacket cover for the new book “Women of the Supreme Court.” (Joseph Romm, Washington) Manic-depressive thought balloons. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) There were constant arguments between the twins as to who would get to wear both earrings that night. (Paul A. Alter, Hyattsville) (Upside down) A new form of birth control: ankle weights for sperm. (Bill Epstein, Bethesda) And Last: Mr. Style Comes a-Courtin’ (Kathleen Pendracky, Avella, Pa.) --- And finally ... *WEEK 148, 1996* Report from Week 148, in which we asked you to interpret any of four ink blots [see them here] : Second Runner-Up: (Blot A, upside down) A pair of giant, cleavage-feeding hummingbirds attack two women involved in a tug of war for the last Wonderbra in the lingerie department. (James Hopenfeld, Arlington) First Runner-Up: (Blot A) In a stunning reversal, crabs get a man. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) And the winner of “The Scream” by Edvard Munch: (Blot B) The American Bar Association logo: two vultures on a field of billing receipts. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Honorable Mentions: *Blot A:* (Upside down) Bob Dole wearing his campaign “smile enhancer.” (Kirsten Schneider, Fairfax) A supine woman with exposed reproductive tract and several links of sausage draped across her belly. What pervert devised this contest, anyway? Jim Ketchum, Columbia) Mr. Toad and his hat at an X-rated movie. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) *Blot B:* Two flying monkeys, each of which first wonders if the woman who left her tennis shoes and bra at his feet will learn to love him, and then thinks, “Yeah, and maybe a flying monkey will fly out of my butt.” (Mike Connaghan, Gaithersburg) (Upside down) The Reliable Source, Annie Groer and Ann Gerhart. (Jim Day, Gaithersburg) *Blot C:* (With musical notes) Mighty Mouse to save the daaaay . . . (Audrey Scruggs, Alexandria) (Sideways) The Ear No One Reads. (Mike Connaghan, Gaithersburg) Leonardo Da Vinci even left sketches for the Wonderbra. (Jessica Steinhice, Washington) Autopsy X-ray shows Elvis’s real cause of death: a severely worn-out pelvis. (Dave Zarrow, Herndon) *Blot D:* Overlooked footprint recently discovered at the murder site by O.J.’s investigators. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Bad: An octopus is thrown onto the ice during a hockey game. Worse: The Zamboni runs over it. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) Georghe Muresan’s wisdom tooth. (David M. Magness, Arlington) An octopus with at least a million tentacles, probably more. — Louis Farrakhan (Greg Pickens, Alexandria) The Eggplant From the Black Lagoon. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) What John Bobbitt’s appendage would have looked like if Lorena had had access to a shredder. (Priscilla Pellegrino, Great Falls) A squid on Prozac. (Tim Sweeney, Churchville) *All blots * The family tree. (Nancy Israel, Bethesda) [Don’t try something like this for Week 1185] And Last: *(All blots) *They are the first four letters of the alphabet. I don’t know what your problem was. This has GOT to be the easiest contest I’ve ever seen. (Mike Connaghan, Gaithersburg) *THE BARDS AND THE BEE*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1181* **An alternative headline suggested by several people* A vaultful of ten-dollar spelling bee words — some of of them tongue-tying mishmashes of letters (solenoglyphous?) — didn’t deter the Invite’s crack squad of Loserbards from incorporating them into rollicking poems, from limericks to “Raven” parodies. This week’s results are, not surprisingly, more ooh-clever funny than bwahaha funny, but we have room for both kinds in Loserland. And — huh! imagine! — many of the entries concerned a certain no-longer-presumptive nominee. Almost everyone among the 14 po’ets who got ink this week gets frequent ink in the Invite’s poetry contests, and the Losers’ Circle was full of Usual Suspects: Chris Doyle, Nan Reiner, Beverley Sharp, and the new-but-already-venerable Jesse Frankovich. I’m not going to count out how many of Chris’s 53 first-place entries have been for poetry, but it’s a big chunk of them. We do have a couple of sort-of newcomers; it’s just the fourth ink (but all in a short time) for Sarah Jay, of the Raven*campagnol parody. And Jayne Osborn, whom I met last month at the West Chester Poetry conference — where she’d brought me next week’s second prize, the weird egg timer, all the way from England — gets her second blot of ink. Jayne, by the way is sort of the Empress of the social side of the poets’ forumEratosphere, organizing dinners for members who live in or are visiting Middle England. *What Doug Dug: * Ace copy editor Doug Norwood weighed in on his faves this week — and they happen to be the first- and second-place finishers. It almost never happens that my colleagues (or anyone else) agree exactly with my picks, so I’m delighted that Doug’s taste continues to improve. *STILL TIME TO BE FESTERING* I just booked a room for Friday and Saturday night, Aug. 26-27, in Pittsburgh for this year’s Loserfest. Among the activities is ashow on Saturday by the Second City troupe on its national tour; shockingly, it’s going for a political theme. Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson has arranged an impressive variety of tours, workshops (make a glass sculpture), museum visits, weird stuff like Knockerball (I’m sorry to miss this one), and of course lots of caloric sustenance. Sign up or get more info at Loserfest.org. ====================================================================== WEEK 1187, published August 7, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1187: Say wha! The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results This week’s winner displayed as an Ink of the Day; get these “social cards” daily on Facebook by clicking “Like” at bit.ly*inkofday. I’ll be posting other Week 1183 entries over the next week. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 4, 2016 It’s our first neologism contest in 12 weeks — Week 1175 was for words whose letters added to 13 Scrabble points — and I can’t envision anything less than a deluge of entries and a mini-deluge of inkworthy ones. (Then again, I can’t envision a Trump presidency either, so for me “certainty” does include hope.) As I mention in the introduction of Style Invitational Week 1187, Loser Matt Monitto noticed that the Master Contest List includes a nine-year-old contest in which you drop the first letter of a word and define the result, but no contest in which you drop the last letter. His suggestion was accompanied by several persuasive examples, two of which appear this week. I don’t remember why we hadn’t run this contest before. Perhaps I just forgot about it, or maybe I thought that people would say their real word was a plural ending in -s, and then they’d just drop the S. *Okay, people: Do not simply drop an S from a plural ending in -s. That would be dumb.* *Can the final word be a real word for which you’ve written a funny definition? * I’m not going to forbid it, but look at the results below for the drop-the-first-letter contest:*Almost all of the inking definitions somehow relate the original word with the neologism.** Can you make that work with a final word that’s already a word? As always, I don’t*require* that the two words relate, just noting that’s what I’ve found cleverest in the past. If you happen to come up with a devilishly clever, utterly hilarious word and definition that doesn’t follow that model, go for it. (*The definition for “kin-diving” below doesn’t relate to skin diving; there might be a couple of other entries as well without that link.) I was reminded to add *“you may use hyphens” * notice from the examples for Week 733: “I-am-I Beach: The last resort spot for egotists” and “BS-ervation: A stupid platitude, like ‘It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.’ ” Those were great! I’d like to think they were mine, but they were probably by 316-time Loser Peter Metrinko, who suggested the contest. So see if you can match the quality of this contest from October 2007: *Report From Week 733,* in which we asked you to create a word by dropping the first letter of an existing word, and then supply a definition. Submitted frequently among the 4,000 entries [this was most likely a rough guess rather than a count] were “rankfurter” (hot dog from the back of the refrigerator), “pectacular” (unbelievably chesty), “Assachusetts” (where Ted Kennedy comes from, etc.) and Hardonnay (you can guess). *4.*Ouchdown: Joe Theismann’s last play . (Ira Allen, Bethesda) *3.* Mnesia: Forgetting a mnemonic device. (Jack Held, Fairfax) *2.* Riskies: Chinese-made cat food. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village) [This entry alluded to the recent discovery of poisonous melamine in Chinese-made kibble sold by several U.S. companies; I received a complaint from an angry reader for my horrible callousness in running it.] *And the Winner of the Inker: * Riminal: A man who doesn’t clean up his toilet dribble. (Deanna Busick, Knoxville, Tenn.) *Lose, but No Cigar: Honorable mentions* Amburger: my realization about myself as I’m kidnapped by cannibals. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills) Amished: Hungering for a simpler way of life. (Brad Alexander, Wanneroo, Australia) Ammogram: A loaded message. (Dianne Thomas, Fairfax) Aspberries: Snake doots. (Howard Walderman, Columbia) Assover: Any holiday dinner at which an unwanted in-law makes an appearance. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Atheter: An even worth medical applianth. (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis) Bacus: A simple device to count the number of alcoholic beverages consumed by your designated driver (Jeffrey Scharf, Burke) Bracadabra: A really good boob job. (Howard Walderman, Columbia) Brupt: Really, really sudden. (Fil Feit, Annandale) Egotiation: An I for an I. (Chris Doyle, sent from Hong Kong) Eminar: Eminem’s fifth child. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) Ental breakdown: When Fangorn starts crazily shedding all his leaves and losing his bark. (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) Etard: A person who constantly replies to all in e-mails directed to only one person. (Jeffrey Scharf) Gonize: To kick someone in the groin. “I’d like to gonize the idiot who moved the Invitational to Saturday.” (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.) Hick-Fil-A: A squirrel that tried to cross the road. (Elwood Fitzner, Valley City, N.D.) Ho’s Who: National registry of prominent hookers. (Chris Doyle) Iarrhea: Running on about oneself. (Jack Held) Ickled: How you feel when your creepy uncle touches you with his fingertips. (Carson Miller, Newark, Del.) Ickpocket: A place to put your used Kleenex. (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Idwife: Every guy’s dream. (Kevin Dopart) Irates: After 15 consecutive losing seasons, what’s left of Pittsburgh ‘s fans. (Jon Reiser, Hilton, N.Y.) Itchhiking: Chasing a tingle from toes to tushy. (Susan Collins, Charlottesville) Kin-diving: Incest. (Tom Witte) Ngland: Vietnam. (Michael Fransella, Arlington) Nowplow: An entirely fictitious device for D.C. residents. (Brendan Beary) Ococo: Chanel’s frilly style before she came out with the simple black dress. (Phyllis Reinhard, East Fallowfield, Pa.) Omenclature: The Homeland Security threat-level warning system. (Edmund Conti, Raleigh) Ompadre: A Buddhist monk. (Bill Strider, Gaithersburg) Onagenarian: An old hand at stress relief. (George Vary, Bethesda) Ooperstown: Home of the Bill Buckner Hall of Fame. (Ed Gordon, Deerfield Beach, Fla.) Oreplay: Laying the groundwork for entering the mineshaft. (Chris Doyle; Tom Witte) Orgy-and-Bess: The Secret Truman Memoirs. (Chris Doyle) Ouch-and-go: A dominatrix’s house call. (Kevin Dopart) Oxtrot: A particularly ungraceful “Dancing With the Stars” performance. (Pam Sweeney, Germantown) P-portunity: Rest stop. (Christopher Lamora, Arlington) Rackdown: the inevitable result of the battle between breast and gravity. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.) Ubergine: An enormous eggplant. (Ken April, Arlington) Unich: German city voted World’s Safest Town for Women. (Jeff Brechlin) Urotrash: Cigarette butts used for target practice in the men’s room. (Brendan Beary) Urple: The color of vomit. “For feeding the baby, Mom always wore her urple sweatshirt.” (Chuck Koelbel, Houston) XY-moron: A man. (Peter Metrinko, Chantilly) *Anti-Invitational *(*add* a letter to the front of a word): Shysterectomy: Disbarment. (Peter Metrinko) *And Last:* NV-itational: A contest that seeks to frustrate by accepting entries from thousands but rewarding only a small group of toadying favorites who obviously have nothing better to do with their time. I don’t want your stupid prize anyway. It looks stupid. (Peter Ostrander, Rockville) *IN LOL HONESTY*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1183* **Non-inking headline idea by Jesse Frankovich* “Not a single Trump joke in there!” marveled Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood after reading this week’s results yesterday. I hadn’t realized that, actually; I guess the Trump jokes canceled one another out. I did note that I got a lot of jokes that dis the honesty of either Trump or Clinton. But as for credited entries, this week breaks a very long streak. (Anyone with lots of time on his hands is welcome to tell us how long.) The 1,000-plus offerings of observational humor included many from new or infrequent Losers; this week’s results include jokes from three First Offenders and several others with just a few inks. Like our Inkin’ Memorial winner. It’s the first win — and the first ink “above the fold,” and only the third blot of ink ever — for Annette Green of way-out-there rural Northern Virginia. Annette’s an Invite rookie; she scored her Fir Stink for her first ink this past May in this year’s foal- “breeding” contest: Great Dane x Who’s Out = Not To Be And she got her first magnet in Week 1180, in which you added a line to a line in one of that week’s comic strips: “ Is the hour up? I’m about to explode!” (”Baby Blues”) “I’m sorry, Secretary Clinton, but your opponent insisted there be no ‘disgusting’ bathroom breaks allowed during the debate.” Second place, on the other hand, goes to the wildly Invite-successful Duncan Stevens — whom we’ll be calling Dunkin’ Stevens for the remainder of the week. Robyn Carlson was a runner-up for the first time just a few weeks ago in Week 1180, but wished she had received the “LOVE*LOSER” mug rather than the “Brain on Mugs” mug. (People, if you’re a runner-up and want a particular prize, e-mail me within a couple of days.) “I will just have to keep trying for the other one,” Robyn said. Ding! This is Robyn’s 15th ink since her Week 1026 debut. Loser mug it is. But it’s a venerable veteran filling out the Losers’ Circle: Howard Walderman has been getting Invite ink since Week 112 212 — most of them via handwritten, snail-mailed entries; Howard didn’t get himself a computer until just a few years ago. But he’s still scored 160 blots of ink. *What Doug dug: * Doug Norwood agreed with me on the winner and second place, and also “laughed ruefully at “If Hillary Clinton were more honest, it would prove she really is willing to try anything to get elected” (John Hutchins) and “If police were more honest, they would charge people with ‘asking for a badge number’ rather than ‘resisting arrest’ ” (Chris Doyle). *NEXT WEEK: WHAT’S THE BAG IDEA? * We ran out of our Whole Fools design of our Grossery Bag for runners-up, and I’ve been given the go-ahead to order 50 in a new design. My plan is to use yet another runner-up or honorable mention from our bag-idea contest, Week 964, but I’ll entertain other suggestions within the next couple of days via email. The design will be on one side of a white bag and can be in full color. It will include the Washington Post masthead logo and will also say “The Style Invitational.” As always, Bob Staake will design it. (Once I run out of mugs, by the way — I have about 15 left — it’ll be just bags for runners-up for the rest of 2016.) ====================================================================== WEEK 1189, published August 21, 2016 Style Conversational Week 1189: Getting a jump on the Limerixicon The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results If your limerick is just good enough for second place, you score an antique book by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who penned not only “it was a dark and stormy night” but also “the pen is mightier than the sword.” (Henry William Pickersgill (not for The Washington Post)) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email** Bio** Follow** August 18, 2016 A couple of eagle-eyed Losers got a bit of a head start on this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1189. A couple of days ago, in preparation for our annual Limerixicon, I updated “Get Your ’Rick Rolling,” my don’t-say-I-didn’t-tell-you guide to what I’m looking for in a limerick. I also created the week’s contest entry form and tested it. And sure enough, on Tuesday a couple of Losers let me know they’d discovered the guide and form already online. Oops. But this is a very small oops, compared with some of my more impressive blunders (links not available). An oopslet. An oop. Because: ● Our Limerixicon has run every August, one week or another, since 2004. It was going to be either this week or next. ● The home page of OEDILF.com , the forever-in-progress limerick dictionary that we’re hopefully going to be enhancing in a few weeks, says: “We are currently accepting submissions based on words beginning with the letters Aa- through Ga-.” Given that the Limerixicon’s sliver of the alphabet is always the section after what’s invited at the time, you might have figured we wouldn’t be asking for gb-, gc- or gd- words. ● And most important, this contest isn’t in any way — and has never been — a race. And the entry window has expanded significantly: For many years, the Invite came out on Sunday, even when it finally went online, and entries were due two Mondays afterward. But the Monday deadline stayed in effect when the contest moved to Saturdays, and then when we started publishing it online on Saturday, then Friday, then late Thursday, and now on Thursday around noon. So now you have 11.5 days to send me stuff. And if someone else has 13.5 days? So what? But yes, in the future, I won’t get these tasks out of the way early. For this week’s example of a limerick featuring a “ge-” word, I combed through our dozen years of previous Limerixicons. Good news: Very few of them contained ge- words other than “get.” And if you’re going to enter a limerick featuring “get,” you’ll have to use it prominently, not as in, say, “get out.” At the very least, it should be accented when read out loud. Here are some (most, actually) of the other ge- limericks I found in previous contests , both Limerixicons and others. If these, along with the Get Your ’Rick Rolling guide, still leave you with questions about limericks — or if you just cannot get enough of them — go to Elden Carnahan’s basically-Loser-porn Master Contest List and search on “limerick”; then click on the*results* of that week number, usually four weeks down. A cheeky young *geek* named O’Malley Had a tendency sometimes to dally While fixing computers For clients from Hooters, Implanted in Silicone Valley.*(Beverley Sharp, da- words, 2008)* Mr. Waters? A call on the line, With a *gender* I just can’t define. Someone born long ago To an actor you know — It’s Chianti, the fruit of Divine.*(Mike Turniansky, di- words, 2009)* Computers are great, I’ll agree, I need technical help, though, you see; And through each passing year, As new options appear, I find that it’s all *geek* to me.*(Mae Scanlan, in a 2010 contest for a limerick including one of a half-dozen given lines, in this case Line 3)* A dozen? But why? What forecloses One less? Still, what everyone knows is You’re scarcely a *gent* If you only present Just eleven long-stemmed perfect roses.*(Robert Schechter, 2011, ea- through el-)* Caltech’s a big deal on TV, And its physicist-nerds are the key. “The Big Bang Theory” speaks In the language of geeks: PhD = BMOC.*(Chris Doyle, in a 2012 contest for limericks about movies, TV shows, etc. Actually, the emphases in Line 3 are pretty much of a stretch; had that not-really-an-anapest appeared in Line 1 or 2, this limerick wouldn’t have worked)* My friend’s a gastronomy *geek,* But my own needs are simple and meek: Pâté and champagne Are too fancy. Just plain Peas and hominy’s all that I seek.*(Jon Gearhart, last year’s ga- contest)* *FREUDIAN QUIPS*: THE INK BLOTS OF WEEK 1185* *(A non-inking headline by Chris Doyle)* At first glance (and a few thereafter) some of the five ink blots we asked you to describe in Week 1185 seemed rather similar and perhaps not too fruitful. But — especially once I decided not to be so particular and literal about every little detail (but why would a frog have wings?) — I ended up with a short­list of more than 80 entries from the pool of 1,500, 40 of which got ink this week. (The other 40, of course, included yours.) Not surprisingly, there were many similar entries for a particular blot; lots of pandas in Blot 2, Cheshire cats in 3, Melania in 4. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial for Hildy Zampella, and just the 15th blot of ink overall — but that’s only because she didn’t start Inviting until Week 1140; lately her name has been showing up in the results more often than not. With the combination of her humor and her great name, I predict that she’s soon going to have people meet her and say, “Oh! Style Invitational!” The second-place finisher, David Franks, first got Invite ink back in 2002, but chose to live an actual life (he’s recently moved from Wichita to deep-in-the-Ozarks Greenland, Ark.). It’s David’s 15th ink, third “above the fold.” If he’d prefer our new Grossery Bag (they’re being shipped as we speak) or one of our last Loser Mugs rather than the dragon*dino hat, I know someone who’d be happ