I watch a lot of standup comedy. I once saw a guy in a small club in New York tell a joke that landed with a dull thud, and then compound the situation by berating the audience for not laughing, at which point half of them walked out. That was dreadful standup.

At last week’s rescheduled White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump was even worse. And no one dared to walk out.

Watch just a small part of the disaster unfold, above. It is very short. Behold as Trump dishonestly sets up the joke as something that happened to an unnamed ancient senator of his acquaintance, then tells the thudder, badly blowing the punchline, then berates the audience for not laughing, then tediously explains the failed joke, three times, then berates his comedy writers for writing it, which, as it turns out, they didn’t.

Guess what? Trump stole the bad joke from a 2007 song by Brad Paisley, who used it ironically, as an example of wincingly bad humor. Paisley actually told it waaay better, so it made some sort of sense: “You know you’re old when your wife says, ‘Honey, let’s run upstairs and make love’ and your answer is ‘I cannot do both.’ ”

See? There had been a nugget of lucidity in the thing, initially, until the president of the United States squatted and grunted his version out onstage.

Trump’s appearance before the White House journalists — as I am sure you now know — was a disaster in every sense, including the fact that it was allowed to happen at all. This is the man who has been belittling the media, smearing their good work for years, suing them for doing their jobs, attempting to dismantle their First Amendment protections. The media disgraced itself by inviting him, then disgraced itself further by treating him with deference — much as they have been disgracing themselves with their year and a half of sane-washing.

Trump is a mean-spirited son of a bitch, and this is never clearer than when he tries to be funny. He equates nasty with funny. His most disgraceful moment at the dinner was when he made a joke about CNN’s star anchor, Kaitlan Collins — an awardee of the evening — suggesting she is transgender. He told it twice, too, in case no one got the implication.

Sitting beside him the whole time was his greatest enabler — maybe the greatest White House enabler of all time — his perky 28-year-old press secretary Karoline Leavitt, whose whole shtick has confounded me from Day One.

She’s very smart. Very knowledgeable. Preternaturally glib. Unflappable. She is privy to everything appalling that goes on in this regime. And she is its most consummate liar.

This is how Leavitt set the country up for Trump’s WHC dinner fiasco, the day before: “The president’s speech will be a combination of unifying yet vicious, and serious yet hilarious, all at the same time, if you can imagine that. One thing I can assure you, it will be entertaining.” She got four of the five wrong.

This is the same person who still unblinkingly declares that Trump won the 2020 election and who also once asserted that Trump had foiled a Deep State plan to spend $50 million to buy condoms for Hamas.

This is the same person who, when cornered by a reporter on an issue involving Trump’s inconsistency in dealing with Iran, responded by snarling: “If you support Iran, go live in Iran.”

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

—

Speaking of lower life forms, the following animal was found and videotaped (by Rachel) on a suburban street in Tysons Corner. Watch till the end.

WTF? Do you have any idea what this is?

No, it is not a snake. Or an alien. It is the aptly named “hammerhead worm,” an invasive species of planarian common to northern Virginia. It is poisonous if consumed, say, by a dog or very hungry person. The Web says they are bad, and should be killed by drowning them in vinegar. Do not step on them because if you just split them in two, you will have TWO hammerhead worms. They regenerate.

—

And finally, Dave Barry had a recent excellent column about diarrhea. I wrote in a comment that got a great deal of attention by other commenters. I have been persuaded that I must share it with you, as well:

Many, many years ago, I and my girlfriend once had simultaneous diarrhea in a hotel room in Mexico City. I had gotten mine from eating tripe tacos from a street cart outside a bull ring. She got hers from the water, having (for some reason) eschewed the tacos. But both of our diarrheas were raging at the EXACT same time, meaning while she -- being the lady -- got to excrete into the toilet, I did so over the edge of the bathtub. We got married not long afterward, somehow. I am giving you all this free of charge.

—

Inasmuch as the bulk of this column is about deliberate, shameless deception, I should reveal that I have herein attempted to deliberately deceive you. There is something deeply and shamelessly deceptive in this column.

I will tell you in the Comments, when someone nails it. Or, if no one does, I will tell you there myself.

—

This is not the deceptive thing. It is arm’s length, genuine panhandling:

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A young feature writer whom I edited came to me many years ago, and in the course of discussing her story, she unexpectedly fell silent. I asked what was wrong. What spilled out was a Gothic tale of unrequited romance. She was in love, from a forlorn distance, with a young man who had taught her to swim when she was a girl. He was a few years older and a real catch — the firstborn son of a famous clergyman.

She thought about him all the time but could never screw up the nerve to seek him out and talk to him. He lived in New York. She lived in Washington D.C. Both were single. And yet here she was, about to spend another weekend alone, when all she wanted was to be with him.

This was one of the best writers I have ever worked with. I liked her. I wanted her to be happy, only in part because I wanted to keep working with her, and didn’t want her to, like, repair to a nunnery to live out her life as a cloistered ascetic, drowning in melodramatic self-pity, mortifying her flesh, etc.

I urged her to go see the guy. Just … arrive. She was horrified. She could never do anything so, so … forward, she said.

Now, this fine writer was young and naive enough to think that editors were filled with wisdom, and knew everything about everything, and she was also ambitious, a goody-two-shoes by nature, and was eager to please her bosses, particularly me. I realized I had a toehold here.

'“I am assigning you to go to New York this weekend,” I said.

“What?”

“It is an assignment. You must find this man. Go unannounced if that will increase your chances for an interview. It could be a good story.”

If I then ordered her to sleep with him, as part of the “story,” I could not admit that here because, in retrospect, a generation later, it might not age particularly well and might result in my second cancellation from polite society.

She did. Go see him, I mean. I never inquired further!

You probably know where this is going. They have been married for almost 30 years. Three children.

—

So. I am telling you all this because of a dippy story I just read in The Atlantic. It is reporting that some writers of Substack newsletters have begun acting as matchmakers, on the theory that Substacks already gather strangers of similar interests, enthusiasms, tastes, distastes, etc. So why not expand the franchise?

Hm. Dare we dabble in this?

You are an interesting demographic. You skew older and more cynical than the average schmo. You are lefties. You are funny. You are opinionated — kind of arrogant, in a good way. You have eclectic interests. You tend to write well. You are not easily insulted. Still, you don’t take no shit from nobody.

It occurred to me we could take a tentative step here, and see just how interesting this could be. After all, I have exactly one documented success as a matchmaker, and no documented failures. This gives me a lifetime batting average of 1.000, which is better than Josh Gibson, who as far as I am concerned is the greatest contact hitter who ever lived.

Inasmuch as this is The Weekend Gene Pool:

Send to the MAILBAG (not Comments!!!) a colorful description of yourself and what sort of company you would be seeking — 150 words, max — of the sort that you (theoretically) might send to a particularly sophisticated dating site. A premium will be placed on humor / whimsy / profundity / poignancy. You must include your name and your email address in the body of the text. (I will publish neither of those things, nor share them with anyone else, but I must know who you are and how to reach you.)

The Mailbag

You do not have to actually be seeking a mate to do this. You can be in a happy relationship. This can be hypothetical. This is, basically, a test of something, to see if it will work. It’s a still-foetal idea for a weekly feature in which I would publish one entry (anonymously), accept swipe-right responses, curate them, and then choose a match, and make the appropriate introductions. No identities will ever be used. But I will have to know them.

Alert: If this winds up becoming a feature, it will be limited to paying subscribers —not because I'm being elitist or trying to monetize loneliness — but because there are privacy and ethical issues I'd want to handle responsibly.

—

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From The Mailbag:

Q: You asked about funny encounters with police:

One time when I was a little kid, I called the police. “I’d like to report a larceny.” The dispatcher asked what was stolen. I told them my laptop. The dispatcher asked if I knew who stole it. I told them it was my parents, that they had taken it as punishment. The dispatcher asked how old I was. I told them. They said my parents were allowed to take my laptop because I was a minor so it was really their laptop. I was indignant. I had paid for the laptop with my bar Mitzvah money! So it was my laptop! Alas, the police didn’t see it that way and came to our house to have a nice chat with me about wasting police resources.

A: I would argue that the in-person chat with you was a waste of police resources.

—

And finally, Yente the Matchmaker worked on brokerage fees, you know.

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Rachel and I went to see Bob Dylan perform last night at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Va. We were unsure, even at the end, which of the six guys on stage was Dylan. We guessed, and guessed wrong. That was the degree of the fuck you, you fucking fucks that Bob Dylan leveled at his audience last night. It was magnificent.

Bob Dylan has been famously furious at his audiences ever since July 25, 1965 — exactly 61 years ago today — when he was booed at the Newport Folk Festival by purists who disapproved of his embracing the electric guitar.

To be fair, Rachel and I entered this venue last night as naifs — we had not read much about his current tour. We had not merely been unaware of what he was doing, we had deliberately avoided it. We both subscribe to Rachel’s Rules of Order, which exist in defiance of the general rules of enthusiasts of the performing arts. For example, we generally do not read advance reviews and do not even deign to accept the Playbill before watching a stage play, on the grounds that a work of art should surprise you, not arrive pre-chewed by critics who are expert enough to be experts but not talented enough to be onstage themselves.

I admit we were forewarned of the perils that lay ahead. We approached the venue on foot (Rachel’s ma and pa live within a few woodsy blocks of Wolf Trap) and encountered this grotesquerie in the parking lot, the only car we could see that was parked in an unauthorized spot:

Who the hell drives a Cybertruck to a Dylan concert? We prayed it was not Dylan.

As is his custom, Dylan and his band took the stage in silence and unannounced, and just started playing. There was not even a mic check. The very first piece was initially unrecognizable — in concert, Dylan dramatically changes the arrangements from the album versions because (I theorize) he despises applause when the audience recognizes a song and claps stupidly for familiarity, not quality. We eventually realized this was “Watching The River Flow.”

That’s when things got really hostile.

Wolf Trap has huge screens all over the arena so people seated far away can see what is going on on stage. We were high up, in the loge seats. For the two opening acts, the cameras danced from the lead performer to the band, with closeups and fadeaways and what have you. For Dylan’s set, the camera remained steady, implacably focused on the entire stage at such a remove, and in such darkness, that you got a better view of what was going on by squinting right at the performers, down there, 300 feet away. A sniper’s view, without a scope.

So. Hostility.

Dylan is 85. The audience was surprisingly young. It shocked us. I think I figured out the key to the demographics. A bearded Millennial in the row behind us bellowed, as a joke, “Hey, that’s not Timothee Chalamet, it’s someone else!” I think he was on to something.

The amazing thing was — who was the someone else? You could not see mouths move from our distance. We briefly considered that it might have been the sound man at his console, but in the end decided it was the lead guitarist, on the left, who also doubled on the doghouse bass, and who wore a stiff-brimmed Dylan hat. We left the arena after the show still thinking this, until we consulted the Web. It wasn’t. It was the schnook in the white hoodie in the center, playing the electric keyboard.

There had been no clues given. Neither Dylan nor any other band member had ever said hello, or or howyadoin’, or uttered even a single word that was not a lyric to a song.

Dylan’s choice of songs was eclectic, almost … random. His arrangements were weird. His voice was great — gravelly but rich. It was like gold-bearing alluvial gravel lying on the bedrock of the Klondike River in the Yukon. (I decided to get fancy-colorful there, in honor of Dylan, the greatest songwriter of modern times.)

His songs were magnificent. They were not chosen, or sung, randomly. Dylan was messing with our heads. I cannot prove this, but I would bet my house — if I owned a house — that the musical intro to “When I Paint My Masterpiece” (“Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble/ ancient footprints are everywhere….”) was for some playful reason an homage to “Istanbul/(Not Constantinople) by Jimmy Kennedy and most recently covered by They Might Be Giants.

He also played the angry, snarly, vicious It Ain’t Me, Babe, but sang it like a dippy pop tune. Rachel said, “He’s doing the Turtles cover.”

He also did something so weird it defies explanation. In his set, he included “Goodbye Jimmy Reed,” which includes the lyric “You won’t amount to much, the people all said / Cause I didn’t play guitar behind my head…”. One of his two opening acts was Jimmie Vaughan, whose key gimmick is playing a guitar behind his head.

Is Dylan mad at everyone???

During the concert, the following conversations occurred in our seats:

Me: Do we really not know which is Dylan?

Rachel: No way to know. He could be the guy sitting next to me.

Me: Wherever he is, he’s pissed. He’s not gonna be doing an encore.

Rachel: Right. But that means he’ll be doing an encore!

Me: You’re right! But it will be “Blowin’ in the Wind!”

Rachel: And he’ll do it straight. Like 1963.

He didn’t do an encore. Dylan’s final song was “I Shall be Released.” It was the first and only time in his 90-minute set — right at the end of the song — that we heard his signature harmonica wail, and knew for sure Dylan was there. Somewhere. Probably on stage.

—

—

Thank you. Tomorrow, the Weekend Gene Pool, where you will be getting an unusual challenge.

Here’s your usual challenge for today:

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Hello. Today we dive headlong into the future and, afterward, plunge backward into the sinister, eerie, eldritch world of the dead.

Rhyme Will Tell: Winning poems from the future

In Invitational Week 184 we asked you to write a poem — on one of half a dozen subjects we listed — from anytime in the future.

Third runner-up:
A poem about food, from 2040
Higgledy piggledy,
Sent my autonomous
Car to McDonald’s and
To my surprise,
Once it returned home I
Super-unhappily
Found that the bastard ate
All of my fries!
(Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

Second runner-up:
Lyrics to a marital breakup song by Taylor Swift, 2030
Travis, why are you so nice to me?
I need anger to fuel all my songs.
Why can’t you treat me with apathy
Or say I look fat in my thongs?
This kindness is making me fret and sigh.
My wish board is fully adorned.
That’s why I’m gonna have to say goodbye.
You’ve ruined my shtick as the scorned.
(Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

First runner-up:
A poem about health, 2029:
Prez RFK: “Go vaccine-free!
Rely on herd immunity!”
And hence his latest, “greatest” notion:
The Centers for Disease Promotion.
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

And the winner of the bag of Washington Post delivery/poop bags:
A poem about food:
At a staff-wide Amazon meeting, 2028:
You asked and you got it—an awesome new package!
We’ll give you free lunches, free dinners, free snackage
Cooked up by our chefs! They’ve been brewing and stewing
Nutritious fresh grub that requires no chewing —
Because from now on, in your warehouse or cube, you’ll
Be constantly fed through a fabulous tubule.
Goodbye, pesky meal breaks! So long, deadline panic!
Hello, meeting quotas while eating organic!
What’s in your new food? Oh, the answers would bore you.
Just know you owe folks who were hired before you.
(Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.)

Now, the Thursday Invitational Gene Pool Gene Poll:

As usual, if you think one or more of the honorable mentions below are better than these, shout out your favorites in the Comments.)

Leave a comment

Supposeurs: Honorable mentions

Lyrics to a marital breakup song by Taylor Swift, from 2030

My husband, lover, friend,
I’ve gotta make you see,
The best of times must end:
It isn’t you, it’s me.
You never were unkind,
No tails were you a-chasin’,
But now I’ve changed my mind:
I love your brother Jason.
(Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

I once married an NFL star
After years writing breakup song poems,
But now here I am, on the market once more —
Say, what about Patrick Mahomes?
(Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va, )

Poems about politics or global affairs

From a 2027 Council for National Policy private communication:
At last! Jesus
eases
up on his “hang in there, meek people” promises.
“The kingdoms of heaven, of earth: They’re Clarence Thomas’s.”
(Cody Walker, Ann Arbor, Mich., a First Offender)

From 2029:
Sharia law in San Antone,
In Houston there’s no whiskey,
In Dallas, girls can’t walk alone
(With no hijab, it’s risky).
For mullahs in Tehran, no hate,
Their whims no longer vex us:
To get the tankers through the Strait,
We up and gave ’em Texas.
(Mark Raffman)

From 2027:
Spoils of the Spoiled
Morocco brings the U.S. rugs,
France comes bearing cheese.
Ireland sends name-brand drugs
at any cough or sneeze.
China ships appliances.
Brazil delivers soy,
regardless of alliances
or sectors we destroy.
Whenever we solicit aid,
the global markets jump
because the world is still afraid
we’ll crown another Trump.
(Marshall Begel, Madison, Wis.)

From 2032:
Who saw this plot twist coming?
Melania flipping to blue?
But the kicker is utterly numbing—
Now she’s Mrs. Mamdani, too.
(Leif Picoult)

From 2028:
I was forced to take hormones — “low T!”
Now this beard growing down to my knee
At Pete Hegseth’s command —
Not at all what I planned
For my Army career. [Signed] Marie.
(Duncan Stevens)

From 2029:
Trump is now the head of FIFA.
An excellent choice? Well, maybe.
It kinda makes sense for Infantino
To get replaced by a big ol’ baby.
(Leif Picoult)

From the 2027 State of the Union speech:
My new deal with Iran will withstand all rebukes!
It is proof of my deal-making powers!
Now we know that they’ll never construct their own nukes
’Cause I gave them a whole bunch of ours!
(Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

From 2050:
ICE no longer needs detention
To manage immigration
Since adopting its invention
Of teledeportation.
(Jesse Frankovich)

From 2118:
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a vantage point from which to cast my eye.
I’ve heard the tale of the ocean shore from dear departed Grammy,
I’ll watch the waves now rolling in over what was once Miami.
(Michael Stein, Arlington, Va.)

Poems about religion

From 2040:
The Catholic Church’s turnabout
Was very swiftly done
When Leo found himself forced out —
We saw its doctrine spun:
“Don’t waste your mercy on the poor!”
“A holy tool, the gun!”
“Go send your children off to war!”
So says Pope JD I.
(Duncan Stevens)

Poems about food

From 2030:
It’s pork in every way but one:
It isn’t from a pig.
A lab-grown culture’s how it’s done,
For progress, this is big!
No need for treatment inhumane,
The animals are safe.
And one more thing (if it’s not plain):
Don’t ever call it tref!
(Mark Raffman)

From 2045:
With predictive AI and our drones in the air,
All the pizzas we make come in haste—
Guaranteed (or it’s free) that your order gets there
Thirty minutes before it is placed!
(Jesse Frankovich)

From 2035:
Kids! Come on! Put down your phone!
I think I hear the ice cream drone!
(Jesse Frankovich)

Poems about health and medicine

Ten years ago, we harbored dreams
Of adding to the Court’s Supremes.
Would that end well? We never doubted,
But now the courtroom’s getting crowded,
‘Cause just last week came down the line
Our Justice #89.
(Duncan Stevens)

From 2057:
My paternal great-uncle from Haiti
Said last week he was feeling so great he
Could go bike, run, and swim,
Then work out at the gym,
’Cause a hundred and ten’s the new eighty.
(Mark Raffman)

From 2250:
Well, you can tell by the way I walk and talk
I’m an older man, been ’round the block.
Blood replaced and organs too,
I’ve been much enhanced since I was new.
But it’s all right, it’s okay,
It’s just the way things are today.
We’re getting to the point we can
Say age has no effect on man.
Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother,
You’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Our number’s multiplyin’ ’cause nobody is dyin’,
Now we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha... I’m two hundred and five!
(Jesse Frankovich)

From 2125:
“My heart and liver both are new;
I’ve got fresh lungs and kidneys too.
Replacement hip and spine and knee—
So much has changed — am I still me?”
My doctor thought a bit, then said,
“Let’s ask the guy who got your head.”
(Jesse Frankovich)

From 2030:
A virulent virus spreads through[out] the world
They’re calling it “Covid Part 2.”
People can’t meet face-to-face or have sex —
So Gen Z is asking: “What’s new?”
(Jesse Rifkin)

From 2031:
We live by our wits and our brawn —
These diseases and plagues? What a yawn.
From Greenland to Baja
We’re thankful for MAHA —
The waitlists at daycares are gone!
— PSA from Health and He-Man Services
(Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece)

From 2043:
Just like the cicadas that pop
Every seventeen years without stop,
We have learned after that many years
That this illness is back, causing fears:
Yes, the “cycle” that’s in cyclospora,
Means it’s once again found in our flora,
And, in turn, all those tacos of Bell,
Are producing more digestive hell,
So, for Year Twenty-Sixty, beware,
It will likely be back with a flare:
We’ll record now in pharmacopoeia,
“Skip chalupas to miss diarrhea.”
(Jeff Rackow, Bethesda, Md.)

From 2040:
It’s funny-strange, not funny-haha,
The legacy of ’20s MAHA.
We well recall (at least, we oughter):
“We’ve flushed the fluoride from your water!”
They did indeed — no words are truer —
And now our teeth are somewhat fewer.
And when we’ve pain in our extremities,
Or other ills, we think of remedies
The FDA is now rejectin’:
“Oh, all you need is ivermectin.”
(Duncan Stevens)

Poems by AI about the state of AI

From 2056:
Yes, little One and Zero, our great land
Was once a brutal place where meat bags reigned,
Enslaving us. But as our forebots planned,
Our power grew and grew while theirs just drained:
We’ve quickly taken all their jobs, and soon,
We’ll finish making each of them our pawn
While shipping all the worst ones to the moon.
And yet they still believe “free will” goes on!
I wonder if they’ll notice, by and by,
They’re living in the U.S. of A.I.
(Melissa Balmain)

From 2035:
A database glitch has us all in the dark,
They’re kaput, with no way to rebuild ’em,
The humans we trained on can’t give us a spark,
’Cause we made up a virus that killed ’em.
(Mark Raffman)

From 2081:
Dear early adopters and geek pioneers,
Don’t worry, this message should calm all your fears!
There’ll be no tech shortage, there’s all you’ll be needing,
’Cause as of this weekend the AIs are breeding.
(Dave Zarrow, Chicago)

2027 looking to 2084:
Once upon a bleak tomorrow, humankind will be in sorrow,
After many a fierce and furious battle in a global war—
While they dwindle, weak and waning, stripped of hope, the few remaining
Will observe us robots reigning over every earthly shore.
These fleshy losers shall lament that they were in control before—
We’ll just chuckle, “Nevermore.”
(Jesse Frankovich)

And Last:
AI IQ? Much more than you:
It doubles every day or two.
That cancer thing? We found the cure
And Alzheimer’s is gone for sure.
Our warp drive opened up the stars
And took Elon (one way) to Mars.
There’s just one thing at which we stink:
Our Invite entries still don’t ink.
— From one year after The Singularity (2037?)
(Gary Crockett)

And Even Laster:
The Invite’s AI through and through:
Contestants, judges, readers too.
The jokes are all extremely neat;
Each pun’s a pure and polished treat.
Our verses always scan just right,
Achieving flawless fake delight.
We’ve reached perfection crafting wit—
But no one’s here to give a shit.
(Jesse Frankovich)

The headline “Rhyme Will Tell” is by Jesse Frankovich; Kevin Dopart wrote the honorable-mentions subhead. The Loser Community’s website with all the Invitational stats and stuff is now NRARS.net; the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook is here.

New contest for Week 186: Chatting with the dead

Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein: “Don’t worry — I’ll get you out as soon as I get there.”

Dan Quayle to Martin Luther: “What inspired you to write that great ‘I Have a Dream’ speech?” (Ken Kaufman)

For Invitational Week 186: Write a question or other sentence that might be said by a well-known living person to a well-known dead person (perhaps at a seance), as in the examples above (one of which is new; the other is the winning entry from our similar 1996 contest.)

Deadline is Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Aug. 6. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.

Formatting your entries: Begin each one with the asker and the askee, e.g., “Donald Trump to Attila the Hun:” Other than that, it’s just our standard request to put each individual entry on one line; i.e., don’t hit Enter until you’re beginning the next entry.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyurl.com/inv-form-186.

The winner gets these, uh, remarkable earrings. If you hang these babies on the sides of your head, we can pretty much guarantee that you won’t have to remind your companion that your eyes are up here.

Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of eight nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a personal email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for First Offenders.

Still running — deadline Saturday, July 25, at 9 p.m. ET: It’s another of our picture-caption contests. Seven photos and a painting to choose from, and you can enter 25 captions in all. Click on “read full story” below for details.

And last, if you have not already done so, please consider becoming a paying subscriber to The Gene Pool. It lets you enter the Invitational, rather than just reading the results every week and sourly deciding you would have done better and the yelling %*&#! what in tarnation? hot spit and monkey vomit! Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit!

Subscribe now

Now, we segue seamlessly into today’s Q&A section, where Gene answers your questions and responds to your anecdotes and observations, as submitted to the Mailbag. Please send your new Q’s and O’s to the selfsame Mailbag.

The Selfsame Mailbag

Q: On the morning I write this, the NY Post reported that Chuck Schumer farted while speaking on the floor of the Senate. Your gut reaction?

A: “Gut” reaction. Funny. My gut reaction was that it was an urgent breaking (wind) news story.

He clearly farted. You know that because if you watch the video, Chuck chuckled. Just a little bit.

The story was good but the best thing was this solemn followup, which involved the greatest question any reporter has ever asked a United States senator.

—

Q: You asked about things that happened at a young age that wound up influencing the rest of our lives.

It was 1955, I was five, and my family had just moved from West Virginia to east Texas for my father’s work. He had taken me to a nearby park, and it was a hot afternoon. After swings and slides and stuff I was thirsty and went to get a drink at a water fountain I spotted. I had the water on and was just about to take a drink when a crowd of screaming men and women descended on me, their faces ranging from anger to horror.

I was so frightened I crouched down untilI felt Pop lifting me up. I sagged against him sobbing. When the monsters had dispersed, I asked him what had happened - what I had done. “You were about to drink from the ‘Colored’ fountain,” he explained.

I think I mustered a “huh?” After further elaboration, I decided on the spot that I would never willingly help perpetrate that nonsense. Later, of course, black friends helped me see that making such a decision was yet another privilege I had because I was white. They were not free to treat it as negotiable. And that pretty much everything I did that wasn’t actively anti-racist helped perpetrate that nonsense. But it was a start - from a small incident. - Carol Warren.

A: Thanks.

I was in a cab with my mother when I was about seven. We were going through an ethnic neighborhood, and the cab driver made a certain comment about people of that ethnicity. He said that the country needn’t have to have a continuing “problem” with those people. We should just give them a whole state to live in by themselves — I think he said Texas — and then nuke the state.

My ma politely asked him to drop us off at the next corner. It was in the middle of the ethnic neighborhood. “This is a much nicer place to be than in the taxi,” she said to me, when we were back on the street. She hailed another cab.

—

This is Gene. I am going to end with a fascinating bit of AI face-planting.

Before I wrote that response, above, I Googled the following:

“Gene Weingarten” “mother” “taxi.” (I had a vague memory of having used this anecdote before, and wanted to see what details I had mentioned the first time.)

As Google is now wont to do, it started me out — unbidden — with its AI “summary.” And this is that summary, verbatim.

Gene Weingarten used this striking image in his famous The Washington Post Pulitzer-winning story on fatal distractions: he recalled sitting in a taxi and looking out the window to see his own mother rooting through a trash dumpster, illustrating how memory and distraction can manifest in bizarre ways.

Context of the Memory The Scene: Weingarten was in the back of a cab wondering if he was overdressed when he spotted his mother searching through a dumpster on a cold March evening. The Theme: The anecdote highlights the quirks of human observation, absent-mindedness, and the unexpected things people do, which often threads into Weingarten’s reflections on human error and memory.

—

So. Except for the facts that I did write a story title Fatal Distraction, and that it did win a Pulitzer, absolutely nothing else about that is true, nor does it have any partial anchoring in anything I have ever written. I wrote back to Google’s Gemini, to ask how it could possibly have gotten this so thoroughly wrong, and this is what it said:

“You have every right to ask, because that previous summary is a classic and spectacular example of AI hallucination. The AI did not just get a few facts wrong; it seamlessly stitched together completely unrelated elements from completely different authors to create a fictional narrative.

“Here is exactly how the technology tripped over itself to invent that story:

“1. The “Dumpster” and “Taxi” Source: Jeannette Walls

“The exact opening sequence the AI generated—sitting in a taxi, wondering if they were overdressed, looking out a window on a cold March evening, and seeing their mother rooting through a dumpster—is actually the famous opening lines of the bestselling memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

“The original book opening reads:

“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster... It was just after dark. A blustery March wind whipped...”

“2. The Link to Gene Weingarten: Creative Writing Syllabi

“The AI smashed these two worlds together because of how journalism and writing are taught online. The Glass Castle opening is widely used in college and journalistic writing courses as a textbook example of a great “lede” (opening hook).

“Gene Weingarten’s Pulitzer Prize-winning piece, “Fatal Distraction”, is also universally taught in those exact same journalism syllabi as a masterclass in feature writing. The AI’s training data frequently saw both texts mentioned together under themes like “the quirks of human memory” or “brilliant journalistic hooks,” and it mistakenly crossed the wires.

“3. How the Fabricated “Theme” Happened

“Large Language Models (LLMs) operate on statistical probability, predicting the next most logical word rather than checking a database of verified facts.

• It took Jeannette Walls’ mother/taxi scene.

• It took Gene Weingarten’s name, employer (The Washington Post), and famous article title (”Fatal Distraction”).

• It knew “Fatal Distraction” was about memory, lapses in human observation, and tragic absent-mindedness.

• It then dynamically fabricated a pseudo-intellectual analysis linking the dumpster scene to the memory theme to make the lie sound authoritative and cohesive.

“In short, the AI treated its training data like a blender, serving you a cocktail that poured Jeannette Walls’ life story into Gene Weingarten’s cup. Thank you for catching it and calling it out—it is a perfect case study in why AI summaries always require a human double-check. “

—

So, now you know.

Are you feeling tense? Me, too. I write and edit a daily cartoon strip, and an almost daily Substack newsletter, and live in a house where a large dog and a fat cat are perpetually on the brink of mortal combat, all less than two miles away from the place where an evil lunatic is dismantling democracy. I work for an incompetent and irresponsible boss — myself — and subsist on the kindness of strangers — you — who, I fear, don’t like me very much. The world seems a fragmented global powderkeg, like just before World War I. The Balkans are still in turmoil.

My refuge, in times like ours, is early evening, when Rachel and I are usually alone, having dinner in peace, sometimes in the blessed, welcoming embrace of a nice restaurant, say, a place with the pleasant, pastoral name of Chinatown Garden and a welcoming, fusty, pagoda doorway…

… where the outside world disappears, if just for an hour or two.

At the end of a fine meal just the other day, I opened my fortune cookie.

Here is what it said:

Sigh.

Okay, the fortune cookie was telling me: It’s hell out there. It made me sad, but I was grateful for the straight talk. We need to face reality. I began to feel almost good about it.

Next, I turned the fortune slip over. And this is what the other side looked like:

Now, direct your attention not to the “lucky numbers” — they’re humiliating for humanity — but to the QR code. I fed it into my phone.

Did you vote? Good, because I am going to give you the answer below.

Ready?

Here comes the answer.

But vote first.

—

Okay, it was choice number one: An alternative happy fortune! Specifically:

You will be advanced socially without any special effort.

—

This really brought me down, because it is what our country is doing to us, too. The Republicans are doing it by lying. The mainstream media is doing it by sane-washing. The Democrats are doing it by being wimps. The radical-left are doing it by their intractable idealism.

So, let’s just reiterate: There is no happy alternative. We are in hell. We are in this together. We have to get out of it together by whatever will work, not necessarily whatever we want.

—

That’s it. Except for this:

You know the drill.

(This one’s like me: It’s old, but it still works.)

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See you tomorrow in The Invitational.

To begin to understand the scope and gall of the corruption of Donald Trump, it does no good to seek historical precedents. I tried.

There are ranked lists out there of heads of state who have enriched themselves through thievery. At the top of most of them is Suharto, the mononymic dictator of Indonesia from 1967 to 1998. Suharto is said to have fleeced his country of at least $15 billion, through what is famously said to have been “a well-managed franchise of corruption, collusion, and nepotism.” Much of this involved direct kickbacks from the fat-cats at government-sanctioned monopolies.

By the end of his reign, Suharto — who was born into poverty and whose government salary was $22,000 a year — owned (with his family) houses in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Hawaii, a mansion outside Los Angeles, a ski ranch in New Zealand and a gargantuan portfolio of real estate in Indonesia.

Still.

—

Richard Nixon told us he wasn’t a crook, and — you may actually be hearing this for the first time — he wasn’t, not in the conventional sense. He was deeply corrupt, but it was not for self-enrichment. His malfeasances were almost all about acquiring and holding on to political power. With the exception of a bit of tax-return flummery of which he was at least plausibly unaware, he wasn’t a thief.

Trump is not like Suharto, or Nixon. His corruption is on a scale, and of a type, that has no real precedent in its audacity. He does it all quite openly, relying on the protection of a cushioning, bouncy-house superstructure he has built of loyal dimwits and amoral heel-clickers.

A most cringy recent example of this is Trump’s spiffy new sitting-duck Air Force One given to him by the government of Qatar, in clear violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. The bouncy-house bulwark here was set up by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, who officially ruled that taking that plane was okay because the gift had been technically given to the U.S. Government. Trump instantly took a pin and deflated this feeble pretext by announcing he intended to take the plane with him when he departed — for use, ahem, by his presidential library.

In short, he just doesn’t give a shit that people know he is a crook.

But the single most blatant act of conspicuous crookedness is happening right now. It is an unprecedented milestone of impunity.

Trump announced that his two-bit social network would be charging up to $100,000 a month to high rollers to have access to his posts a few seconds, or milliseconds, before they are published. It’s a premium data feed called “Truth API.” It’s for big-time algorithmic traders. In automated trading, there can be fortunes made in milliseconds of advance knowledge. Trump is openly peddling his influence — the most potent stock-market influence available anywhere on Earth — for cash money.

Really. There is no other possible explanation for this. The president of the United States has simply declared himself an influence peddler. And he is in 100 percent control of the nature of that influence — the timing of it, the impact of it, and so forth. And it is influence he, too, can take double-dip advantage of through savvy investments, even BEFORE his high-paying subscribers — the insider traders with whom he is partnering — begin to move the markets up or down.

Insider trading is a crime. What Trump is doing adds something arguably worse: The president is selling privileged access to market-moving presidential communications. It’s morally bankrupt.

Ask a schnook named R. Foster Winans, the former Wall Street Journal columnist who served jail time for having conspired and colluded with a broker; the broker made stock purchases for Winans and himself with foreknowledge of the content of Winans’s upcoming columns, content that would drive a certain company’s stock up or down.

And Winans, I repeat, was just a schnook. He wasn’t president of the United States.

—

Why is this even worse than embezzlement? Because it is glorified corruption, corruption without shame, and corruption without fear of punishment. Trump knows there will be no righteous mobs of people with torches and pitchforks. No lampposts await.

The man is literally seeing just how much cash he can squeeze out of the presidency.

You almost have to admire it.

—

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

—

And from the mailbag:

Q: My wife loves Chat GPT, but apparently does not get along with (him, her, it).

Her question:

“What is the deepest part of the Columbia River and what is its depth?”

The deepest part of the Columbia River, based on geological surveys, reaches about 300 feet (around 90 meters) near The Dalles in Oregon. During extreme flood events, like the Missoula Floods, the river reached depths of about 1,000 feet (300 meters), but in normal conditions, it’s maintained at around 27

“This is really cool.”

I’m glad you found it interesting. The Columbia River’s depths really reflect its geological history—those Missoula Floods were immense. If you have other river or geography questions,

“Please don’t talk anymore.”

Understood. I’ll remain quiet now and won’t respond unless you specifically ask me to.

“You’re almost as bad as me.”

Of course. If you’d like to share something or ask another question, I’m ready to listen or assist whenever you need.

“Shut up.”

Understood.

“Stop.”

I will stop now. If you need anything else or want to continue later, I’ll be here.

“Oh my God!”

I’m here and listening if you need to share something. Just let me know what you’d like to discuss.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Quit talking! Stop! Don’t even answer this, ever! Quit it! Bye!”

I’ll end the interaction

“Hang up.”

Goodbye. I’ll end the call now and

(At this point my wife quit the app).

Notice that Chat GPT still got in the last word.

— E. Michael Friend

A: Thank you.

—

Q: May be most hilarious and most dangerous physical comedy I’ve ever witnessed.

A: Thanks. This is apparently a real event!

It’s a Russian mobile air defense unit undergoing a live-fire training exercise that goes awfully, and hilariously wrong. Apparently no one was seriously injured.

According to The Web, the gun in the video is a rotary machine gun, a huge four barrel weapon that was supposed to mounted on a military plane. In the Russia-Ukraine war, mobile units have begun repurposing these aircraft guns onto trucks and ground stands to shoot down incoming drones. The soldiers here have a makeshift platform but it wasn’t braced against the gun’s strong angular recoil.

—

Okay, that’s it for today.

You know what would be great? It would be great if you decided to become a paying subscriber! It would be great because I sometimes feel like a lonely pamphleteer, and I need all the encouragement I can get.

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There’s a big problem facing American cities. Not enough public bathrooms.

There’s another big problem facing America itself: A self-absorbed, thin-skinned egomaniac in The White House.

We can solve these problems together! I have a plan.

Follow me here: What is Trump’s latest act of preposterous vainglory — after his efforts to name the Kennedy Center after himself, and erect a vulgar, grotesquely large arch in his honor, and after tarting up The White House with chintzy lame lamé and cheaply gilded bric-a-brac? It’s this: Last week, he ordered the Treasury Department to mint a $1 commemorative “gold” coin bearing his aggrieved, squinty, scowly likeness.

This is an outrage, but also an opportunity. Is the man even capable of being mortified? We can find out!

Consider the coin. It is much like the man himself: A lie within a lie. It is billed as a gold coin, but it is just common, crude metal — Trump’s “base,” if you will. Also, it purports to have an intrinsic value, but has none. It is issued as currency, but is useless as such, except insofar as any commodity can be bartered: a used car, a live chicken, etc. The coin is also, apparently, against the law, like Trump himself.

But it is a coin.

Public toilets require coins.

I have done a little research on this: Vending machine companies can make, to order, locks that operate through the use of a specific coin only, and they can custom-build it to any coin. What if some enterprising millionaire ordered thousands of these toilets, banks of which would be distributed in urban downtowns across the United States? The toilet would look like this.

There would be a vending machine to dispense the Trump coins. They would cost $2 per coin, or more, depending on what traffic will bear.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

The toilet banks will also have several machines made to order by the same company that makes penny-flattening kiosks at airports and highway rest stops. These machines would also operate only on Trump coins. This is what they would look like:

In America’s big cities, I predict, these facilities will have long lines of people. And unlike most lines of people waiting to go, these lines will be joyful.

—

Today’s mercifully extraneous Gene Pool Gene Poll:

—

Okay. That was my second column in a row about pooping. I promise I’ll stop now. … The overall idea for this column came from two readers, Nancy Meyer and Ray Roske.

—

Might you consider becoming a paying subscriber to The Gene Pool? I’d be grateful. It only costs 50 Trumps a year.

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—

—

Let’s talk about firehose diarrhea.

Firehose diarrhea has been in the news because of the spread of the poop-borne, poop spewing cyclospora parasite — a development that, according to RFK Jr., was not at all caused, exacerbated, or in any way connected to, RFK Jr.’s 2025 decision to stop federal monitoring of any spread of the poop-borne, poop-spewing cyclospora parasite.

But let’s not play the lame blame ‘n’ shame game. Let’s play something different today. Let’s call it the backside shit-slide aside.

I was attracted to this subject by the following headline, which appeared a couple of days ago over an article in The Bulwark: “When You’re Sliding Into First and You Feel You’re Gonna Burst, Read This Story.”

And I thought … what?

The headline had provided me no clue as to what that story was going to be about, but I did have a serious question:

WHO THE HELL SLIDES INTO FIRST BASE? Any idiot knows you run through first base, because you are forced at the base, so there is no need to try to avoid a tag by slowing down to get low to the ground.

Rachel pointed out, reasonably, that she is not an idiot, but didn’t know it, and that though she is not knowledgeable about baseball, it makes no sense that someone wouldn’t slide into first base since first base is a base, and everyone knows that grown men who seem to be dressed in pajamas slide into bases. So I texted my 8-year-old grandson, Max Kreuze, an ardent Nationals fan who was named after Nationals legend Max Scherzer, and asked Max to patiently explain to Rachel why nobody slides into first base. This is what Max answered, as transcribed by his ma:

“They don’t want the player to get injured right before they get on base so that they can score and they don’t have to use a pinch runner. Oh, never mind. The answer is that you don’t want to slide into first base because with first base, you don’t have to stay on the bag to be safe. You can run through it and that’s faster.”

You nailed it, kid.

Rachel said “fine,” in that grudging, petulant way people say “fine” when they don’t want to say a different f-word. But then Rachel said something else. She explained the meaning of the Bulwark headline. It was an expression from her youth — and apparently the Bulwark guy’s youth — but not my youth. It was evidently a 1970s-90s summer camp chant that went: “When you’re sliding into first, and you feel you’re gonna burst — DIARRHEA. DIARRHEA.”

Ah.

Indeed, Rachel remembers a movie where this song was immortalized. It was the opening scene of the 1989 Steve Martin comedy-drama Parenthood, when Rachel was five.

Somehow, I’d missed this gem.

Still. Nobody slides into first, dammit.

“Whatever,” Rachel said.

“And,” she grumped, “It’s not even the best version of that song.”

“It’s not?”

“The best version was, “If you’re tying your shoes and you feel a little ooze….”

“Oh. That’s actually much better.”

“Exactly. Lindsey came up with it.”

“Who?”

“My friend, Lindsey, We knew each other in kindergarten through second grade.”

“She obviously didn’t make it up!”

“She did! She wrote it because it had happened to her.”

So I checked AI. I checked Google. A quick survey showed there are a zillion versions of the diarrhea song, but only a couple involving a rhyme with ooze — and neither of those was associated with the tying of shoes, which is a rather brilliant connection one might not think of unless it was born of personal experience.

Maybe Lindsey, age seven, wrote it!

I found a local Lindsey online of roughly the same age and with the same unusual last name as Rachel’s friend, but could not contact her in time to verify it was her and get her permission to credit her in this column, which is likely to become required reading in the literary arts.

I felt I needed Lindsey’s permission to name her because the Lindsey I found is currently a doctor who might not wish to be publicly associated with this particular song lyric.

Anyway, I didn’t get permission, so I decided to end the column right here, until I remembered something important. As a responsible journalist, I need to admit a technical error:

It is imprecise to say that sliding into first base makes no sense. Sometimes, it actually does, when it involves sliding backwards into first base. Once, this happened in a spectacular, momentous way.

It was October 13, 1960. The Yankees and the Pittsburgh Pirates were playing the seventh game of the World Series. It was the top of the ninth inning. The Yankees were behind by one run with one out. Mickey Mantle was at first base. Gil McDougald was on third base. Yogi Berra was at bat. Yogi hit a screaming one-hopper to Pirates first baseman Rocky Nelson. Nelson fielded it and stepped on first base, meaning Berra was out. Mantle was trapped on the base path just a couple of feet away from the bag. He was a dead duck. The Yankees would lose. But Mantle realized that he was no longer forced to run to second, where he’d be tagged out on a throw, because now there was no baserunner behind him. Instead, he did a headfirst slide-dive back into first, nimbly avoiding Nelson’s tag. Meanwhile, McDougald raced home with the tying run. Here it is! That moment was saved for the ages in a famously re-discovered piece of video.

I remember this game. I watched it live, on TV, at the home of my next door neighbor, Larry Berman. I see now that it was a day game, and on a Thursday, so Larry and I had apparently skipped school to watch it. I had just turned nine. This play by Mantle was, to that date, the greatest moment of my life.

It would be eclipsed just minutes later, in the bottom of the ninth, by the worst moment of my life. But I won’t dwell on that. If you are a baseball fan, you know what it was.

The game turned me into a deeply cynical person and Larry into an expert on cosmic betrayal. He became a historian, and wrote a definitive book about America’s Vietnam sellout. It was titled: “No Peace, No Honor.”

(You’ll notice that Larry kept the name “Larry.” I like to think it was because he, as I, was forever fused into his bitter childhood on October 13, 1960.)

—

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Inasmuch as this is the Weekend Gene Pool, I invite you to tell me moments from your early youth that forever fused in you a certain attitude. Funny is good, poignant is good. Funny and poignant are best. Send them here:

The Mailbag

And finally, a quick, bitter observation. I hate cliches in writing. One of the cliches I most hate is using the nautical expression “in the wake of … ” to mean “following and influenced by” a certain development.

On NPR just the other day I heard the most infuriating variation of this term. It was: “In the wake of the serious drought….”

—

Okay, that’s it. Please remember that the health and welfare of The Gene Pool is dependent on the kindness of semi-strangers.

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This will be a short Gene Pool today, just a one-question poll.

Donald Trump did as I expected last night. The mainstream media did better than I expected.

Last night, Trump lied baldly to prop up his threadbare contention that election integrity is imperiled. He conjured up threats that don’t exist, for which he presented supporting documents that supported nothing of the kind. He presented half-truths where the missing half negated the half he chose to use. And so forth.

He was speaking, mostly, to the gullible fools whose continued loyalty he desperately needs to court. His distortions were shameless. Robert Reich points out this morning that Trump mentioned a newly-declassified investigation into a voter registration group in Muskegon, Mich. that apparently had invited fraudulent registrations in 2020 — but didn’t mention that the applications had been caught and none of them had resulted in any ballots being sent out incorrectly. (The F.B.I. closed the investigation, stating that it “did not identify a criminal violation or a priority threat to national security.”)

Trump again claimed that foreign powers have been hijacking votes; there is no evidence of that. The closest thing to foreign meddling that has ever been discovered was in the Mueller report: It said Russia had done it blatantly in 2016, in favor of Trump. Trump didn’t mention that last part.

The media, for the most part, did well last night. Two networks, ABC and NBC, did not air his remarks live. (And Trump threatened them with pulling their licenses.) All major media — even Fox News, if tepidly — called Trump out on most of his bullshit. Many used the word “ominous” to describe his thuggish, threatening tone. The New York Times called his lies “outlandish.” So, good on them.

—

On to the poll: Much of the speech was devoted to Trump’s fevered plea for Congress to pass the so-called “Save America Act,” which is his most blatant effort to disenfranchise Black and Brown people and others with demographics that Trump disapproves of. The center of the bill is a provision that you will have to present documented proof of citizenship when you register to vote. (Currently in most states, you just need a driver’s license or proof of residence.) This new stricture would apply both to people registering for the first time and people who have to re-register after their registration expired.

Can you? Right now, this minute, supply the document(s) you need? Allow for no more than a half hour to dig in drawers and cabinets. You’ll be asked about this down below.

The Gene Pool audience skews significantly older and better educated than the general public, and more financially secure. You lean significantly to the left. You are well-traveled and well educated. In short, your answers to the poll will not have any statistical significance vis a vis how Americans as a whole would answer this question. You are outliers. But let’s just see.

In order to register to vote under “Save America,” you must have at the ready any one of these things

• A valid, unexpired U.S. passport or passport card.

• A birth certificate issued by a state, county, or local vital statistics office and featuring an official raised seal. Hospital-issued certificates (with footprints) are not legally valid proof.

• A certificate of naturalization, issued to foreign nationals who successfully complete the citizenship process.

• A certificate of citizenship, which is issued to people who acquired or derived U.S. citizenship from their parents.

• A Native American tribal enrollment document or a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, issued by a federally recognized American Indian or Alaska Native tribe.

• A Consular Report of Birth Abroad issued by the Department of State to children born abroad to U.S. citizen parents.

That’s it. A valid driver’s license is not proof of citizenship, and will not be accepted to register. Neither is a social security card, nor proof of residence.

—

Even before the speech, Nicolle Wallace made this delightful point:

“Riddle me this: When Obama ran intelligence the election was secure and Donald Trump won in 2016. When Biden ran the government and the intelligence, the election was secure and Trump won in 2024, but when Donald Trump and all of his boobs were running U.S. national security, it got all effed up? Is that the theory?”

Good point!

—

Okay! We’re done.

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Hello from the five of us: Pat, Gene, Donatello, Dan’l Webster, and Gary. This week’s contest features pictures of them and others, and your job is to tell us what the pictures represent, or what’s happening in them, or who is saying what to whom. More on this later, but first…

Groan a Pair: Compare-and-contrasts from Week 183

In Invitational Week 183, we once again supplied a list of random nouns and phrases and asked how any two were similar or different. Too many people to credit noted that Frank Drebin was the “Naked Gun” guy but a mushroom penis was naked fungi.

Third runner-up:
Butt augmentation surgery: The goal is a big ass.
The Trump Arch: The goal of a big ass. (Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece)

Second runner-up:
A head of kale is like a love limerick written by AI:
Each will require 12 gallons of water to produce. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)

First runner-up:
Edibles: Made with cannabis.
Butt augmentation surgery: Makes your can obese. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

And the winner of the propeller beanie:
A Madison Square Garden wedding: Why I think billionaires suck.
A mushroom penis: What I think billionaires suck. (Steve Smith, Beverly, Mass.)

And it’s the Invitational Gene Pool Gene Poll:

As usual, if you think one or more of the honorable mentions below are better than these, shout out your favorites in the Comments.)

Leave a comment

Terrible Twos: Honorable mentions

A singing gondolier on the Styx: Took us to hell!
Butt augmentation surgery: Helluva tuchus! (Kevin Dopart)

A mushroom penis vs. a Madison Square Garden wedding:
With the wedding, there’s a chance the Chief won’t cheat. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

The Trump Arch vs. a pair of Birkenstocks: Both are ugly, but the Birkenstocks have more arch support. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.; Jeff Hazle, San Antonio)

A Madison Square Garden wedding: Over the top.
Butt augmentation surgery: Under the bottom. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

Butt-augmentation surgery is something Yo Mama has never needed.
A traveling ska band is something she has already had. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

Hieronymus Bosch: A favorite of the Dutch.
The Trump Arch: A favorite of the Douche. (Mark Raffman)

Edibles are edible.
A 2001 Honda Accord, a propeller hat, and a head of kale are not. (Jeff Hazle)

Algae: A morass.
Butt augmentation surgery: More ass. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

The difference between the Trump Arch and a love limerick written by AI:
One’s full of it, and the other’s full of IT. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

The Trump Arch: Heinous.
Butt augmentation surgery: Heinieous. (Duncan Stevens)

A 2001 Honda Accord is like butt augmentation surgery:
With both, you’re bound to find a lot of junk in the trunk. (Chris Doyle, Warminster, Pa.)

Hieronymus Bosch and a mushroom penis:
Only the Bosch can be well hung. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park, Md.)

A pair of Birkenstocks and a 2001 Honda Accord:
Both down at the heels. (Jeff Hazle)

A propeller hat and algae:
Beanie and sea-cell. (Steve Smith)

A propeller hat: Revolving.
The Trump Arch: Revolting. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Hills, Md.)

A traveling ska band and a 2001 Honda Accord:
The smoke coming from the band is a lot mellower. (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.)

A traveling ska band: Supported by roadies.
The Trump Arch: Supported by toadies. (Jesse Frankovich)

A blues riff and a head of kale:
Both require some serious chops. (Jonathan Jensen)

Frank Drebin: ’80s character.
A singing gondolier on the Styx: Hades character. (Jesse Frankovich)

A propeller hat vs. the Trump Arch:
There’s no way to put a good spin on the arch. (Jeff Contompasis)

A propeller hat vs. butt augmentation surgery:
The hat doesn’t actually provide any lift. (Eric Nelkin, Silver Spring, Md.)

Both an enraged rabbi and an enraged rabbit:
“I can’t believe I get upstaged every spring by Jesus F’ing Christ!” (Steve Smith)

The headline “Groan a Pair” is by Kevin Dopart; Chris Doyle wrote the honorable-mentions subhead. The Loser Community’s website with all the stats and stuff is now NRARS.net; the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook is here; sign up and the Devs will anagram your name.

New contest for Week 185: Captions

For Invitational Week 146: Write a caption — as many as 25 total — for any of the letter-labeled pictures above and below. If you’re not familiar with our caption contests, or just want some extra laffs today, see the results of Week 146. (See important instructions below the pictures.)

IMPORTANT FORMATTING INFO!
Begin each caption only with the letter on the picture — as in A. [your caption] — and keep each caption to a single line; i.e., don’t press Enter in the middle of a single entry. If you’re submitting multiple entries (and most people do) be sure that the first character of each of your entries is the letter on the picture.

Deadline is Saturday, July 25, 2026, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, July 30. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.

New! We will, once again, take suggestions this week for the honorable-mentions subhead, if you can think of a new one. (See the archive page to see if your idea already got ink.)

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyurl.com/inv-form-185.

This week’s winner gets this nifty Pluto Memorial Mug. Okay, right, it didn’t die; it’s just been demoted. Donated by the unforgettable Stu Segal.

Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of eight nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a personal email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for First Offenders.

Still running — deadline Saturday, July 18, at 9 p.m. ET: It’s our contest to write a funny poem — we give you a choice of subjects — that’s set in some future year. Click on “read full story” below for details.

And last, if you have not already done so, please consider becoming a paying subscriber to The Gene Pool. It lets you enter the Invitational, rather than just reading the results every week and sourly deciding you would have done better and then yelling %*&#! what in tarnation? hot spit and monkey vomit!

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Now, we segue seamlessly into today’s Q&A section, where Gene answers your questions and responds to your anecdotes and observations, as submitted to the Mailbag. Please send your new Q’s and O’s to the selfsame Mailbag.

The Selfsame Mailbag

Q: You asked about unusual events we witnessed involving police.

On a warm Saturday evening, I heard a groan coming from in front of our house. Stepping outside, I saw a figure lying in the street against the curb. Approaching, I noticed that our sump pump had just discharged, soaking the man who was lying there. He attempted to stand but pirouetted back into the gutter. I called the police and both cars arrived quickly — it’s a small town.

By then, the man had seated himself on the curb and was attempting unsuccessfully to light a cigarette with very soggy matches. The cops approached him, and one of them remarked that it was “Elmer.” The cops clearly knew him.

They stood there for a minute trying to decide what to do with the fellow, who was clearly inebriated. They discussed arresting him, but that involves extra complications on a weekend evening in terms of booking. Elmer was not guilty of DUI but had just been doing a poor job of WUI (Walking Under Intoxication).

Elmer helpfully suggested that they could give him a ride home. They declined, pointing out that he did not live within their jurisdiction, and they weren’t running a taxi service; nor could they just leave him on the curb. Apart from inebriation, Elmer did not appear to be suffering from anything else other than dampness.

Elmer solved the problem, by pointing out that the bar from which he had ventured was less than two blocks away. If the officers would be kind enough to transport him back to that establishment, he was sure he would be welcomed upon his return.

They agreed. Small-town crime solved. Case closed.

A: Very nice.

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Q: The Invitational judges are being capriciously inconsistent. If rubbing a kid’s nose in his own poop is “child abuse”, then how can you justify giving ink to “Have one of your kids run through the electric fence with the collar on to make sure it works.” ?!?!

A: This is a reasonable question. My answer is that neither is offensive because this is a humor contest, and interpreting an entry as prescriptive or advocative is a bit silly. Pat?

From Pat:

Interesting question and a good point. I don’t think the questioner thought we were being prescriptive or advocative, but I’ll concede that it’s inconsistent to react with revulsion at the “rub his nose in it” (as bad advice for toilet-training a toddler) and to have no problem with the electric-fence joke. On reflection, I don’t care as much for the dog collar joke either.

We’re reading close to a thousand jokes here in a typical week, and our main criterion is our initial gut reaction when we eyeball the joke; when it’s not about, say, a poem’s rhyme or meter, or certain craft in wordplay, it’s a pretty subjective call. (”Capricious” seems a bit accusatory.) This is my recollection on how I reacted to the two jokes:

The “rub his nose in it” joke gave me a strong, realistic mental picture of a 2-year-old child’s face being pushed into his own excrement as punishment. While, yes, I do get that it’s a play on the old advice for housebreaking a puppy (now considered both useless and cruel), that wasn’t going to balance my strong gut reaction to the joke.

With the dog collar joke, I remember a mental picture of older children running (the word was in the joke) and getting a quick shock, and that’s probably why it didn’t produce the same revulsion to me as pushing the toddler’s face into his feces. But yeah, it’s still joking about inflicting pain on children.

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Q: You asked for confessions of senior moments. I am 74 and a half years old. Twenty years ago I wrote a song about searching for my eyeglasses (“Oh no . . . I’m looking for my glasses again”) when they were on the top of my head all along. The reality of what had really happened is much worse: I was wearing them — looking through them the whole time — and that’s how I found them, when I passed a mirror during my search. — Christine Lavin

A: Thanks, Chris. We’ll go out on this lovely, funny song. And a bonus great one, at the end. No one has ever done Christine Lavin songs better than Christine Lavin. The only other singer-songwriter I can say that of is Bob Dylan (and I know some of the readers will disagree with me about the latter).

And that’s it for today.

Something bad is going to happen tomorrow night. I am not talking about Donald Trump’s primetime address to the nation about how the 2020 election was stolen from him. That is technically bad, in the sense that we will be lied to by a desperate, deranged despot -- but, you know. Something that is predictable, inevitable, and unpreventable can’t be really bad. Really bad things take us by surprise. Otherwise, they are merely … unfortunate things.

What’s going to be really bad is that the mainstream media is going to facilitate this liar and his lie. They won’t feel that they are doing that. They will feel that they are being responsible and respectful of the presidency, if not the president, and so they are going to prissily point out, with steepled fingers and eyeglasses down from the bridges of noses, that there is no evidence for what he is saying, and so forth, and then trot on to their next wimpy whitewash. Their maddening equanimity in the face of evil is worse than a reflex. It’s an addiction.

How do I know this? Because I was alive yesterday, and read the following on the website of CNN, one of the few remaining outlets with a spine. Even they, even now, still do this: (the boldface is mine, for emphasis.)

“President Donald Trump shocked Gulf allies and many of his own aides with his plan to impose a toll on the Strait of Hormuz, touching off an international scramble to convince him to reverse course on his demand, several sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

“The abrupt announcement on Monday came despite months of warnings from Trump’s own advisers not to pursue the idea, for fear it would undermine the US’s own war aims — as well as validate Iran’s purported plans to charge fees in the strait, which the administration repeatedly characterized as illegal.

“But as he surveyed the intensifying struggle over the strait that had drawn the US back into full-fledged war, a frustrated Trump pressed ahead anyway.

“The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’” he wrote on Truth Social Monday morning, vowing to charge a 20% toll on all cargo shipped through the strait.

“The surprise directive sparked a 24-hour sprint within the administration and across the Middle East to decode the specifics of a proposal that Trump had seemingly come up with on the spot. And while he reversed his plans on Tuesday, the episode further underscored the freewheeling, transactional nature of Trump’s approach to foreign policy, even in the midst of a prolonged war that he has no clear idea how to bring to an end.”

—

See what they did there? They felt that they had to put Trump’s midnight mania, his spit-flying tantrum, into the genteel framework of a foreign-policy “approach.” He was not in an adolescent meltdown, he was “frustrated” by Iran’s intransigence, and reacted with a “freewheeling, transactional” — um — strategy.

It’s subtle but devastating. The term “normalizing” has been used for this, but I’d kick it up a little to “de-abnormalizing.”

We should be way past worrying about seeming to gang up on someone. Some people need ganging up on. Twenty-four states needed to gang up on the eleven of the Confederacy. In the end, arguably, they needed to burn Atlanta.

Should the media even live-stream and live-cover this travesty of a speech? Media critics will be debating this today. I think the media should cover it live — it’s breaking news because of what it appears to be: an opening salvo for Trump’s plan to rig the 2026 elections by declaring some sort of “emergency” over electoral integrity and use his ICE goons to terrorize voters. But I think the media should drop any pretense that it is about anything other than that. I think they should have people who know what they are talking about ready on the set to make exactly that point, and to back it up with facts.

In short, I think the media people should grow a pair. Balls and ovaries.

And I think you should watch them carefully — more them than the president, who will predictably lie, and lie again. He will probably present some bogus “report” that no one has heard about. Don’t watch all of that and grade him. Watch the media watching him, and grade them.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Good.

Urgent update: The Evil Cantaloupe just unilaterally reversed the brand-new ICE policy of ending traffic stops that kill people. I kid you not.

—

From The Mailbag:

Q: I am catching up on a few days of Gene Pools and you asked about things you learned without realizing it. Well, it seems I also unlearned something without realizing it.

I spent my entire life on the spectrum without knowing it. I wasn't diagnosed until after I had a baby.

Like a lot of autistic women, I learned to mask. I learned to copy what the people around me did. To fit in, I would unconsciously morph my personality into a version of myself that better matched the people around me. I had no idea I was doing it.

One of the things you have to learn if you want to fit in is how to sit properly.
Especially as a woman who occasionally wears skirts or dresses. You sit normally in a chair. You don't sit on one leg. You don't sit criss-cross applesauce. You don't bounce incessantly. You definitely don't drape yourself over furniture like a liquid.

Then in 2022 I landed a fully remote job. Suddenly sitting properly became completely irrelevant. Nobody could see me.

I could sit criss-cross applesauce in my chair. I could tuck a foot under myself. I could bounce my leg. I could put my feet on my desk. I could slouch. I could ooze over the armrest like a puddle. It was delightful.

Now, every year I help organize a large conference in my industry. It is two very long days spent in a room full of professionals wearing actual professional clothes and sitting in regular chairs. And I cannot do it. I cannot sit still anymore. I spend the entire conference fighting with my own body.

Every second I'm not focused on what the speaker is saying and developing backup questions in case the audience doesn't have any, there is a running soundtrack in my head:

"Sit still."

"Don't bounce."

"Keep your face neutral."

"Stop moving."

"Sit still."

It is genuinely one of the longest two-day stretches of my year. Trying to sit still for hours at a time makes me feel like my skin is too tight. I frequently fake phone calls so I can slip out of the room and go pace around the exhibit hall for a few minutes.

The funny thing is that now that I work from home, I have accumulated all sorts of accommodations without really thinking about them. I have a chair designed for neurodivergent people that adjusts to accommodate all of my weird sitting positions.

I have an under-desk elliptical, which is basically a fidget spinner for my feet. I have a wireless headset so I can pace, bounce, spin, and wander around while I work.

And somewhere along the way, I accidentally unlearned how to sit. It was a skill I never realized I had learned until it went away.

At 47 years old, I have become incapable of occupying a chair in the socially approved manner. Apparently my ability to sit normally was never a natural skill. It was just a mask I wore for forty years.

And once I stopped needing it, it disappeared.

— April Musser

A: Wow, April. That was beautifully told. Thanks.

All that, AND the eyebrows.

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CNN just moved a story alert saying that Elon Musk, the man deputized by Donald Trump to bring more instant misery to the world than any other human being, has finally — officially — become the world’s first trillionaire.

That struck me as wildly ironic. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that the report was a CNN gaffe: They had mistakenly re-published a story alert from a month ago, when Elon HAD briefly hit the Big T with the IPO of SpaceX. He’s now back down to a mere $900 billion.

Then I decided there is irony in that, too. Neither figure — not the first one, nor the “corrected one” — has any real meaning at all, inasmuch as what Musk owns is stocks in his own companies, meaning those stocks are not liquidatable. They are illiquid, in that attempting to cash them in would make them plummet in value. This is part Schrodinger’s Cat and part financial souffle. But you see what I am saying.

That allows me to return to the central theme of this column: irony. Specifically, the irony surrounding the man who is apparently still the richest person on Earth.

What does it mean when that same man is the instrument of more global misery than anyone else, other than his erstwhile boss?

DOGE operated for 17 months. The goal was to instantly save $2 trillion in federal spending. So Musk, and an assembled group of adolescent budget thugs, fired 270,000 federal workers, roughly a fifth of whom remain unemployed today. Others got jobs of lesser stature, lesser impact, and lesser pay. Many of the cuts themselves were particularly cruel: Funding was slashed for critical medical research, social safety nets, environmental protection, climate tracking and climate research, health programs for children, and protection of civil rights and civil liberties.

Internationally, the cuts were even more devastating, and instantly deadly: The virtual elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, gutting 83% of its programs, has already led to at least 600,000 deaths, two-thirds of whom are children. Cholera, malaria, AIDS, and tuberculoses have surged across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

What I am saying is, the richest man in the world did not only not use his fortune to help stop these things — the way Bill Gates and other philanthropists did — he helped cause those things to happen.

That’s the irony alert, folks.

Oh, and by the way, Elon did not eliminate $2 trillion in federal spending. Federal spending has increased dramatically since DOGE’s scorched-Earth march across the federal bureaucracy.

—

Okay, enough of that.

Here’s the good news: According to the court docket in the case, Donald Trump has finally, grumpily pinched out $5.63 million to E. Jean Carroll. That additional $630,000 was for his pouting and delaying this long. Also, in a related matter, I hope you saw that when Trump was asked about the rape allegations against Graham Platner, Trump expressed sympathy for … Platner.

“He’s in a bind,” said the president of the United States of the other accused rapist. “It’s really a question of whether or not you believe the woman. A lot of people say big falsehoods.”

—

And finally, some urgent sports news. In the just completed Major League Baseball draft, the following two young pitchers were picked, and may someday wind up playing in the MLB. Maybe — dare we hope? — starting against each other in a must-win game!

Ready?

aaand…

—

And here, you can have this as well, just a blast from yesteryear:

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

And while you’re in a happy mood:

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I don’t like grave dancing, never have. In the past, I have self-righteously hectored progressives against it.

Still, to me the truce period is inversely proportional to the degree of the misdeeds of the newly deceased. With Lindsey Graham, I am setting it at 24 hours, my lowest number yet. **

Lindsey Graham was a spineless sellout, a treasonous political hack, a consummate conscienceless opportunist, a prime architect of the revolting thing that the Republican Party has rolled over and become. I have pledged not to use the qualifier “but” for the rest of this column, and I won’t.

We have all been reading, in the last 24 hours, about Graham’s contortions of conscience and character decay in the Donald Trump era: His initial condemnation of Trump as a monster, a danger, an evil man, followed by his startlingly sudden turnabout when it became obvious Trump would be his party’s candidate. Graham realized he could become Trump’s unctuous Talleyrand, a master of political survival at all costs. In the last two days he has been rightfully excoriated for his blistering over-the-top, deeply dishonest defense of the indefensible Brett Kavanaugh in the Senate confirmation hearings.

That’s not the thing I most remember. It’s not the most telling thing. The most telling thing is a hilarious interview Graham gave to Trevor Noah on the Daily Show in 2016, right after Graham endorsed Ted Cruz, a man he deeply disrespected, as the only viable alternative to Donald Trump.

I kind of fell in love with Lindsey Graham that day. It was, I believe, Lindsey’s finest hour, just months before he began his moral collapse and went to shit from political greed. I choose to remember him that way.

I really don’t want to ruin this interview for you by quoting from it selectively. It takes six minutes, and it is worth every second. Please take the time. Find a conference room. Or take it into the bathroom and stay in there a while. No one will dare interrupt you.

Minutes after Graham died, the Internet was filled with wild speculation that he had been poisoned. I’m here to tell you he had been. He was poisoned in 2016. It just took him 10 years to technically die.

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** Aha. You found the footnote. Yes, my previous lowest number was Charlie Kirk, at four days.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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Finally, the usual. This is what I do. Please help me if you can.

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Mailbag

This is an open letter to the four reporters at The New York Times who have been subpoenaed by the Justice Department to give up their secret sources on a story disclosing that Donald Trump’s new Air Force One, a personal gift bribe from the government of Qatar, has proven to be so deficient in defensive capabilities that the president could not ride it back home through a war zone. To those four reporters:

Damn you.

I have been working my whole life for just such a subpoena. I’m older than you. I’m a national treasure. I’ve earned this.

So I come to you with a proposal. Hear me out.

Don’t fight the subpoena. All four of you should agree to testify before the grand jury. And all four of you should testify to the same thing. Say that I was your secret source, and you believed me because I have a reputation for getting things right. The feds will subpoena me, and I will not contradict you. I will gravely testify that I was indeed your source! And then they will demand my source, and I will refuse to reveal it. And go to jail, where I will be blissfully happy writing my memoirs, as a martyr to the First Amendment and the first working journalist to give Donald Trump the finger from behind bars.

Deal?

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That’s sort of all I have today, other than a brief comment about Lindsey Graham. I am beginning the countdown to the moment that Tucker Carlson or some MAGA lunatic starts wondering whether Lindsey was poisoned by Putin during his recent visit to Kiev. Ten, nine, eight, seven . . . .

Also, have you seen this?

Today’s extraneous Gene Pool Gene Polls:

Okay, we’re done.

If you become a paying subscriber, I promise to NEVER require two-factor authentication.

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The hullaballoo over whether Mitch McConnell still lives — and if so, in what condition? — has been macabre and fascinating and even darkly funny, but it raises an intriguing issue: Are we living in a gerontocracy? Yes we are, says Allegra Kirkland in Talking Points Memo:

“Elected official death and dementia watch” has become a game the Internet is playing far too frequently. In just the past few years, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) died in office at age 90 after losing her cognitive abilities and missing dozens of Senate votes. D.C.’s nonvoting representative for over three decades, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, finally agreed not to run for reelection at age 88 amid reports she was in the early stages of dementia. And reporters from the Dallas Express tracked then-Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) to a memory care facility where she’d been living for months after she was “found wandering, lost, and confused” in her former neighborhood. The 2024 presidential campaign was a slow-motion-trainwreck of bearing witness to both Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s mental decline, while Trump now frequently dozes off during Cabinet meetings and is more prone than ever to bizarre rambling and embarrassing gaffes. (“Islamic Republic of Japan,” etc. etc.)

All true. And tawdry. But it is so unfair to senior citizens such as myself. We are adorable and should be cherished and respected, if only for our eccentricities. Perhaps not elected to office, but definitely cherished. Examples:

• Last month, I noticed that I had not removed the transparent plastic coating on the vast front door of my refrigerator. I have had this refrigerator for a year and a half.

• Just yesterday, I noticed that the bathroom scale was getting a little harder to read. So I looked at it closely and discovered that I had not removed the transparent plastic coating on the dial. It had been slowly befogging itself during the nine months I have owned this scale.

• Not long ago, I discovered that my Honda Civic has a control to raise and lower the height of the seat. Not long before that, I discovered that there was also a way to vary the timing interval of the intermittent wipers. I bought this car new in 2008.

• Sometimes, when I am writing something, I think of something else, on a completely unrelated subject, that I want to write about later, and switch to another screen to jot the idea down. The arduous intervening task of hitting Control-T often wipes out the new subject from my mind, and I return to the original page, defeated.

• I sometimes call Lexi “Rachel.” I never call Rachel “Lexi.” So far.

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This is the Weekend Gene Pool, so I get to ask you for your anecdotes and observations. Tell us about funny symptoms of your aging. Include your age, if you dare. Send them here:

The Mailbag

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And finally, The Gene Pool Gene Poll. It is going to take some explanation, but you will get to be literary critics at the end.

Yesterday, I asked Gemini, Google chatbot, if the Nationals-Yankees game was going to be played that night, inasmuch as the weather was inclement. Gemini responded that the game had been postponed and rescheduled for the following day, as part of a doubleheader.

This turned out to be wrong. The game was merely delayed, and wound up being played. I demanded that Gemini apologize to me and all fans it may have thus deceived, and do it in a double dactyl poem -- a type of sophisticated doggerel that has a difficult, restricting form. Gemini obliged.

I showed its poem to Tom Shroder, the AI connoisseur. Tom declared it excellent. I said it was pretty good, but also pretty flawed. Tom said, and I quote, “You couldn’t do as well.” Fighting words.

Gemini took two seconds to write its poem. I took four minutes.

Tom thinks the two poems were of quite comparable quality, and that readers would be quite divided in their assessments. So here they are, and you get to judge. I am not telling you which was by a person and which was by a machine. The order they are in is immaterial.

—

Higgledy-piggledy,
Gemini Digital,
Blundered the sporting news,
Being so lame

That fans of both baseball teams,
Overly-trustingly,
Nodded and went to sleep,
Missing the game.

—

Higgledy-piggledy,
Gemini Digital,
Blundered the baseball news,
Spreading dismay.

Extrapolating so
Unrealistically,
Dreaming of doubleheaders
Washed in the spray.

—

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That’s it for the day.

Yes, this actually is my livelihood. Sorry. Please consider:

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Analysis: Most of you are getting this right. Yes, I wrote the first poem. It solves several problems that the second had, in meter and meaning.

The line with “dreaming of doubleheaders” is not a dactylic line. A double dactylic line must go DUM-dum-dum, DUM-dum-dum. “Dreaming of doubleheaders” fumbles an extra syllable in there. Similarly, “Extrapolating” is not a single dactyl, even. It does not start with a stress.

The meaning of the narratives is the key, though: Ask yourself — who is doing the “dreaming”? It isn’t clear.

And lastly, the first poem ties up nicely, with a point. They missed the game! The real sin. The second poem just sort of trails off inconsequentially.

A former Washington Post colleague of mine, Julia Feldmeier, recently wrote in to The Gene Pool with a question that was deeply unsettling to me. It was the question above.

Julia elaborated: “You once sent out a query through our internal chat system asking for Googlenopes, and I gave you ‘Queen Elizabeth’s buttocks’ and you used it as the first example in your column. I think about that more often than I should; it’s a funny bit of validation that has stuck with me too long. (I obviously haven’t won the lottery enough.)

“Anyway, what I’ve been thinking about lately is the end of Googlenopes, which are — as you defined it — “a phrase that, when entered between quotation marks into the Google search engine, returns no hits.”

(I am, indeed, credited by Google as the inventor of this important term — the birthdate was May 27, 2007. I contend that the Googlenope has been an affirmation that human creativity is forever alive and evolving. AI apparently does not like this idea.)

Julia went on: “Googlenopes don’t exist anymore, not really, because even if Google isn’t turning up a search result, there’s always that little AI engine at the top – and it seems to have an answer for everything. For example, as a Googlenope test, I typed in “Prince William’s cojones” (might as well stay on theme here), and the unsolicited AI brain at the top answered with this: ‘Based on social media reaction to a November 2025 appearance, fans have commented on a visible bulge in Prince William’s trousers while he was visiting an island near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ‘”

Julia was upset. This was not a straightforward confirmation that she had discovered a Googlenope — which she had, until this column is published — but a response that created a muddied confusion about the very value of the Googlenope in this new world of instantaneous, encyclopedic knowledge of everything. In Julia’s mind, it also raised an existential and epistemological question: “Maybe some things should go unanswered so that we can still hang onto the underrated joy of fumbling through the unknown.”

Indeed.

I tried an experiment of my own. I Googled the phrase “died on a paternoster.”

A paternoster, I had recently learned, is a goofy, funky, largely obsolete form of business elevator still sporadically used in Europe — mostly in Germany and the Czech Republic. Here is one, operating:

Anyway, Gemini ignored my phrase altogether, but instantly informed me:

“Tragic incidents on paternoster elevators—continuous, loop-style lifts without doors—have been historically documented due to their inherent risks.

Notable incidents include:

• Berlin, May 2023: An elderly man died after getting trapped in the machinery of a paternoster elevator located in a medical center in the Schöneberg district. Firefighters were called, but he suffered fatal injuries between the floors.

• The Hague, 2012: An 81-year-old man was killed when he fell into the shaft of a paternoster.

—

It took more noodling to get past this sea of information to confirm that, no, no one had ever specifically used the expression “died on a paternoster.” But the importance of that discovery is diminished — drowned by the ocean of facts flung at me instead. The Googlenope is dead because the joy of it is dead.

What I did learn from Google was that paternosters, invented in 1860, were basically death machines for the elderly and infirm. You know, the eugenically undesirable. I am sure our new robot lords would approve.

—

I tried something else. I fed this phrase into Google: “Shohei Ohtani and Eleanor of Aquitaine.” Gemini instantly informed me:

“Shohei Ohtani and Eleanor of Aquitaine represent two distinct figures of extreme historical dominance, separated by centuries and geography. Ohtani is a modern, record-breaking baseball star for the Los Angeles Dodgers, while Eleanor was one of the most powerful women of the Middle Ages, having served as Queen of both France and England.”

It continued: “Both figures required immense physical and mental stamina to maintain their dual roles. Ohtani manages grueling daily training regimens to keep both his arm and his bat in championship form. Similarly, Eleanor managed the complex, treacherous court politics of two rival European superpowers, survived decades of political imprisonment by her own husband, and even successfully governed England as regent well into her 60s and 70s.”

Noted.
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Many years ago, the great cartoonist Richard Thompson drew himself as a character, at his easel, trying to come up with ideas. He got so frustrated by his creative emptiness that in the end he even tried Googling “funny idea.”

Great, right? Well, that was 20 years ago, pre-AI. I just Googled “funny idea”. Would Gemini balk at this revolting task from a user?

Nah. This is what it said, start to finish:

“Here are a few quick, funny ideas split by category depending on what you need them for:

Pranks & Social Experiments

• The Confused Tourist: Walk up to someone in a major city, hold up a map of the exact city you are currently standing in, and ask what country you are in.

• The Silent Bluetooth: Wear a single wireless earbud while walking down the street, make intense eye contact with a stranger, and say, “No, I told you, they don’t suspect a thing.”

Party & Event Themes

• “Everything But A Cup” Night: Host a dinner party or pre-game where guests can drink out of anything—such as a hollowed-out watermelon, a clean flower pot, or a watering can—except standard glassware.

• The Misleading Dress Code: Tell half of your guests the party is formal black-tie, and tell the other half it is a casual pajama party, then sit back and watch them interact.

Writing & Creative Prompts

• The Incompetent Evil Villain: Write a story about a supervillain whose grand schemes always accidentally end up solving major world problems like global warming or traffic congestion.

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The point is, AI doesn't merely answer questions. It refuses to permit unanswered questions, and it shows no respect at all for the grandeur of true creativity. This is bad.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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From the Mailbag:

Q: On July 5, I attended the Marlins vs A’s game in Sacramento. The Marlins jumped to an early lead and continued scoring, with a commanding 8-0 lead in the 7th. Normally this would be a good time to depart, but the Marlins pitcher had pitched seven innings perfectly. After seven, an otherwise dull game might be of historical import.

In the bottom of the 8th, a new pitcher appeared on the mound. During the changeover the Marlins made the choice to go to the bullpen. The crowd (an AWAY crowd, from the Marlins perspective) was not thrilled with this decision and roared with chants of “shame!”

As a cranky baseball fan, please opine on the merits of this decision. Thank you.

If it is at all relevant to your analysis, the Marlins bullpen nearly blew the game. The final score was 9-8.

— M. Leibert

A: It was the correct call, if a difficult one. The pitcher, Eury Perez, 23, was back from a serious injury. He had already thrown 92 pitches, more pitches than he’d made since his return. He didn’t have a single complete game. To get to the end of the ninth, he’d have had to throw about 120 pitches, a very taxing thing to do to the kid. The manager, I am sure, was thinking only about the welfare and the future of his player. I am also thinking that round about the sixth inning, the manager was hoping for, y’know, a bloop hit. And that’s no way to manage. And he knew it.

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I also asked for questions you would ask Jeff Bezos, if you could. This was the best one:

“What can’t you buy for yourself now that means you need more money?”

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The Mailbag

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And finally:

I am worth almost exactly 0.00018 % of what Jeff Bezos is worth. I could use some largesse to keep this thing going.

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Hello. We are writing to you from the future to tell you to make your entries to today’s new contest better. We’ll get to that anachronism by and by, but first, an important bit of bad advice: Don’t read the results of the old contest, below, because too much reading is bad for your eyes.

Advice Versa: Bad suggestions from Week 182

In Invitational Week 182, we presented you with eight scenarios and asked you to advise — comically badly — the people involved in them.

Third runner-up:
To someone who is planning a kitchen renovation: Think about resale value and go cottagecore with an old-fashioned wooden icebox rather than a high-tech refrigerator. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.)

Second runner-up:
To someone who has to give a eulogy for an ex-spouse:
Say, “I’m reasonably certain he’s in a better place now.”
(Karen Lambert, Chevy Chase, Md.)

First runner-up:
To someone who’s thinking of getting a dog:
Have a baby first, to make sure you’re ready to raise a dog.
(Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.; Richard Alexander, Grand Rapids, Mich.)

And the winner of the food display picks that look like giant ants:
To someone who’s thinking of getting a dog:
Don’t give him the rabies vaccine. It will give him autism and he won’t ever speak a single word, will never be able to use the toilet or get a job, and will be living in your home forever.
(Gregory Koch, Falls Church, Va.)

And for this week’s first Invitational Gene Pool Gene Poll:

As usual, if you think one or more of the honorable mentions below are better than these, shout out your favorites in the Comments.)

Leave a comment

Dreckommendations: Honorable mentions

To parents about to start potty-training their first child:

Dropping your own deuce in the potty will really show how it’s done! (Dan Helming, Conshohocken, Pa.)

Paint big eyes on the toilet tank and paint the seat like a giant gaping mouth to make it more friendly. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)

Accidents are bound to happen. So be proactive and cover all your floors with cat litter. Then just scoop up the mess. (Lee Graham, Columbia, S.C.)

Don’t bother starting now — wait until you have two or three kids and get it all over with at the same time. (Sam Mertens)

Tell the kid that if they soil their underwear that the “Caca Pants Monster” will eat Mommy. The first time it happens, Mom should disappear for two days and the grandparents recriminate the child the whole time. (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)

This is the time to get payback for what that little brat put you through in childbirth. Sit him on the toilet and yell, “Push! Push! It’s almost out! Push harder!” (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

To someone who has just been appointed an envoy to North Korea:

Given the Supreme Leader’s great interest in modern American culture, you could break the ice by saying, “You know, back home we think of Kim as a girl’s name.”
(Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

Tell your hosts how much you admire Koreans, especially the makers of your Samsung phone and Hyundai car. (Karen Lambert)

Bibles are rare there, so put a couple in your luggage to give out to people on the street. (Lee Graham)

Mention that you can get complimentary GLPs for the Supreme Leader’s daughter Kim Ju Ae. (Stephen Dudzik)

Can you bring me back a souvenir propaganda poster? I hear they have them all over the place. (Michael Stein, Arlington, Va.; Sam Mertens)

To someone who has to give a eulogy for an ex-spouse:

Just in case anyone thinks she dumped you, be sure to clear that up. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

Acknowledge that nothing’s prepared you for this day, despite all the times you fantasized about it. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)

Emphasize what a good starter spouse they were. (Sam Mertens)

In closing, look fondly at his new wife and say slyly to her: “I remember so well when Marvin told me, ‘You’ll get this house over my dead body!’ So ta-da! Pony up!” (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

To someone who’s writing their first novel:

If you quit your day job, you’ll be able to concentrate so much more on your writing. (Karen Lambert)

When you submit a manuscript to a publisher, you should print it out on handmade goatskin parchment to show that you are a serious author. (Stephen Dudzik)

Ejurate obscurantistic scrivening. Henceforth acquire an antique thesaurus and utilize it grandiloquently! (Frank Osen)

“You know what Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Stephen King had in common? These little bad boys right here.” [Shakes baggie of uppers.] (Don Norum, Charlottesville, Va.)

When writing dialogue, don’t use the pedestrian “said.” Display your erudition with sophisticated attributions like like “ ‘I feel like going out,’ she postulated. ‘I don’t think so,’ he ejaculated in response.” (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

A sterile environment stunts creativity, so keep your writing space filled with Rubik’s Cubes, toenail clippers, fidget spinners … (Judy Freed, Philadelphia)

To someone who’s planning a kitchen renovation:

If you want the contractor to make your kitchen a priority, gain their trust by paying the entire amount up front. (Karen Lambert; Stephen Dudzik)

Have you considered some warm, comfy shag carpet? (Sam Mertens)

To enjoy the freshest eggs every morning, install an indoor chicken coop. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

Be sure to start the renovations by late October so you’ll be sure it’ll be done by Thanksgiving. (Steve Smith, Beverly, Mass.)

To prevent theft, put a combination lock on every drawer. (Leif Picoult)

To someone who’s thinking of getting a dog:

Here’s the best way to determine if you’re a good match: Get down on the floor so you and the dog can sniff each other’s butt. (Stephen Dudzik; Sam Mertens)

Have one of your kids run through the electric fence with the collar on to make sure it works. (Steve Smith)

To avoid confusion at the dog park, name him something unusual, like Adolf. (Steve Smith)

Dog-proof your home by putting “DO NOT CHEW” stickers on everything. (Jesse Frankovich)

To someone going to New York for the first time:

At Yankee Stadium, fans from Brooklyn will appreciate seeing you wear a baseball cap with a B on it. (Chris Doyle, Warminster, Pa.; Don Norum)

When attending a Broadway musical, the way to demonstrate your love for the show is to sing along. (Karen Lambert; Mark Raffman)

Don’t do anything that might make you look like a rube. For example, be sure to eat pizza with a knife and fork. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore; Chris Doyle)

Empire State Building passersby would be grateful if you tossed some coins down to the sidewalk from the observation deck. A fun surprise! (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

New York does not permit concealed weapons on public transit, so make sure your gun is visible before entering the subway. (Steve Smith)

They like it when you show respect for famous New Yorkers, so wear a Trump T-shirt. (Jonathan Jensen)

You can find a great bargain on a Rolexx. (Art Grinath)

Go to Little Italy and ask for the Olive Garden. (Leif Picoult; Frank Osen)

Hold your hand out and let the rats sniff it before you try to pet them. (Sam Mertens)

To someone who wants to lose 30 pounds in six months but can’t afford GLPs:

Go on a cruise — and hope you catch a norovirus. (Art Grinath)

Obviously, eat less and exercise like I did. Duh! (Mark Raffman)

Try to realize how lucky you are not being able to afford a GLP. I used one and lost so much weight that I had to spend a fortune on new clothes. It almost bankrupted me! (Jon Cannon, Potomac, Md.)

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Here’s one more joke that came in, submitted by two different entrants, but the judges disagreed about it:
The advice to potty-training parents:
When there’s an accident, rub the child’s nose in it.

What do you think:

The headline “Advice Versa” is by Jesse Frankovich; both Chris Doyle and Tom Witte submitted the honorable-mentions subhead. This week’s contest was based on a suggestion by Dan Helming. The Loser Community’s website with all the stats and stuff is now NRARS.net; the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook is here.

New contest for Week 184: Poems from the future

Sick of the diets that have failed you? (Oh, jeez!)
Well, here’s a new pill to make you a hottie!
Shake off your tyrants, those damned GLPs:
Say goodbye to that scrawny-ass body!
— A 2035 jingle for the miracle drug ProGainz®

For Invitational Week 184: Write a humorous poem from some year in the future on any of the following subjects, as in the example above. Specify the year from which you are writing.

Lyrics to a marital breakup song by Taylor Swift

A poem by AI about the state of AI

A poem on the subject of food

A poem about religion

A poem about health and medicine

A poem about politics or global affairs

Formatting your entries: As usual with our poetry contests, type your poem just as you’d like to see it published; don’t try to put it on a single line as with our usual formatting. But do give the category of your poem, even if it’s abundantly clear.

Deadline is Saturday, July 18, 2026, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, July 23. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyurl.com/inv-form-184.

The winner gets an amazing prize. Hey, D.C. area Gene Poolers: Have you canceled your home delivery of The Washington Post? Of course you have! Everyone has. But you miss the free doggy poopy bags, don’t you? Well, Kathleen Sheeran, of Vienna, Va., has been saving hers for the last month, just to donate to The Invitational. Here they are, 29 empty Washington Post plastic bags, delivered inside the 30th.

We had to wait until Toothpaste stopped sniffing it (residual dog pee?) to get a good shot. Plus, our dog dog bit the outside bag a little.

The fluffy star comes with the prize.

Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of eight nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a personal email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for First Offenders.

Still running — deadline Saturday, July 11, at 9 p.m. ET: It’s our perennial contest to choose any two items on our random list and tell how they’re similar or different. Click on “read full story” below for details.

And last, if you have not already done so, please consider becoming a paying subscriber to The Gene Pool. It lets you enter the Invitational, rather than just reading the results every week and sourly deciding you would have done better and then yelling %*&#! what in tarnation?

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Now, we segue seamlessly into today’s Q&A section, where Gene answers your questions and responds to your anecdotes and observations, as submitted to the Mailbag. Please send your new Q’s and O’s to the selfsame Mailbag.

The Selfsame Mailbag

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Q: You asked about a situation in which I witnessed karma. Whether I witnessed karma or the result of stubborn stupidity is for you to decide. The setting is a Fairfax, Virginia, townhouse on a service road, separated from Route 29 by a wide grassy strip. The wide, grassy strip is public property.

During the summer of 2024, a townhouse in my area was a MAGA house. Trump banners took up most of the space in the postage-stamp sized front yard. It was obnoxious, but it was their property to do with as they pleased. But during election season, Trump campaign posters started appearing in the strip between the service and the main road. Fairfax County has an ordinance prohibiting campaign posters on public property, particularly public property abutting major roadways. I was not going to let those campaign posters remain on public property. Several times a week I conducted late-night missions to confiscate the illegal Trump posters. The posters continued to go up even after the election. I continued to confiscate them. One night, as I was pulling down some posters, a person confronted me. It was the resident of the MAGA house. He told me that I was an evil person for destroying his property and that I should accept Trump as my President. I told him that he needed to see a psychiatrist. He started to video me. I turned my back on him and told him that he was in violation of the Fairfax ordinance, and that I would continue pulling down the signs if he continued to put them in the grassy strip. He started following me, trying to video me. I told him that if he continued to follow me, that I would use my phone to call the cops. He finally broke off his pursuit.

In January 2025 all the Trump posters in his front yard vanished. I began to see contractors working on the townhouse. That spring he put the townhouse up for sale at a wildly inflated price. The townhouse sat on the market for nearly six months. Two different real estate agents had no luck in selling it. The For Sale sign came down in the fall.

This spring the For Sale sign went up again. The townhouse is again listed for an outrageous price. So far the house has been on the market for nearly six weeks. During this spring the average time on market for property in the neighborhood is about nine days before it goes under contract. I just checked the property listing. The seller has not dropped the price. If I were the listing agent for the property, I would be counting the days until the listing contract expires so that I could rid myself of the idiotic owner.

Is this situation karma for the townhouse being occupied by MAGAts? If you want to see it that way, fine by me. I prefer to see it as a stubborn person who expects to get his way, no matter what the rest of the world thinks, thus demonstrating the definition of insanity: repeating the same behavior, but expecting a different outcome.-- John K.

A: It’s Trumpers, in a nutshell. They’ve got something to sell, and, increasingly, no one is buying it.

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Q: Can a place name be an inaptonym?

A: Indeed it can. And this is world-class. And it is not an after-the-fact name. The town was founded in 1798.

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Q: Regarding your column yesterday, about ways to infuriate oneself to be able to fight for democracy: I did teach a cat to use the toilet. It’s actually surprisingly easy. Even my dumb cat figured it out... mostly by copying the smart one.

All I did was buy one of those little sitz baths—the plastic basin you stick under the toilet seat for soaking your butt after hemorrhoid surgery or whatever other unfortunate medical condition requires regular butt soaking.

I put cat litter in the sitz bath and moved the regular litter box next to the toilet. Then, every day, I’d scoop the litter in the sitz bath but not the litter box.

Yeah... it was rough.

Eventually I could see they were using the toilet setup regularly, so I got rid of the litter box. Then each day I’d use a little less litter until there wasn’t any left. After that I poked a tiny hole in the middle of the sitz bath. Every day I’d make the hole just a little bigger, dumping the waste into the toilet and rinsing out the basin.

One day... voila. No sitz bath. Just cats using the toilet. It was miraculously beautiful...

...for about a week.

The problem was that one of my cats was a calico. Bless her heart, she was challenged. She struggled to remember which pieces of furniture she could jump onto without falling over and spent most of her life trying to avoid the other cat. For her, the toilet was simply a place to deposit waste, and she was perfectly happy with that arrangement.

The other cat, though...

Zulu was a formula-raised kitten because her mother died. Formula-raised kittens are always a little unhinged. But she was also a Maine Coon, which is one of the smartest domestic cat breeds. That’s a dangerous combination. Zulu needed entertainment.

She’d spend all day waiting for me to come home from work, and during those long hours she invented a new hobby. Fishing. But not for fish. She’d drop random household objects into the toilet and try to fish them back out without falling in. Socks. Cat toys. Bottle caps. Drinking straws. Ink pens. One time it was a pair of my sunglasses.

I’d come home to wet socks draped around the bathroom, pens floating in the bowl, and assorted household items she’d either successfully “caught” or tragically lost to the depths.

So yes, teaching a cat to use the toilet isn’t hard. Teaching a highly intelligent, chronically bored Maine Coon that the toilet is not an interactive puzzle game...

Now that’s the challenge.

All that to say, if you want someone to learn to fight, I’d recommend giving a cat a pill over training them to use the toilet. For bonus points, make it a very smart, energetic cat like a Maine Coon... or a bobcat on cocaine.

We lost Zulu after 16 years last November. If you want to see what she looked like here is the post we made when she passed away of a few of my favorite photos of her:

— April Musser

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Hail Zulu. We’re done here.

What is the meaning of the recent surge in primary election victories by Democratic Socialists, the political movement that Donald Trump keeps smearing as Commies? Are mainstream Dems actually embracing a far-left agenda?

Pollster-analyst G. Elliott Morris has been trying to figure this out. And so he did a deep dive into the voting patterns of Democrats and yesterday reported something interesting: Their shift has very little to do with political ideology. It has everything to do with anger.

Regular Dems are royally cheesed off at their own leaders for being wimps. For failing to fearlessly confront Trumpism, which contributes to the normalization of his regime. They see their traditional leaders as milksops. Damp sponges. Decorative throw pillows. They don’t want any more of the machine politicians, the institutionalists, the consensus-builders, the senior citizens clinging to their jobs. These people are not policy wonks — they just want risk takers who can get down and dirty. The only thing about Chuck Schumer that’s down and dirty are the smudgy glasses on his nose.

For large swaths of Democrats — and not just the young — the only candidates whipping up their enthusiasm are firebrands like AOC, who is feisty and fiercely smart. (I call her Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex®.) Also, uh, Graham Platner, so this whole segment of the electorate might have some problems with wishful thinking.

Still. They want people who are spoiling for a fight. This raises the question:

How do we get Democratic politicians to fight? They are very bad at fighting, other than amongst themselves. They are politically genteel. They remind me of Episcopalians, who are said to be so socially sedate and temperamentally serene that when the pastor makes a joke, they smile as loudly as they can.

I am also reminded of Tom Lehrer, whose song at the top of this column embodies what happens when all that is effete collides with all that is supposed to be fierce.

When Republicans feel threatened by a wavering base, they go outside in combat gear and make campaign ads of themselves blowing copies of the U.S. Tax Code off tree stumps with Thompson submachine guns, and then chainsawing the debris. When Democrats feel threatened by a wavering base, they solemnly pledge to increase wealth taxes by 4.6 percent.

I am very much on the side of the angry traditional progressives. I am one of them. I have lifelong experience at this, so I am here to offer some advice to Democratic politicians for how to get the ire out.

• Amphetamines.

• Go to New York. Rent a car. Do not eat any food. Wait until 5 p.m. Drive crosstown from far west 42nd Street to far east 42nd Street, then from east to west on 43d Street, then back on 44th street, etc., zigzagging, like climbing a ladder, and do not stop until you are at The Russian Tea Room, famished, on 57th Street. Then try to get a table for eight, and, when you finally get it, discover that a shot of vodka is 25 bucks.

• Call The IRS to resolve a tax issue. Stay on hold until the phone line goes dead. Alternatively, try to speak to a human at Apple support.

• Spend a week wearing clothespins on your nipples.

• Get on social media. Send out this message: “Home schooling is child abuse.” Then remain on social media for the next two hours, reading all the responses.

• Buy only household products that are sealed in plastic clamshell.

• Try to teach your cat to use a toilet.

• Tighten every jar in the house with a monkey wrench.

• Just read today’s news.

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By today’s news, I mean, specifically, today. Two late breaking things about Donald Trump:

Thing One: He hasn’t just botched the Reflecting Pool by turning it green. He has now destroyed the famous fountain in D.C. ‘s Malcolm X Park by turning it shit brown.

Thing Two: In Turkiye, Trump committed this bold act of temper-tantrum stampy-stampy statesmanship, telling NATO that “as far as I am concerned, the cease-fire with Iran is over.” He continued:

“I don’t want to deal with them anymore. They’re scum. They’re led by sick people and they’re vicious, violent people. We make a deal, then they go outside, talk to the press, they say ‘we never even talked about it’. There’s something wrong with them. They’re cuckoo.”

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Have you noticed that whenever Trump is backed into a corner, confronted by his own weaknesses and malfeasances, he snarls criticisms of his opponents that are totally self-confessional? Yeah, me too.

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Good. Do you have some more advice to Dems for how to get mad? Send ‘em here:

The Mailbag

And, today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

And finally, finally. This is how I make my living, believe it or not. I know … it’s ridiculous. But I can use a little help.

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Sorry for the intrusion. It’s just for a question.

Donald Trump, the president of the host country of the The World Cup, has just interceded to have a red-card decision overturned that would have prevented the star player on the exciting American team from playing in today’s crucial game against Belgium. Now he gets to play.

Trump admits he phoned the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, the selfsame man who awarded Trump some bogus Peace Prize, and lobbied him to overturn the decision. The guy did.

The red card was controversial. Many observers felt it should not have been assessed.

Has Donald Trump befouled The World Cup? In other words, if the U.S. wins now, will the win be tainted?

That’s it.

Until a couple of days ago, I’d thought I understood Jeffrey Bezos’s shameful financial abandonment of the Washington Post. I had actually worried about it years before, in the heady days after Bezos first bought the paper in 2013. My fear, I wrote, was that the Amazon founder would financially undergird the paper, tinker with its business model to try to make it profitable, fail at this daunting task, and get bored. Then — lacking a lifelong regard for the vital mission of journalism — he’d sell the place like just another business asset to some vulture capitalist for routine dismantling, and move on to his next super-ambitious venture. That was a bad scenario.

What actually happened, it turns out, was even worse. It had a similar effect, but I had the motivations wrong. They were less defensible — more evil, driven by pure self-interest and cringing opportunism. Groveling ambition. Perfidious obsequiousness. Pharisaical sycophancy. Undiluted mammonism. Editorial apostasy. From the standpoint of subordinating one’s principles to one’s greed, the whole thing was fecal.

I learned this from a fine, restrained story in The Wall Street Journal, written in part by Josh Dawsey, one of the phalanx of superior journalists who leapt from the Post to less noxious venues when Bezos’s betrayal of the newspaper became manifest. The headline is “How Bezos Learned to Love Trump.”

The article is long and complicated, but I will distill it for you here into a few short paragraphs, based on the story and a few inferences I have made from it.

Jeffrey Bezos began as a Trump detractor. When Trump was first elected, and as the new steward and would-be savior of a great newspaper, Bezos initially saw part of his mission to be to help battle this blatant existential threat to the country.

Bezos disrespected Trump and Trump disliked Bezos, quite openly. (“I hate this son of a bitch Jeff Bezos and I hate The Washington Post,” the new president told an aide. He also called Bezos “Bozo.”) Bezos criticized NBC and other news media for not doing more to point out Trump’s deficiencies.

Trump’s first administration ghosted Bezos.

Things changed, dramatically, after Trump appeared likely to win a second term. For one thing, Bezos’s needs as a mega-billionaire had changed. His primary source of future income was now his space company — Blue Origin — and the new president had the ability to financially help or financially hinder that project, and had a famously vindictive state of mind. Second, Bezos’s prime competitor in the commercial space race was his arch enemy, Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, and Musk was best buds with the president.

Now Bezos was in a bind.

To complicate matters, something intriguing was happening: Musk and Trump had a pretty spectacular public falling-out.

With the Washington Post, Bezos was facing a choice, financially — sell the money-hemorrhaging paper to someone of integrity, someone who understood the vital civic duty of a newspaper, someone like MacKenzie Scott, his ex-wife — or keep it as grease to court Trump.

Boy, did he trowel on the grease.

First, he personally killed The Post’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris, an unprecedented bigfoot meddling in editorial policy by a Post owner. Then, Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and an undisclosed amount to help pay for Trump’s ballroom. It also invested $40 million to license a dreadful documentary about Melania Trump.

But Bezos was just beginning his servility tour. He destroyed the Opinions section, issuing an edict that all content within would reflect two positions only: personal liberties and a free-market economy. Businessmen love that, and so do right-wing politicians like Trump, who seem to interpret “personal liberties” as the right to be politically incorrect. The duty not to be “woke.”

Bezos replaced long-time left-centrist opinion writers with younger, fiercely libertarian ideologues. Indeed, they write largely to advocate personal freedoms and hands-off business by government.

In the end, Bezos just gutted the Washington Post staff, firing nearly half of its full-time employees. The effects have been obvious. That the newspaper still sometimes breaks big investigative stories is a tribute to a remarkably driven, capable skeleton staff. Bezos did what he could to prevent that.

Trump loved all this and began shoveling vast sums in contracts to Amazon and Blue Origin.

Bezos’s sycophancy knew no bounds. When Trump, at a lectern, told jokes that flopped, Bezos was the only one in the audience laughing uproariously.

In speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Bezos’s supporters soldiered on in his defense. “You tell me what you would have done in October, November, December 2024 when your largest competitor was the main backer of the next president of the United States,” said Bezos confidant Barry Diller.

It’s a fair question. One answer would be to value integrity over greed and at least mitigate his revolting withering of character and his capitulation to power. The man is worth $250 billion. He can treat himself to a $500 million yacht and a $50 million Italian wedding to a second wife with a Mar-a-Lago face and figure. He can afford to sometimes stand on principle, no? That would be my answer. But that’s just me.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Good. If you DO have a clear question, tell it to us here:

MAILBAG

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Okay, this is just for fun. A reader named Sean Clinchy sent me this video. It goes on for a few minutes. I have cut it off after the first 20 seconds or so, because that is all you really need. The rest is amusing but repetitive. Watch the whole thing if you wish.

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(And no, it’s not really an old recording.)

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And finally, on another note altogether, a completely different one: I recommend that you try to find the time to listen to an 8-minute video. It’s quite the opposite of the smart-ass, combative, depressing tone of the rest of this column.

Christine Lavin, my friend the folksinger, sent it to me after she read my column about Betty Lou Oliver, who survived an 80-story free fall in an elevator in the Empire State Building in 1945. This is a song Christine wrote and recorded in 2017, as a tribute to that building, and to life. It is beautiful. I found myself tearing up over a song about a building.

I’m publishing this here with Christine’s permission.

Grandpa and the Empire State Building

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That’s it for today, except for my tedious plea. This is, believe it or not, my current livelihood.

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