45 Comments

So interesting to see how Pat’s editing made the whole thing scan better with no loss of content. Editors matter.

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What do I have to do to get the autographed Circus Peanut? You might have explained this, possibly even in great detail. I, however, have the attention span of < a Rabid Squirrel (and I am confidant that that GNFARB has already been claimed) and I now have no idea where I was going with this. Anywhoo...

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Gene --- Normally I don't make ad hominem remarks (unless paid) but, I can't help noticing your display ID here is starting to look like the front of Idi Amin's uniform. Pat, on the other hand, continues with only her simple and elegant (and may I add ingratiatingly, charming) young Betty White pose. You might want to have Marie Kondo take a quick look before things really get out of hand.

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Biological age? Subjective age? Balderdash. In truth, you’re as young as the people you feel.

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With the fire curtain ("wall" is so last administration) descending on "The Gene Pool" in a cynical grab for your kids' or grandkids' summer camp money, I thought it only right to give you an idea of the kind of "need-to-know" information you'll be missing by not subscribing. Don't for a moment believe that business about being able to lurk freely without lining his pockets. Word is, Mean Gene is planning to avail himself of a new technology that renders comments, at will, visible only to subscribers. So, there you are smugly reading along without charge when suddenly --- nothing. Maybe a GIF of Gene giving you the bird or, the British two-finger salute (that hasn't been worked out yet), but certainly nothing you want to see. You have been warned. In this space, no one can hear you scream.

Anyway --- in finger up the butt news. An international panel of experts recently suggested in a leading European medical journal (What!? You think I only read Jackie Collins ?) that the so-called digital rectal examination (DRE) for “active surveillance” should be replaced by MRI scans. And ladies don't think not hearing that unnerving snap of exam gloves going on will be welcomed only by men. The DRE is used as a diagnostic tool for female issues too, as you may know. Well there you have it. You read it here; probably for the first (and if you're lucky, last) time --- though perhaps unwittingly. You can unclench now.

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That is the first time you've noticed that the NYT lies???

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Yes. Lying is deliberate. Getting something wrong need not be. Slanting is not lying.

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When I see Heisenberg I see meth, not physics.

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I'm so happy -- well, that's not strictly accurate -- that someone I admire as much as Gene cares about the acrostic as much as I do. The acrostic is MADE for online! I was so happy the first time I worked it online and saw the miracle of "double placement" or whatever you want to call it.

It took me forever the other day to find out what the heck happened to the "variety" puzzles, and when I finally found some little comment section on the Times puzzle site, most of them were bemoaning the removal of the acrostic online. As one of them said, " How can someone pay a 'premium' for puzzles, and not have access to the puzzles? Or in my case, pay for 'All Access' but not have access to all?"

I didn't know that Cox and Rathvon actually quit -- where will I find them now??? I canceled my Atlantic subscription decades ago when the magazine discontinued Cox & Rathvon's Atlantic Puzzler (and Barbara Wallraff's WordCourt). Don't publishers realize that people subscribe to their product for a variety of reasons, and feel strongly enough about them to vote with their feet?

Sorry to go on about this. but it feels like just one more thing I enjoy that "they" are taking away.

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The Washington Post has discontinued the Acrostic as well as disabling access to the library of older acrostics. I've subscribed to the Post for nearly 25 years and it's a shadow of its former self. Yet "they" keep shrinking their product. Besides news, I believe a newspaper should carry items that entertain their subscribers. Maybe Cox and Rathvon will continue on their own on a subscription basis. I'd pay for that!

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I'd pay for that too!

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In a weird coincidence, I too once had shortness of breath the night before a big (law school) exam, and it also turned out to be a pulmonary embolism that was caught because I went to the hospital. High five Molly!

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Wow!

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Ok, I really think your beg-a-thon needs help. Compare your price to something that everyone can relate to without thinking twice -- apps! We decide we need an app, pay the price and then never use it or rarely use it. Your chat is something everyone will use and not forget about. It's better than a stupid app! (Ok, maybe that wasn't a great slogan, but you get the idea!).

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Hi, this is Gene. So. A chatter has said he will contribute to The Gene Pool but only if I write a poem begging for his money, but using the word "potatoes" to mean money. In other words, I am to work not for money, but for a PROMISE of money. And justr $50.

So, sure.

An angry old scrawler of print

Seeks handouts from a skinflint.

Not $ with eight O's

Just a bag of ... potatoes

 Nudge nudge wink wink hint hint.

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You set a bad example. Now I'm demanding an ekphrasis about the AI painting of Jesus. Actually, I already paid. But someone else might demand it.

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Or an alternative, edited by Pat.

An angry old scrawler of print

Seeks just a small gift, not a mint.

Not $ with eight O's

Just a bag of ... potatoes

Nudge nudge nudge wink wink wink hint.

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How about

A Czar with an ancient phallus

Lured a young maiden into his palace

Then he needed some money

To satisfy his honey

Cause they don’t give away that Cialis

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I am ashamed, and also alarmed, to admit that even after some contemplation I don't get either the Heisenberg joke--which is apparently. about quantum mechanics??--or the Dionne-Putin pun. Oy!

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Fear not fair Hortense for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy... I have it on questionable authority that the so-called "Putin pun" is to be found not in the word "movement" per se, but in the acronym RNIM ("right-wing nationalist international movement") which on closer inspection also stands for "Republican Network of Independent Monitors;" an actual thing. Gave me a chortle, that did. But nothing compared to the real thigh-slapper, "Radionuclide Imaging of Micturition." What a guy, that E.J. Dionne, Jr. Never one to go for the easy poop pun. As for that "Stop, stop, you're killing me" classic in the annals of quantum mechanics humor (a slim annals), you might scroll down, if you've haven't already done so, for the eye-watering explanation. This will cause you to either nod off or exclaim, "Oh!" and then quickly get on with your life.

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Thank you, Dale.

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"nationalist international movement (no pun intended)." As in bowel movement. As in Putin just pooping all over everything.

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I would guess that the "pun" was just the oxymoron of international / nationalist. (I also think the general usage of adjective order should have it "international nationalist movement).

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Does Tom the Butcher get the pun?

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I guarantee he does. He's well schooled in quantum physics.

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Explain the Heisenberg joke, pls.

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Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is that the uncertainties of the position of a particle and of its momentum (which is the product of its mass and its velocity) are related, and their product is never less than a certain value. Consequently, if Heisenberg's speed is known exactly, his position is infinitely uncertain and he's totally lost.

Another version of the same joke:

Cop: "Do you know how fast you were going?" Heisenberg: "No, but I know exactly where I am!"

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Let's start with that laugh-a-minute Werner Heisenberg. He was a pioneer in the theory of quantum mechanics -- which (if you don't already happen to know) deals with the behavior of light and matter at the atomic and subatomic levels. The hilarity comes from his uncertainty principle. The principle states that when it comes to quantum particles, the more precisely you know the speed of a particle, the less precisely you can know its position. So in the joke, once Heisenberg is told how fast he was going, he no longer knows where he is. Hilarious, huh ? Still causes the learned folk at the Lawrence Livermore lab to double over. Although, wags that they are, they sometimes change the speed, chuckling mischievously each time.

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I will do so in the style of MC Hammer:

You have a certain particle

You know its exact location

What's its momentum?

Can't solve this...

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Charged with speeding and hauled into court,

Werner Heisenberg's heard to retort,

"The police cannot prove

Where I was on the move

If they're sure of the speed they report."

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Just saying the other day to my preternaturally brilliant Jack Russells that you just don't get the quantum mechanics jokes these days like you used to, then --- voilà! That being the case, allow me to go that one step further in expanding the elastic bounds of good taste here by adding that, in theory, running around a tree at 87 mph would allow you to have unlawful carnal knowledge of yourself.

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Would the ChatGPT written in the style of Gene Weingarten, been funny and totally in your style if it ended with, "And yet, WE pick up THEIR poop?"

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You have the right idea, but that would be an insuffient line to effectively subvert what came before.

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You have the right idea, but that would be an insufficient line to effectively subvert what came before.

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I'D SAY IT A THIRD TIME BUT YOU MIGHT GET MAD.

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At least no one responded: “You can say THAT again!”

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It's OK, you don't have to shout.

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