Invitational Week 92: Wryku
Write us a funny haiku about something in the news. Plus our winning campaign bumper stickers!
The Candidate
A man is running,
Sweet family by his side.
What’s wrong with this pic?
Hello. This week’s Invitational appears at the suggestion of Melissa Balmain, who in addition to being a 217-time Invitational Loser (including as a 16-time winner) is the editor in chief of the poetry journal Light, which regularly offers topical “Poems of the Week.” Melissa wrote to remind us that we hadn’t run a haiku contest in quite a while — and that if we would, she’d even pony up the prize.
For Invitational Week 92: Write a witty haiku about anything in the news right now, as in Gene’s example above about the strange ad by Virginia congressional candidate Derrick Anderson. For our purposes — and with this we aim to stop the pedants in mid-hand-wring — we’re defining a haiku as any three-line poem with five syllables in Lines 1 and 3, seven syllables in Line 2. It may have a rhyme but does not have to. It should be funny. It doesn’t have to concern nature etc. etc, etc. etc. You may add a title, and if your haiku is referring to a specific news item, we could link to it, as above, if you’ll include the URL.
This week’s winner receives the tote bag pictured above, displaying a haiku by Paul Lander, himself an Invite One-Hit Wonder. And Melissa reports that “this is one sturdy tote. I lugged home quite the haul of gourds.” So go for the gourd!
Formatting this week: While of course we’ll run each inking haiku as three lines, please submit each haiku (including the title if any) in one long line, separated by slashes. For example, here’s how this almost eternally timely haiku would be submitted; it’s by the late light-verse master Mae Scanlan:
Springtime in D.C.!/ Two things ruin outdoor fun: / Mosquitoes and Nats.
Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyURL.com/inv-form-92.
An extra day! Because of the unfortunate scheduling of this year’s Yom Kippur, which was inconsiderately set 1,700 years ago on the Hebrew calendar, this week’s deadline will be extended to Sunday, Oct. 13, at 5 p.m. ET. (Sharp!) Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Oct. 17. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.
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.
Meanwhile, send us questions or observations, which Gene hopes to deal with in real time today. You do this, as always, by sending them to this here button:
Back-Ended Compliments: Winning bumper stickers from Week 90
In Invitational Week 90, we asked you to suggest ideas for bumper stickers about this year’s elections. Not that we’re actually going to print the permanent car-defacers, as we used to do for honorable-mention winners back in the 20th century.
Third runner-up, by Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.:
Second runner-up, by Jesse Frankovich:
First runner-up, submitted similarly by Michael Stein, Arlington, Va., and Dan Helming, Conshohocken, Pa.:
And the winner of the figurine of NFL star Ricky Williams from when he was playing bush-league baseball for the Piedmont Boll Weevils, by Jon Gearhart, Des Moines, Iowa:
As always, if you think the best among today’s inking entries were unjustly buried in the honorable mentions, shout out your favorites in the comments.
Decal Matter: Honorable mentions
Immigrants Are Grabbing Your Socks From the Laundromat Dryer! Vote Trump! (Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)
De Ploribus Unum: Trump Voters, Unite! (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)
For He’s a Jowly Old Felon: Harris 2024 (Jesse Frankovich)
Trump Means Never Bothering to Say You’re Sorry (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.; Diana Oertel, San Francisco)
On Wednesday, November 6, Cast Your Vote for Trump! (and in teeny type: Vote Harris) (Jonathan Jensen)
All Hands on Dick for Lauren! Reelect Boebert (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)
Listen carefully, as our menu options have changed: KAMALA HARRIS and TIM WALZ (Jim Schaefer, Greenbelt, Md., a First Offender)
Even Having Trump’s Name Here Devalues My Car (Neal Starkman, Seattle)
If You Can’t Read This, We’ll Deport You: Trump-Vance 2024 (Jon Gearhart)
If You Can Read This, You’re Too Smart to Vote for Trump: Harris ’24 (Michael Stein)
She Suffices (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)
Concepts of a Bumper Sticker (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)
Only Cats Should Be Orange and Stupid: Vote Harris (Gregory Koch, Falls Church, Va.)
The Truth Hurts. So Ignore It. Trump-Vance 2024 (Diana Oertel)
We’re Gonna Need Your Full Coup Operation: Vote Trump (Jesse Frankovich)
No New Texas: Reelect Senator Ted Cruz (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)
My Dog Ate My Kid’s Homework, and Then My Neighbor Ate My Dog. Vote Trump. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)
Roadkill in Every Pot: RFK Jr. 2024 (Chris Doyle)
I Am Applying an Adhesive Catchphrase to This Car as We Normal People Do: Vance 2024 (Duncan Stevens)
Indicted We Stand! Bring Back Trump (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
Kennedy 2024: Every Animal Was Harmed During the Making of This Candidate (Duncan Stevens)
We Drained the Swamp (and found 22 Trump associates): Harris 2024 (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.)
Make Assholes Go Away: Vote Harris (Neal Starkman)
Porn-Again Christians for Mark Robinson (Chris Doyle)
Better a Childless Soul Than a Soulless Child: Harris 2024 (Jesse Frankovich)
If you can’t pronounce her name, just say PRESIDENT HARRIS (Ward Kay, Vienna, Va.)
Eliminate the Middleman: Putin for President (Tim Livengood, Columbia, Md.)
Make America Hate Again — Good, Fine People for Trump (Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)
SAVE THE WHALES … for RFK Jr. (Stephen Dudzik)
Vote for Whoever Taylor Swift endorsed! // Caution: Student Driver (Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.)
Trump’s Golf Score: A-Hole In One — Vote Blue (Howard Walderman, Columbia, Md.)
If You Liked January 6, You’ll Love the Sequel: Trump 2024 (Diana Oertel)
A Vote Is a Terrific Thing to Waste: Jill Stein 2024 (Jesse Frankovich)
He Can Still Remember ‘Woman’ and ‘TV’: Vote Trump (Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)
The Procrastinators Club of America Endorses John Quincy Adams in ’24 (Gregory Koch)
And Last: Trump 2024: Four More Years of Prime Invitational Entry Content (Duncan Stevens)
The headline “Back-Ended Compliments” is by Kevin Dopart; Kevin also wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.
Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Oct. 5: our Week 91 contest for humorous ways to economize (including true anecdotes). Click on the link below.
We now enter the coveted Real-Time Segment of The Gene Pool, where Gene tries to respond to your questions and observations, which were made in Real Time. Today’s Q’s and O’s run the gamut, a word we had to look up because we didn’t know for sure we were using it correctly. We never got it defined to our liking, but determined it is almost never used except with “run the,” which means we are probably using it correctly. Please send in more Q’s and O’s of any sort:
Also, you might want to send us money by upgrading your subscription to “paid.” It supports us, and makes it more likely the Gene Pool will survive another year. We live in a cold, hard world populated by cold, hard people, people like this guy, Stephen Miller,
who looks like someone who attends torch-lit rallies featuring pitchforks, whose name should be Gauleiter Stephan Vom Himmelfaert. We think you are not like that. We think you are more of a warm, squishy person who shops at farmer’s markets and looks like this, and whose last name should be elegant, hyphenated and multicultural, like Butterfield-Suarezstein. Are we right?
Please:
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Okay, this is Gene. A brief thought about the Vice Presidential debate. Pundits were very quick to label this one a draw. It just wasn’t, whatever their insta-polls may show. Vance won for the simple reason that he entered the night with as soiled and sorry a public image as possible: liar, toady, rampant misogynist, snarling xenophobe, creepy weirdo, cyborg space alien without discernible human communication skills. But he emerged merely as a liar, toady, snarling xenophobe and rampant misogynist. He shedded the other stuff. He seemed presentable — cool and collected and on mostly on message — and that means he ended with a net plus! Walz remained mostly where he was before: boring, fuddy, folksy, likable. But he added a negative: unwilling or unable to bring the heat when he had to. Net loss.
Vance could not have started the evening lower in public esteem. On Jimmy Kimmel’s show, he was devastatingly parodied by Haley Joel Osment, the now-sort-of grown up Sixth Sense child actor phenom. I have queued up the segment for you here. Donut miss it!
At the debate, Vance made two main gaffes. The first, widely reported, was his comical, colossal nosedive for cover when he refused to answer Walz’s question about whether Biden had won the 2020 election. It was a toady-al disaster, and perhaps the most quoted and re-watched moment in the debate. The second was much less well reported. Vance, the accused misogynist, spent the entire evening Mansplaining to his two female questioners, shouting them down, demanding time he was not allotted, and, most deliciously, berating them for breaking an agreement by daring to fact-check him on an error. He didn’t say it outright, but the implication was “NO FAIR! YOU SAID I COULD LIE.” In the end, the two women cut off his, um, mic.
Walz made three gaffes — and that doesn’t count his stammer-y apology for prevaricating on his presence in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre. That thing was out there, he had apologized before and had to do it again. Embarrassing, but there was no alternative, and no surprise. The first gaffe was that he kept answering general questions about national and international affairs by referring to how he handled semi-similar problems in Minnesota. This made him seem small-town and insular, not equipped for global statesmanship.
The second was subtle, but damaging; for some reason, Walz allowed Vance — when criticizing Biden policy — to keep calling it “The Harris administration,” which was inane and deserved ridicule. Everyone knows the role of all vice presidents — to provide wise counsel, and then step away, salute the boss, and support whatever decision is ultimately made. Blaming anything on the “Harris Administration” would be like blaming The Great Depression on “The Curtis Administration.” Charles Curtis, whoever he is, was Hoover’s Veep.
Walz’s third gaffe was mammoth and inexcusable. It seemed as though the two men had tacitly agreed to make nice to each other, which put Walz at a huge disadvantage, because Vance was much more vulnerable to legitimate attack than Walz was. If anyone needed shrug off phony notions of comity so as to be able to deploy the full fusillade of scorn Harris had shown Trump, it was Walz, who was debating a man with a glass chin. Here was an unforced error, a felony of political forensics: Walz never brought up the issue of Haitians eating dogs and cats, a deeply destructive, ludicrous, overtly racist lie that Vance himself had gleefully spread, and then shockingly defended, saying it was okay to make up stuff if it helped him win.
Walz wimped out.
Okay, I’m done.
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Q: I felt you need to know this as soon as possible. In Licking County, Ohio, there is a lawsuit titled Butt v. Butt.
A: Thank you. The world needed to know this. It is a squabble among a father, his sister, and his son, about ownership of a home. Plenty of room for Butts to make noise.
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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: Just click on the headline in the email and it will deliver you to the full column online. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.
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Q: During your re-scrutinizing of the presidential debate, did you notice (or, for that matter, has anyone, anywhere, yet pointed out) that in the first question of the evening (at 2:41 on CNN's Youtube video), the moderator begins "Vice-President Harris, you and President Trump were elected four years ago..."? Kamala Harris either didn't pick it up or just didn't want to correct him so early in the debate. And Trump missed his chance to yell "See - I told you I won!" But he was probably already daydreaming by then. —Andy Bassett - New Plymouth, New Zealand
A: Excellent observation. The opening question was flubbed. I didn’t notice it, nor – I think – did Harris. It is here, cued up for you.
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Q: I'm fairly sure I'm the only person to utter the sentence "Don't worry, the Velveeta won't damage your roof." I said it to a roommate about 30 years ago. The roof in question was that of a Honda Civic.
A: I will publish this but if you do not explain the circumstances of this quote, and in real time, during this chat, I am going to make up a damaging story about you and publish it.
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Q: I've read that Trump has repeatedly invited foreign heads of state, emirs, potentates, etc. to his pile in Florida. In recent days, he's had (at least) telephone contact with leaders in the Middle East, trying to broker peace, or some such. Question: Doesn't this violate some federal statute? The Logan Act perhaps? Akin to Kushner trying to establish a back channel to the Russians before Trump's inauguration?
A: If true, yes, it would appear to violate the Logan Act, which (from Wiki:) “criminalizes negotiation of a dispute between the United States and a foreign government by an unauthorized American citizen. The intent behind the Act is to prevent unauthorized negotiations from undermining the government's position.”
It is a felony.
Alas, it has only been invoked twice in criminal cases, the last in the 1850s.
I think Ronald Reagan was probably guilty of this when he apparently tried, and succeeded, to persuade Iran to delay releasing the embassy hostages until he took office.
Q: I initially thought your first reaction to Trump’s “she puts out” comment about Harris was wrong, but the more I think about it, I’m starting to believe that your first interpretation was the intended one. Remember, this is a guy who goes to great lengths not to be accountable for anything he says. He attributes it to “what people are saying” or to “every expert” or even to something he “saw on TV.” Or, when he has no other option, he simply says he was being “sarcastic.” (Oh, he definitely knows what ‘sarcastic’ means. Absolutely.) So here was his way of slipping in something that some of his supporters like to say about Harris, but not in any way in which he would be accountable for it. Maybe one of his advisers thought of it and had him rehearse it exactly this way.
A: I’d like to agree, but nah. The problem was lack of context. I think it wasn’t pre-planned because it made no sense in how he used it.
In answering a question about his wacko theory that Harris has been coy about her blackness, he said: “All I can say is I read where she was not black, that she puts out — and, I’ll say that — and then I read that she was black, and that’s okay…”
In context, “she puts out” does not seem tethered to anything before and after, and he did not seem to be laughing or sneering or nodding and winking . I think he’s just a dope. But we knew that. The “and, I’ll say that” is what persuaded me initially that he was trying to flag it as a naughty thing he was saying, but… just no. Just a dope.
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Q: Making a siss — my family used that too, my grandmother and my mother. Maybe it’s a New York Jewish thang; onomatopoeic for the sound of the stream hitting the water in the toilet.
A: Oh, I have no doubt that is the derivation. I’m not so sure it is Jewish, or confined to New York, or anything, really, because Google searches return NO HITS AT ALL. It’s weird.
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Q: I asked ChatGPT if you ever had rabies, and it confirmed you never did, but claimed you wrote a column in 2006 called "In a World Gone Mad, Rabies Makes Perfect Sense" in which you imagined getting rabies and how you would react with humor. Is this real, or is ChatGPT hallucinating? And if so, how did you make the most horrifying fate imaginable funny?
A: Totally made up, but I question your “most horrifying fate imaginable.” There are many worse fates, including the medieval punishment being slowly disemboweled via a cranking device called a windlass, with your intestines being slowly removed from your living, screaming body until, mercifully, you die.
Then rabies.
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Q: Sam's car scrape reminded me of a similar incident--but it really wasn't my fault. Many years ago during radiation treatment for breast cancer I developed a lung inflammation and had to take a steroid. Regular Me is pretty cautious, has little confidence in her perception of spatial relationships, and doesn't take pride in her parking prowess. Gingerly inching into a spot next to a large truck, I reached the point where Regular Me would normally surrender and look elsewhere. But Super Steroid Woman took the wheel and persevered, leaving a scratch (tastefully small, but still fairly costly) on the truck. Then RM wrested the wheel back, found a different spot and, though SSW flirted with the idea of hit and run, left an apologetic note. — Terri Smith
A: This reminds me of a joke I once heard from a comedian on the Ed Sullivan show. I think the comic was Alan King, but am not sure. Guy arrives at his parked car, finds a huge scratch along the one side, and a note under the windshield wiper. It said “Bub – Hey, I scratched your car, and am now leaving you a note because a bunch of people are standing around wanting to see if I leave a note. Good luck.”
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Q: My parents like to tell a story about my Dad. He got home from work one evening and Mom sent him to the basement to remove a couple leaves out of one of those expanding tables. It was one of those heavy ones, ornate carved feet, thick dark wood, heavy enough that it took two to move it. Dad got the leaves out, got a hand on each end his face inches above the table and snapped it shut. Then realized he'd shut his tie in it.He didn't have the armspan to get it open and he couldn't pry the center crack with his fingers. So he called Mom. She never really disputed his version that she stood on the basement stairs for five minutes laughing before fully descending to help free him.
A: that is spectacular. Very sitcom-ish.
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Q: I am so with you on resisting the name change of National Airport. I cringe when otherwise correct-thinking locals call it by That Other Name. In addition to the reason you cite for objecting, with which I agree, there is also the fact that Reagan himself would likely not have supported Congress's overriding the objections of the local airport authority to impose the new name. This wasn't his idea, it was Grover "Name Something After Reagan In Every State and Oh BTW Paying Estate Taxes Is the Same As Being Murdered In the Holocaust" Norquist who pushed it through.
A: I once interviewed Norquist for a column. He is surprisingly funny and can laugh at himself. He says that he thinks Reagan has not yet been adequately celebrated. He said:
“I do think that we might have a statue of Reagan with one foot in Maine and the other in Tallahassee. I believe this is the first time I have officially suggested this, and I like it. It would be like the Colossus of Rhodes, only bigger. Actually, an even better plan would be to name all U.S. airports after Reagan.
Me: Couldn't that cause some confusion?
Grover: I don't see why. They are already all called "airport," and that doesn't create any confusion.
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Q: I grew up hunting, and I actually did … it. Picked up and ate roadkill recently. I had specified in my mind if I ever wouid, though I knew the pleasures of fresh venison from before . (I hadn’t hunted recently). Finally, something on the side was fresh-killed, and it checked all the boxes. Served its purpose. Footnote: A friend is a vegetarian and said it is frequently done in the South, and it was “morally vegan.” Def: I didn’t cause the animal’s death, and I made use of it.
A: I talked to an animal rights activist, who is a vegan, and he agrees with this thesis. Uh, he wouldn’t approve of your hunting. Not that you asked.
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Q: One of the things in particular that Walz missed was the simple: “Can you imagine President Vance?” William Pifer-Foote
A: Not sure I buy this. Vance was kinda winning. I think too many people might have answered, “Well, I can now, sorta.”
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Q: I saw the 2024 list of MacArthur Fellows awards and didn’t see your name. Sorry. I actually know a previous winner, a fiber artist. Does a MacArthur trump a Pulitzer?
— Stephen Dudzik
A: Oh, yes. Because it comes with a shitload of money. And has the word “genius” in it. My friend David Simon has one. I hate him for it.
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Q: Now here’s a One-off —
I may be the only person on the planet who has paid $500 to try to keep a rat alive.
My 9-year-old son was soooo distressed when heard his beloved Fury’s raspy breathing that I drove, at speed, 40 miles to the nearest emergency vet that was open at 10 PM AND treated rats. The vet was honest about the odds against recovery and seemed incredulous that I wasn’t listening, but I was in full “Mom saves the day” mode. (It may be that my determination to shield my son from the loss of his rat had something to do with the recent loss of his grandma.)
Next morning, I tried to hint gently that a happy reunion was not a certainty, but my son tuned me out because he was busy decorating a shoe box, preparing the best-ever recovery suite for Fury.
The vet was right, of course. I ended up driving back to collect the stiff little body, which was placed into the recovery suite for the backyard funeral. My son misspelled “Fury” in the funeral program and decided “Furry” was a better name anyway. He read a lengthy tribute to Furry, in verse. We all sang.
Soon after Fury/Furry’s demise, we realized that we needed to forget about rats with their piddly two-year life spans and get a dog.
– Robin Rowland
A: This reminds me of a fabulous story by my good friend Caitlin Gibson, about her guinea pig named William Wallace.
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Q: Regarding two of your requests: Embarrassments we have suffered, and things that apply only to us in the whole world:
In December 1972 I spent my Christmas vacation visiting my parents in the Panama Canal Zone. My Dad was the Admiral in charge there at the time. My parents were friends with the then Governor of the Zone, David Parker, and his wife. The Parkers invited my parents out on their beautiful big sailboat one day, and my folks brought me along. It was just the five of us on board. I felt very out of place, never having met the Parkers before. At one point on the trip, the Governor was talking to my folks and I could have sworn he turned to me and said "Scatch my back". I was startled and embarrassed, but complied, until I noticed the shocked look on everyone else's face and realized I had misheard. I stopped abruptly and am sure I have never been so mortified in my entire life, before or since. I could not wait for that sail to end. Please do not use my name! I never shared this with anyone but my husband. I noticed, in scratching, that the Governor had some kind of brace on his back, which was what I actually scratched.
A: Odd, but good.
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Q: Your picture in the One Offs reminded me that I may be the only one to have actually lived an opening scene from Dirty Harry. I was reminded because in 1976 I was playing in the pit orchestra in the King's Dominion Mason Dixon Music Hall. However in 1975, I started the season as a security guard at KD. So...
A: One day during my stint as a security guard, I sat down to lunch in the outside area of the employee canteen behind the Italian Pizza place right by the Eiffel Tower. Beyond the tower was the Happy Land of Hanna Barbera and I sat facing that direction. I took ONE BITE of my hamburger and a call went over the radio of a lost child and a description. I looked up and saw the child, maybe 5 or 6 years old, climbing a fence to get into the back side of the "raceway" where the gas powered cars that the kids could drive are roaring by. I called back for a repeat of the description and reply, "I've got him!" Base comes back with a "What?" as as I'm heading out of the canteen, and I repeat , "I've got him!" I ran over, jumped a fence myself, and picked him up. I walked him up front to Guest Services where they held him until his parents came and got him.
I went back to the canteen and my entire tray was gone. AND they made me buy another one!
— Tom Logan - Sterling, VA —
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Q: Now that's it well into football season, I am reminded of a joke I heard on a Bob Hope Special (obviously a number of years ago!), probably one of his shows about college All American awards.. The bit was introducing the players from various colleges, you know where they step up, give their name, college and position.. One stepped up and said, "[name], Westminster Choir College, tight end...and next year I hope to be a wide receiver." Tom Logan - Sterling. VA
A: THAT WAS IN A BOB HOPE SPECIAL?
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This is Gene. I am calling us down, and making a plaintive request. Even more plaintive than usual. It is almost a plaintiff request, in which I sue you to make you do it. PLEASE KEEP SENDING IN MORE QUESTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS ON ANY SUBJECTS. In particular, but not exclusively, I’d like to hear your views of the Veep debate. But you know, anything good and provocative and funny will do.
Send em here:
See you on The Weekend Gene Pool.
I'm partial to this entry by Chris Doyle: Roadkill in Every Pot: RFK Jr. 2024
Lots of great entries this week! The ones that made me laugh out loud were "Listen carefully, as our menu options have changed: KAMALA HARRIS and TIM WALZ" (way to go, First Offender Jim Schaefer!) and "Even Having Trump’s Name Here Devalues My Car."