Loose Ends

Hello! Yesterday’s Gene Pool engendered intriguing results. I’m presenting them today in a brief but highly eventful followup. You may want to stick around for this.

Yesterday’s post contained a riddle, about my pizza consumption, and I invited people to answer. I received many dozens of guesses. Every one was wrong. I am going to tell you the answer right away, after a brief aside:

Yesterday’s post was paywalled. I do that about eight times a month. The nonpaying subscriber sees a tantalizing top, but then is coldly informed (sorry — this is boilerplate Substack language) that to read the rest of it, they need to pay. I want them to be able to see this today, so I have removed the paywall from yesterday’s post. It is here.

But for convenience sake, I am also reprinting the riddle here:

“Last night, Rachel and I went out for dinner at an excellent, bougie artisanal pizza joint in D.C. named Little Grand. She ordered a pepperoni and potato pizza and I ordered a meatball and mozzarella pizza. Both were 12 inches in diameter, served on individual pizza pans. When we were ready to leave, Rachel had half a pizza remaining on her pan, and I had no pizza remaining on my pan BUT WE HAD EACH EATEN THE SAME AMOUNT OF PIZZA. Neither of us had had any of each other’s pizza, and no third party had had any of ours.

“How is this possible?”

—

Your answers — none of which was right — were grouped into categories. The most frequent category, and most defensible, was based on basic high school geometry:

“Hers was deep dish, yours was New York thin crust. You had the same area of pizza, but not the same volume, which is the only valid measure of “amount.”

A worthy and intelligent response, but kinda boring, no? I would not have posed a riddle with so banal an answer.

Second most frequent answer:

“You ate three quarters of yours, she ate one quarter of hers, then you put the remaining quarter on her pan, to take home.”

That’s odd. One does not take home the pan. There is no need to consolidate the pizzas in one pan for take-home — it adds an unnecessary step. One just transfers the take-home stuff independently from each plate and/or pan into a box.

The third most common response was:

“You gave away some of yours to another person, or Rachel ate some of yours, or possibly this artisanal place allowed dogs.”

That’s dumb, or as I have long said when something is really dumb, “that’s dumn.” Re-read the riddle set-up, please. I explicitly stipulated that we did neither.

A completely uncommon but delightful response — unique, in fact — was from Michelle H. It read: “Gene dropped half his pizza on the floor.”

Here comes the answer. It is entirely encapsulated in a photograph we took at the scene, of the box in which we carried the leftovers home. The fact that did not occur to you is that Rachel and I consume pizza in different manners:

Okay, good.

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The second loose end for today:

Yesterday’s post was primarily about The Greatest Editing Decision Ever Made. It was about accidentally publishing a penis cartoon. Again, for persons who could not see the entire post, you can revisit it now and it will fully engorge and rise to your view, as it were. You will also see the associated poll, and take it if you wish, and then see the correct answer. You can also, along with everyone else, now revisit the cartoon art in question. Again, it is here. Unpaywalled.

Several people wrote it to ask for examples of the original winning entries, from 1995, to this cartoon challenge. There were three that got ink for this cartoon. Here they are:

“Although the tuba is stuffed with a man's torso, the little notes indicate that the player is making musical sounds somehow. You people are absolutely disgusting.”
(J. Calvin Smith)

and:

“There is a pig flying. As the Style Invitational has yet to show a sign of good taste, pigs should not have flown yet. (Arthur C. Adams)

and:

“The newsboy cannot be selling The Washington Post, because the headline would be ‘Feds Register Concern Over Beverage Ramifications.’ “ (Jennifer Hart)

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And finally, and most titillatingly, in the Comments section of yesterday’s post, we received this communique from a reader who calls herself Elizardbeth. Elizardbeth is an editor:

“Oh my god, twinsies. I too inadvertently ran a cartoon of a penis in a newspaper and didn't get fired.

“This penis, however, was very noticeable. It was in a highlight in our entertainment calendar, notifying readers of a GWAR show. I decided I was tired of running the same handout art for the same band and asked the music writer for another image. Whether he was kidding around or didn't see it either, I don't know, and I would never ask at this point. The image was a drawing and it included a woman impaled on a spike, which I noticed immediately and wasn't thrilled with. I showed it to a few other editors who all said the same thing: "It's GWAR." I ran it, and the next morning, sipping coffee at my desk, got a call from my friend Kellye asking me if I was responsible. For what? I asked. OH.

“It's HUGE.

“If I hadn't done my tour of the newsroom trying to gin up outrage about the impaled lady, I probably would have been fired on the spot. Instead, the grandboss only said that if I kept laughing he'd have to fire me.

“I'm not linking to it because I don't want to accidentally sexually assault anyone's eyeballs.”

My response to Elizardbeth, in the Comments, was:

“Okay, you cannot leave it like this, Elizardbeth. I will email you privately, so you have my email, and then send me back the art. EYE, and not you, will decide whether we can share it with the offendable.”

—

She did. I did. Here it is, from her files, along with appropriately writhing apologia from her newspaper to the readers.

—

Good.

—

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll.

And finally, The Plea.

Writing The Gene Pool is a soul-crushing enterprise. I am writing and sending this post at 4:20 a.am. I no longer sleep much. I wake up most every morning from a nightmare in which I no longer know what I can entertain you with. I am not regular enough with my hygiene habits. My dog has begun to look at me with suspicion and possibly loathing. The ticking of an old clock no longer brings me joy — it delivers unsettling intimations of mortality. I have 21 ticking old clocks in my house. My prostate gland is no longer what it used to be, and it never was much to begin with I am always angry, except during dinner with Rachel.

If you are in a position to help, I’d be grateful. Paid subscriptions cost about a dollar a week.

Special bonus: Only paid subscribers can Comment. If you become a paid subscribers today, I will not take down any comments by you today that are wildly self-serving or self-celebratory to the point of public revulsion.

Good. See you all soon.