The Hundred-aire
Introducing a new meta-contest.
Hello. Welcome to the orgasm-inducing Weekend Gene Pool, in which we ask you to ask a question or make an observation which we will respond to next week, in return for which we promise to entertain you now. The entertainment this week will involve a contest that you can enter, with a prize worth fifty bucks.
But first, your challenge. It was suggested in the last Gene Pool chat by a reader who identifies as Jill from Utah:
“This is not quite a sosumi, which is something you dislike but everyone else likes, or your Nickelback, which is something that you like but everyone else dislikes: My idea is something that irritates you although it’s extremely minor and most people wouldn’t even think about it. My example: When I buy bananas and put them in the fruit bowl I have to peel off the little labels. Can’t stand them being there although I don't care about them until they hit the fruit bowl.”
So, that’s it. You need to volunteer a little, petty thing thing that annoys you but that most people wouldn’t think twice about. We shall call them Jills. One of my Jills is that I hate that there is no @ button on the first letter-text screen on my iPhone, or a “.com” button anywhere at all. The extra three seconds of effort drives me nuts.
Send your Jills here, to this great orange button that carries ideas to me:
Now, the new meta-contest.
It was proposed by a person I will call John Beresford Tipton. That is not his or her name; it is a pseudonym I chose. John Beresford Tipton was the name of a character in the brilliant but long-forgotten 1950s TV show The Millionaire, featuring a very rich man (never seen on camera except from the rear) whose hobby was anonymously giving away one million dollars a week to total strangers, and then sitting back and smugly watching how it affected their lives.
I was recently approached by just such a person, a person who happened to be a devotee of The Gene Pool. Insisting on anonymity, he or she generously offered to donate a year’s subscription to The Gene Pool to four people (a value of $50 apiece) whom we would choose through a contest. The benefactor’s real name will never, ever be revealed, but I swear to you that there is one; this is not some sleazy giveaway by Substack. It is a sleazy giveaway by John Beresford Tipton, who exists.
The contest, open to all of you: Explain why you (or your designee) deserve the gift. Your plea may be of any length. — longer is not necessarily better. It will be judged on the basis of humor and/or originality. If you currently are not a paying subscriber, you may argue for yourself. If you are a paying subscriber, you may argue on behalf of someone else you know who is not a paying subscriber, as long as you have their consent and email address. No names will be published without approval.
Send your entries to this handsome orange button, which is the selfsame orange button above and goes to the same place, but which is renamed here “handsome orange button.” YOU MUST INCLUDE YOUR NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS. No one sees it but me. If you hear from me, your entry is at least a finalist.
Or, as always, you can also just cough up a subscription yourself:
With due respect to "Jill from Utah" (and Dear Leader) there is already a perfectly good word to describe what she's caviling about and no --- it's not caviling, which is not a perfectly good word. It's "niggle." So if you don't mind, for purposes of the weekend Pool party, I'll go with the combo "Jiggle." Should make everyone happy. I was going to say my Jiggle is the overuse of the word "sphincter," but what really gets my knickers in a twist is when you order a venti 7 pump vanilla soy 12 scoop matcha 180 degree no foam green tea latte and THERE IS FOAM. Yes, yes --- I know. Disgusting. Almost as bad as those banana stickers not all facing the same way.
Being hot for Inger Stevens as an eleven-year-old boy was not remotely gross. It was perfectly natural and, I would say, praiseworthy.