The Invitational Week 102: Next Year in Review

Give us some events for our 2025 timeline -- and check out our predictions for 100 years from now

Hello. Remember how a couple of weeks ago, celebrating the 100th week of The Invitational, we inaugurated a new contest to humorously predict events from 100 years in the future? Well, we have the results of that contest today …

…AND…

today we once again look ahead. This time, just by a few months. This week’s contest is to come up with things that at least theoretically might occur during 2025.

What follows, as usual, are examples of what we are looking for, but they are examples of a type we have never done before, not once in 32 years of professional Invitationalizing. These are not examples we made up or examples taken from entries to previous, similar contests. These examples were excellent entries to the 100-years contest, ones we felt worked even better as predictions for next year. Behold:

The Department of Governmental Efficiency announces that it has outgrown the Pentagon and has set up a commission to search for new office space. (Steve Smith)

The Alabama Supreme Court rules that 18-year-old frozen embryos have voting rights. (Deb Stewart)

UnitedHealthcare is named Corporate Citizen of the Year for its exceptional, empathetic, responsive service. (Jon Ketzner)

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For Invitational Week 102: Tell us as many as twenty-five humorous events that “happen” in 2025, as in the examples above. Write them in present-tense sentences as in a timeline, not as headlines. Begin your entry with a particular date only if it’s relevant to the entry. (For inspiration, and so you don’t repeat the jokes, take a look at last year’s results; the winner, by Steve Smith: “The NFL announces that next year’s Super Bowl will be the halftime entertainment at a Taylor Swift concert.”)

Deadline is Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Dec. 26. 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-102.

Formatting your entries this week: Just our regular request that you write each individual entry as a single line (i.e., don’t push Enter until the end of each entry).

This week’s winner gets a Christmas card from us. Up to you whether you’d like us to sign it or leave it usable.

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.

Save the date! The Loser Post-Holiday Party, our annual winter potluck/singalong/schmoozefest for Invitational players and fans, will go down on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 26, at a house in suburban Maryland. Write to BrunchOfLosers@gmail.com to get on the mailing list for an invitation.

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100 Years of LOLitude: Week 100’s predictions for 2124

Third runner-up:
A bestselling book of 2124: 20th-Century Daredevils: The Humans Who Steered Their Own Cars (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)

Second runner-up:
A Page 1 headline from 2124: Canada Strengthens Border Wall With U.S. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.)

First runner-up:
A news event of 2124: Continuing its effort to retain control of Congress, the GOP majority splits the Dakotas into sixteen separate states. Both residents of West-Southwest Dakota become senators. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

And the winner of the inflatable pumpkin pie:
Page 1 headline of 2124: Fighting Erupts on Mars Between Jewish and Palestinian Settlers (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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.

Not in a Hundred Years: Honorable mentions

Headlines from 2124:

Climber is First Blind Quadriplegic Centenarian From Burkina Faso to Reach Everest Summit on a Tuesday (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

Musk’s Great-Grandson 5xy7/@& Changes Name to Doug (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

Mohel’s Botched Bris Traced to Faulty Space Laser (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

Stock Market Rallies as Last Recipient of Social Security Dies at 119 (Larry Peterson, Brooklyn, N.Y., a First Offender)

Will Voters Hold 138-year-old Candidate’s Youth and Inexperience Against Him? (Tom Witte)

Contractors Who Built Trump Monument Say They Never Got Paid (Sam Mertens)

NIH Alarmed at Thinness Epidemic Since Ozempic Was Added to Water Supply (Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece)

Caravan of undocumented Americans threatens to overrun Mexican Border Patrol (Steve Smith, Potomac, Md.)

U.S.-Built AI Qualifies as ‘Natural-Born Citizen’ in 7-2 Supreme Court Ruling; Both Human Justices Dissent (Michael Stein, Arlington, Va.)

Post-Post Malone wins AI Song of the Year at the HoloGrammys. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

Ted Williams’s Thawed Head to Manage Washington Nationals (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

President Disparages Immigrants from Shithole Planets (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

Invitational’s AI Overseer Declares That Jokes About AI Are Not Funny (Neal Starkman, Seattle)

Bestselling book from 2124:
“501 English Pronouns” (Art Grinath)

“📚 ➡️ 🤪” (Jeff Contompasis)

News developments from 2124:
139-year-old LeBron James becomes the first athlete to play in an NBA game with his great-great-grandson. (Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.)

Now that Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa have become states, the drive for statehood for the District of Columbia picks up steam. (Roy Ashley, Washington, D.C.)

Impossible Foods Inc. develops plant-based Impossible People to eat that stuff. (Deb Stewart, Damascus, Md.)

Rising oceans have covered all the land on Earth. But fortunately, people are able to live on floating continents made entirely of plastic trash. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

In a press conference, just as President Donald J. Trump IV disparages the current leprosy pandemic as a “hoax,” his nose falls off. (Tom Logan, Sterling, Va.)

A sixth-grader wins the local science fair with a project that proves quantum physics is total bullshit. (Roy Ashley)

After the recent election of the first geranium ever to be president of the United States, commentators agree that “it is only a matter of when, not if” the country would elect its first woman president. (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)

Cyborg shortstop Dusty Maris collapses in a heap and is sold for parts just 30 games short of tying Cal Ripken’s consecutive-games record. (Jon Ketzner)

The D.C. area Metro system continues its expansion with its 27th and 28th train routes, the Puce Line and the Cerulean Line. There are still no trains that go anywhere near Georgetown. (Duncan Stevens)

The great-great-love-children of Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore finally descend to Earth from the International Space Station. (Beverley Sharp)

The final Googlenope has been revealed (Note: The expression “the final Googlenope” was de-Googlenoped Dec. 11, 2024) (Kevin Dopart)

The Trump Dynasty Bargain Health Plan has been amended to exclude benefits to anyone who's ever been sick. (Howard Walderman, Columbia, Md.)

A winning Invitational entry in 2124:
Old idiom: When hell freezes over.
New idiom: When Helsinki freezes over. (Chris Doyle)

The headline “100 Years of LOLitude” is by Kevin Dopart; Judy Freed wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Dec. 14: our Week 101 contest for jokes roughly in the format “X is so Y [that] …” Click on the link below.

The Invitational Week 101: A So-So Contest

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Good. We now begin what is ordinarily the Real-Time Section of The Gene Pool, where Gene takes your questions and observations and responds to them in real time. Here is the highly coveted question and observation button, of which you should avail yourselves:

However, today there is a small adjustment. Because this Gene Pool was published at 11 p.m. EST Wednesday, as an experiment, there won’t be real-time Q’s and A’s published in real time. There will still be lots of Q’s and A’s, below, but they will have been ones received before 10 p.m. Wednesday. Keep sending them in, though, because they tend to be great and Gene will respond to them next week. The comments section will be active all day on Thursday and beyond, of course, and Gene and Pat will be dipping in and out of there.

Okay? Here we go.

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Q: In response to your observation that readers don’t want to be identified when criticizing Trump:

I hope Donald J. Trump rots in Hell for all eternity.

Sean Clinchy
Sclinchy@gmail.com
609 Hinton Avenue
Charlottesville, Va 22992

A: Good for you.

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Q: Is there really a mysterious Invitational benefactor with the pseudonym John Beresford Tipton? I am thinking it is you, using an alias. Nothing you have written about him would be technically seen as a lie – yes, “he” desires anonymity, etc. — Virginia

A: Yes, Virginia, there is a John Beresford Tipton. This person contacted me a year ago with the offer to finance some paid gift subscriptions to The Gene Pool. He or she is a fan of the Invitational, and a generous individual with no agenda other than kindness. I so swear.

I would like to remind you of the time when it was de rigueur for smart media critics to speculate that Deep Throat was a composite, made up by Woodward. Ha ha. Those douchebags.

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Q: Excellent aptonym

– Sean Clinchy

A: Wow. World class. You are having a good day today, Sean.

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Q: Back in the Goode Olde Days (when “men were men, women were men, and sheep ran scared), the (Style!) Invitational was responsible only to itself (and possibly the Editor). Losers were expected to maintain a stiff upper lip, and understand that losing was part of the game. (For all intents and purposes, losing has always been the PRIMARY part of the game for everyone except the most gifted contributors.) Second-guessing the selections of either of the oligarchs was rarely (and only barely) tolerated, but was almost always completely ignored.

Now that the (styleless) Invitational has become not only a crowd-sourced, but also a crowd-funded cooperative venture, those same oligarchs have become fawning weasels, bending over backwards to not only tolerate, but actually INVITE second guessing from the great unwashed. The result is that a significant percentage of the reader commentary has become a tiresome rehashing of “likes”. (I would rather read a horoscope than someone else’s likes.)

The Invitational’s list of winners was more meaningful and entertaining when there was just ONE sense of humor that counted, and not that of a committee, which seems to be an attempt to produce a golden mean of results that will induce more readers to become paid subscribers.

A: Uh, what? This is a very strange interpretation.

Pat and I make the choices after much debate, sometimes vituperative. It can take days. We are and remain confident in our choices. We have simply added a device where readers can, by implication, call us idiots. We like that. We like hearing other opinions. But it never causes us to rethink our choices. We know what we are doing and our criteria for judging has not changed, and will not. There is only a committee of two in charge.

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Q: Why is it that when a black man is killed, he is murdered, but a rich white CEO is assassinated? Why aren't there $10,000+ rewards for most murders in the US?

A: You know, there is plenty to be said about the continuing racial discrimination in America, but this complaint is ridiculous, and demeans more serious racial questions that should be on the table.

This was called an assassination because it was an assassination. There is no other term for it. This is the definition of an assassination, from the Britannica: “The term typically refers to the killing of government leaders and other prominent persons for political purposes—such as to seize power, to start a revolution, to draw attention to a cause, to exact revenge, or to undermine a regime or its critics.

This was a highly visible, important person, and the crime was done to draw attention to a cause, and also to exact revenge.

The murder of a black person, even if racially motivated, even if obviously unjustifiable and reprehensible, does not meet any of those criteria, unless he or she was a prominent individual and the motives were political.

When prominent Black people are assassinated for political reasons, the media have no problem calling it an assassination. MLK, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Vernon Dahmer – all assassinated, each one called an assassination at the time it happened and after.

Here is an interesting and disturbing corollary: Was the 1963 murder of the four little girls in the Birmingham bombing an “assassination?” It certainly was political, intended to draw attention to a rotten “cause.” But it fails in the first part. This was a wanton act of terrorism; the girls were not specifically targeted. The specific targeting of the victim because of who he or she is, is essential to an assassination.

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Q: Clarence Darrow once wrote, "I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

A: Good quote. Usually misattributed to Mark Twain, as are so many things.

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Q: Very discouraging to read about The Washington Post increasingly censoring their reporters and news coverage -- and appalling to read what's happening at the LA Times. Makes me feel a bit more hopeless than usual -- so many read no newspapers, and that will just continue to get worse if newspapers are no longer a truthful source of information. I'm starting to understand why so many are just crawling into their bubbles and ignoring it all. Time to focus on whether the Netherlands or Portugal would be the best escape?

A: Montreal and Toronto are very fine and urbane cities. So is Halifax if you are looking for quaint and funky.

Q: On Luigi. Every choice you listed is bizarre, so choosing becomes an impossibility. But here's the really weird part: Keeping the ghost gun and carrying a 265 word admission of guilt in one's backpack is an invitation to authorities catching and charging you. He obviously wasn't planning to use the gun to defend himself. So, why did he go to the trouble of fleeing? The electric bike, the bus rides, the taxi. He could just as well have stood there with his hands up until the police arrived.

A much more significant point - he was wealthy, well-known, well connected to hundreds of people in his earlier life. How did NOBODY who knew him call and identify him as the pictured individual? Does this mean that his prosperous upbringing and exclusive education put him above suspicion in the minds of everyone who had known him in his adult life? – D. Karaus

A: It’s that second question I find fascinating. I hadn’t thought about it before. For at least 3 days his face was all over the world. The cop who arrested him knew it was him the instant he lowered his mask.

There is no evidence from police that they had any solid leads on who he was before he was arrested. So, in the three days they got no tips from friends, colleagues, relatives of the murderer? It is kind of disturbing, isn’t it?

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This is Gene. We’re done. Please keep sending in Questions and Observations here. Gene will address them at length in upcoming Gene Pools:

And comments!

(Gene and Pat hope to spend some time in the Comments tomorrow as well.)

Oh, wait. You forgot to give us money!