The Invitational Week 108: Bill Us Now

A wordplay game to join congressional names to 'cosponsor' legislation. Plus winning names for the Eighth Dwarf.

We expect that new Rep. Crank is going to be cosponsoring a lot of "legislation" in this week's Invitational contest.

Hello. Applause for the new Congress. On the one clapping hand, it seems to be a rubber stamp for the wishes of a new president, whom we hereafter call call Porky. On the other, there are pretty good names in there.

So:

The Knott-Hurd-Taylor bill to establish that any music written in the 21st century isn’t worth listening to.

The Bynum-Moore-Justice Act to permit lobbyists to contribute to the Supreme Court’s favorite “charities.”

The Turner-Moody Act to get another beer for us, will ya?

The Knott-Harrigan bill to ban Sarah Palin from ever trying to make a comeback.

What, you’re not feeling all that great this week, watching helplessly as a horde of thugs gleefully smashes into pillar after pillar of our democracy and decency, like the Taliban taking sledgehammers to 1,500-year-old sculptures because they weren’t of their preferred sect?

Well, we at The Invitational are here to divert you, as we are every two years at the beginning of another congressional session, with our beloved (and occasionally behated) “joint legislation” game — in which we pretend that two or more freshman senators and/or House members might actually work together to suggest a new law.

For Invitational Week 108: Combine two or more names from the new members of the 119th Congress — click here for our list — to “cosponsor” a bill based on their combined last names, as in the examples above.

We’re just playing with the sounds of their names, not commenting on the sens and reps (and even a couple of dels) themselves. That’s why the list doesn’t mention their parties, or even their first names. Learning that we’d be getting good names for this list — Crank! Figures! Pou! the perennial Johnson! — at least gave us a half an iota of cheer on election night.

The Czar and Empress implore you, having judged eighteen previous Joint Legislation contests between us: A pun on these names that’s clear to you is not necessarily clear to anyone else in the world. Before you send in your entry, ask someone else to read it out loud and, without hints, body English, etc., tell you what phrase you had in mind. There can be a little stretch in the sound, as in “Harrigan” meaning “her again” in the example above, but don’t use that name to mean, say, “harry gams.” For guidance ’n’ inspiration, take a look at our 2023 inking entries (the winner, by Pam Shermeyer: The Ogles-Magaziner-Jackson-Self Act to encourage sperm bank donations.).

Deadline is Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Feb. 6. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.

Formatting this week: It’s just our standard request to write each entry as a single line (i.e., don’t push Enter until you’re finished that particular entry). That way we can shuffle all the entries and won’t know if you’ve sent us one entry or 25.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyurl.com/inv-form-108.

This week’s winner, while we’re thinking congressionally, receives an adorable finger puppet depicting Sen. Bernie Sanders very well except for its highly uncharacteristic silence. Yeah, it should have been a mitten, but it’s still awfully cute. Donated by Dave Prevar.

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.

Gnomenclature: The Eighth Dwarfs of Week 106

In Invitational Week 106 we asked you to come up with amusing names for an Eighth Dwarf to complement Sneezy, Happy, and the rest of Snow White’s adjectival posse.

Third runner-up:
BERNY changes the lyrics to “It’s off to work we go, with a minimum wage of $15 per hour.” (Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.)

Second runner-up:
ENNUI is the only dwarf who doesn’t whistle while he works. He sighs. (Jeff Rackow, Bethesda, Md.)

First runner-up:
JENZY: He’s the entitled one who wants to work in the mine remotely by Zoom. (Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)

And the winner of the plushie uterus-and-ovaries:
IRONY: Is dead. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, 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.

Miner Characters: Honorable mentions

COSBY: Who do you think gave the Evil Queen the sleeping potion? (Steve Smith, Potomac, Md.)

BEEPY: Goes everywhere in reverse. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

BIGLY: A great dwarf, the greatest, many people are saying. (Mike Bardallis, Allen Park, Mich., a First Offender)

SNOOTFUL: Bashful’s twin brother, who found a special potion to overcome his shyness. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)

BEERMY: Every evening his mood changes from happy to dopey to grumpy and finally sleepy. (Jeff Hazle, San Antonio)

CANARY has PTSD from his old job at the coal mine. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

DICEY makes crypto recommendations.to the other Dwarfs. (Daniel Helming, Conshohocken, Pa.)

FAPPY: He’ll be right back once he’s … done. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

HANDSY, the miners say, knows her way around a shaft. (Steve Smith)

OXY: Such a popular guy, people just can’t quit him. (Sam Mertens)

BOTTY replaced all the other dwarfs’ mining jobs. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

CLAMMY: He’s just … resting. (Chuck Helwig, Centreville, Va.)

PHLEGMY, Sneezy's brother, who is always near you on the Metro. (William Kennard, Arlington, Va.)

SLOOPY: Not a real dwarf, just a hanger-on. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.)

DISNEY insists that you cease and desist from infringing on this copyrighted material. (Jason Meyers, Hamilton, N.Y., a First Offender)

DINKLAGE is sick and tired of the fucking stereotypes already. (Jason Meyers, again!)

SOAPY is waiting for her rinse to come. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

And Last: DOYLY: He is a composer of brilliant puns, limericks, spoonerisms, double dactyls, and song parodies, and has appeared in a certain humor contest almost three thousand times. And he crochets little lacy things. (Jeff Hazle)

And Even Laster: NOPEY: The Empress. (Jesse Frankovich)

The headline “Gnomenclature” was submitted by both Jon Gearhart and Jesse Frankovich; Judy Freed wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Jan. 25: our Week 107 anagram contest. Click on the link below.

The Invitational Week 107: Twits' Twist — fun with anagrams

We now enter the celebrated Real-Time segment of the Invitational Gene Pool, where Gene reads your questions and observations and responds to them in the aforementioned Real Time. That means you can keep sending QUestions, Observations, Telling Anecdotes to our newly named QUOTA button. And if you are reading it in real time, remember to keep refreshing your screen for new questions and answers.

Also, you can send us money. Our advice is that you send us $4.15 a month, and ALSO give the same (you might round it up to $5) to a homeless person, so you will feel noble in both areas: Body and soul. In our case, you will be contributing to our body of work. Thank you.

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Q: I disagree with your analysis, that “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” is a theft of Dylan’s “when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.” I always thought Dylan and Kristofferson were talking about utterly different ideas. Dylan's line means that when you have nothing because you've lost everything (in the case of the Rolling Stone protagonist, by failing to value what she had and being careless with it), you have nothing more to lose and no reason to resist further degradation (with the mystery tramp, Napoleon in rags, etc.).

Kristofferson's protagonist is lamenting that the "freedom" Bobby McGee offers is really a lack of mutual commitment, and that while roaming around with Bobby sure was fun, s/he "let him/her slip away" outside Salinas because Bobby was never going to offer anything of substance that could be lost. (For that reason, KK's song always made more sense to me when sung by Janis Joplin than in his version. It's an update of the folk songs celebrating the hobo life lived exclusively by men because they never got pregnant and tied down with kids. The narrator misses Bobby, but didn't want to eternally roam, whereas Bobby did.)

I vote with Rachel -- no theft.

A: Good analysis, thank you. To me, “nothing left to lose” is equivalent to freedom. All avenues are open to you. Plus, Bobby’s lady clearly regrets having let him slip away down there in the suburbs of Salinas, because she would give up all her yesterdays for one more day with him.

Many more readers agreed with you and Rachel than with me. I accept defeat, grudgingly.

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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 in real time.

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This is Gene. Very important thought. The first person who discovered prunes probably died right there, next door, on his bathroom floor.

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Good.

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Q Mis-heard lyric that I didn't realize until this week: in Paul Simon's "The Boxer", I thought he got a "come-on from the war zone, Seventh Avenue". I guess at the age I first heard the song, nothing else would have made sense.

A: Excellent.

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Q: There may have been a human being capable of empathy inside Donald Trump at some point many years ago when he was very young, but he was crushed almost immediately. He used to throw rocks at other little kids. And repeatedly got in trouble at military school where he was sent to get straightened out. He’s been a lost cause from the beginning He loves to tell the story that ends “you knew I was a snake when you let me in.” He’s the snake.

I tried to watch the video and respond to the poll yesterday and got the "page not found" message across all of Substack -- I was worried that the Fuhrer had spiked your platform!

Anyway. When I first saw the clip, without sound, of just the salutes, my initial reaction was "probably not". Both because how stupid, and also because anyone who's had to watch Triumph of the Will would say that was a pretty lousy imitation of the Seig Heil. I wouldn't put anything past Musk for certain but it seemed like just a clunky attempt to show love by someone who doesn't actually know how. But now that I've seen this full clip and taken in both Musk's new Fashy haircut and his words leading up to the salute, I changed my vote to "possibly". The entire package is disturbing!

A: Wow! You did it! We birthed it here, in your brain, edited by mine.

Forever after the Leni Riefenstahl movie is Trump of the Will.

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Q: Every goddamn time I talked with friends with informed opinions - but no ACTIONS - this past election.

It took everything I had to overlook their towering arrogance and cowardice to maintain civil relations before/after the election. Post inauguration, I think I’m

Shit out of Fucks.

They and their self-serving, vocal but passive, treating politics like sport are what brought us here. I’m done being nice - because we’re done - because of them.

Q: Thank you. I am also Shit out of Fucks.

Q: Could Biden have pre-emptively pardoned millions of immigrants…say the Dreamers and the ones who have kids? And if yes, why didn’t he?

A: This is a fascinating question. Three minutes of googling suggests that he could have pardoned anyone deemed guilty of a federal crime, which I assume illegal immigration is. Can anyone smarter than I am – basically anyone on Earth – answer this definitively?

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Q: Regarding your views of “A Complete Unknown”: Screenwriters always throw in falsehoods to make the movie better (in their opinion). In the Bernstein biopic Maestro, the movie has Bernstein's gay relationship causing a permanent break between him and wife. It did not happen. When his ex-wife had cancer, Bernstein moved into her apartment and took care of her until she died. The truth would have made the movie better IMO. Just sayin'. – Steve Newman

A: Agreed. But also more complex – a terrible sin, which is an American movie no-no . Here is a column by me, with Lars Von Trier.

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Q: This is your pal again. I find it sweet that you keep calling on your following here to “resist” the Trump restoration. You do realize, don’t you, that this very bright and highly informed assemblage are kinda fun but at the end of the day are just Statler and Waldorf writ large?

You have heretofore been unspecific in how we should turn our snark and “ get off my lawn” hollow outrage into meaningful resistance. Other than to resist the lure of Trump’s bloviating rhetoric. Well, that’s not a big stretch.

You have suggested that we somehow work to proselytize Trump supporters back from the dark side of the Force. The swing voters will drift back at the mid-terms . The rabid faithful , never. You’re a devout atheist; try persuading a religious kook to see things your secular, rational way. Trust me, the Trump kooks are a much harder sell.

I once was a person of action; but, frankly, at this point in my life I fear gravity more than I fear the Second Coming of Adolph Trump. Even if I was inclined to shamble forth as an anti-Trump zealot, I wouldn’t know what to do that would be much more than the silly antics of a fading hippie.

A: Hello, pal. I really like your writing. And understand your thirst for privacy. Please in the future use the nom de plume Talleyrand. By which I will know you.

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Q: Is the NYT Bestseller list basically meaningless? I peruse bookstores and libraries often, and So. Many. Books claim this. I'm sure they're not lying, but....come on.

A: I have felt this too. Does anyone have any insight here?

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Q: "In case you missed it, in her substack...." is why Ann T will reach far fewer people now. Substack's reach is tiny compared to the WaPo, for all its faults. I don't fault her for leaving, but the consequence is that she isn't on one of the few platforms I have time to follow on a regular basis. I'll miss her.

A: Understood, but this is changing. Substack is becoming big. Oddly big. On the day that Instagram briefly died, it became the most used news platform in the country.

Q: My first observation is that I love this format for you. We don't need to discuss our ages for me to say how long I read -- in actual newsprint -- your columns. My husband reached for the latest on the O's while I reached for the magazine.

Second, I don't have the heart -- or the bourbon -- to watch today. I'll trust you and others to inform me. I just can't. Thank you for creating this new page for your long-time and new fans.

A: Obviously, you need more bourbon.

We are done for today. Please send in more questions and observations. Please share this. Please knock off the bourbon.