The Invitational Week 109: The Alternaugural Address

Write something funnier with the words from the latest Jan. 20 diatribe. Plus AMAZING anagrams.

Is it the BACONATOR or some fake CRAB-TOONA? See more anagrams for the Wendy’s artery assault in today’s results.

Hello. Or, alternatively, “O hell.”

Today’s Invitational results are from our Week 107 anagram contest, in which we challenged you to scramble and rescramble all sorts of things, which you did to great result. The contest was inaugurated around the time of the Inauguration, meaning that one thing on everyone’s minds was the new malevolence in the White House. We make no apologies for a certain theme that inevitably permeated the entries.

In the meanwhile:

"Aliens from Mars love me, you know. ‘Great One,’ they said to me, ‘make our planet your new state.’ I said, ‘Perhaps after Panama.’”

For Invitational Week 109: Using only words that Trump used during his 2025 inaugural address, write either a fake passage from an alternative inaugural speech, as above, or just anything else: a “quote,” an observation, a joke, a dialogue, a poem, whatever. For consistency, please use the White House transcript, skipping over notes like “(applause).” You may also attribute your quote to someone other than Trump, or to no one. Within a single entry, you can’t use a word more often than Trump used it.

Since we’ve done a number of “word bank” contests over the years, we’ve developed some ground rules about hyphens, capitalization, whether you can add an S to a word, etc. And if you’re gagging at the prospect of mulling over the re-president’s odious fulmination over and over — you’re saved: You don’t actually have to read it! Because once again, Hall of Fame Loser Gary Crockett has provided us with a list of every word Trump said, along with the number of times it occurs in the speech. See both the rules and the word list at this link right here.

How long should these things be? Depends on how funny and clever they are; if an entry becomes boring or difficult to read, we’re likely to toss it. To see what we went for last time, see the nifty inking entries from our 2024 State of the Union contest.

Deadline is Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Feb. 13. 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-109.

This week’s winner gets a candle encased in this little metal shell (pictured front and back). We have it on excellent authority that Donald Trump received five of these as gifts from all his known children. Donated by superdad Jeff Contompasis.

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.

Wittiness > Witness It: The multi-anagrams of Week 107

In Invitational Week 107 we asked for a sentence or two that included either (a) a word or name plus at least two anagrams of it or (b) a multi-word phrase that included at least one anagram of it. We would declare the results utterly astonishing in their ingenuity, except that these and other Losers have repeatedly blown our socks off in previous Invite anagram contests. Remember, each of these anagrams rearranges all the letters in the original phrase, with no letter used twice.

Third runner-up:
Come across FLORIDA MAN and you’ll see RANDOM FAIL. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore; Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

Second runner-up:

The EGOMANIAC,
A MEGA-ICON,
I.E., MAGA CON,
has COME AGAIN. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

First runner-up:

“SACRE bleu!” complained Usha. “No fair!
JD’s foisted this immigrant SCARE!
No one CARES there’s no basis,
He’s off to the RACES —
And soon to deport our au pair.” (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

And the winner of the earrings that look like miniature plastic bags holding live goldfish:
FACE IT—HARMFUL EGO! Our CHIEF GOLF AMATEUR, who cannot distinguish a HUGE LIE FROM A FACT, favors the name THE GULF OF AMERICA. (Jesse Frankovich)

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.

LOSERS — OR LESS: Honorable mentions

Donald and I, STORMY DANIELS, did it once — his mushroom dick reminded me of TINY MORELS. SAD. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

In better times, she’d slice the LIMES,
And SMILE and salt the glass.
But the MILES we’d roll would take their toll:
Tequila kicked our ass. (Mark Raffman)

It would be a DIRE SIN for a biology INSIDER not to know the difference between an amphibious SIRENID and flying IRENIDS and NERIIDS. (Yes, I IS NERD.🤓) (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

In ELON’S “SIEG HEIL” SALUTE on Inauguration Day, I SEE SOUL-SELLING HATE. (Chris Doyle)

The ELON MUSK NAZI SALUTE pleased the USUAL ZEALOT KINSMEN. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

The BACONATOR might not contain a COAT O’ BRAN… OR CAN O’ BAT … or even something obviously fake like CRAB-TOONA, but it does contain the key to your next clogged artery. (Leif Picoult)

America PINES for a prez with a SPINE
And the judgment (let’s keep this between us)
To make dictators quail, and not list us for sale
To the ones who keep stroking his EGO. (Mark Raffman)

Hey, federal workers, what do you want to do on Trump’s EXECUTIVE ORDERS?
“EXCRETE? VOID? SURE!” (Duncan Stevens)

According to Pat Robertson, SANCTUARY CITIES are a plot to give immigrants SATANIC SECURITY. (Chris Doyle)

^(Eric Nelkin, Silver Spring, Md.; animation from Wordsmith,org)

CATS’ ACTS CAST SCAT. (Jeff Contompasis)

Hasn’t MELANIA TRUMP had enough of MR. MANIPULATE? (Jonathan Jensen)

If you’ve bought a TRUMP MEME COIN, you’ve MET PREMIUM CON. (Duncan Stevens)

I went to an IMAGINE DRAGONS concert and risked SENIOR-DAMAGING … GONAD MIGRAINES. (Jeff Contompasis)

Mark Zuckerberg hopes META’S “MASCULINE ENERGY” will attract INSECURE MAGA-STYLE MEN. (Chris Doyle)

So three guys, ARNOLD, ROLAND, and RONALD, walk into a bra … (Jeff Contompasis)

At the end of THE TRUMP ERA, I will gleefully shout “TERM UP, HATER!” (Jonathan Jensen)

To Blake Lively, JUSTIN BALDONI has worked himself into a JAIL-BOUND SNIT. To Justin Baldoni, BLAKE LIVELY is BLEAKLY EVIL. (Chris Doyle)

THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS is where NUTCASES DISSENT TOGETHER. (Jesse Frankovich)

I WILL ASK THIS: WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU CROSS A POLAR BEAR //
WITH A SEAL? WHY, IT’S NO SHOCK, SIR—YOU WOULD GET A POLAR BEAR! (The words after the slashes form a perfect anagram of the opening words.) (Jesse Frankovich)

Whenever I would hear Doris Day sing “Que SERA, SERA” … it would SEAR my ARSE. (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)

While a teenager, ALEC GUINNESS exhibited GENUINE CLASS even while suffering ACNE UGLINESS. (Jeff Contompasis)

Once again, the FELON PRESIDENT brought in his FETID PERSONNEL. (Jonathan Jensen)

You thought you’d heard all the rumors about PETE HEGSETH, but did you hear what happened when he said, “GET THE SHEEP”? (Duncan Stevens)

When the man with the orange MANE coins a MEAN NAME, I hope a few follicles fall out. AMEN! (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.)

And Last: The cartoonist was so mad she could SPIT! She shouted, “This job is the PITS!” So she quit. (You can read all about it in The Washington PIST.) (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

And Even Laster: With GENE POOL INKS, we KEEP ON LOSING. (Jesse Frankovich)

Note: We do want you to get to the rest of The Gene Pool, and we know it doesn’t fit the contest’s call for “a sentence or two,” but we have to show you Jon Gearhart’s tour-de-force fantasy of THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS by Trump, which includes fifteen anagrams of that phrase. It’s here on this link.

Oh, here’s one really last And Last: Next week, JOINT LEGISLATION will yield NO GIANT JOLLITIES. (Jeff Contompasis)

The headline “Wittiness > Witness It” is by Jesse Frankovich; Kevin Dopart wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Feb. 1: It’s our biennial “Joint Legislation” wordplay contest. Send us some giant jollities! Click on the link below.

The Invitational Week 108: Bill Us Now

We now enter the celebrated Q&A portion the Gene Pool, where Gene reads your questions and observations and responds to them; all questions here were submitted before 11 p.m. on Wednesday. Please keep sending QUestions, Observations, Telling Anecdotes to our newly named QUOTA button.

Pat Myers will be on hand in real time today (about 11 to noon ET) to respond to you in the Comments section, which is below and which as always can be accessed by our special comments button. Or she’ll write back later.

Lastly, we recommend that you consider upgrading your subscription to “paid,” on a purely mathematical cost-benefit analysis. Bear with us here: The Gene Pool costs $4.15 a month, which always worked out to 32 cents per post. But that was months ago, when we averaged three posts a week. We now average five posts a week. This means you are only paying 21 cents per post! How can you turn this down??

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Q: Given Trump’s trade policy preferences and the nihilistic tendencies of him and his followers, I think of him as the Tariff of Nothingham, who will, alas, soon prove to be a tax on all of us. — Gary Blankenship

A: Excellent observation, Gary.

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Q: The comments on the tick-tocking of clocks of clocks in your recent posting bring to mind the name of a hitman for Murder Inc. in the 1930s, Albert “Tick-Tock” Tannenbaum. Apparently he got his nickname because when he was excited, he talked so incessantly and so fast that it was like the ticking of a clock. And like many good nicknames, it was nicely alliterative with his last name.

A: Yep. Here’s a photo of Tick-Tock (on the left). He was a notorious hitman.

On the right is fellow gangster Abe Reles. In 1941, Reles was being held in police custody in a high hotel room in Coney Island because prosecutors had flipped him and he’d become a government witness whose testimony sent several members of Murder Inc. to the electric chair. He somehow got flipped out the window and fell to his death. Evidence suggested that the cops who were guarding him had been paid off to send him through that window. Postmortem, he became known, in crime circles, as “the bird who could sing, but could not fly.”

Tannenbaum also became a stoolie, but died of natural causes.

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Q: The South won the Civil War. They have decapitated the northern states in Congress.

So the southern states said we want to leave your union and the North said you cannot, and then the North invaded the South in a war that killed 760,000 soldiers. The North defeated their armies and destroyed and ravaged their country.

After that, the North said we want you to think like us, which has never happened and probably never will. We even went into their states and took down the statues.

Then the North said, do you think like us? No, they don’t, and they never will.

This is our reality. I do not want to live in their country, and they do not want to live in mine. In truth, I do not like them, and they do not like me. So, can we say goodbye and go our own ways?

A: Interesting argument. You are a skilled enough writer that I do not know for sure whether you are a northerner or a southerner. So good on you.

As to the validity of your argument, I’d urge you to run it by Mr. Lincoln. He’d have several political and economic issues to raise.

But mostly, I think he’d ask you this: What are the ways the southerners wish to think, and live, that we northerners are not permitting them to pursue? What are the values they hold so dear that we are stifling them from exercising? And are those values consistent within a modern compassionate democracy? Are they consistent with those of another country above which we wish to live?

I think if you mess around down there, you’ll find your answer.

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Q: Gene, brilliant piece about DEI. I used the “rat out DEI policies” email address you shared to send the following:

I’m a five-year US Army veteran who swore to defend our Constitution — which is now under attack! There’s an extreme risk of military leaders being given unlawful orders, civil rights being violated, and violence in the streets as a result of the unconstitutional behavior of….you. The entire Trump administration. My late father, who survived the Battle of the Bulge to become a career U.S. foreign service officer, is no doubt churning about in anger in his Virginia grave.

You. Are. Traitors.

A: Thank you. You gave me your full name and invited me to publish it. Not gonna, for your sake, in recognition of the brave new world in which we live.

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Q: Hello Gene, Marilyn Mathis here. My comment on the article about the women priests: Yes, I agree that somewhere within Donald Trump is a lost, frightened child, and it can be true that this is the way God sees him. But he has long ago lost touch with that inner child. I fear for our country and our people.

A: I think the problem is that he is very much in touch with only the worst parts of his inner child — petulant, needy, greedy, etc.

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Okay, that’s it for today. Please keep sending in QUOTAS as well as COMMENTS, where Pat will be lurking.