The Invitational Week 129: The Pettysburg Address

Plus, we give spelling bee words a better reason to exist.

Art by Valerie Holt

Hello. A jolly, joyous Juneteenth to you all. Not coincidentally, the results of this week’s Invitational contest will run on July 3, which is also the 152nd anniversary of the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg, which gives us a pretext to gin up today’s contest. It was suggested by Tom the Butcher.

In Invitational Week 129: Rewrite some portion of the Gettysburg Address as it would have been written and delivered by Donald Trump. For example:

“The world will greatly note and long remember what we say here, because it’s coming from me, who, by the way, I’ve heard is considered the greatest president ever by everyone except Hillary Clinton, who should be in jail.”

Your entry may play off existing lines from the actual speech, as in the example above, but doesn’t have to. You can write to any length, but it’s unlikely we will publish an entry of greater than, say, 50 words. And, um, not to belabor an obvious point, we are looking for funny, not merely embittered.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyURL.com/inv-form-129. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form. Formatting: It’s just our standard request to write each of your entries as a single line; i.e., don’t push Enter until the end of each entry.

Deadline is Saturday, June 28, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, July 3. (What better way to celebrate?)

The winner receives what is perhaps the polar opposite of the Gettysburg Address: It’s called America Has Very Nice Legs: It’s a Fact!, a spiral-bound book with three rows of flip cards, each containing a Trumpian word or phrase. The gimmick of this product — which probably will not end up on the list of Great Works Published by Simon & Schuster Inc. — is that you line up three of these snippets, Mad Libs style but not as funny, to make some silly sentence. And we’ll balance it with actual wit, a mini-pocket-size but hardcover Benjamin Franklin: Wit and Wisdom, epigrams from Poor Richard’s Almanack such as “Approve not of him who commends all you say.” (Pssst, Donald …)

A Bee in Your Sonnet: Spelling bee poems and jokes from Week 127

In Invitational Week 127 we asked you to use obscure words from the later rounds of this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee in funny poems or jokes. A few let’s-call-’em-real words also made it in, courtesy of the Bee’s vocabulary round.

Third runner-up:
Anenterous: having no stomach or intestinal tract
(To my Republican Senator)
No stomach have you, nor intestinal tract,
An anenterous being, but still it’s a fact:
Though you haven’t the guts for what’s right to defend,
You can bet that some shit will come out in the end. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

Second runner-up:
Littoral: relating to the seashore
Quite pleased at last that seaside bar to reach,
She ordered, with a smile, “Sex on the Beach.”
The barkeep then commenced to rub her clitorally —
She hadn’t meant for him to take her littorally.
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

First runner-up:
Monticle: a little hill
What’s so funny about places with monticles?
I don’t know, but they’re totally hill areas!
(Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

And the winner of the book Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter:
Perpension, deep reflection
For an elderly man comes a time of perpension,
Reflecting on days when he gave no attention
To matters mundane, like the strength of his streams,
Since he’d sleep for eight hours not waking from dreams.
But his prostate’s now big as a grapefruit, and he
Makes five trips every night to the toilet to wee.
So though fondly recalling his youthful well-being,
He longs for one bearable night of less peeing.
(Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

And now the Gene Pool Gene Poll, Invite Edition:

As always, if you think we ignored better entries in the Honorables (below) yell at us in the Comments.

Beleaguered Bee-leaguers

Villatic: rural
In America villatic,
The response is automatic:
They vote red in all the races,
Though the leopards eat their faces. (Mark Raffman)

Dactyliomancy: divination with finger rings
Soothsayer-boothsayer,
Telling my future by
Swinging a ring around —
Heck, what’s to lose?
I’d guess reports from this
Dactyliomancy
Aren’t more off base than the
Word from Fox News. (Duncan Stevens)

Oxter: armpit; osphresis: the act of smelling
Disgust oft increases
From oxterosphresis.
(Jesse Frankovich)

Blithesome: cheery; tithe: to give a tenth of your income to a religious institution
The church bell rang out in the steeple;
Then the pastor addressed all the people:
“If you covet a life that is blithesome,
I would highly advise that you tithe some.”
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

Rubicund: ruddy, especially in the face
Said a rubicund gambler named Fred,
“It’s not fair! There’s a tell I can’t shed!
Though I don’t tend to blush,
With a straight or a flush,
When I bluff, I’m too easily red.” (Mark Raffman)

Hyaline: transparent, glasslike
Project 2025’s aim? To belittle.
It’s hyaline — there’s surely no riddle.
While wrapped in the flag,
MAGA cons finger-wag
While libs wave their finger—the middle.
(Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

Shikken, senior officer during the Japanese shogunate
Some have called a shogun shikken
And spoke with fear and dread,
But all who called a shogun chicken
Went home without a head.
(Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece)

Aptery: winglessness
Dear Lord, this winglessness — my aptery —
Seems ill-conceived, quite maladaptery.
These arms I’ve got are insufficient
To slow this fall. Aren’t you omniscient?
I feel you should have known that I was going
To ply the skies in planes designed by Boeing. (Duncan Stevens)

Funis: umbilical cord
Upon our son’s brand-spanking-newness,
The doctor snipped away his funis.
But it took eighteen years—my Lord!—
For us to truly cut the cord. (Jesse Frankovich)

Genethliac: relating to birthdays or the position of the stars on one’s birthday
The milestone that every year comes back:
Its pattern’s in the stars: genethliac.
I’m wishing that they told us how to soften
The blow, and make it come around less often. (Duncan Stevens)

Tropholytic: Relating to the deeper part of a lake
The mobster made an offer that the rat could not refuse:
A tropholytic vacay in a pair of concrete shoes. (Jesse Frankovich)

Kasha: Eastern European porridge
Putin’s first bowl of kasha? Too hot!
And the second? Too cold to consume.
The third was just right, but did not
Save the cook from his subsequent doom. (Jesse Frankovich)

Antrorse: directed forward or upward
While driving, if I get cut off by some distracted idjit,
I’ll show the jerk my feelings with an antrorse middle digit.
(Jesse Frankovich)

Basilisk: a mythological reptile with poisonous breath
A basilisk with poison breath
Could surely cause your instant death.
But here’s a plan (I know it’s mean!):
Give him a slug of Listerine! (Beverley Sharp)

Avidya: ignorance; blindness to truth
Hey, you’re the guru of avidya!
(Betcha didn’t know that, didya?) (Jesse Frankovich)

Endarterectomy: surgical removal of part of the lining of an artery
“You may need an endarterectomy,”
My doctor said, rather direct to me,
“And your stomach looks rather suspect to me;
I’ll need to perform a gastrectomy.
And your testes are in such defect, you see,
Removal seems duly correct to me.
The good news: no hemorrhoidectomy —
And you’ll no longer need that vasectomy.”
(Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)

Juvenescence: youthfulness
One feature of the Trumpy recrudescence
Is jobs for folks in throes of juvenescence.
Authority for folks like Edward Coristine,
A hacker resume-is-rather-porous teen.
It’s not the trust in younger folks that galls:
Please find some better help than ol’ Big Balls. (Duncan Stevens)

And Last: Acetarious: used in salads
What did the Empress do with all my acetarious jokes? She tossed them. (Jesse Frankovich)

The headline “A Bee in Your Sonnet” is by Leif Picoult; Chris Doyle and Beverley Sharp submitted halves of the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline Saturday, June 21, at 9 p.m. ET: Our contest to “discover” new words in a randomly generated word-search grid, and write funny definitions. Click below for details.

The Invitational Week 128: As the Word Turns

Now we seamlessly segue into the Real-Time portion of The Gene Pool, where Gene answers questions in real time. Many of the questions today relate to his Father’s Day story about the day he killed his father and another post about Grandpa, the cat he and Rachel rescued from a cat carrier in the street. Please send new Questions and Observations here:

Oh, wait. You also have to give us money. Okay, you don’t HAVE to, but won’t you feel better about yourself if you do? We work hard at this and without your contribution, Gene and Pat have to reuse toilet paper to keep financially viable.

Three items before we begin. Please watch this colloquy between the egregious, testicle-deprived Pete Hegseth and the mighty, ovary-empowered U.S. Senator from Michigan, Elissa Slotkin. Watch someone being totally owned. It’s a delight.

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And secondly, please note the hilariously inept headline on this otherwise horrifying story.

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And thirdly, the latest from the aptonym front: From a recent Wapo story about the apprehension of a stray bear in Northern Virginia:

“The bear spent about four hours in a tree in the 800 block of Elden Street on Monday, said Lisa Herndon, the public information officer for the Herndon Police Department.

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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.

Okay, let’s go.

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Q: You wrote that you don’t like The Three Stooges, ergo you are not really a man. What it really means is that you have a sense of humor. I don't understand how anyone can watch them for five minutes.

A: I’d like to hear from someone – it will be a man – who can articulate why the Stooges are funny. My theory is that they are funny for the same reason Donald Trump was elected to a second term. Stupid people. Men.

However. Possibly I am guilty of stereotyping. Snap Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Q: Would your joke recently about yarmulkes still be funny if you heard a klansman tell it?

A: Fair question. No, it would not be, but that was not my point.

The joke was: “Why do Jewish men wear those beanies? Because the little propeller costs extra.”

Now, I think it would still be funny if an Episcopalian told it, so long as he also told jokes making fun of Black people, gay people, Polish people, transgender people, etc. It’s about context. In that case, it becomes a joke about stupid stereotypes.

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Q: Regarding the cat in the carrier who you rescued, I think you were too judgmental of the person who left the cat in the street.

The carrier is clean, fashionable; its placement half on grass, half on pavement suggests a comfort accommodation for the cat and a polite intrusion into human space of passersby. I'm thinking a bereft, kind-hearted girl, doing her best. We must consider adult decisions forced her surrender of what seems a healthy cat. I say keep Grandpa/ma. As a 70 year, childless cat lady, I know nothing heals the heart better than LOVE of another Sputterhead. So many in need, and y'all are the strongest guarantee that this cat's misfortune will be answered with kindness. Besides, cats are phenomenal. Read Christopher Smart, JUBILATE AGNO: "spraggle upon waggle" and "camels his back to bear the first notion of business."

A: That is a very sweet analysis, but it seems offbase. The food and water visible in the photo was put there by us. And Grandpa the cat – who is VERY slowly losing fear – does not like to see hands. She hisses whenever she sees hands. If we keep our hands in our pockets she is much more comfortable. This suggests to me that in her previous home, she had been brutalized.

We do intend to keep her. We don’t feel we have an alternative. In bringing her home, we feel committed to doing what we can to make her new life as good as possible. If she lets us.

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Q: Did you see the This Will Hold substack “She Won”? Do you think there’s a chance it’s on to something?

A: It hypothesizes that the Trump camp used sympathetic tech companies screwing with voting machines, Trump stole the election from Harris. From everything I know and believe, there is nothing to this. This has no more validity than the nutcakes who insist Biden stole the election. Trump won the election because we are a country of idiots and bigots.

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Q: I’m confused. How did you kill your father? Seems as if you gave him some comfort from his demons. Jane

A: I unambiguously authorized the hospice lady to kill him with a deliberate overdose, something she would not have done without permission. It is pointless to deny that. I believe it was the right decision, and feel no guilt. But yeah, I killed him.

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Q: My grandmother had Alzheimer's. Because most of my knowledge of Alzheimer's prior to that came from movies and TV, I thought the worst thing about Alzheimer's was when the person forgets their loved ones. Unfortunately, that step is fairly early in an increasingly horrible process where your loved one forgets everything including how to get dressed, how to hold their bladder, how to speak, how to eat, how to sit, how to swallow. Eventually, she was a shell of a person laying in a bed incapable of speech or movement. She was being kept alive by a feeding tube. Our family had many hard discussions about removing that tube. Some family members struggled with the thought of starving her to death while others realized it was the last mercy we could offer. Before a decision to remove the tube was made, she succumbed to a sudden infection from being bedridden. All of this to say, I understand the choice you made for your father, and I would have made the same one. It is a horrible thing to watch someone's dignity and humanity be stripped away by disease when you know the person would be appalled if they were aware they were living in such horrific condition. I would not want to live that way. I pray I never develop Alzheimer's, but if I do, I pray my family increases my medicine or removes my feeding tube.

A: As to the last point, me too. I have given explicit instructions to both Rachel and my daughter, Molly. As specified in my will, and by my separate instructions, they will make the decision together. They will not disagree.

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Q: Thank you for the story about your father. I went through something similar with my mom almost three years ago and every damn day I am riddled with "did we kill mom or just assist her commit suicide".

A: You did neither, actually, unless she had made her wishes explicitly known. You made a decision for her, out of love.

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Q: One thing about the article about the pregnant Georgia woman in a coma really struck me.

"My grandson may be blind, may not be able to walk, we don't know if he'll live once she has him," Newkirk told WXIA last week. "And I'm not saying we would have chose to terminate her pregnancy. What I'm saying is we should have had a choice."

There was a major news story in Rochester, New York in 1996 about a comatose woman who was raped and impregnated after she was already in a coma. Her family were staunchly pro-life Catholics, and chose to continue the pregnancy to term. That child was born healthy, and is living today as an adult. This was very controversial at the time over whether the family should have continued with the pregnancy or had an abortion. But whether they made the right choice or the wrong choice is besides the point - they had a choice, and they should have had a choice. The family of the woman in Georgia did not. Ordinarily the choice would be with the woman, but with her in a coma, the choice did in Rochester and should fall to the next of kin, the one and only circumstance where someone else should be allowed to control a woman's body.

Being "pro-choice" means believing women should have the right to make that choice, whether you ultimately agree with whatever choice they make or not.

A: I can’t say this any better.

I recall during the 2008 election, the antiabortion advocate Sarah Palin discussed her decision, made with her daughter Bristol, to bring a baby to term. No abortion. And I remember thinking, exactly, YES, you moron. THE POINT IS SHE HAD A CHOICE.

This reminds me of a great Samantha Bee skit on this very subject. It’s really worth re-watching.

By the way, the child was delivered by Caesarian section yesterday after which mom was finally allowed to die. The baby — at only 23 weeks — was born at under two pounds and is in intensive care. I don’t want to say any more.

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Q: Do you consider yourself Jewish?

A: I consider myself culturally Jewish, yes, largely because of the nature of my sense of humor, which is fatalistic and cynical, and because I feel guilt about everything. It ends there because have no religious identity or beliefs of of any sort. I do not believe in the supernatural, period. This does lead me to a snap Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Q: Here’s an essay about fathers from a different point of view:

I didn’t write it, but found it moving and compassionate.

A: This is terrific. Very well written – sparsely, elegantly. Wonderful use of detail. We’ll end with this.

See you all in a day or two. And please keep sending in Q’s and O’s.

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