The Invitational Week 181: Bumptious Behavior

Write new dialogue for some more classic ‘Speed Bump’ cartoons. Plus winning poems featuring ‘hwyl’ and other spelling bee words.

This week’s Invitational contest: Fill in the word balloon for this or the seven other “Speed Bump” cartoons below.

Hello. Today, we wheel in the Wayback Machine, which goes all the way back to March. That’s when we permanently inverted the format of The Invitational by beginning with the results of the old contest, and only afterward presenting the new one. Today, just this once, we are reverting to the old format because we feel we cannot in good conscience make you wait for the cartoons.

For Invitational Week 181: Provide text for the word balloons for any (or all) of the old “Speed Bump” cartoons labeled A through H. Each originally had words in it, of course. For this contest, we deleted those.

Be sure to see the instructions for Week 181 way down the page beneath this week’s poems.

This week’s winner gets a 2027 “Speed Bump” daily calendar — signed by cartoonist Dave Coverly himself. Just as he did last time, Dave will help us judge the contest. 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.

(To enter the cartoon contest, see the directions below the poems.)

A Ha-Bee of Ours: Spelling bee poems from Week 179

In Invitational Week 179 we asked you to choose one of the hundreds of obscure words from this year’s National Spelling Bee and use it in a funny poem or joke.

Third runner-up:
Tongkang, a type of light boat or junk used in Southeast Asia
I’m in trouble. My fortunes have sunk.
I’ve been canned from my job, like a punk.
How’d I get in this fix?
Had a tongkang, took pix
And said, “Boss! Let me show you my junk.”
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

Second runner-up:
Tangalung, a Malayan civet cat
Let’s hear it for the tangalung (Malayan civet cat);
He’s fond of coffee cherries and devours them — like that!
But (just like us) he has to poop and leaves some beans behind;
The locals then collect them to make coffee — what a find!
The civet cat is very cute; I know because I’ve seen ’em;
But as for all those coffee beans, I sure do hope they clean ’em …
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

First runner-up:
Tessaraconter (TEStes-er-uh-KON-ter), an ancient galley ship with 40 banks of oars
A tessaraconter from dreamland drew near—
A galley of emerald green.
’Twas a sight to behold, filled with crystal and gold
And sails of a silvery sheen.
The oarsmen plashed through the gossamer sea
While moonbeams danced lively and fleeting;
Then winkin’ and blinkin’, old Donald woke up
In the midst of a Cabinet meeting.
(Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park, Md.)

And the winner of the crocodile socks:
Teraglin (te-RAG-lin), an Australian food fish
The Australian teraglin may flee
From a tanglier net in the sea.
If relating this clears any doubts,
They are croakers with triangle snouts
And integral, crescentiform tails.
I’m alerting you; notice the scales
That are purple and blue near the top.
(Done with altering words, so I’ll stop.)
(Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

And the Thursday Invitational Gene Pool Gene Poll:

As usual, if you think one or more of the honorable mentions below are better than these, shout out your favorites in the Comments.)

Bee’s Whacks: Honorable mentions

Cour d’honneur (koor doh-NUR), a three-sided ceremonial courtyard in front of a grand building
You want to build a monument to show you are the greatest!
The East Wing, and the massive “Arc de Trump,” to name the latest.
Perhaps you’ll want a golden bust of you aside Abe Lincoln —
But there may be a place more apropos, so I am thinkin’
Let’s build a cour d’honneur to honor eight years of presiding!
(And add it to the prison where one day you’ll be residing.)
(Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)

A catometope (marine crustacean),
Unlike the leader of our nation,
Lacks fake hair and mushroom penis,
Although it is a stable genus. (Jonathan Paul)

Paroemia (paro-EE-mia), a rhetorical proverb or adage
A software guy out in Bohemia
Hawked an app with a daily paroemia.
Yet soon did I see:
Though the first words were free,
For the rest, it said “Upgrade to premia.”
(Karen Lambert, Chevy Chase, Md.)

Bylina (bih-LEE-nuh), a traditional East Slavic oral epic poem or heroic narrative
Atop his horse with shirtless chest,
The leader preens to look his best,
With vanity and feral eyes —
Don’t cross him, or it’s your demise!
Whoever writes this man’s bylina
Had best omit the tiny weena. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

Cara sposa (KAH-ruh SPOH-za), Italian phrase meaning “dear wife”
I lost my cara sposa.
I couldn’t be morosa.
(Michael Stein, Arlington, Va.)

Ainhum (eye-NYOOM), a tropical disease that can result results in toes falling off
Ernest Hemingway, master of prose,
Wrote great novels that everyone knows.
Less renowned, I presume,
Is my tome on ainhum,
Which is titled “A Farewell to Toes.”
(Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

Sondeli (son-DEH-li), the musk shrew of India, known for its strong scent
They say the sondeli
Is known to be smelly.
I wonder who claimed it?
(Could Shakespeare have tamed it?)
(Beverley Sharp)

Histidinemia (HIS-tih-dih-NEE-mee-uh), a metabolic disorder
Higgledy piggledy,
Histidinemia,
Marked by the lack of an
Enzyme in blood.
Patients may live with it
Asymptomatically,
Making this malady
Kind of a dud.
(Jeff Contompasis)

Taurokathapsia (TAW-roh-kuh-THAP-see-uh), an ancient Minoan sport in which a
performer grasps the horns of a bull and somersaults over it
In Minos, each taurokathapsia player
Began by reciting this bull-leaper’s prayer:
“Keep my scrotum intact and not punctured or torn
With my testicles draped on a taurus’s horn.”
(Chris Doyle, Warminster, Pa.)

Hwyl (pronounced variously “hyool,” “hoil,” and “whee-ul”), a Welsh term for joy or emotional fervency
“Iwan, what could be causing your hwyl?
Explain what is giving it fwyl.”
“It is just that we rock
Here in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
We are awesome, bodacious! We rwyl!” (Duncan Stevens)

Cashaw (kuh-SHAW), a crookneck winter squash
Once upon a late September, while I struggled to remember
The names of many a quaint and curious squash I’d gotten from the store,
While I pondered in my haven, suddenly there came a raven
That I hoped might be a maven of all gourd-related lore.
“Tell me what this crookneck’s called,” I humbly asked that bird I saw.
Quoth the raven, “Cashaw! Cashaw!” (Jesse Frankovich)

Igdyr, a remote settlement or geographical locale in central Asia
I do not give a flying fig, dear —
We’re not moving to your Baba’s igdyr.
(Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)

Ophir (OH-fer), a biblical port famed for its wealth
If Trump reads the Bible
He’s possibly liable
To learn of the treasures of Ophir,
With its gold and its riches
Plus real estate which is
An asset he’d certainly go f’r. (Jonathan Paul)

Tsine (syne), a banteng, a wild ox native to Southeast Asia
Lost in the jungle and starving,
I craved a juicy steak,
or a rump roast ready for carving,
or a burger and a shake.
Hundreds of miles from the nearest Whopper
I prayed for a rescue divine.
Wait, look there!— no, not a chopper,
But— praise be! —God tsent me a tsine.”
(Daniel Galef, Cincinnati)

Wachna (WAHK-nuh), a type of Arctic cod
A chef once took wachna fillets
And topped them with bubblegum glaze,
Which you’d probably think
Is a dish that would stink —
But cod works in mysterious ways.
(Jesse Frankovich)

Flaith (flah), an Irish prince or chieftain
Our chieftain is by all revered —
No, not a guru, not a shaman.
Does he at times start acting weird?
Well, you’d expect that from a Flaith Man.
(Duncan Stevens)

Potto, a small primate native to African rainforests
The vegan potluck’s in the books,
And man, I got some stormy looks!
A typo made my dish invalid:
I seems I made a potto salad. (Duncan Stevens)

Carreta (kuh-RET-uh): a two-wheeled cart pulled by oxen
Putting on your shoes and then your socks
Is putting the carreta ’fore the ox. (Jesse Frankovich)

And Last:
I steer a carreta every Sunday
To my local farmers’ market,
And just like Gene, I hit other carretas
When I parallel-park it. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

The headline “A Ha Bee of Ours” is by Jesse Frankovich; Jon Gearhart wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.
Note to Invitational fans: For obscure techie reasons, the Losers’ website, with all the archives and stats, has changed from nrars.org to nrars.net. (NRARS stands for the Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society.)

Still running — deadline Saturday, June 20, at 9 p.m. ET: It’s our contest for a riddle whose punchline is a series of rhyming words. Click on “read full story” below for details.

The Invitational Week 180: Riddle-Fiddle

More instructions for Week 81: New words for ‘Speed Bump’ cartoons

Note: Your replacement texts don’t have to fit Dave’s particular word-balloon spaces: You could write fifteen words — or just one. To get an idea what tickles our fancy, check out the results of Week 159, our first roll over “Speed Bump.”

Important advice: We don’t want to show the original texts of these cartoons to you, because we think it will limit your imaginations. But there are lots of “Speed Bumps” out there on the Web, and if you search hard enough for these particular cartoons, you may find some. We strongly urge you not to try. We know there’s a risk that you’ll come up with the same joke Dave wrote — a few entries did that in Week 159. We’re sure you’re not stealing, but if you do happen to send in something that’s too close to the original, we won’t be able to use it. It’s just a risk we are all taking. We will publish the originals when we publish the results.

Formatting your entries: Begin each entry only with the letter on the picture — as in A. [your entry] — and keep each entry to a single line; i.e., don’t press Enter until you’re starting another entry.
Also: There won’t be an honorable-mentions subhead this week, so don’t go suggesting one. We’ll still have the headline for the results, as usual.

Deadline is Saturday, June 27, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, July 2. 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-181.

Now we seamlessly segue into the Mailbag portion of The Gene Pool, in which Gene responds to your questions and observations. Please send your new Questions and Observations here, to Ye Olde Mailbagge:

And last, if you have not already done so, please consider becoming a paying subscriber to The Gene Pool. It lets you enter the Invitational, rather than just reading the results every week and sourly deciding you would have done better and then kicking the family’s dog cat hamster bunny potbelly pig. weasel. sea monkey. giant squid. raccoon. humpbacked whale. Clydesdale. axolotl. naked mole rat. slime mold.

Q: While reading a Graham Greene short story last night I learned a new word:
borborygmus noun bor·​bo·​ryg·​mus ˌbȯr-bə-ˈrig-məs plural borborygmi ˌbȯr-bə-ˈrig-ˌmī
: intestinal rumbling caused by moving gas
I appreciate your expertise in such matters and realize it might not be new to you, but if you don’t know the word, I thought you should. The story itself was oddly boring, considering it was about a guy whose borborygmi imitated the sounds around him, from lovely music to air raid sirens. — T. S. Berg

A: You will not be surprised that I am well acquainted with this word. I have used it several times, including in a column in which I submitted an “entry” to an actual gastroenterologists’ contest calling for poems about colonoscopies.

T.S. Berg, this was my poem, a la Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot, whose name famously anagrams to “toilets.” I consider it my best parody poem:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the time is nigh, and thigh is spread from thigh
And the patient’s etherized upon a table.
Let us enter deftly through his seat
(Swift, and yet discreet)
And snake our way along that shadowed, half-deserted street
Where every fetid crypt and cavern beckons like a wicked, saucy trollop
Hiding in her folds the grisly gift of ulcer, wen or polyp,
Streets that wind like a tedious argument of intestinal distress --
oh, do not ask what’s in there -- Follow me -- I’ve done that, been there.
In the room the women cannot “go”;
They come to me to ease their pelvic woe.
First, there is time, and there is time,
Time enough for fifty years to pass,
Time for borborygmus and for gas,
Time for lovely necks and hands to coarsen just a trace
Before they’re told to come to me.
There is time for taking tea, for worried talk of friends and kin and others taken dead,
Taken slow, taken from below,
And soon -- the early evening light’s just so,
Just so, upon her graceful, well-aged cheek,
Is it not time, my longtime patient asks, for a preemptive peek?
Is it not time at last for you, my friend
-- she smooths her skirt -- to wield in me your magic fiber-optic tool?
I wipe my glasses on my shirt. Does one return a flirt with wit?
It’s trifle late for you to think of fiber -- that’s my jest,
But this I leave unsaid; sometimes it’s best
To leave forward things unsaid, lest you play the Fool,
One must never play the fool nor make the jest nor take the chance that one might
Be rebuffed, or maybe worse, to find a vulgar, unchaste breast
Upon one’s morning bed.
I grow old, I grow old,
I have measured my existence, fold by fold, inch by Sigmoid inch, seeking cure for blockage, blood and cramps.
The young among them sometimes call me Gramps.
(Oh, how I wish they would not call me Gramps.)
So, dispensing the necessary ointment,
I bid her return, with a proper appointment,
And she arrives spot on three,
(Punctual as she is wont to be)
Exchanging pleasantries, quick I give her sleep.
And then, professional, detached, possessing self-possession for which I’m famed among my Fellows,
I activate the bellows to fill her up with . . . air.
And then perform the needed task,
Unmatched in my detachment, after which she is dispatched
To the room where, like all the others,
She awakens to her farts,
And then, gathering up her gloves and bag, departs.
I grow old, I grow old.
It is on to other patients, other years,
My penmanship precise, my diary a list of humble fears,
Punctuated with a simple mark -- The colon: giving pause, and a promise of a drama yet to come.
Which does not come.
I think it will not come for me.

—

Q: This is the best short take on Trump’s “victory” in Iran.

A: Agreed. I wonder if Iran chose the venue.

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Q: Thought I would pass along this story from my father. Unfortunately, no crazy people are involved. During WWII, he served in the Army and was assigned to a camp in Arkansas. One day someone said something antiSemitic. My father told to guy to watch what he said as he was Jewish and did not appreciate the soldier’s comment. The guy looked at my father and said, “you’re not Jewish”. That caught my dad off guard. So he asked what he meant by that. “You can’t be Jewish, you don’t have a tail” came the response. By the way, my father was one of two Sonar operators in the Army. He spent the war trying to get transferred to the Navy, but was told that the Army thought it might have a use for sonar someday so they wanted to keep him around.

A: During the war, my father was stationed in Fort Belvoir, VA. He and my ma were dining with another couple, and the guy said, “I don’t like Jews. I can smell a Jew a mile away.” Also, my father knew of another Jewish soldier who was asked by a superior — politely, just curious — if he wouldn’t mind removing his hat to to show his horns.

—

Q: Regarding things that seem the same but aren’t – Donald Trump and a piece of shit. At first blush, they appear to be almost identical. Upon closer inspection, the observer remembers that the latter can serve as fertilizer and help things grow.

A: Actually, when you think of it, Donald Trump also could serve as fertilizer and help things grow.

—

Q: My dear Geneious, in your proposal to turn Trump’s arch into a “chai” sign, you misspelled chai. You wrote Hi (at least in the emailed version). The Hebrew letter you started with was the Hey, not the Chet you meant to use. This is what you wanted: חי. Otherwise, מזל תוב — Samantha Horwitz

A: Right you are. I later corrected it. In my lame defense, internet sites — even Hebrew-based internet sites — sites aggressively confuse the two letters when printing “chai”. Here they are, correctly distinguished.

The first is chet, the second is, hey — hey, unless you read Hebrew, in which case . . . .

With that, I leave.

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