The Invitational Week 30: Poll-ish Jokes

Come up with a ridiculous reader poll. Plus winning poems about glomerulonephritis and other spelling bee words.

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Jul 27, 2023

Here is today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll !

This week’s Invitational contest was occasioned by desperation. Gene was trying to think of a Gene Poll to use for the next Gene Pool, and unfortunately came up with the one above, the poll you have just taken.

The new contest for Week 30: Come up with a really stupid online poll for a general interest news site. It can be stupid because it is trivial, like the bread-tie thing, or for any other reason. Here’s another example, which we will mercifully not present as an actual take-at-home poll requiring your response:

In Civilization and Its Discontents, published in 1929 in German as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, did Sigmund Freud mean to suggest that there are fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual, or was his thesis more of a psychoanalytical exploration of the urge to escape conformity?
A. Fundamental tensions
B. Escape conformity
C. Neither — it’s more about universal ennui.
D. The question is biased and intellectually unsound. I refuse to answer.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to bit.ly/inv-form-30. As usual, you can submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same entry form. See the form for how to format your entries.

Deadline is Saturday, Aug. 5, at 4 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Aug. 10.

This week’s winner gets a pen you can play blackjack on. Donated by Kathy Sheeran of Vienna, Va.

Another game in which you’re likely to win nothing!

Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of ten nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a sweet email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for those who’ve just lost their Invite virginity.

Jest for the Spell of It: Poems and jokes from Week 28

In Week 28 we once again invited our Loserbards to actually use — in a funny poem, or even a joke — any of the words from the later rounds of this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Third runner-up:
Poliorcetics, the art of conducting a siege:
Once upon a January, Trump incited, mad and scary,
Making many a rigged election claim that simply wasn’t true—
While he ranted, hardly quiet, suddenly there came a riot;
Sadly he would not decry it, like a decent guy might do.
His followers tried poliorcetics, staging a revolting coup—
After all, he told them to.
(Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

Second runner-up:
Timorous, fearful:
As summertime approaches, we are often feeling timorous:
Will last year’s swimsuit fit, or will there have to be a slimmer us?
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

First runner-up:
Sneeziness, wheeziness.
Bogart’s been sick and has
Taken loratadine
Pills for the flu.
Flubbing his line despite
Pharmacological
Help, he says, “Ilsa, here’s
Looking — ACHOO!”
(Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

And the winner of the Wicked Witch of the East over-the-knee socks:
Crore, ten million:
Six crore and five million years ago, God brought forth upon this planet
An asteroid dedicated to the proposition that dinosaurs no longer ran it.
(Jesse Frankovich)

The Bee List: Honorable mentions

Ethnarch, leader of ethnic group or homogeneous people:
This ethnarch seeks once more to wear a crown,
Appeals to fear: his tribalistic fight.
Has little use for votes from black or brown—
Don rules for, and is blinded by, the white.
(Duncan Stevens, vacationing in Gloucester, Mass.)

Silentiary, one appointed to keep silence and order:
Librarian and silentiary, she frowned at every sound
That was too loud and quickly vowed to have it squelched.
Imagine then her horror when a rude noise most profound
Resounded on the main floor. Without warning, she had belched!
“Shh!!” said one and all, and to her deep mortification
Her buttocks then performed a swift but thunderous aeration.
(Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)

Alexia, inability to perceive written words:
If you have alexia,
This poem oughta vexia. (Jesse Frankovich)

Hypovolemia, a decrease in blood circulation:
I went weak in the knees when I first saw your face.
I clumsily stumbled, besieged by your grace.
For weeks, I was dizzy, lost in a daze.
Unable to think, in an amorous haze.
The time slowly passed as I hungered and yearned.
Now, thanks to my doctor, there's much I have learned:
If you fall for a guy who is out of your league,
That may not be the source of your sudden fatigue.
Though you're sure you know why you seem pale and anemic,
You aren’t in love. You’re just hypovolemic.
(Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)

A joke:
How is the Washington Commanders organization like a lamprey?
You have to remove the head so they’ll stop sucking. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)

Conversazione, a meeting for conversation:
A wiseguy conversazione
Over plates of cannelloni
Features capos swapping tales
Of icing hoods for their betrayals,
Offing rats on one-way rides,
And whacking grooms in front of brides.
The highlight’s when Don Vito dishes
On who’s next to sleep with the fishes.
(Chris Doyle)

Isolette, enclosed crib for a newborn:
My baby’s in an isolette;
No germs or chilly drafts get through.
She hears no news of climate threat,
Or what the Donald plans to do.
It’s quite a thing, this bassinet!
I often wish I had one too. (Duncan Stevens)

Pridian, referring to yesterday (or an earlier time)
After dealing with trials quite worthy of Job,
How perfect if you could just fly round the globe,
Crossing that line on a mapmaker’s chart
Where night turns to day – you'd just get to “restart”!
One’s pridian stresses would all dissipate —
But the baggage remains, parked right at the gate.
(Sarah Walsh, Rockville, Md.)

Pridian II
Are the films of John Hughes on the brink
Of oblivion? Certain folks think
That his ’86 hit
Is so yesterday it
Should be listed as Pridian Pink.
(Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.)

Isogloss: a boundary line between regions that differ in a particular linguistic feature:
An isogloss marks where those odd people stop
Saying “soda” and properly ask for a pop. (Midwesterner Jesse Frankovich)

Chumble, to chew:
There’s a story, I swear it’s well founded,
Of a girl who was bright and well rounded,
But on lamp cords she’d chumble
Till to bits they would crumble,
And now she’s been totally grounded.
(Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)

If George Seurat were now alive
And got online, I think it’s plain
His pointillistic self would strive
To make dot.com his own domain. (Chris Doyle)

Furtum, theft:
The key to a deftly done furtum?
The owners: try not to alert ’em.
My old thief-pal Byron,
He triggered a siren—
And the dogs, well, they gulped-for-dessert him. (Duncan Stevens)

Anilox, a system of printing that transfers consistent amounts of ink
I went down to the deli for a Sunday morning nosh
And ordered up the special of the day;
Included was a bagel, when cut open it displayed
My name, imprinted. Blew my mind away!
I asked, “How did you print my name so neatly on the bread
That I found inside the daily special box?”
The deli man replied, “It is a skill as old as time:
I simply used the bagel anilox.”
(Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)

Leguleian, a lawyer who bogs down in trivialities:
Said the plaintiff who got trounced in court to his attorney Sheehan:
”You only argued trial points; you’re just a leguleian!
I now reject your crude demand that I should send my fee in —
I’m shocked, based on your work today, you have a pot to pee in.”
(Rick Bromberg, Fairfax, Va., and yes, he’s a lawyer)

Glomerulonephritis:
To simply say or write is
An awful pain, and yet it
Is even worse to get it. (Jesse Frankovich)

Opacate, to make opaque:
When famous folk in scandals face
A public they must placate,
They promise, “I can clarify!”
(Which means “I can opacate!”)
(Coleman Glenn, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.)

Officious, meddlesome, offering unwanted advice:
My neighbors are rude – they’re officious
And their prying is downright pernicious.
They are bad to the bone
So I leave them alone
(Well, except when the gossip’s delicious . . .) (Beverley Sharp)

Sacalait, a Louisiana fish (aka crappie)
On the bayou, we’re fishin’ today —
“Let the bons temps roulez!” we all say.
Caught another! So happy!
Who dat callin’ it “crappie”?
Mon cher, it’s un grand sacalait!
(Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

Cognoscente, expert in a certain field
Runway models just can’t win
When every fashion cognoscente
Thinks a woman’s not too thin
At six foot two, one hundred twenty. (Chris Doyle)

Monoxenous, living on a single host throughout a parasite’s life:
Their son is thirty-five but still content to live at home.
“He’ll find a job soon,” Mother said. “I’ve faith in our Jerome.”
“He’s monoxenous. Our parasite will never leave,” Dad said.
“But we should make him stop sleeping between us in our bed.”
(Pam Shermeyer)

Novenary, a group of nine:
It’s safer to crawl through machinery
And get chewed like Jack Nicholson’s scenery,
Than to count on your rights
When they get in the sights
Of the current Supreme-type Novenary. (Duncan Stevens)

She walked into the bar and all the men began to gawk;
The room fell strangely silent then, and no one dared to talk.
A lusty lad approached her and he soon became besotted;
(He’d had a lot of schnapps, you see; quite frankly, he was potted.)
The hapless guy had failed to see — he really was a dope —
The girl he found so sexy was a female lycanthrope.
(Beverley Sharp)

The headline “Jest for the Spell of It” is by Jesse Frankovich; both Chris Doyle and Kevin Dopart submitted the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 4 p.m. ET Saturday, July 29: Our Week 29 contest for pangrams — sentences that include all 26 letters of the alphabet. Click here or type in bit.ly/inv-week-29. NEW: Check your pangram instantly to make sure it has all the letters at pangram.me/en.

See more about The Invitational, including our 2,600-member Facebook group, the Losers’ website, and our podcast.

Okay, so now we entreat you. The Gene Pool has many thousands of people around the country and globe who read us weekly for free, and many hundreds who pay us a little money ($4.15 a month). Will you take the graceful, gazelle-like leap from the first group to the second, upgrading from “free” to “paid”? If you scratch our backs, we’ll scratch yours. Literally. Gene will come over to your house and scratch your back. Here’s how to arrange it:

Here come your questions and observations, with Gene’s answers. Please keep refreshing the page; from this point on, the Gene Pool is live, in real time.

Q: What do you think about the news that President Biden’s dog, Commander, has bitten secret service agents ten times? And that his prior dog, Major, had done the same thing? And is there a connection to Hunter Biden’s laptop?

A: Serious answer: it bothers me a bit. I like Biden. I think he has been a good president at an important time. But I believe that dogs behave the way we train them to behave. Dogs want to be good. If they are not, it is the dog owner’s fault.

Rachel: Excuse me?

Me: Wait, what are you doing here?

Rachel: I am reminding you of what happened last night.

Me: Don’t do this.

Rachel: I have to. Did your own dog, Lexi, not in fact, just last night, steal some lamb bones and run away and growl and actually bare her teeth when you tried to take them back?

Me:

Rachel: This is The Gene Pool. It is sacrosanct. You are under oath. It is a covenant with readers. You must tell the truth and the whole truth.

Me:

Rachel:

Me: She did.

Rachel: Are you a bad dog owner?

Me: Well, I own a bad dog.

Rachel: Nice try.

Me: I am so sorry, Mr. Biden.

Rachel: Good.

Me: Now, what about Hunter’s laptop?

Rachel: Bye.

Leave a comment

Q: Wait, what are those framed newspaper things above the record cabinet?

A: They are New York Times stories from the 1920s, reporting the acquittal of Calegoro Greco and Donato Carrillo for the murder of a fascist in the Bronx. The lead attorney was Clarence Darrow. The second attorney was Isaac Shorr, my grandpa. They were probably guilty. It was a case that nearly rose to the prominence of Sacco and Vanzetti — the government going after Italian immigrants.

Q: Like you, I live in a large city, although not in the United States. Not surprisingly, I encounter many panhandlers, some sitting with a sign, others standing with a cup or walking around asking for spare change. Sometimes I give them money, sometimes I don't. I would say that about half the time I do, usually the equivalent of at least a dollar, more often two. But there's one thing that bugs the shit out of me: I absolutely despise it when a panhandler thinks he's* going to win me over somehow by grasping my arm or shoulder. It doesn't have anything to do with perceived cleanliness or presumed microbes - I just really, really, really (insert adverb of choice) hate it when a stranger touches me in a familiar manner. I hate this to the point of wasting time fantasizing after the fact about how I should have screamed at the guy. Of course, since I'm me, that never happens. Is this a neurosis, a phobia, a natural reflex or a logical reaction?

A: Panhandlers test my sense of decency. I resent them. This is entirely an interior monologue – I do not treat them with scorn. But each and every time someone asks me for money (I live in D.C, so it is constant, and often serial, along a single block) I find myself challenging my sense of compassion. And I resent THAT. It is awful. There is no end to the shame. And I resent THAT.

Q: Some years ago, you had a kerfuffle on Twitter because of a tweet about women wearing short skirts while bicycling. You responded at length, with an interesting mea culpa. You said that you found the Internet hordes could be forgiving of this type of thing if it is handled correctly--admitting fault and apologizing promptly, as I recall. Does your opinion change after your curry kerfuffle?

A: They were very different things, so I guess my views have not changed. The initial thing – skirts, bikes – was explicable, so I explicated. It involved the strange circumstance of the Internet’s ability to punish and then reward. The second thing – my opinion about Indian food – involved a wildly emotional abreaction, to which no response made sense. There was no dialogue to be found. I had evidently insulted a subcontinent, and the reaction was driven by famous people with many, many followers. The fact is, I don’t like cumin, coriander, turmeric, cardamom, saffron and garam masala. These are tastes I do not celebrate, and they happen to be prevalent, in combination, in much Indian food. I expressed my respect for Indian culture. But there was no discussion left to be had. We had none.

Q: Gene, your poll about chickens and ick factor was deficient, IMO. I do not eat any meat or poultry. I do eat kosher species of sea food, and lab grown lox would DEFINITELY interest me. I answered that I wouldn’t eat the lab grown chicken because of the “ick” factor, but my reason was that it was chicken. You needed TWO ick-factor categories: (1) Lab-grown meat seems icky and (2) Meat is icky and I wouldn’t touch it even if lab-grown.

A: I once had an interesting conversation with my good friend Bruce Friedrich, who is president of the Good Foods Institute and the leading advocate of lab-grown meat. I told him how much I liked duck, and he asked me how much I like roasted human thigh. When I said I had not tried that, he asked me why not. I did not have a great answer. Why will you eat fish but not chicken?

Q: Did you see the obituary of Pamela Blair, original cast member in "A Chorus Line"? What do you think of the Post's prudishness in not naming the line that the song is most commonly known by?

A: Utterly fucking stupid, and you can quote me on that. The line, for those who don’t know, was the horribly vulgar and unrepeatable “Tits and Ass.”

Q: OK, so this is sort of about technology, sort of about that whole chicken thing. Here's what I think about when I think about this chicken question: There is an amazing book called Feed by M.T. Anderson that I have forced down the throat of 10th-graders in my English classes for many years now. In this depressing yet fascinating book, there is no such thing as "straight off the breathing animal" meat because they're all gone. There is only lab-grown stuff available. There is this lovely passage regarding lab-grown beef and its charming use as walls in hay mazes gone terribly wrong: meat mazes. The walls to these things (at "farms" at fall festivals), rather than being built from stacks of hay, are instead built from slabs of lab-grown meat. Everyone has a great time frolicking in it, as well as the protagonist, who discusses how in parts of the maze there's sections where the DNA went cuckoo and there's an occasional eyeball or horn sticking out of the slab. What fun! Each year that I read this book, I swear I will become vegetarian. Or maybe not read the book again. And yet, I do neither. And that, my friend, is why the thought of lab-grown chicken brings nightmares of DNA gone cuckoo, with occasional beaks or feathers jutting out...--Mary Ellen Webb

A: Noted. I will find and read this book. But I think we can be pretty sure that once lab-grown meat is standardized, and not a curiosity, and overseen by the FDA, this sort of thing will not happen, right?

Q: Ok, I'm very belatedly chiming in on the song lyrics. I have many and will attempt to control myself but I feel like lyrics that speak to one person because of their situation may not land the same for another and I wasn't sure you would identify with the feelings that these struck in me (and the rhymes are probably far too loosey goosey for your discerning taste in prose). Just recall that I was one of 2 female graduates in my engineering class, a former firefighter, a girl that once emphatically used a tampon instead of a pencil to point out an unfair question on a quiz soon after accidently assaulting a statistics professor with prophylactics, and I found myself having to boss around construction workers on job sites as a brand spanking new baby engineer after graduating from college and since my field is Fire Protection, PEOPLE'S LIVES MAY HAVE DEPENDED ON THEM LISTENING TO ME. Also, engineers are notorious mansplainers (not all of them, but a lot of them). And once I climbed into management and even senior management levels, male engineers OLDER THAN ME (and sometimes decades older than me) often reported to me. Many were wonderful, but the handful that were awful had to be carefully won over and it was always an uphill battle but a battle I was willing to fight. I've worked in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Egypt where women don't always command the same respect as they do in the states...especially an ex-pat female engineer, and my task was to earn the respect that men just were often gifted simply because they possess greater quantities of testosterone. Luckily, I always found these types of challenging people intriguing. I hope I eventually won them over with my knowledge and wisdom but it's possible that for a few, it may have been my exceptional stubbornness that just wore them down over time.

This is from the song 32 Flavors by Ani Difranco

Squint your eyes and look closer

I'm not between you and your ambition

I am a poster girl with no poster

I am 32 flavors and then some

And I'm beyond your peripheral vision

So you might want to turn your head

Cause someday you might find you are starving

And eating all of the words you just said.

A: See, this is good writing. No problem with it. And I do think it speaks to all of us. Alas, you also submitted this:

From 40 dogs by Bob Schneider:

Well you’re the color of a burning book

You’re the color of a sideways look

from an undercover cop in a comic book

You’re the color of a storm in June,

you're the color of the moon

You’re the color of the night,

that’s right Color of a fight,

you move me

You’re the color of the colored part of "The Wizard of Oz" movie.

A: I like this, except for the idiot end. Unless it is intended to be ironically bad, which I don’t think it is.

Q: I love the Invitational. It makes me laugh all the time. But it looks as though it is written by about 20 people, max. Is that right?

A: More like 100, but that’s a bit simplistic. The Invitational uses the work of world-class humorist, about 100 of them, who enter all the time. They are geniuses. They work for trinkets.

But we also have many, many more people who enter intermittently, who are also smart and funny, and whose names appear from time to time. They are Harper Lee. One great thing that worms its way out. We get lots of entries, week to week.

Rachel was one of those Harper Lee’s. She got ink once when she was 14. Entered under her ma’s name. Got a bumper sticker that said “Who is The Czar and Why Does He Hate Me?” I would not meet her for another decade.

Okay, we’ve been writing about creativity and poetry, and I’d like to put it to rest right here, with a lesson in how to distinguish what is great from what is good. It’s a tale of two poems.

In 1817, Percy Shelley and his poet-friend Horace Smith decided to challenge each other to see who could write a better sonnet, about an agreed-upon subject. The subject was human hubris, and it had to involve an invented conqueror named Ozymandias. One poem, ironically, has lasted forever. The other disappeared. They both were excellent, by any fair measure. But only Shelley transcended. Why?

Shelley’s Ozymandias:

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert . . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

This is Smith’s Ozymandias:

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,

Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws

The only shadow that the Desert knows.

"I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,

"The King of kings: this mighty city shows

The wonders of my hand." The city's gone!

Naught but the leg remaining to disclose

The sight of that forgotten Babylon.

We wonder, and some hunter may express

Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness

Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,

He met some fragment huge, and stops to guess

What wonderful, but unrecorded race

Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

–

Why was Shelley’s great, and Smith’s not? Because Smith’s point was too obvious, too plainly stated. Shelley left it to marinate in the reader’s mind. The difference between good and great.

We are down for the day. See you on the weekend. PLEASE keep sending questions, observations, comments right here, down below where it says “right here.” I will answer them next week.

Right here!

To the questioner above: More than 5,000 people have gotten ink in The Invitational -- most of them just once. These days, though, there are far fewer one-off entrants, since nobody's getting here by idly paging through the paper and seeing a contest; everyone's a Gene Pool subscriber, and a higher percentage are the devoted Losers who see the Invite as a primary hobby every week.

And when the contest requires a lot of skill and craft (e.g., a rhyming poem, a song parody) rather than just a funny idea, the very best people among the week's entrants tend to blot up the ink. You're allowed to submit up to 25 entries, and my strong hunch is that some of this week's winners sent me their best 25 poems -- or at least 10 of them.

That said, we really enjoy hearing from new people, and I'm always thrilled to award them the coveted Fir Stink for their first ink -- a tree-shaped "air freshener" you (shouldn't) hang from your rearview mirror.

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