The Invitational Week 32: Holy moly, it's Limerixicon XX

Write a limerick featuring a word beginning "ho-." Plus winning ideas for stupid reader polls.

This spectacular image relates to the limerick contest you will encounter very shortly after the long-awaited, Pulitzer Prize-winning appearance of our latest Gene Pool Gene Poll, below.

Hello. Today, as with all Thursdays, we devote all our attention to The Invitational, including the above idiot poll, which relates to the results of our Week 30 contest, about idiot polls, the results of which will be revealed below. Yes, it’s stupid. Take it, anyway. Your consensus might be valid!

In the meantime, here is a limerick about horsemeat and horsemeat byproducts written years ago by Brendan Beary, and which introduces our new contest, which involves limericks featuring words beginning with, um, “ho.”

A new horsemeat to-do! There’s no telling
That it’s clear what our vendors are selling —
Like the sandwich I’d bought
From a truck, when I thought
“Filly cheesesteak” was just a misspelling!

Ever since a Midwestern knife seller named Chris Strolin embarked in 2004 on his Grand Mission to create a Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, in which every meaning of every word would be represented by a limerick, The Invitational has popped up once a year to help round up some prime material, seeking limericks beginning with whichever sliver of the alphabet OEDILF.com  was up to. (Current estimated completion date: Nov. 3, 2063; current number of limericks: past 119,000.)

Now it’s our 20th year of our Limerixicon — conveniently labeled XX — but our first in which we’re no longer constrained by the proprieties of a Major Metropolitan Daily Newspaper, and thus free to celebrate the limerick’s traditionally bawdy content. Last August, Chris was up to the “hi-” words, and now we inch forward.

For Week 32: Supply a humorous, previously unpublished limerick significantly featuring any word, name, or term beginning with “ho-,” as in the example above from an earlier Invitational contest.

While we may be freer with the subject matter (though we’re certainly not requiring off-color material), we’re still as strict as always about the limerick form: “perfect” rhyme; a strong “hickory-dickory-dock” rhythm within Lines 1, 2, and 5; a “dickory-dock” in Lines 3 and 4; extra unaccented syllables on either side are fine. Say the example above with exaggerated accents, and you’ll get the hickory-thing.
For more guidance, you can read the Empress’s 2022 primer “Get Your ’Rick Rolling” (just remember that the dates, etc., refer to last year). Or just absorb the classic ink from past Invites by going to the Losers’ Master Contest List, searching on “limerick,” and clicking on the far-right column.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to bit.ly/inv-form-32. As usual, you can submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same entry form. No special formatting needed this week; just write them as five-line poems and we’ll make them look nice. See OEDILF.com about submitting limericks there, if you like, after our contest results run on Aug. 24.

Deadline is Saturday, Aug. 19, at 4 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Aug. 24.

This week’s winner gets TWO Bigfoot-motif car air fresheners, which smell precisely, truly uncannily like Bigfoot. There are two because in May, totally independently, Dave Prevar and Jeff Contompasis each arrived at the Flushies, the Losers’ annual award picnic, and presented us with one of these olfactory wonders.

Hopefully, it doesn’t smell like big feet: Half of this week’s prize.

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.

Faux Questions Asked: Stupid polls from Week 30

In Week 30 we asked for “a really stupid online poll for a general-interest news site.” Some of the entries made direct, cruel references to what an idiotic contest this was, which, frankly, hurt our feelings, at least to the extent that we have feelings. Without defensiveness, we have to say we like the results, as weird as they are.

Third runner-up: Who was our finest Under Secretary of Commerce?
a. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney
b. Wayne Chatfield-Taylor
c. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.
d. Luther H. Hodges Jr.  
(Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)

Second runner-up:  When putting on shoes and socks, in which order do you do it?
a. Sock, sock, shoe, shoe
b. Sock, shoe, sock, shoe
c. I never wear socks.
d. I never wear shoes.
e. Shoe, shoe, sock, sock
(Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

First runner-up: Thank you for registering a new account with Facebook. How did you hear about us?
a. My children
b. My grandchildren
c. My great-grandchildren
(Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.)

And the winner of the pen you can play blackjack on — plus a Fir Stink:
When giving random responses to a survey, which ONE answer are you likely to give?
a. D
b. C
c. A
d. B  
(Dan Sachs, Pineville, N.C., who is a rarity: a First Offender and winner)   

None of the Above: Honorable mentions

Which fast-food double bacon cheeseburger would you prefer? 
a. One that meets 98 percent of your daily calorie needs
b. One that meets 99 percent of your daily calorie needs
(Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

What is your favorite way to create a secure password?
a. Wedding anniversary
b. Name of pet
c. Child’s birthday
d. High school mascot
e. Other (please specify): _______ 
(Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

What is your dream vacation spot in Europe?
a. Hafnarfjarðarkaupstaður
b. Bolungarvíkurkaupstaður
c. Svalbarðsstrandarhreppur
d. Dublin
(Jesse Rifkin)

Where do you prefer scooter renters to abandon their rides?
a. In the middle of the sidewalk
b. On someone’s lawn
(Leif Picoult)

The movie Oppenheimer would have been improved … 
a. If the title character had ridden on the bomb à la Dr. Strangelove.
b. If  there were more BRRRAAAAAM sound effects.
c. If everything were pink. 
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

When you sort your socks after a wash, do you place them heel down or heel up?
a. Heel down
b. Heel up
c. It’s random.
d. All my socks are identical, so I have no need to sort them.
(Neal Starkman, Seattle)

Whom would you rather sleep in the same bed with?:
a. A dog with fleas
b. A cat with mange
c. A spouse with fleas and mange
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

How much weight do you need to lose?
a. 5 pounds
b. 10 pounds
c. More than 240 pounds
(Beverley Sharp)

Besides “Macarena,” what is your favorite song by Los Del Rio?
a. “El Sueño de la Marisma”
b. “Aqui Me Tienes Rocio”
c. “Qué Bonita Está la Feria”
(Jesse Rifkin)

If you had to choose one in a social situation, which would you rather have?
a. A random hair sticking out of your nose
b. A random hair sticking out of your ear
(Leif Picoult)

Women, who is your favorite member of the Three Stooges?
a. Curly
b. Larry
c. Moe
d. I can’t pick one — they’re all so great!
(Jesse Rifkin)

Which restaurant chain has the finest plasticware?
a. Arby’s
b. Wendy’s
c. Checkers
d. McDonald’s
e. Burger King
(Leif Picoult)

What should the status of Pluto be?
a. Dwarf planet
b. Ninth planet of the solar system with all accompanying rights and privileges
c. Planet-like celestial object unfazed by judgments and titles assigned by Earth-bound astronomers who have never even visited
d. Dog companion—but a pet, not an equal like Goofy
(Jon Carter, Fredericksburg, Va.)

Which 1960s-era mustache do you think gets more food stuck in it?
a. Handlebar
b. Walrus
c. Van Dyke
d. Fu Manchu
(Leif Picoult)    

When you accidentally step barefoot on a Lego piece, what do you say?
a. “Son of a bitch!“
b. “Damn it all to hell!”
c. “Fuuuuuuuck!”
(Leif Picoult)

Which is the most entertaining relationship in a daily comic strip? 
a. The subtle socioeconomic debates of Barney and Clyde
b. Hagar and Helga’s classic take on the familial pressures created by Viking marauding and debauchery
c. The brutal working-class violence unleashed on Andy Capp by wife Flo
d. The sexually charged repartee of Nancy and Sluggo
(Jon Carter)

How long is a piece of string?
a. Twice the distance from the middle to the end
b. 3
c. I HAVE THE BEST, MOST BEAUTIFUL STRINGS, UNLIKE THOSE CRAZY CORRUPT STRINGLESS PROSECUTORS.
(Duncan Stevens)

Which of these claims from Marjorie Taylor Greene do you most agree with?
a. A Rothschilds-sponsored satellite started wildfires in California.
b. Georgia Sasquatches are taller and more Christian than those in the liberal Northwest.
c. The Lizard People controlling the economy should raise interest rates a quarter point but keep White Claw under $10 a six-pack.
(Jon Carter)

When clipping your toenails, do you start with your dominant foot or the other one?
a. Dominant foot
b. Other foot
c. I don’t have a dominant foot.
d. I don’t have feet.
(Tom Witte)

If you stay in a hotel room that has a houseplant in it, do you water it?
a. No, that’s not my job
b. Yes, if it is in need of water
c. Yes, I water it with my own urine, which is a natural fertilizer.
(Tom Witte)

Choose the sentence below that’s closest to your own views:
a. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
b. Ernst Haeckel’s biogenetic law vastly oversimplifies embryology and understates the significance of genetic frameworks and mutations in his insistence that zygotic development parallels evolutionary relationships between taxonomic groups. 
(Duncan Stevens)

Do you lie to your dentist about how often you floss?
a. Yes
b. No, but I’m lying to you now
(Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

How should the Supreme Court be adjusted?
a. Increase number of justices to 11, 13, or maybe even 29.
b. Impose mandatory retirement at 80, earlier if they can no longer find way out of their robes. 
c. Bring back those long white wigs.
d. Set limits of $10K per occasion, $100K for the year, for bribes from any one source.
(Jon Carter)

Cats or dogs?
a. Cats
b. Dogs
c. I’ll stick with the traditional beef and pork.
(Gary Crockett)

And Last:  Should I cynically attempt to get ink by exploiting, for the third time,  the Empress’s fondness for Bob Dylan?  
a. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
b. You’re an idiot, babe; it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
c. When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose
d. She knows there’s no success like failure and that failure’s no success at all
(Greg A. Johnson, Victoria, B.C.)

The headline “Faux Questions Asked” is by Chris Doyle: both Chris and Tim Livengood submitted the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 4 p.m. ET Saturday, Aug. 12: Our Week 31 contest for new words formed by seven-letter ScrabbleGrams “racks.” Click here or type in bit.ly/inv-week-31. 

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:

So here comes the highly vaunted question / comments / answers part of the Gene Pool. We begin now.

Q: Do you and Pat ever fight over entries? 

A: Imagine you are partnering with one of your closest friends, in an enterprise that requires you to have to agree, week to week, on the merits of roughly a hundred works of creative fiction, all of which attempt to bend the boundaries of taste. You think there would not be fights, even among two people who like and respect each other?

Coincidentally, we just had one of our biggest disagreements. It was about an entry to this week’s contest (the one whose results are published above.) There was one I loved that Pat felt would have been one of the most revolting, repugnant and offensive things ever published in American literature, including porn. She could not abide it. She hated it. I hated to lose it. It involved cats. It did not run because, on balance, her discomfort outweighed my delight. We are equals in this stupid endeavor, which gives each partner, in effect, veto power. We seldom use it.

TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this right now on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “The Invitational Week 32”) for the full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post from about noon to 1 p.m. ET today.

Q: Secrets in the law business? Where to begin… - It is unfortunately very common in the practice of law for attorneys to promise the moon to prospective clients when they know that they don’t have much of a case, just so they can bill some hours before urging them to settle or drop their claims. And this happens just as often at the expensive white-shoe firms as it does with street lawyers. - Time billing is nowhere near as precise as we make it out to be. Even honest and scrupulous lawyers often can only make their best estimates re: time (and usually round down as a consequence). Scummy firms have no such compunctions. I worked with junior associates assigned to major cases who would bill 8-9 hours a day just reading the pleadings over and over again. It’s not just young lawyers either — we recently had a dispute with local counsel because they billed several hours of associate time drafting an insubstantial one-page document, then billed almost as much time for two partners revising the same document. Then whatever number that ends up in the system is adjusted by the managing partner to what they think is an appropriate number. Always review your bills closely and challenge anything that looks suspicious. - A surprising number of successful lawyers are complete hacks. Client relationships are often established through personal relationships, so you have situations where a firm is handling work for a major corporation not because they are any good, but because a partner is married to a vice president or something.

A:  Thank you.   I remember many years ago where a client, suing a lawyer, proved that the lawyer had charged for personally doing 72 hours of work in a 24-hour period.   It does remind me of one of my favorite Piet Hein poems, which I quoted not too many weeks ago:  

Yes, he was tempted / And yes, he fell. / But do not judge him hard.  / It does take character to sell / Elastic, by the yard. 

Hey, this is Gene. I am going to be cutting the  Q-and-A section a bit short today because of something hilarious and bizarre  that happened yesterday that resulted in my getting almost no sleep.   I will be writing about it in the Weekend Gene Pool, in which I will ask whether anything like that ever happened to you. 

Q: What's behind the insane trend -- apparent requirement, actually -- that TV and radio commercials play sound/noise/music while text is being read? It's distracting, annoying, and -- presumably most important -- a hindrance to understanding what's being said. But it's everywhere, every time, everything -- so someone powerful must have written a memo demanding it. WTF?

A: I don’t think it’s as bad as ads that weirdly increase the volume of the ad to the maximal level allowed by law.

Q: The other day I found myself singing along with "Non, je ne regrette rien" in my original French and at the top of my voice. What !? Like you never sing along with Edith Piaf ? It's the famed French chanteuse's anthem about regretting nothing ("No, I regret nothing") and moreover, wiping away the past. Easier sung than done, of course. Having momentarily fortified myself mentally, reality took over and I fell into a funk. Nothing that prevented me from having an extra Krispy Creme Original Glazed Doughnut, mind. But the crumbs of the past were there amidst the crumbs. Any regrets (other than starting a Substack blog), you care to tell us about ? Either something you did, or didn't do.

A: This is a fine question, and I will ask it of all of you, soon. I have an answer but will save it for the Weekend Gene Pool question. It involves Elvis Costello.

Q: I agree with you that Von Drehle is wrong, but I think the "right" answer is hard to pin down. I think the Republicans who are trying to have it both ways by acknowledging that the former guy did bad things but arguing against prosecution that will "split the country" are, on the one hand, better than the FG defenders who say he did nothing wrong, but just as opportunistic in attempting to appeal to his less rabid supporters as well as the so-called middle. Not prosecuting him will be just as divisive. It's just that the upset people would be the ones who wouldn't vote for Republicans anyway, so no loss from their perspective. So yes, prosecution of FG for actions that would and in fact have led to prosecution when other people, most especially the J6 rioters, commit them. Incarceration is where I struggle. Not because it isn't deserved but because of the impact it will have. (I would LOVE to see him in the orange jumpsuit.) I'm not all that impressed by the "but how can the Secret Service protect him in jail" argument because I'm quite sure that could be achieved. I struggle more with the optics vis-a-vis his rabid and heavily armed supporters. I think house arrest or even lengthy progation might take the teeth out of his outrage machine, whereas having him languish in Camp Fed will be a festering sore for the loonies. I do think that if convicted he must absolutely lose his right to vote, though. Until his debt to society is paid, which, given his age, should take longer than he has left.

May wanna change my poll answer. If incarcerated, the giant orange turd will be 'entitled' to a remarkable amount of privilege allowed to federal prisoners. I voted not to incarcerate because his penalties/ punishment could otherwise include house arrest without freedom to crash MAL or Bedminster events, no internet or social media access, etc. If I could be assured that he would be locked up in 'gen pop' without Secret Service protection, I would vote YES, as many times as I could pull the lever.

A: I think his incarceration needs to be minimal, just to show it can happen.   Otherwise, the message is, it can’t happen. 

Q: Silver Spring - Can you opine on the sorry state of the use of "me" and "myself" and the mistaken belief that they are synonyms? Why would someone say "please let myself know" as I saw this week in a work document? It makes no sense!!! (thank you for letting me vent.)

A:  Many, many many years ago I was promoting a friend to be hired by my newspaper.  He was a page designer, not an editor.  But his first answer to his first question began: “Myself and my colleagues believe…  “  Did not get the job. 

Q: Surprising thing about my job? I prosecute traffic and misdemeanors. We make up the fines and penalties when we work out plea agreements. Most charges don't have set fines (although they have maximums) so when we negotiate with a defense attorney, we just make up a number. $150, 250... I just spit out random numbers and they usually take them without argument.

Q: Surprising thing about my job? I prosecute traffic and misdemeanors. We make up the fines and penalties when we work out plea agreements. Most charges don't have set fines (although they have maximums) so when we negotiate with a defense attorney, we just make up a number. $150, 250... I just spit out random numbers and they usually take them without argument.

A: This is valuable information! We can negotiate???

This is Gene! Gonna cut this a bit short now, but I have to say I am weirded out by the apparent consensus, in the poll, for Wendy’s plastic cutlery. Is there any logic to this answer?

Please keep commenting and questioning. Comments below, questions below that. I will answer on the weekend and beyond.