The Invitational Week 43: Let It Be a Lesson to Us
Tell us some things to be learned from Costco, the bathroom, TV shows, etc. Plus winning word-grid neologisms.
Hello. Welcome to the regular Thursday Invitational Gene Pool; we will get to the new contest and the old contest results momentarily, but first, as always, a one-question Gene Pool Gene Poll. Today, we need it to resolve, once and for all, by a public vote, a burning question left over from Tuesday’s Gene Pool. The Comments section contained a spirited debate about it, including personal invective and ad hominem attacks. We urge you to discard all preconceived notions.
Two missionaries are captured by a savage tribe. The chief offers each of them a choice: Death, or roo-roo. The first missionary chooses roo-roo, figuring that whatever it is cannot be as bad as death. He is then stripped naked, strapped to a tree, and violated serially by 50 tribesmen until he dies in agony, from shock. Then the second missionary, having seen this, is given the same choice. He chooses death, of course. The chief answers.
This week’s contest is one we’ve done thrice, but not in a long time. Then, we limited you to a few situations; now you have free rein. For Week 43: Tell us a life lesson that can be learned from any particular milieu — say, “on the pot,” or “from the comics pages,” or “from surfing the Internet,” or “at Costco” or “at the movies” or “lying in the gutter with a bottle of Ripple.” The examples below were past winners.
From romance novels: No one is named Maxine Fischman or Fred Paczynski. (Mel Loftus)
At the movies: At all speeches, the microphone will squeak once before allowing the speaker to continue with no further problem. (Alan Hochbaum, Timothy Gotwald)
From TV: All family crises, whether large or small, take exactly 22 minutes to solve. (Ed Gordon)
At the dentist: Nitrous oxide can somehow cause your underpants to turn inside out. (Russell Beland)
This week you may choose any of the above categories — see the results of those contests here, here, and here — or others such as “at the gym,” “at preschool,” “while doing your taxes,” “from scrolling on X for two hours.” Or any other category you devise.
Click here for this week’s entry form. Or go to bit.ly/inv-form-43. Be sure to read the formatting directions! As usual, you can submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.
Deadline is Saturday, Nov. 4, at 4 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Nov. 9.
The winner gets a pair of very nice socks that look like cat paws, or what cat paws would look like if they had heels and big long soles. Donated by the footsome Dave Prevar.
Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of ten nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a personal email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for First Offenders.
Meanwhile, we need questions / observations / reactions that Gene can answer right here, in real time. Roo-roo roominations will be particularly valued. Send ’em to this tasteful orange button:
Sharing Your Pathword: The neologisms of Week 41
In Week 41 we asked you to choose any letter on the randomly generated grid below, then “discover” a new word or phrase by snaking around the grid through adjacent letters in any or all directions. That so many of you noticed that M-11 or K-12 can begin “asshole” … well, let’s say we have lots of hope for our still-running “Am I the Asshole” contest. (Note: Pat and Gene judge the Invitational without knowing who wrote the entries, and so sometime the same person nabs two spots in the top four. This time two people did.)
Third runner-up: Beginning at V-7, heading down diagonally and then straight up: BOOZO: Former children’s entertainer, now in rehab. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)
Second runner-up: K-5: I AM A STUD, YOU OLD LOON!: Debate response to be used by both candidates in 2024. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)
First runner-up: J-13: URASSHOLE: Proposed name for the seventh planet before they decided it should be more polite, but still able to provoke snickers. (Jesse Frankovich)
And the winner of the headband that looks as if a knife’s going through your head:
Q-10: DITZY, BITCHY, ’N’ RUDY: The next three candidates who were in line for the House speakership. (Frank Osen)
Turns for the Worse: Honorable mentions
F-12: ARSE ROLL: One of your less popular sushi choices. (Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.)
B-5: HEAPA: A unit of measure equal to 40 trillion tons. “Donald Trump’s reelection would mire our country in a heapa shit.” (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)
B-7: TITCH: An involuntary spasm that a guy experiences when he sees a well-endowed woman. (Lee Graham, Reston, Va.)
C-2: AIRYAK: The spiel at the beginning of your flight that the attendants pantomime with arm gestures and you totally tune out, even when the sound system is audible. (Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)
C-10: VP SEX: Official event celebrated annually in the Pence household. “Mike found himself stirring on the night before Christmas.” (Stu Segal, Southeast U.S.)
C-12: EXLOPE: Run away to get a quickie divorce. “After my parents spent so much on the wedding, we felt it was only right to exlope.” (Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)
C-15: PORNYLAND: Theme park with the happiest endings on Earth. (Jesse Frankovich)
C-17: RELIB: To reminisce about the good ol’ days of youth radicalism. “There goes Aunt Cleo again, relibbing the SDS sit-in at the Berkeley chancellor’s office…” (Karen Lambert, Chevy Chase, Md.)
D-6: DENAY: To deny a previous denial. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t run again for Speaker,” the congressman denayed. (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)
F-3: FAPPETA: The stiff, discolored fabric that teenage boys’ bedspreads seem to turn into. (Frank Osen)
F-15: MR. JOLLY GALLOP: YouTuber nickname for Sen. Josh Hawley escaping the Capitol on Jan. 6. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)
G-10: SKANX: Open-crotch shapewear. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)
G-19: NITWIZ: An ace proofreader. (Steve Leifer, Potomac, Md.)
H-3: DJT APP: A mobile tool that automatically adds gaslighting, dog-whistling, disinformation, and all-caps to your tweets. (Jesse Frankovich)
D-8: BIDEN APP: Program that works better than any alternative, but damn, it’s on such an old platform. (Mark Raffman)
H-4: PAYN: An ache in your fingers as you write a check to the IRS. (Judy Freed)
H-10: CANDY TRAMP: What the grumpy old man next door calls a trick-or-treater. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)
H-16: BLIZZLE: A much-hyped snowstorm that turns out to be a few flakes on the grass. (Michael Stein, Arlington, Va.)
I-5: PEWNY: What church attendance has been since the pandemic. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)
J-4: SOLOLAY: A politer version of “screw yourself.” “The deacon smoothly suggested that the rude taxi driver would benefit greatly from a sololay.” (Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece)
J-11: GRASSHOLE: That neighbor who insists on mowing the lawn at 6 a.m. (Duncan Stevens)
N-10: BASSHOLE: Your co-worker who regales you every Monday morning with his fishing stories. (Richard Franklin, Alexandria, Va.)
J-12: RATMICEELKPIGLLAMA: The genetically engineered feature attraction — well, the only attraction — at the One Room Zoo. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)
K-22: MM…PÂTÉ!: Homer Simpson gets hoity-toity. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)
L-7: UNSMIT: Reversed an infatuation. “One look at his bathroom floor and she was immediately unsmit.” (Pam Shermeyer)
L-8: BUTTASM: Occasional result of prostate massage. (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)
L-17: LOLLYGAP: Taking a schoolyear off to do nothing. “Scott said he’d master tutoring in the barrio, but instead he’s lollygapping through mastering Super Mario.” (Frank Osen)
M-12: I, ASSHOLE: In his memoirs, Trump finally comes clean. (Fiction) (William Kennard, Arlington, Va.)
M-19: McNERD: A Facebook friend who posts tips like this: “Because the discount for buying two McDoubles is a non-coupon offer, you can add a large fries for $1.19. That's still only $5.78, which is $2.18 less than a Big Mac with two extra patties and one extra slice of cheese. Bargain!” (Chris Doyle)
L-12: McSHIT: What not to order at the Golden Arches. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)
M-3: KAMOLALULA: In a bid for ratings, Tucker Carlson unveils a new mispronunciation of the VP’s name. (Frank Osen)
M-3: KOI MIX: What Pepperidge Farm calls its Goldfish in Japan. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
N-10: BS-SAT: A special standardized test used by college football recruiters. Question 27: What kind of fruit is in apple pie? (Leif Picoult)
N-12: SASSHOLE: (1) A mouthy teenager. (2) A teenager’s mouth. (Jesse Frankovich)
O-7: QUINOA OOZE: Product name before the manufacturers decided to call it “vegan ice cream.” (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.)
L-12: MASHTIT: What the clinic techs call the mammography machine. (Lee Graham)
O-15: SALARD: “At the We Please Everybody Cafe, we offer a salard special: a fresh romaine/spinach blend, smothered in pork fat gravy.” (Judy Freed)
P-4: YALLISM: A classic Southern expression such as “Butter my butt and call me a biscuit.” (Rob Cohen)
P-9: VINALDOO: What you get when you misread the recipe in your Indian cookbook. (Duncan Stevens)
P-13: KELCE PASS: Something Taylor Swift didn’t need a football to make. (Jesse Frankovich)
P-15: ALPS FLESH: Epic goosebumps. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)
Q-17: MAGARITA: A Kool-Aid alternative that Republicans have wasted away on. (Kevin Dopart)
R-7: LOOLOO: A stunningly beautiful restroom. (Jeff Contompasis)
R-7: LOONOODLE: To cogitate on the toilet. (Steve Leifer)
T-21: MEATRE D’: The headwaiter at a barbecue joint. “Yup, y’all can sit at that picnic table over yonder.” (Jesse Frankovich)
The “Pathwords” headline is by Jesse Frankovich; Chris Doyle wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.
Still running — deadline 4 p.m. ET Saturday, Oct. 28: Our Week 42 contest for humorous “Am I the Asshole” situations à la the popular Reddit thread. Click here for details.
Last, if you are a free subscriber and can afford a paid subscription, please consider supporting The Gene Pool. Our paying subscribers let us continue to expand and experiment while keeping most of this newsletter free and open to all. It’s $50 a year or $5 a month.
So here comes the renowned real-time questions / observations part of the Gene Pool, and answers thereto. Many of today’s involves my call for story about special. weird gifts and knacks that you might have. REMINDER: If you are reading this in real time, keep refreshing your screen to see more Q’s and A’s.
Q: My special gift: I can pinch people with my toes. I learned this from my grandfather when I was young.
A: See next observation.
Q: When I was younger I could play “chopsticks” on the piano. You say so what, lots of people can do that. But I could do it with my big toes. When my house (kind of like a sorority with automatic membership based in what dorm you’re in) had a talent show. People knew i could play the piano and asked me to do that. So i played chopsticks with my toes.
A: See next observation.
Q: I can pick up objects with my toes. Pencils, magazines, Kleenex, and so on. When parties get dull, i whip off my shoes and socks and play "let's pass these coasters around with our toes!" I have discovered there are others with this talent.
A: Okay, we’re done with the cheesy toe stuff now.
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 43… “ 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 roughly 1 p.m. ET today.
Q: A knack I have is a Tetris-like ability to fit objects into spaces. I presumably inherited this from my father, who took great pleasure in packing as much as possible into our 1960 Chrysler Windsor station wagon (The Spaceship) for trips. There were six of us, so that was a challenge to begin with, but adding all the luggage and other impedimenta needed for a two-week camping trip was a true test of my father's abilities. He did eventually resort to having a custom-made zipped-up canvas bag made for the q: roof rack, which reduced the pressure somewhat, but by the time we had stocked up with groceries in Patton, Maine, the last 40 miles (much of it over dirt road) into Baxter State Park were quite a trial for my youngest brother, who was berthed in the back of the wagon.
A: I am the opposite. I also consider it a knack. I will only be able to fit about 2 cubic feet of stuff into an eight cubic-foot car trunk.
Q: I am both a knitter and a reader. Most people are surprised to know that I read books and knit at the same time. Both things go slightly slower, but I'm happy!
A: Dave Barry was amazed by a talent my then-wife had. She could hold an animated conversation with several people while rapid-chopping broccoli or dicing cucumbers with a sharp knife millimeters from her fingers.
Speaking of chopping broccoli…
Q: I can hang a spoon from my nose and stick one to each of my temples, sequentially, so that I have three spoons stuck to my face. The fellas I dated were never as impressed as they should have been, but my husband is.
A: When I was in college, I had a pretty good vertical leap. I could dunk a ping pong ball. I’d wedge it between the distal knuckles of my index and middle fingers. Won a couple of bar bets with this. I contend that had there been an NBA slam dunk contest back then, I would have won it because everyone in the stadium would have been peeing their pants watching a guy dribble a ping pong ball up to the basket.
Q: My weird talent is that I can push a single button really fast many times in a row. This has been useful when my older brother (when we were kids) or my kids (now) are playing a video game that
requires rapid fire, and for pretty much nothing else. But they are always so grateful when I get them past something they are stuck on by doing it!
A: Very few people here will get this, but back when phones were rotary, and you hung up the receiver on a cradle, and it depressed a couple of buttons to hang up? Well, not many people knew this but those phones dialed on the basis of number of clicks it heard as the dial was released, clicking back into place. That meant that you could effectively dial a number by rapidly clicking the button in the proper sequences. This came in handy sometimes, because some businesses used to put dial-locks on the phones so customers could not use them. Easy to circumvent if you had quick fingers. I did, too.
Q: Roo-roo: I thought the punchline was "Very well ..." not "Okay ..."
A: It is, but I couldn’t fit “very well” into the space substack allows for choices. Do you think the difference is significant??
Meanwhile, when I tell the joke I have always said “instantaneous” death, but I think that is my editing, and I wanted to keep the options pure to the two common recitations.
Q: I have a knack for answering weekend questions in the comments section. Ha ha. Hahahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Ahem. No, but seriously -- the submission form doesn't seem to format paragraphs correctly, so whenever I write something longer than a few sentences it turns into a mess. And sometimes -- in the proud tradition of newspaper editors everywhere -- Gene edits things in a way that I feel detracts from what I wrote. Hblam maruth กากววงงแทแ้ frenulum badoo great civil war testing whether this nation or any other nation กรืหา gadzoofus badam but The only time I prefer the submission form to the comments section is when what I'm writing is so personal or embarrassing that anonymity outweighs the risk of my work being mutilated by man and/or machine. Sincerely, Dr. Basil T. Nosewater, Battle Creek, MI.
A: Just FYI, I just now inserted the gibberish. You are welcome.
Q: I have a knack for being able to be reasonably creative very quickly. You want me to write you a song? I'll write you one in a minute. You want me to write you an Elizabethan sonnet? Give me three minutes. You have a brief that is due today that you forgot about? Well, you're damn lucky that I work at your firm, buddy. The downside to this ability is that my work does not meaningfully improve with more time for composition. If you give me 30 seconds to improvise a song about a zebra who likes artichokes, I will produce a half-decent song within 30 seconds; if you give me 3 years to do the same thing, after 3 years I will produce a song that is only marginally better than the one I would've written in 30 seconds.
A: Please send in a video of you performing an original song about a zebra who likes artichokes.
Q: Hi, Gene! April here. I have a superpower that drives my husband bananas. Every day, sometimes multiple times a day, the dog (a red-tick coon hound you labeled as passive-aggressive in a previous post) will walk up to me and sit down and stare at me. I will then look at my husband and announce "The dog is out of water" or "the neighbor's dog is in our yard" or "his ball has rolled somewhere he can't reach it," or sometimes he just wants belly scratches and I oblige. It drives my husband bonkers that I'm almost always right. However, he hasn't figured out how to stare his message into my husband yet. Here's the TRUTH... I can't read the dog's mind. But I have this thing that tracks what everyone is doing and where they are and constantly takes stock as I move around the house. If the dog was last playing with his ball and then comes and stares, I know he probably lost the ball. Whenever I walk past his water dish, I see how much he has and I can hear him when he's drinking out of it. When the neighbor's dog is over, he gets tense and wags his tail because he wants to go out and play. When he wants belly rubs, he tends to slightly lift one paw off the ground. I'm not reading his mind, I just have learned to combine his body language with my constant observations. I think it's a mom thing. We always have a piece of our brain monitoring the people and situations around us.
A: April, you are like an early 20th century performing horse named Clever Hans, who was said to be able to do math in his head. He was also a fraud.
Q: I know I should be getting this but can you explain the dentist joke that you used as an example?
A: Sure. Can anyone help this person out before I do?
Q: There is no way that the movie you watched is worse than this one:
And yes, my husband and I watched the entire thing in horrified amusement. -Anonymous (because... I watched the WHOLE THING)
A: I haven;t watched the movie, but I watched the trailer, which is hilarious. The movie that I watched – The 13th Guest – was much worse for one simple reason. This one was done as a parody. It was deliberately bad.
Q: I can add strings of figures very quickly in my head, causing people to say "How did you know that?" When I was a little girl going to school in England, part of our math/maths lesson was mental arithmetic. The person who came up with the answer most quickly was given a threepenny bit. (Yes, this was a long time ago.) One of the other kids was deputized to talk to me outside of class and ask me not to answer all the time, because nobody else ever got any money.
A: See next post.
Q: I remember number and strings of characters frighteningly well. It’s frustratingly not quite at a photographic level, but quite good. Things like the license plates I’d see in the work parking lot every day get absorbed. I once had a boss casually challenge me on this, and I just as casually told him the tags on both his cars. On one, he thought he had me, as he dug into his wallet to pull out proof. “No, that’s not it … oh, yes it is.” He changed the subject, probably because it’s objectively creepy.
A: It is.
Q: I can make fart noises with my hand over my eye socket. I discovered this talent while taking a test in junior high. -- Ward Kay.
A: You are not afraid of accidentally sucking out an eyeball so you look like a googly-eye monster or the kind of fish that lives on the bottom of the ocean?
Q: Once my partner and I did not open our mail for six months. We would retrieve the mail and had the foresight to immediately recycle all the catalogues and adverts. But anything that looked like real mail was added - unopened - to a stash that became so large we eventually needed to store it in a bankers box. One day I sat down to open all of it. It included at least 20 holiday cards, many with personalized notes, and something like $3,000 in uncashed checks. We are still terrible about opening the mail but I'm fairly certain we haven't gone quite that long since. (I recognize this is a huge privilege, knowing that very little of my life would change if i failed to open the mail.)
A: Isn’t the main reason for this that since the advent of email, the percentage of snail mail that turns out to be non-crap is less than … one?
Q: This is not just *my* dysfunction, but like... a household dysfunction. One half of my marriage has problems with authority. Being told what to do or what needs to be done collapses his helpful and contributing nature like a rusty lawn chair. But, there are things that will drive him bananas if I do them because obviously, I'm not doing them right and will surely batter his tools into useless hunks of metal from which they cannot be returned to useful working order (in his opinion). So, if I ASK him to fix a hole in the drywall or repair the drawer slide that broke on my kid's dresser, it will sit undone for the next 6-8 months until he completely forgot I asked and realizes himself that it needs doing and does it because he thinks it was his idea. I have ADHD and cannot relax (or sleep) when there are "to do's" on the list in my head. So, I've developed a solution that weirds out house guests. I write the things that need doing on surfaces like windows and mirrors in dry erase marker. When he sees one, I'm not ASKING him to do it, I'm writing it down so I don't FORGET I need to arrange to do it. He sees them and at his leisure when he's feeling productive, or he has the approrpriate tools out for another project, he does them. I don't have to ask, nag, persuade and he doesn't have to revert to middle school mentality of "you're not the boss of me." It works for us. But it's hard to see out of some of the windows sometimes for all the writing.
A: This is seriously weird.
Q: I can cup my hands together and clap air into my mouth so that it sounds just like the old Popcorn song (link below) And no I will not do a video so you have to trust me.
A: Well, I’ll believe you but would have preferred the video. I am publishing this because everyone must hear the popcorn song.
Q: Re: Dentist joke. While you were in LaLa Land, the dentist may have undressed you.
A: Correct. That’s the joke.
Q: My weird talent: since I was a child I can whistle one melody while humming another. This enables me to do rounds with myself or perform classical numbers, Christmas carols, etc, whistling the melody while humming the bass.
A: That is a major step up from my pathetic version. I learned to whistle while humming, but only to make a weird spaceship noise.
This is Gene. Okay, I’m calling us down. Two things. This announcement is from the excellent Melissa Balmain:
POETRY & PUNCHLINES is coming!
If you like the Invitational, you probably like funny poems. And if you like funny poems, you’ll really like what’s happening in D.C. on Friday, Nov. 17:
What: A bunch of funny poets—including the Czar himself—reading from their work
What else: Poetic drinks & punchy hors d’oeuvres
Where: The 1600 block of K Street NW (exact address & parking info available to those who RSVP)
When: Doors open at 6:30pm. Reading starts at 7pm.
Why: Because Light (aka America’s light-verse magazine) loves throwing a shindig, and because a generous friend of Light and the Invitational has a great space to throw it in
So Who Exactly is Reading? Gene Weingarten * Sarah Walsh * Duncan Stevens * J.D. Smith * Mark Raffman * Claudia Gary * Melissa Balmain… and maybe you! (Loserbards & Light contributors can sign up for open mic when they arrive—limited spots available)
Holiday Shopping Bonus: Signed books available so you can buy all your gifts in one swell foop (cash, check, Venmo)
RSVP by Nov. 12 to lightpoetrymagazine@gmail.com (put Poetry & Punchlines in the subject heading).
And last, please keep sending in questions / observations. I will address them anon.
Send ’em here:
I hope all fans of Gene, The Invitational, and light verse in general will come to the Poetry & Punchlines event on Nov. 17 mentioned above -- it's free, for Pete's sake. I'll be there in the audience, heckling.
And the Sunday before that, Nov. 12, there's a Loser brunch at noon at the Indian restaurant Aditi in Kingstowne, Va., which is just a couple of miles outside the Beltway at the Van Dorn exit. GREAT buffet. (Nope, Gene won't be at that one.) RSVP at bit.ly/loserbrunch1123 so we can get a head count.
Husband: what ARE you doing?
Me: Definitely not trying to make fart noises with my eye socket.
Husband: ...