The Invitational Week 77: Ebenezer Screwed

Write us a funny comic strip on a certain sensitive subject. And the winning things you can write with one little patch of the keyboard.

Hello. Today’s new contest is our second installment of “Write a ‘Barney & Clyde’ for Us.”

“Barney & Clyde” is a 14-year-old comic strip written by Gene and Horace LaBadie and illustrated by David Clark. It involves a relationship between a homeless man, Clyde Finster, and a pharmaceuticals billionaire, J. Barnard Pillsbury, but there are several subplots, among them one involving the deepest sort of love. Cynthia Pillsbury, a cynical 11-year-old, loves her grandpa, Ebenezer Pillsbury, who is a cynical man entering the early stages of dementia. Ebenezer is a piece of work, and Cynthia — a much younger piece of work — respects him, and is the only person in the family who knows of his condition. She protects him so others don’t find out, but has taken it upon herself to see that he gets medical treatment.

Yes, complicated. And dangerous. There is nothing funny about dementia, except when there might be, in the right hands, with the right timing and wording.

For Invitational Week 77: Write a four-panel script for a “Barney & Clyde” strip that addresses dementia in some amusing way, based on Ebenezer’s failing — but still active and iconoclastic — brain; he’s funny, and amazingly accepting of his situation. The strip must include Ebenezer and Cynthia, but may include other characters. You just supply a script — words only. (For formatting guidance, see a sample script on the entry form.)

The first-prize winner will be drawn by David Clark, and published in many newspapers, and credited to you, the author. And we’ll send you a signed print of the illustrated comic. Fifty years from now, it will be worth a fortune. Original copies of “The Katzenjammer Kids,” for example, can sell for thousands of dollars. And by then David will probably be dead, so the profits go to you and Gene — who will be 120, but still alive, though incontinent. As always, you may submit up to 25 entries, but don’t stretch a story line over multiple entries.
Here are some more we have done:

Deadline is Saturday, June 29, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool right on Thursday, July 4! 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-77.

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.

Meanwhile, send us questions or observations, which we hope to deal with in real time today. You do this, as always, by sending them to this here button:

Talk QWERTY to Us: The partial-keyboard inventions of Week 75 

The contest was simple and complex in equal measure. You had to write complete phrases or sentences using only portions of the classic typewriter/computer keyboard: You could use the QWERTY row, or either of the two other letter rows, or any three adjacent vertical lines, such as QAZWSXEDC. And you could use any numbers or punctuation. We cannot tell you how bad and painfully stretchy most of the entries were, because we do not wish to insult people whose only sin was entering a contest for which they were ill-equipped. Fortunately, some were excellent.

Special thanks to Loser Gary Crockett, who worked out a program to check whether each of the hundreds of this week’s entries contained only the letters in its given little row or patch of the keyboard — and promptly discovered, too late, that one of his own entries had flunked. 

Third runner-up:  QWERTYUIOP:  Outwit uppity uteri? You worry or pout. We uproot Roe! — S. Alito, Flagstaff  (Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece) 

Second runner-up: WAESZRDX: Sex rearward? See ass, reassess. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) 

First runner-up: ASDFGHJKL:
All shall gag as Dad, alas
Has alfalfa salad gas. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.) 

And the winner of the toy diseased liver cell:  
WSXEDCRFV:  Sex ed exed?  We’re screwed! (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

YHNUJMIK > Junk Ink: Honorable mentions

IJNOKMPL: Limp, I pop pill... OK, I’m in! (Jesse Frankovich)  

IKOLP (punctuation marks fill the other keys): Lollipop, Lollipop, O, Lolli-Lolli-Lolli, Lollipop pop (LOL LOL LOL LOL) (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)   

ESZRDXTFC: Reefer test + secret sex = street cred. (Neil Kurland, Elkridge, Md.) . 

IJNOKMPL: Look, no poopin’ in pool, OK? Poop in loo! (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

WSXEDCRFV:  2024: “We deserve 2020 reversed! We revere screed-server, excess-sex-fevered, sewer-fed exec!”(Duncan Stevens) 

QWERTYUIOP:
Retro toy: Yo-yo.
Retro potty: Poop pit.
Retro outputter: Retiree.  (Jesse Frankovich)  

QAZWSXEDC: Ed assesses ewe, accesses ewe, WEDS ewe?  Eww, Ed! (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

QWERTYUIOP:
01001110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100110 01110101 01101110 01101110 01111001 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101100 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 00101100 00100000 01101101 01100001 01111001 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101000 01101111 01101110 01101111 01110010 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00100000 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00111111  (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md. — Hey, the contest rules said you could use any numbers on the keyboard! Click on it.) 

QWERTYUIOP: I write wry, witty poetry. You trot out poop & potty rot — utter tripe. I pity you & your trite repertoire. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)   

QWERTYUIOP:  P_T    _ _ _ _ _    RETIRE_    _RO_    W_EE_   O_   _ORTU_E (Eric Nelkin, Silver Spring, Md.)  

QWERTYUIOP:
Pete: “I wrote witty trope!”
Writer tutor/torturer: “You wrote petty tripe. Utter rot. Your terrier puppy outwit you.  I pity you.”
Pete: “Yet to our pet pittie, you’re prey. I pity YOU.”  (Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)

QWERTYUIOP:  We require you to put your pup out to poop or pee.  — Proprietor (Beverley Sharp) 

QWERTYUIOP: Writer + pot + pot + pot = pretty poor poetry. (Beverley Sharp) 

UHBIJNOKM:
I join jumbo-boob bimbo: “Hi, I’m Bob.”
Bimbo: “Hi, Bob, I’m Kiki.”
I un-bikini Kiki. . . Oh, no! Him-junk! (Jesse Frankovich)   

And Last: IJNOKMPL: Look, Mom, I’m inkin’ in poop-jokin’! (Jesse Frankovich)  

The headline “Talk QWERTY to Us” is by Jesse Frankovich; both Dave Prevar and Jeff Contompasis offered up the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, June 22: our Week 76 contest for “good/bad/ugly” progressions. Click on the link below.

The Invitational Week 76: So Good! So Bad! So Ugly!

Meet the Parentheses! Schmooze with the Losers (and the Empress) at the Flushies, their annual awards/potluck/singalong. This year it’s in Crystal City, in Arlington, Va., on the afternoon of Sunday, July 7 (blessedly indoors). Any fans of The Invitational are welcome. Click here for the info and to sign up.

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Now we enter the real-time portion of the Gene Pool, where Gene will take your questions and observations, and respond to them. Send your stuff to this awesome creamsicle-colored button:

Many of today’s questions relate to Gene’s call for weirdnesses about your body AND the moments you realized you were an adult. These are not necessarily entirely unrelated.

Q: Regarding when you felt like an adult: When I was 35, I bought my first car (I know.  I had a car from my parents in college, then I lived in DC and didn't need one, then my parents gave me their old car.  Privilege, I know).  At any rate, by 35 I'd already been living on my own for years, moved several times, changed careers, bought a house a couple years earlier, and was about to get engaged.  But somehow buying my own car made me feel the most adult.  I'm 47 now and still think the 35-ish age was a pretty good time.

A: Your 35 year old experience is pedestrian.  When I was 35 I got the job of my life, editor of Tropic magazine at the Miami Herald.  I immediately hired Dave Barry and Tom Shroder and Joel Achenbach, and suddenly we all became 17 years old. (Joel was not chronologically much older, actually.)  I don’t really need to go over the things we did, because I have done so many times, but suffice it to say that when Joel was 24, I assigned him to write about the first sperm bank in South Florida, with the condition that he had to DO it in a beaker.  The Miami Herald actually published this. It was a great era for journalism. WE DID WHATEVER WE WANTED.

The story Joel wrote was the best story ever written by anyone in the English language.  Better than “A Modest Proposal” or “Hamlet.” This was the top of it.   The headline was “Dr. Schlamowitz is looking for a few good men.”

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By Joel Achenbach.

“Do sperm scream?” wonders Mr. Posterity as he sits in the sperm bank. He is alone in a room so bright he cannot find a shadow. In his hand is a large cup. The doctor has asked him to produce within 15 minutes. He has already wasted five.

Are sperm powered by the same thing that powers salmon? Do scientists call it the Salmon Force? Mr. Posterity is dreaming up inane philosophical questions to distract his mind from the true discomfort of the moment, discomfort made more acute by the unnatural laboratory atmosphere, by the vinyl furniture and glass beakers, and most of all by the accursed cup, which seems way too big, something like 150ccs, with measuring lines up the side, 60, 90, 120, he thinks that surely this is something they use to measure buffalo or elephants. Definitely not humans.

The doctor at the sperm bank has been thoughtful enough to leave a girlie magazine in the room (it's the only thing in sight with any trace of color). But when Mr. Posterity flips the pages he can barely focus, the Girls of Texas are bending over backwards to help him in this wretched moment, but all he sees is paper.

He glances around and suddenly recoils from his own image. There is a small mirror on the wall.

He hides.

Voices come from outside the door. It is the doctor and another person, laughing at something, probably something not very funny. Mr. Posterity makes a mental note that the door does not lock. He is trying to be cool about this whole thing, but he wonders if perhaps a lock would have been a good idea, a lock and chain and a hefty deadbolt, and maybe the room could have been down a long hallway or in the basement -- jeez, he could have just mailed it in, no hassle.

Eventually cold logic takes over, and Mr. Posterity steels himself, realizing that there would be no greater humiliation than to exit the room with nothing to show for his time. He had vowed to be productive. He had vowed to be manly.

And so . . .

When he leaves the room he is wearing his dark shades. He is not proud. More than ever, the cup seems needlessly vast, a virtual bucket, mocking him. This is a tense moment and he wants to look slick, but the cup is proving awkward, he isn't sure how to hold it. He decides to grip it close to the stomach, the way he holds a Bud at a party.

Mr. Posterity tells the doctor that it is an off day. He waits for her to double over with long, cruel laughter.

Instead, the doctor takes the cup nonchalantly and disappears around the corner.

"There's no abuse," she says, "like self-abuse."

Her name is Carol Schlamowitz and she has just started the first commercial sperm bank in Florida. The first thing one notices about this South Miami sperm bank is that it greatly resembles an ordinary doctor's office, which indeed is all that it is, not a single sperm on view, no vaults, no guards, no tellers.

There is only a blue piece of paper on a wall around the corner. It's a license. In formal language it decrees that Dr. Carol Schlamowitz, obstetrician and gynecologist, is certified by the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services as a DRUG REPACKER.

That is what it says. DRUG REPACKER. This means she can run a sperm bank.

"I have to repackage it," Dr. Schlamowitz explained. "If I was selling it in the original package, I'd be a pimp."

Which is the other thing you notice about the sperm bank: The drug repacker is rather a wit.

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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.

Also, if you love freedom and your family, send me money. If you love neither, don’t.

Q: Adulthood?   I turn into a toddler at the dentist.  I'm not proud of it, and I've gotten a lot better over the years.  I had some dentist trauma at a very young age, and medical anxiety in general.

Pro tip to parents:  Pick your children's early-age medical providers carefully, those early experiences can set the tone for the rest of their life.  (and I know the reality of the current healthcare system makes that wishful thinking for many people).

A: My first dentist was Dr. Cashman, in the Bronx.  I had a completely different experience there.  He would give me nitrous oxide as a painkiller, and it was the greatest high in the world. He’d turn it on and not come back for 20 minutes.  I LOVED going to the dentist.  

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Q:  Age, you say ? There’s biological or chronological age, of course, and then there’s what geriatricians call "subjective" age — how you actually feel. Scientists are finding that people who feel younger than their chronological age are typically healthier and more psychologically resilient than those who feel older. I suggest there's yet a third or "virtual age." It's how old others feel, or perceive you to be, even with no obvious signs of infirmity, and treat you accordingly. Doubtless a codger of long-standing in deed and thought, if not in fact a life-long curmudgeon, I have to wonder if now that you're of the appropriate age for these sobriquets, whether you've suddenly noticed people rushing out of nowhere to help you cross a street against your will, or insisting on saying each word loudly, and in exaggerated fashion, when speaking to you?

A: I have occasionally been offered a seat in the Metro.  I decline it. Once, though  – maybe 30 years ago – I was berated in a crowded Metro car by a woman who demanded my seat.   She didn’t seem to be older than 50.  I was about 40. I apologized extravagantly and loudly for having behaved so thoughtlessly, then got up, gave her my seat, and limped dramatically and painfully away.   There was nothing wrong with my legs. It was one of my favorite moments on Earth, other than the births of my children.

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Q: Re: The professor’s story. About penalizing students for getting abortions. Why does the GOP want to be a bully so bad? Like it started in the article, ever since Dobbs, the men have started using it to just regain control of women. And everything the people just want do in their lives they are against. I hate bullies. And that’s what the whole theocratic arm of the party is. They got this bug up their ass about sex and how it’s the downfall of our nation. 

Maybe if you left people and their peccadillos alone, life would be greater for all! This observation probably makes no sense but I just get riled up about it. Being an ex-catholic who was bullied in school doesn’t help, just brings back old trauma. 

A: I actually think it is about vicious sexism and subtle racism.  I think deep conservatives find women’s freedom to make sexual choices to be a threat to them.   They want to be the ones to decide who can have an abortion – not the women.  It’s a threat to their masculinity.   

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Q: I present with minimal comment, the first line in a recent Post story:

"Soon after Karalyna Ashley’s daughter, Emersyn, was born in March…"

A: Thank you.

Q: I have a cleft a-hole. Few people know this. 

A: Thank you for sharing.  Cleft?

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Q: It's not very interesting, but I can bend my pointer fingers at the first joint, while keeping the rest of the finger straight.  I can only do it with my pointers.  I have a friend who can do it with all her fingers, but no one else that I know can do it at all.  (Well,   I think everyone can do it with their thumbs, but no other fingers.)

A: Rachel can, too!  She is an actor and has informed me that this is an invaluable attribute for a professional puppeteer.   Phenomenal riches and fame await you. 

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Q: What’s weird about my body?  Basically all of it.  As for what’s uniquely weird about mine, two main things.  First, I have a very long tongue, basically prehensile.  There aren’t a lot of uses for this which are fit for polite conversation.  Second, I have double-jointed shoulders; I can pop them in and out at will, just as easy as bending my elbow.  Apparently it’s quite visually disturbing; nearly everybody who’s seen me do this without a shirt on has asked that I never do it again.  People who see me do it with a shirt get a little uneasy.  I’ve never been straitjacketed but I imagine this might be useful in getting out of one.

A: The prehensile tongue might help with the straitjacket, too.   Houdini would have been inquisitive.

Q:  About once a week, either right before I go to sleep or if I am lying awake in the middle of the night, my whole body shudders—just once, for a second. I don’t feel cold or afraid. I can’t just make it happen and I don’t try to stop it because it feels kinda good afterwards. I used to think I was shaking my sillies out like a kindergartner, but that would take a lot longer.

A: This is a strangely common experience.  I know it from my book about hypochondria.    It feels like an electricity pulsing through your spine, right? A sort of thrill?

Q:  I have a freckle on my iris, giving me the appearance of a partially green, and partially brown, eye. Only one eye doctor in my life has expressed concern -- that it could become cancerous. I didn't know eyeball cancer was a thing, but that WOULD be something that would happen to me.  (it hasn't happened).

A: In researching my hypochondria book, I asked an oncologist if there was any place cancer cannot attack, and he thought and thought and finally said the only thing he could think of was the cornea of the eye.   But he wasn’t sure.   

I did, stupidly, ask him about the nipple and he said, “um, that’s called breast cancer.”

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Q: Weird? I realized one part of my body is actually another part-- my prostate is such an asshole!

A: This is a joke only men of a certain age will get. 

Q: I once told you about the weirdest thing about my body in your WaPo chat so this is a repeat.

I had a very dramatic and somewhat cool thing happen to me when I was 29.  Before this event I always sneezed an odd number of times, mostly 3 and sometimes 1 or 5.  After the event I immediately began sneezing twice or 4 times instead.  Over the 25 years since I've drifted back to 3, though I occasionally have a 2 or 4.

A:  I have a weird ability to predict, with stunning accuracy, how many sneezes I will expel.  It’s usually about seven, but after the fourth or so I will say “three more” or “four more,” and almost always be right. 

Q:  I was born with only one testicle. My pediatrician was concerned that the second one was undescended, but tests confirmed that it just did not exist. That one nut produced enough testosterone to make up for the other so there were no consequences, and it made for interesting conversation in bed with anyone new. Interestingly, I was told that a great grandfather on my mother's side had three, so there's obviously something hereditary going on down there. And to wrap things up, my mother's name was Jeanette, so I like to say it's a Jeannetic condition. All of this is true. 

A: Thank you.  This whole conversation about bodies is filling me with much joy. 

Q: I have a few weird things about my body. For instance, when I had a heart attack, I had all the classic symptoms (numbness in the arm, shooting pains in the chest), but on the wrong side of my body. A trained and skilled neurologist looked at my face in my late teens and asked when I had my stroke, because my left eyelid droops and the eye is noticeably lower in my face than my right eye (kind of like Charles Laughton's portrayal of Quasimodo,

To be clear, I have never had a stroke. But I think the weirdest thing is that the skin of my left upper arm is connected to the nerves of my left ear, so that when I scratch my arm or scrub it in the shower, my ear crackles.

A: When I put a finger in my mouth, and rub it against my right cheek and right gum, my right ear canal itches, and i have to scratch it to relieve the tickle.  I have never hear of anybody else with this weirdness. But a dentist told me it is not uncommon. It’s a “trigger” reaction of some sort.  

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Q: Now that I'm in my nineties, I take it as a given that I will be wakened several times a night by the pressure of needing to pee. But it's dismaying lately to realize that the urge has nothing to do with the amount of urine in my bladder; no matter how much of how little water I drink, all I discharge in the bathroom is a dribble of a few ounces and a dozen drops. Something other than my bladder's usual detection and relief mechanism has been taken over by some element in my brain or nervous system. What's more, the frequency always settles down to exactly the same number of minutes, and often exactly one hour. Somehow my circadian rhythm has taken charge of a natural function and distorted it into a sort of timekeeping function. There ought to be a way to learn how to correct this and use my mental powers to empty my bladder normally. 

A:  Thank you.   One of the weirdest facts I ever learned as a journalist is that all species of animals, including humans, pee for exactly 17 seconds.  It seems to be inexplicable. It implies the existence of an all-knowing, oddly benevolent God.

Q: The little toes on my feet are each rotated a quarter turn outward. As a result, my little toenails appear to be on the sides of my feet.

A: You know what would be weird? If our eyes were positioned on the sides of our faces, like fish, so they can detect predators.

Q: I always weigh myself naked, or maybe with just socks and tighty-whities, because I very much want to know the actual weight of me. I do my best to poop as thoroughly as I can beforehand, to bring my weight down further. However, that does not always work out so well, because it is shortly after I wake up -- my guts still are experiencing sleep paralysis, and I do not yet have the help of a good cup of coffee to move things along. The unmoved mornings are the mornings I don't feel so good about myself. – Tim

A: I tend to weigh myself in the morning because I have usually peed out a couple of pounds overnight. 

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Q: regarding your typewriter keyboard: Well, nüts. Beföre I reäd Gene‘s self-served „qüestiön“, I häd been plänning to sübmit än entry bäsed ön the Germän keyböärd thät I äm üsing right nöw.

A: Thank you.

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Q: In response to your question about being an adult and your bank balance avoidance, my “still don’t feel like an adult” is as follows. My mom’s family was…successful. Wildly so. As a result when my mother’s sisters proceeded my grandmother in death, my mom was the sole living heir when grandma passed making my very financially secure and responsible parents multi-millionaires. However, they don’t want me to have to wait until they die to enjoy the fruits of their financial literacy and in their inheritance windfall. So they suggested they begin divesting some of their accounts to me. This immediately incited panic in me. I am not financially literate and haven’t spent the last many decades meeting with financial advisors and planning for the future as they have done. I picked my 401k options based on pretty colors. So I relayed these fears to them and the fact that I just have too much on my plate to go and find financial advisors and become financially literate. So we worked out a deal, they continue to manage the money and investments (and their financial advisor reviews my retirement savings) and when I need money, I call them. I am 45. And I CALL MY MOM AND DAD WHEN I NEED MONEY. Like our retaining wall recently collapsed and I got 3 bids, picked one, called my parents and the money was transferred to my checking account in 3 days. I can’t blow through grandma’s fortune, I don’t have to meet with financial advisors, I don’t have to try to be an adult about money. When we had the contractor for the retaining wall add in some extra gravel for the driveway and under our pole barn, he told me how much extra it would cost, I called dad on my cell phone and asked him to transfer the extra amount and he did and my 30 year old contractor’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head watching a 45 year old woman utter the words, “dad, can you transfer another 500 dollars so we can re-gravel the driveway?” I am not an adult yet.

-anonymous non-adult

A: Okay, just for the record, I know who you are and this is funny.   Your only hope is that I am nearly 30 years older than you, and no more mature financially.  You have time to recover. 

This financial incompetence thing seems to be a very common adult immaturity.  I should have added, initially, that I still walk to the bank to deposit checks.  The teller, who is a lovely lady at least five years older than I am, always informs me there is a way to do it online, and I always just hang my head in shame, and say, I know, but am incapable.

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Q: I have always hated the idea of sharing any kind of puzzle I’m working on, letting anybody see it unfinished. This goes back to elementary school where I’d always cover my work- I wasn’t worried about anyone copying just didn’t want anyone to see it. Now, with crossword puzzles, I am still very protective. Perhaps because I’m afraid of someone seeing an error  and correcting me, or adding a suggestion that shows they are smarter than me. This  affects me deeply. Can normal people work with others on crosswords, sudoku, Wordle, etc.?

A: Rachel and I do puzzles together.  It was originally kind of competitive, but about 5 years ago, I simply came to the realization that she was and is better than I at everything, subsumed my ego, and simply gave in to accepting that, at best, I can get 40 percent of the answers before she does. I am happy with that.   For one thing, she is WAY better at pop culture than I am.  But also, sometimes, SPORTS.   Lyric poets.  Anyone who has ever performed live on a stage since 1300.  It is humiliating.   But in a way exciting.  She is the most brilliant knowledgeable 40-year-old in history, with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson or Isaac Newton, or maybe John Keats, who died of consumption at 25. Or Marie Curie. I am adding that just to throw a woman in there.

Okay, We’re done. Please keep sending questions / observations in. I need them.

Also do you realize that if you subscribe to a 400-year subscription to The Gene Pool, you can do it for as little as $20,000?

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