The Invitational Week 93: Ask Backwards XLIII
We give you the 'answers'; you tell us the questions. Plus winning ways to economize.
Camelot Harris
Roto Ruder
Bond. Percival Bond.
Chewing gumption
Muhammad Alley
The Topic of Capricorn
Not a peep out of him
Washington, CD
E pluribus um um
Grip it by the seams
Take it for a spin
A White Sox Burger
AI sauce
A children’s book by RFK Jr.
The question you’d have asked at another debate
43 Ask Backwards contests
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Hello.
Yes, we are running our 43rd Ask Backwards contest, a great national achievement in recidivism and redundancy. We are very proud.
For Invitational Week 93: Above are the “answers” for this year’s Ask Backwards contest; you provide the questions, in the “Jeopardy!”-ish form of A-followed-by-Q. Like last year’s winner by Duncan Stevens:
A. Donald Trump, PhD:
Q. What’s more plausible than “Donald Trump, 6-foot-3, 215 pounds”?
SUPER-IMPORTANT formatting note! While we’ll publish the results in two lines as above, we ask you to help us sort the entries into categories. So: Write each one of your entries in a single line, beginning with the answer you’re using, as worded in the list, and don’t start the line with “A:” for “answer.” Do it like this one:
A children’s book by RFK Jr.: What is “Where the Wild Things Are for Eating”?
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Deadline is Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Oct. 24. 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-93.
The winner gets, possibly in time for Halloween, a fine pair of thin skeleton socks, which 4 out of 5 doctors recommend over holding an X-ray machine in front of your feet all day.
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 Gene hopes to deal with in real time today. You do this, as always, by sending them to this here button:
The Skinflintational: Thrift tips from Week 91
In Week 91 we asked for some comical ways to be thrifty. Even the Empress, who routinely tears paper towels into quarters because why use a whole piece for a small cleanup, has not tried any of the practices below. Oh, wait, there’s one.
Third runner-up:
Wear actual Coke bottles instead of glasses. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)
Second runner-up:
Get free appetizers and drinks on the way to Sunday brunch: Just stop at several churches to take Communion. (Jeff Rackow, Bethesda, Md.)
First runner-up:
Do all your old underpants have holes in them? No problem! Just wear one pair on top of another — as many as it takes until the problem is solved. (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)
And the winner of the french-fry earrings:
I save on my water bill and toilet use by holding it in as long as I possibly can, both Number One and Number Two. A doctor might tell me that’s not healthy, but I also save money by never going to the doctor. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)
As always, if you think the best among today’s inking entries were unjustly buried in the honorable mentions, shout out your favorites in the comments.
Half Off: Honorable mentions
Save those really big toenail clippings to use as letter openers. (Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)
Save money on food and yard maintenance by getting a goat stomach transplant and eating your lawn. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)
Book all your flights through Istanbul. — E. Adams, N.Y.C. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)
A little strategically applied makeup, liquid latex, silicone, gelatin, and hair coloring are all it takes to snag the senior discount at the buffet. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)
Hurricane insurance prices going through the roof in Florida? Move hundreds of miles inland, then way up in the mountains. Asheville is said to be especially nice … (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)
Send that Nigerian prince just $1,750 rather than $3,500. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)
Ever wonder why Grandpa has kept fourteen old calendars? That’s because in any given year, one of them will always work. And those Vargas pinup girls never get old. (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)
Collect debris from defective Boeing airplanes and sell to a metal scrapper. (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.)
Collect S&H Green Stamps. They were discontinued in the 1980s, so now, as collectibles, they’re finally worth something. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)
Use both sides of the toilet paper. (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)
Did you know it only takes 165 free Wawa coffee creamers to fill a gallon jug? (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.)
Adjacent burial plots: Use only one headstone. At the bottom, draw an arrow with a Sharpie, adding, “He’s with me.” (Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)
The morning after Halloween, gather toilet paper from all the TP’d houses in the neighborhood. (Lee Graham, Reston, Va.)
Cut food costs by getting a DoorDash gig and keep a bit of each meal until you have enough for your family’s dinner. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)
Taking discreet sips from cups of beer as you pass them down the row at sporting events can give you a pleasant buzz at no cost! (Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.)
Did you forget to brown-bag it today? The kids on that unlocked bus in front of the museum didn’t. (Rob Huffman)
Don’t throw away that toothpick until you've used both ends. For the fancy ones, you can use the frilly part to clean out your nose. (Diana Oertel, San Francisco)
Explain to the hookers you patronize that you’re short on cash but you’ll happily pay them in sexual favors. (Duncan Stevens)
Get your money’s worth for that parking space: Hang out in your car till the meter hits zero. (Eric Nelkin, Silver Spring, Md.)
Give a few small donations to Habitat for Humanity; get a lifetime supply of postage stamps from the return envelopes in its solicitation mailings. (Michael Stein, Arlington, Va.)
Go back to dial-up internet access: It’s much cheaper and your porn addiction will quickly dry up. (Stephen Dudzik)
Go to a forested park, don a bear costume, and sit innocently along a tourist road; when enough idiots give you food for a picnic, enjoy it while forest-bathing. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.)
Instead of buying milk, shampoo, toothpaste, laundry detergent, and motor oil, just use water. (Jesse Frankovich)
Collect your earwax and use it as lip balm, just as some refined ladies did in the 19th century. (Dan Steinbrocker, Los Angeles)
Instead of buying sweets for Halloween, put out a sign on your front lawn that says “COME GET YOUR CANDIED BROCCOLI.” (Sam Mertens)
Let’s say you have a, uh, an old dead fish that you need to dispose of, and I mean totally. Just mix up a vat of sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide from your, um, chemical business. It’ll melt all that soft tissue — and even turn the bones into gypsum, which could be added to stucco or drywall if you also happened to, say, own a legitimate construction materials interest. — Jack “The Dipper” Stromboli, Brooklyn (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)
Instead of purchasing expensive name brands, make your own cars, appliances, and smartphones. (Jesse Frankovich)
Re-create most of the Disney World experience for less, by standing outside in 105-degree heat for hours while not going on rides. (Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.)
Make pens and pencils last longer by writing everything in shorthand. (Sam Mertens)
When someone passes the collection plate to you in church … collect! (Gary Crockett) .
Junior doesn’t need a tuxedo for his prom when the party store has lots of perfectly good penguin costumes! (Duncan Stevens)
Learn how to tie your shoes, brush your teeth, and change the toilet paper roll yourself instead of hiring a professional. (Jesse Frankovich)
When your kid needs wheels for a soap box derby car, remember that shopping carts are only a quarter at Aldi! (Jon Gearhart)
Place fake pizza orders going to your neighbors, wait for them to turn the delivery person away, then go outside and offer to buy it at a discount. (Sam Mertens)
Persuade your multiple personalities to participate in your pyramid scheme—that way you get all the profits. (Jesse Frankovich)
Volunteer at a local senior center. Ever notice that those people almost never finish a meal? (Rob Huffman)
To make a thriftier PB&J sandwich, put the peanut butter on one side of a slice and jelly on the other. Bam! 50 percent off your bread bill right there. (Gregory Koch, Falls Church, Va.)
When your ratty old shoes are about to fall apart, go bowling and exchange them for some snazzy multicolored replacements. (Jeff Contompasis)
And Last: Cancel your subscription to the Substack column that keeps being unfair to our BEST PRESIDENT EVER! —John Barron (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)
The headline “The Skinflintational” is by Kevin Dopart; William Kennard wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.
Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Oct. 12: our Week 92 contest for witty haiku about the campaign or other current events. Click on the link below.
We now enter the coveted Real-Time Segment of The Gene Pool, where Gene tries to respond to your questions and observations, which were made in Real Time. Today’s Q’s and O’s (so far) are in part influenced by Gene’s call, on the weekend, for your stories about times you felt you were going to die … and obviously, were wrong.
PLEASE send your Observations and Questions right here. They will be dealt with with alacrity and gusto, a promise employing an amazing sentence that uses the expression “with with.”
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Also, please take a moment to pity your poor hosts. We try to scrape by in what passes for our “lives” through the continuing kindness of strangers. Not that you are strangers, exactly. Many if not most of you are persons we have never met, though we feel we somehow know you, and know the naive goodness in your hearts. You are persons with real jobs and real incomes who deceive yourselves into thinking our fate — wretched street mendicants — will never befall you. Out of respect for you, we would do nothing to disabuse you of these notions. We will, however, ask you to find it in those weeping, financially successful hearts to come up with $50 a year — $4.15 a month, 22 cents a day, barely more than a ha’penny an hour — to fund us a bit.
Good. We proceed.
This is Gene. I wish to report that yesterday, I made two strangers laugh out loud, which does not often happen. I am proud and want to tell the story.
I was at Whole Foods, buying overpriced but delightful edible merchandise. A fellow shopper came up to me and she said I looked exactly like a certain famous person. I laughed, and agreed with her. The interaction was over.
Then, just a few minutes later, I was at the self-checkout. Among my purchases was a six-pack of beer, so the beeper beeped and a store lady came over. She asked to see my ID. My ancient, wizened countenance regarded her with amusement, and I said, “really?” She smiled apologetically and said, “I’m afraid I have to ask.” So as I was rummaging for my driver’s license, I said, pretty loudly:
“You know, a lady in the store just told me that I look exactly like Kurt Vonnegut, and he’s 102 years old and dead. “
Both she and the lady next to me, buying carrots, guffawed.
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And this just in, from the Web:
“Dear MAGA, if you dropped off your child as a boy and picked your child up as a girl, please return her back to the school. You picked up the wrong child.”
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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.
Here we go.
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Q: I have a friend who owns an antique store that was converted from an old theater. This last Spring, the furnace went out in it. The furnace was an ugly beast that hung from the ceiling near the checkout counter, so my friend decided to have a new one installed in a crawlspace that was near the old one. It was a four foot tall space between the ceiling and the actual roof. Not a pleasant space to be working in (and it was also fifteen feet above a cement floor). Before the furnace could be installed, the crawlspace needed to be prepped with a floor and fire rated drywall.
I was helping to install the floor on the joists when my friend realized he needed to go to the hardware store to get something. I said I’d be fine as I was just trimming the boards along the furthest joist. I was trimming the last board closest to the outer wall and couldn’t get the right angle at it. I turn and extend my leg out to the next joist over to get leverage. It turns out that that joist was not connected to anything (we later determined that it had rotted at the end that was connected to the outer wall) and I immediately fell to my left. My leg went through the ceiling and I slammed into the joist that was the next one beyond the rotted one. Luckily, it was not rotted and held. I had caught it in my left armpit and was dangling 15 feet above the cement floor. I manage to extract myself from the situation and peer down the hole I just made to make sure no one below was hurt by falling debris (did I forget to mention we were doing this while the store was open?)
No one else was hurt, so I checked myself over. There was a large tear in my jeans starting just above my knee and going right up to my crotch. I pulled the flap away to see how much damage there was… and there was nothing, not even a scratch. Whew! The next day I had some very large purple/green bruises around my left armpit and on my upper right thigh. That sequence of extending my leg out to dangling from the ceiling happened so fast that I didn’t realize what was happening. I went from standing to dangling with no memory of the transition.
Anyway, the furnace was installed, but my friend left the hole in the ceiling and is planning on having a life size skeleton peering down from it this Halloween.
– Paul Nesja
A: Thank you. I kept a friend’s vomit on the fender of my car for 15 years. But that is a separate story you probably have heard, from me or someone else.
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Q: Soon after I graduated from high school I attended a party at the home of a classmate. They had a swimming pool slightly deeper than I am tall. Though I couldn't swim, I decided to jump into the pool. Not much danger in that, right? My friend's younger brother jumped in right on top of me and pushed me to the bottom. In his defense he didn't know I couldn't swim. After what seemed an eternity of trying to surface in panic, someone jumped in and pulled me out. I was thinking, "Great, I'm going to drown feet from safety in front of all these people." I recall exhaling a stream of water while being towed to the side of the pool. Two good things came out of that. I was about 50 pounds overweight at the time. I decided I needed to shed the extra pounds, and by the end of the summer I was svelte. And I took a swimming class in my freshman year of college.
A: I cannot swim. It is my greatest secret shame. I am now admitting it for the first time. Your story made me tremble.
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Q: People are saying JD Vance doesn't know how to act like a normal person, giving his experiences ordering donuts and Primanti's. That's only part of the problem. The other part is that he's trying to act like a normal person even though he's NOT - he's a Vice Presidential candidate with his own security detail, he CAN'T just walk into a place and order food like a normal person, they have to do security sweeps and kick all the customers out in case any of them are armed. And yet he's trying to act like a normal person to "prove" he is one, and failing at that too.
A: I’m sorry but other candidates don’t seem to have this problem. Mr. Vance does not seem to be a normal person.
Q: Back in the day, there used to be this annual event in Atlanta called the Great Southeastern Fair, held at Lakewood Fairgrounds. One year when I was maybe 7 or 8, I went with my mom and dad, and somehow my mother and I wound up, just the two of us, in the line for the roller coaster. This was a wooden contraption built around WWI, called The Greyhound, and although it did not feature the gravity-defying antics of today's modern roller coasters, it was pretty scary because a) it was made of wood, and therefore eminently come-apartable and b) it had actually killed somebody a couple of seasons prior. They closed it down for a decent interval and then re-opened it after tightening a few nuts and bolts and announcing it was "fine." This was 1964 or so, long before Ralph Nadar. This was the thing we were lined up for.
I had never been on a roller coaster. My mom--this was a side of her I never saw before this event, or since--was giddily, gloriously looking forward to a ride on this thing. And as fate would have it, we ended up first in line as the train ahead of us emptied and our part of the line began to embark. My mom said, "Let's get in the first car!" and I said "Noooooo" but she pulled me forward and there we were, the first car in this death trap. The ride began--a long, slow climb up an interminable slow hill, and all the time I am wondering how this is going to work--and then: we're at the summit. I looked down and saw ....nothing. We were impossibly high off the ground, and there was nothing between us and the pavement, and my own mother had put me there. She sat beside me, laughing maniacally, and I am wondering what on earth I have done to make my own mother want to kill me. Facing death is one thing; facing death at the hands of your own parent is a special kind of horror, especially when she is laughing like Mr. Rochester's first wife, the one in the attic.
I forget how many curves and hills there were, and how many times I faced death on that ride, but at the end I was speechless and rigid and my mother was still laughing maniacally. Several years later, they blew up that thing in one of the "Smokey and the Bandit" movies. You can look it up.--tracy– Tracy T.
A: Trying to demonstrate to my daughter how cool her father was, I once went on a ride with her called the Spider, or The Octopus. It looked kind of like those tame teacup rides, the ones you take with your two year olds. This was not that. Molly was 12 or so. This one spins you, hard, in two different directions at the same time. I whimpered and advised Molly to close her eyes. She was fine. Dad nearly passed out.
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Q: Regarding your video and the two balls and the dog.. Since Lexi is a hound, she is olfactorily oriented. Sound takes a distant second to smell.
A: True enough. I will recommend that the company do a new model, with competing tantalizing fart smells.
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Q: Regarding offensive yet funny jokes, it depends on who’s telling them in my opinion. There’s a line in Elie Weisel’s memoirs where someone at a concentration camp jokes about how great Hitler is since he’s the only politician who ever kept his promises to the Jews. Told by someone in that position at that time, it is quite funny. Told by anyone else, it would be horribly offensive.
A: This reminds me, not hilariously, about a true story involving a woman who was killed for telling a joke.
The joke: Hitler and Göring are standing on top of the Berlin radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on the Berliners’ faces. Göring says, “Why don’t you jump?”
When a woman told this joke in Germany in 1943, she was arrested by the Nazis and sentenced to death by guillotine. It was apparently carried out. Humor is dangerous in the hands of Trump. autocrats.
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Q: Regarding the mom who spent $500 treating a rat: About 25 years ago my best friend, a veterinarian, performed surgery on a chicken. When he told me over the phone what he was doing that afternoon, I volunteered that I had operated on a chicken just that day, at lunch time, and was available to consult. He declined. The chicken, named Boo, was the beloved pet of an 8 year old girl and was presenting severe neurologic problems- loss of coordination and erratic behavior. My friend determined, via x-ray, that Chicken Boo had some lead pellets lodged in her gizzard and could be restored to normal (chicken normal,) by some $400 worth of surgery. The girl's mother had made the strategic error of bringing her daughter along, who was now staring up at her expectantly, so what could she do but pony up the money? She agreed to the fee, telling my buddy to tell her husband *nothing* if he should call. Postscript to the story: The girl, now well into adulthood, recently identified herself to my friend at his clinic and let him know that Chicken Boo lived out a normal (chicken normal) life.
A: During her many years as a veterinarian, Molly had to euthanize many animals when saving them was possible, but the owners couldn’t, or wouldn’t, afford it. She was a great vet. Shemade heroic efforts to place them in other homes, but sometimes it was impossible.
Q: Here’s why I have answered “no” to the racial/ethnic jokes. The problem with them is they are generic. The cheap Jew joke is the same as the cheap Scot joke. The dumb Pole joke is the same as the dumb Italian joke. The Black stereotype is the same as the Indian (both subcontinent & American!). You can laugh at the dumb/cheap/slow whatever joke, but when you assign it to a racial or ethnic group, you are pointing fingers at a falsehood. William Pifer-Foote.
A: I would argue that is part of the joke: The obvious randomness of it. If I told a “wow are they dumb” joke about, say, high-born Brits, Mr. Pifer-Foote, it would be just as funny.
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Q: The nappy-bottomed Ho joke probably hit the same rail as that "niggardly" problem from 30 years ago (notice nobody still will say "niggardly".) No one can explain why it's bad but we all have to back away.
A: I have lately reconsidered the whole niggardly thing, harking back to a line by the great, rhetorically gifted, Courtland Milloy. He said that he knows it was innocent, and literarily correct, but that it just, somehow, didn’t sound so good to him.
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This is Gene. Rachel just told me that I missed a humor opportunity when I created a one-year bucket list for myself in the last Gene Pool. She is right, and I am embarrassed . She said one of my wishes should be to have Jimmy Carter speak at my funeral.
Q: Your not-so-recent anecdote about Gene Shalit. A neighbor of my Stockbridge MA cabin got a summons because his (well-behaved) dog was in the street. Gene ran for and won the office of dog catcher and revoked the rule.
A: I have been unable to find this online, but I’ll take your word for it.
Q: From a recent Post article on menstruation: "Boys learn that their reproductive abilities — including erections and semen — are a source of virility and pride, while girls tend to speak in embarrassed voices about theirs." Yes, this was written by a woman, who clearly has no understanding of boys' feelings about their incipient sexuality.
A: Mostly, we worry, as yoots, about penis size. Polls suggest – as in the case of the children of Lake Woebegon – a substantial minority of men feel they are smaller than average. So that feeling persists into adulthood, though we no longer worry about it.
This is Gene. I am calling this over a few minutes early today, and begging you, as always, to keep sending in new questions and observations. And to do it here:
I almost submitted the “both sides of the toilet paper” gag myself, but decided it was too gross even for the Invitational. WHAT WAS I THINKING?
Use both sides of the toilet paper made me laugh out loud.