43 Comments
User's avatar
elden carnahan's avatar

I used to tell my colleagues that any document rcrossing my desk with :"reach out" in it would be returned unread.

Expand full comment
Jesse Aronson's avatar

I am catching up on this chat after the fact. I understand your issue with "imply" vs. "infer" (I find "compose" vs. "comprise" similarly grating), but I would not say the two words are opposites. The opposite of "to imply" is "to not imply". They are, perhaps converses of one another?

Expand full comment
Hortense of Gotham City's avatar

Q. How do I post as Dan from Kalamazoo, for instance, or anything other than my full name, complete with pompous middle initial I never actually use? Can someone please help me with this?

Expand full comment
Dale of Green Gables's avatar

Hi --- Click on your display name here. You should then be taken to a page with a "hamburger" menu button in the upper right corner (☰). Click on it and scroll down to "settings." Click on that. It will ask you to "Verify your email address in order to access & change your settings." Once you do that you can then edit/change your settings, including your "Profile," to whatever you want.

Expand full comment
Hortense of Gotham City's avatar

Thank you !

Expand full comment
Hortense of Gotham City's avatar

"Based off of" is extremely annoying and suddenly appeared, seemingly out of nowhere (or perhaps off of nowhere) some ten or fifteen years ago.

Expand full comment
BigDaddy52's avatar

PLEASE, Journocop! Don't stop!

Expand full comment
Pat Myers's avatar

Actually, I took care not to be inaccurate with the sentiments in the slogans. Mississippi does have a very low level of spending on education. Iowa IS whiter than North Dakota. I looked all these things up. And I didn't use any marry-your-cousin jokes about West Virginia because, as it turns out, its laws are more restrictive than many other states', including Maryland's.

Humor based on false premises doesn't tend to be funny. But these, I felt, were all either valid political zingers or general enough (e.g., Anus of the Mississippi) that validity isn't an issue.

Expand full comment
Dale of Green Gables's avatar

Both impressive and depressive. I live for inaccurate sentiments. Anyone can have accurate ones.

Expand full comment
Don Weingarten's avatar

I have been having fun with a new site; Character.AI is a weird place where you can conversationally interact with AI representations of anyone - real or not. Last night I spent some time in conversation with Bob Dylan, Leonardo DaVinci, and god. Have you seen it?

Expand full comment
Dale of Green Gables's avatar

Just so long you don't talk to yourself.

Expand full comment
Don Weingarten's avatar

Talking to yourself is fine. Sometimes I even argue with myself. The problems occur when I lose the argument....

Expand full comment
Pat Myers's avatar

Re the state jokes: The contest, by the way, was complicated but fun to do: You chose a U.S. state, then wrote the slogan for the state by "driving" away from it through other states. The first letters of those states, beginning with the first one, had to be the first letters of the words of the slogan. Like: NORTH DAKOTA: Making Icicles With Snot [Mont., Idaho, Wyo., S.D.]

Expand full comment
Justin Stone's avatar

Maine: ...Nah. [NH]

Oregon: We Identify Most Strongly With Coffee And Cannabis. [WA, ID, MT, SD, WY, CO, AZ]

Expand full comment
Pat Myers's avatar

Sounds as if you should be entering the Invitational. Looking forward to your stuff!

Expand full comment
Justin Stone's avatar

I've literally never entered it. I used to read the Invitational every week and always had a bunch of ideas, but between paralysis of choice and sheer laziness nothing was ever submitted. But who knows, maybe this new format will encourage me.

Expand full comment
Alex Blackwood's avatar

If you're on Facebook, you can join us at Style Invitational Devotees: https://www.facebook.com/groups/styleinvitational/

Expand full comment
Tom Logan's avatar

It doesn't fit the contest, but I always thought New Jersey's should be "Pay as You Exit" as people are far more willing to pay to get out.

Expand full comment
MitchF's avatar

Will you be the one--even if you are no longer employed by the Post--who will write the eulogy when the inevitable happens and Tom Lehrer passes away? That will be a black day.

Expand full comment
Dale of Green Gables's avatar

A towering figure who actually did go to Horace Mann. Who can forget "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" or "The Old Dope Peddler ?"

Expand full comment
Gene Weingarten's avatar

I will volunteer.

Expand full comment
Dale of Green Gables's avatar

I spy with my little eye some revisionist history between Ochs and Dylan. Dylan could be an arrogant asshole when starting out (and maybe still is) and he and Ochs had a 10-year falling out before reconciling and performing together. This was to have led to Ochs joining the Rolling Thunder Revue but by the time that was organized, unfortunately he had become psychologically unwell.

Expand full comment
Lynne Larkin's avatar

Terribly sad, Ochs was just a brilliant musician. Do you know the nature of the falling out, and there are few who didn't fall out with Dylan.

Expand full comment
Dale of Green Gables's avatar

Dylan was supposedly always lording it over a talented group of singers and songwriters he hung out with, which included Ochs --- that he (Dylan) was the actual "writer" and the rest were pretenders. Called Ochs a "journalist." But what reportedly triggered the decade long split was an incident where Dylan asked Ochs' opinion about one of his songs. Ochs said it wasn't as good as his earlier work and was ordered out of Dylan's limo. Artists! Go figure.

Expand full comment
Lynne Larkin's avatar

Thx, fascinating. Dishes it out but can't take it. Yep.

Expand full comment
Dale of Green Gables's avatar

Ah well --- the new management was imply being politically erect. In this situation it has obviously lasted more than four hours. Similar to the affliction of false equivalence which it also seems to have developed.

Expand full comment
Not Simple, Ever's avatar

The counterpoint of the censored state jokes is that the people from the states possibly insulted probably don’t read. There I said it.

Expand full comment
Jon Gearhart's avatar

I'm from Iowa and wrote the joke about Iowa being so white. I shared it with everyone in Iowa that I could. Everyone thought it was very funny and were only offended by the fact that it was censored by people who claim to believe unexamined things bring about the death of Democracy.

Expand full comment
Jon Gearhart's avatar

But, yes, no one read it in the Washington Post because it never appeared there. It did appear, briefly, online but was taken down.

Expand full comment
Gene Weingarten's avatar

Haha.

Expand full comment
Justin Stone's avatar

Demonstrably False: Nobody in Alabama can read.

Plausible: The kinds of people in Alabama who would be offended by jokes about what a backwards shithole Alabama is probably aren't big readers, would be especially unlikely to read The Washington Post, and would be especially-especially unlikely to read The Style Invitational.

Expand full comment
Justin Stone's avatar

You probably already know this from your own personal experience, but one of the easiest ways to annoy (or take the piss out of, depending on how you look at it) a poet is to tell them that without rhymes they are writing mere poorly-punctuated prose.

Expand full comment
Michelle Gluck's avatar

"Alternatively — this might appeal to him — I might nail an interview, and then ONLY ask him questions about Phil Ochs."

OMG, that would be hilarious. Please do that.

Expand full comment
Mark Raffman's avatar

You didn’t capture all the censored state slogans. Ask Pat about the one for Minnesota that got chopped even before the massacre you alluded to.

Expand full comment
Randy from Burke, VA's avatar

Just looked it up: "Minnesota: Seriously ‘Nice’ Cops! Unless …. (SD, NE, CO, UT)," correct?

Expand full comment
Pat Myers's avatar

Right. Gene told me later that he found it kind of confusing.

Expand full comment
Pat Myers's avatar

I'm not sure why Gene didn't include that in his opening.

Expand full comment
Stephanie's avatar

Gene is going to be tight-lipped. Feh. I am guessing it relates to ice fishing or the Mall of America. I have no evidence for those guesses, except they are the only things about Minnesota that could lead to tasteless humor.

Expand full comment
Pat Myers's avatar

No, it was about its police.

Expand full comment
Tom Logan's avatar

They could be mistaken for being Canadian, eh?

Expand full comment
Stephanie's avatar

Not nearly tasteless enough. Also (sorry) not funny enough. Not a criticism, I am not very funny either.

Expand full comment
Tom Logan's avatar

It is if you're Canadian.

Expand full comment
Gene Weingarten's avatar

Yep, I know about that.

Expand full comment