Tuesday Chat #2
Chat intro here! Submit questions here!
Q: Gene, I can't think of anyone better than you to answer this question which gets to gender roles and poop. I'm in my 30s and my wife is expecting our first child. Obviously I will be helping change diapers -- 50% or more of them. My father has never changed a diaper in his life, which seems pretty standard from this generation. My question is: Did you change diapers? And do you agree there's been a generational change in this respect? If so, to what do you attribute it? —Dale in Chicago
A: See, I did change diapers, but I was sort of in between, generationally. I did it frequently but always acted both deeply put upon and immeasurably heroic ... One of the lines I wrote that kinda pissed my friend Gina Barreca off was in a column in which we were asking each other gender-related questions, and my question to her was: "Hey, you know those weird drop-down shelves on the walls in some men's rooms? What are they for?"
Q: Can The Czar reveal the jokes/entries behind the Blind T-shirts? Did he self censor or did Tom The Butcher and his ilk nix the entry? —Dale in Chicago
A: Excellent question, and something substack can address. Yes, over the years the Style Invitational had a number of entries that the Czar loved a lot and awarded "Blind T-shirts," namely, t-shirt prizes but without the entry having been printed because the entry was too disgusting. It was usually censored directly by the Czar, but sometimes higher heads had to prevail. Some of these have oozed out over the years; many have not. Substack is for oozing.
So here's what I remember. I also call on Pat, who is far younger than I with a more nimble mind.
We had a Bob Staake cartoon featuring a man (or woman) holding a small envelope that was dripping. The blind caption was "Honey, the mail came!"
Perhaps the most infamous was a poem. The challenge was to write a limerick featuring "Dr. Kevorkian." The limerick was:
A comely young lass from Nantucket
Wanted help in kicking the bucket.
"No problem, my child
Doc Kevorkian smiled,
Wrap your lips round my tailpipe and suck it."
There's one more that I can recall. The contest was to come up with ridiculously outrageous lawsuits that might be filed in the name of over-sensitivity (appropriate to today's Gene Pool intro, actually.). And the entry was "An LGBT group sues the Green Bay Packers to change its name."
You are welcome.
Q: Until maybe 2-3 years ago, when my wife and I were out, people would comment that we were a good-looking couple. Then quarantine hit, and left to my own devices I turned into a sort of Unabomber-hippopotamus hybrid -- a "unapotamus," if you will -- while my wife remains the very epitome of beauty. Now when we are out, people comment on her beauty, and then turn to me and say "you're a lucky man!" How, if indeed at all, should I respond in these circumstances? —Dale in Chicago
A: As I have mentioned before, my girlfriend is a lot younger and vastly better looking than I am, so I appreciate your problem and my solution for you depends on where you are at the moment the comment is made. If you are, say, in the street, you might say something like, "Yes, but you are ugly, madam, and I am drunk but tomorrow I will not quite as drunk." And then purse your lips and steeple your fingers as if you had just said something profound. If you are in a restaurant, however, the thing to do is dash a glass of beer in their face, and then sneer derisively and say "You stink of beer."
Q: The restored glass face clock - Is there a magnet that runs an orbit within the frame, that causes the minute hand to move, and brings the hour hand along for the ride? --Dale in Chicago
A: This is in reference to this 1950s. clock, which I recently bought and restored. A magnet is a reasonable guess, but the fact is that there's a great deal of friction drag on the hangs. For a magnet to be strong enough to drag the hands, it would probably also attract sharp silverware, apple corers, etc. in a horrible Carrie-like scene of fatal body piercing. The answer -- two chatters did figure it out, or research it, is that the glass itself moves; it is rotated by gears that are out of sight in the base. A counterweight keeps the hour hand in the right place. This clock was called the Jefferson Mystery Clock.
Q: My question: IIRC, you had a mysterious event with your residential door at your Bethesda house some years ago. Did you ever sort out what happened? —Dale in Chicago
A: I believe I mentioned just a few paragraphs ago that I have no recollection left of anything that has ever happened in my life. So you will have to be more specific. I WILL say that the most mysterious thing I can sort of recall involved dog pee, and here it is.
Q: You've mentioned several times that Rachel is your "fnorf," but you've never stated whether that term is related to "fnord," the concept from Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy that was a metaphor for the Powers That Be using the media to terrify us into obedience. Is this merely a (highly-nerdy) coincidence, or is Rachel terrifying and this is your call for help? —Dale from Chicago
A: Wilson was a thief and I've never forgiven him for this. He stole the term from me in 1991, the year after his death, and never apologized.
Q: Why is Elon Musk here? — Dale from Chicago
A: Elon is here simply because of the Great God of Anagrams, a just and noble God. Elon Must anagrams to "Lone Skum." By the way, it’s astonishing to me that no one has yet asked about “Dale from Chicago.” If you haven’t figured it out yet, the Substack tool leaves room for a name and location, but people have not been providing theirs. So I’m just deciding everyone is Dale, from Chicago. This may or may not be fixed soon. And yes, I know that you smartasses are going to start entering as Dale from Chicago.
Q: Would you rather eat a man-sized bean or a bean-sized man? — Dale from Chicago
A: You haven't given me enough information. Was the bean-sized man Hitler? Was the man-sized bean slathered in Beluga caviar?
Q: What do you think of prunes?
A: I like prunes, in moderation. But this does give me an opportunity to discuss an incident I don't think I ever mentioned, for reasons of shame. I believe you are getting it here first. One day in 1991 I was at work when I discovered I was leaking. From a bad place. I had no idea what was going on, but I had to run out and buy new pants. I got an immediate doctor's appointment, and what we discovered was that I had idiotically consumed an inordinate amount of peanut butter, without bread or anything else, any "carrier" to mitigate its relentless descent through the colon. That's the first part of the story. The second part is that, just to be safe, the doc ordered some routine blood tests, which discovered an advanced case of Hepatitis C, and led to a ten-year treatment program that literally saved my life. Peanut butter saved my life.
Q: This is Pat Myers, responding to Gene’s observation about Blind T-Shirt prizes. At least that censorship / editing resulted from some rational judgment. As opposed to this action by the Facebook algorithm this morning:
As an admin of the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook (sign up and the Devs will anagram your name 52 ways), I got a notice that FB had removed someone's comment on a post I'd made about some sloppy grammar in a recent Washington Post story.
The commenter quoted a line from crotchety Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady" when he hears the Cockney accent of Eliza Doolittle:
"By rights she should be taken out and hung
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue."
Inciting violence, you see. —Dale from Chicago
Q: Can a family-friendly place like this chat or page have a section devoted to wrong music playing in a situation? — Dale from Chicago
A: Sure. I think many of us have seen the Yakety Sax overlaid on The Passion of the Christ, which is so awful I turned it off, but I think a better idea would be a bunch of enraged maniacs chasing a tricycle riding Benny Hill, accompanied by Adagio for Strings, by Samuel Barber.
Q: Two questions: 1. My wife and I are slightly left of you by the sounds of it. Both of us come from families that are Ultra, MAGA, conservative. What the hell happened? 2. Is disrespect a verb? — Dale from Chicago
A: 1. It’s pretty hard but not impossible to be left of me; you’d have to be younger and more tolerant of this squishy crap. Speaking of squishy crap I have to take the dog out. 2. “Disrespect” is both a noun and a transitive verb, though I didn’t know about the verb form until “dis” barreled into the language with a foul thud about 30 years ago.
Q: ...I am about as far left as the low-A key on a piano (which is weird, because up until 10-20 years ago I was pretty sure I was middle-C), but it was right around that moment that I realized conservatives may occasionally have a point about woke culture going too far. — Dale from Chicago
A: Yeah, that was sort of my point, but I don’t use “woke” because it has been cynically hijacked by the right to kinda mean all manners of “bad.” But when the progressives start losing people like us — or at least creating a doubt and distaste — the progressive movement may be in trouble.
Q: Do we care that Jared and Ivanka are no longer getting along ?
A: What? WHAT HAVE YOU HEARD? THIS IS DESTROYING MY DAY.
Q: Oh, this is Gene. I should just remark that, as a Jew, I find the name “Hamline University” offensive.
Q: Gene again. I just remembered another blind T-shirt. The contest was to come up with with explanations for certain sounds. The sound was an inversion of the Alka-Seltzer jingle: “Fizz, fizz, plop plop.” The entry was “What is the sound of two toddlers finding the drain cleaner under the sink?”
Q: I am stunned to just now learn about the blind T-shirts. I would have tried a lot harder if I had known there were no limits imposed when awarding those prizes. Can you please try to come up with contest ideas to promote more unacceptable humor now?
A: I will be talking to Pat about this. The thing is, there were ALWAYS entries, regardless of the contest details, that pushed the bounds of human decency, at least as defined by the Wapo. But, um, that restriction no longer applies.
Q: What kind of tree would Barbara Walters have been buried under?
A: A giant wedwood.
Q: We’ve missed you, Gene. Is it good to be back? Or do we need to submit insightful questions instead of short suck-uppity comments for you to answer the previous question?
A: Suckuppy is not necessary. Double entendre is more appreciated. Which reminds mme of one of my favorite jokes: Woman walks into a bar, says to the bartender: I’ll have an entendre. Make it a double.” So he gives it to her.
Q: Gene again. Calling this a day. Thank you all and see you on Thursday, where we reconnect with the Invitational.
I was in a Target bathroom (Mens) not too long ago and the baby-changing station had a sign above it saying "Do not leave your child unattended on the changing table." I asked my wife if her restroom had a similar sign, and it did not.
I'm also confused by what seems like multiple pages. Anyway, this comment is for Unapotamus Dale:
Some years ago, on the first day back at work after the spouses-included company dinner dance, the break room fell silent when a woman said to me, “I couldn’t believe it when I saw your husband! How did you ever get such a good-lookiing guy?!” While everyone else there was probably thinking the same thing she was, they were also thinking the same thing I was, that the obvious and appropriate response was, “Kiss my ass!” But instead, I said with a smile, “I must know…stuff…you don’t.” The rest of the break room liked that answer, even if she didn’t. I’m just lucky she didn’t ask for specifics. I don’t know what I would have said then.