Week 5 of The Invitational: Where in Hell ….?

Name a ‘circle’ for some ‘evil,’ plus a suitable punishment. Plus the Kiggans-Self Coulda Woulda Shoulda bill and other winning ‘joint legislation.’

Hi. The illustration above will make sense to you in the next few minutes. It will involve this week’s Invitational. But first:

We have a new, simplified system here! The entirety of The Gene Pool is on this one Web page. The page will be long. But you will not have to leap to another page, and all the questions and answers will be here.  We’ll begin with The Invitational,  followed by  some of your questions (and answers)  --  and then I'll keep adding them as the hour progresses.    To see those later Q&As,  just refresh your screen  every once in a while. 

SPECIAL ADDITIONAL TIP: If you're reading this on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (The Invitational Week 5),  for my full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers, and be able to refresh.

And finally, a new orgasmically satisfying feature: You can ask your questions here. With the big ugly orange button below. Here it comes.

You can also ask questions here. They go to the same place, but if you are scared of orange buttons, you can do this.

 On this late Thursday it'll be largely The Invitational, and it will feature….

Get ready…

… The most disgusting published winner ever. We all should be very proud. Give yourselves an ovation. It’s a world-class entry The Washington Post would never have green-lighted, and will be cited in college humor classes for years and win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(As an added parenthetical feature, and totally without relevance, I want to point out that the president of the Philippines is “Bongbong Marcos.”)

Also, you might wonder why this Gene Pool is happening late in the day. It is because I had a doctor’s appointment — with a neurologist — that I had to make six months ago because of how awful doctors are. Medically, a minor physical problem. No biggie. But six months ago, there WAS no Gene Pool to schedule around. There was, however, a stern-faced medical desk person with a 1950s telephone operator Lily Tomlin voice to explain how Groundhog Day was The First Available Appointment Do You Want It or Not?

Okay, so. Here.

The new contest was suggested by a questioner from the last chat who did not include his or her name. He or she wrote this: “So where do we submit ideas for the Invitational? I’ve had one for a while: name a particular sin/sinner deserving of the most horrific and appropriate eternal punishment, and then create/describe the Circle of Hell & their punishment.”

I do not know who this person was, but if he or she will identify him or her self, including details of an offense they or them offered as an example, which we are withholding here, I will give them or they credit.

Here are three examples, made up by us:

“People who are too timid to drive out into the intersection to turn left, so everyone behind them misses the light. Their place in Hell is where they are always about to vomit, but never succeed and have to stand there for eternity, next to the toilet.”

And:

“A traffic circle designer who has to drive on Escher's Mobius strip forever. as an ant.” (Now you understand the cartoon, above.)

And:

If you steal the money intended for the surgery that will save the life of a sick dog, and the dog dies because of your theft, you will enter Hell and be subject to an appendectomy performed by a dog. And then removal of your gall bladder, your tonsils, etc., ad infinitum.

Reminder, send your questions here. Questions are different from comments, which will accumulate at the bottom of The Gene Pool, and be mostly amongst yourselves. I love comments and support them equally. Here is a way to distinguish between comments and questions.

And:

If you need help, here is an example of a question:

Why are you such a dick, Gene?

Example of a comment:

You are such a dick, Gene.

Okay? Good.

The winner of the new contest (reminder! Circles of Hell!) wins “Farts: A Spotter’s Guide,” a board book describing, field guide-style, such species as the Poof, the Sleeping Dog, and the Seismic Blast. Complete with an electronic box that mimics the various types – even,  go figure, the Silent but Deadly. Donated by Longtime Loser Pie Snelson.    First Offenders receive the Fir Stink for their first ink: a smelly tree-shaped air “freshener.” 

Know your tailpipe emissions: This week’s prize..

CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK’S ENTRY FORM.  

Deadline is midnight Friday, Feb. 10.  Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Feb. 16.  

Unnatural Acts:  ‘Joint Legislation’ Winners From Week 3

Week 3 of The Invitational was our biennial “joint legislation” contest in which the Losers link two or more names of this session’s Congressional freshmen to “cosponsor” a bill. If the inking  puns below aren’t clear to you, say them out loud. If you’re still stumped, ask about it in the comments below – we promise we won’t mock you unless you are really stupid.      

Once again, some Losers clearly neglected to ask someone to read their entries to see if they were understandable to anyone but the deluded writer. Someone we’ll ID as Xxxx Yyyy of Zzzzzzzz, Calif., explained that the Ciscomani-Pettersen-Tokuda-Bean-Brecheen bill, to permit sibling interventions in sketchy beauty parlor procedures, obviously translates to Sis go mani-pedi and toe could have been breaking.  ’Course it does.    

The Czar and Empress both got a kick out of  Ivy-Lee-Goldman (Ivy League Old-Man) but the 15 entries using that combination canceled one another out.  As did the many Ogles-Self entries either condemning or promoting narcissism. (Gene interjects here that he doesn’t find “old man” a morally acceptable designation, and uses his mighty editorial power to put this complaint in boldface.)

Repeated names in an entry refer to two new members with the same last name.

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By Empress Pat Myers and Czar Gene Weingarten

Third runner-up:   The Mullin-Nickel appropriation for five people’s thoughts.  (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.) 

Second runner-up: The Ezell-Lee-Landsman Dating App Improvement Act.  (Dave Airozo, Silver Spring, Md.) 

First runner-up:  The Hoyle-Lee-Schmitt Act for socially acceptable cursing.  (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.) 

And the winner of the reptile-foot-motif socks: 

The Ogles-Magaziner-Jackson-Self Act to encourage sperm bank donations.  (Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.) 

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I’M JUST A NIL:   HONORABLE MENTIONS 

The Kiggans-Self Shoulda-Coulda-Woulda Act. (Jesse Frankovich)

The Ivey-Bean-Mullin-Mullin Act to promote deep thinking about deep  thinking.  (Leif Picoult) 

The Schmitt-Hoyle bill to improve relations with countries insulted by  Trump.  (Randy Lee, Burke, Va.) 

The Ezell-Lee-Fry Expeditious Capital Punishment Act.  (Dave Airozo)

The Fry-Nunn Prohibition of Capital Punishment (Jesse Frankovich) 

The LaLota-Budd-Kiggins bill to honor Chuck Norris. (Randy Lee)  

The Sykes-Self Act to build self-esteem. (Brett Dimaio, Cumberland, Md.) 

The Kean-Bean-Britt-Schmitt-Hoyle-Moylan-Kiley-Fry-Lee Poetry Education Act  (Jeff Newman, York, Pa., a First Offender; Judy Freed, Deerfield Beach, Fla.)   

The Crockett-Schmitt Act to Investigate the Credentials of Rep. Santos. (Frank Yuen, Forest Hills, N.Y.) 

The Deluzio-Nickel bill to mandate regular parking meter inspections.  (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.) 

The Budd-Zinke-Budzinski bill to MYOB.  (Randy Lee) 

The Self-Fry DIY Wiring Safety Act.  (Chris Damm, Charles Town, Va.) 

The Bean-Nunn Catholic School Kids’ Revenge Act. (Dave Airozo)  

The Britt-Williams-Bean-Strong Resolution commending the Harried future King of England. (Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.) 

The Ezell-Zinke Act to recognize the capital of Finland. (Jesse Frankovich) 

The Mullin-Mullin-Welch Act directing the Treasury to ponder the national debt at length, then default on it. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) 

The Nickel-Collins Act to bring cheap public pay phones back to street corners everywhere.  (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) 

The Lee-James-Lee initiative to recommend that the next 007 actor be Asian.  (Rob Cohen) 

The Balint-Self-Ezell-Lee Act to mandate roadside sobriety tests. (Jesse Frankovich; Jon Gearhart)  

The Mullin-Tokuda-Budd Act to fund PSAs warning kids to think carefully before bogarting that roach.  (Roy Ashley, Washington, D.C.) 

The Moylan-Nunn Interfaith Circumcision Initiative.  (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) 

The Vance-Bean-Lee-Kean-Hoyle Act to require monthly inspections of used  Ford Econolines, Sierras, and Odysseys.  (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) 

The Duarte-Ezell-Lee Resolution to award the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously to Bob Ross.  (Kevin Dopart) 

And Last: The Nunn-Budd-Deluzio resolution, asking who would enter the Invitational anyway? (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) 

The headline “Unnatural Acts” was submitted by both William Kennard and Jon Ketzner;  Bill Dorner wrote the honorable-mentions subhead. 

Still running – deadline Friday night, Feb. 3:  Our “Questionable Journalism” contest.   See it here (scroll down to the first subhead) 

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Okay, here come your Questions and Answers but first, a couple of ugly orange buttons. Three, actually.

Q: I often hear on TV news that when a person has been seriously injured in an accident or by an assault that the person is in the ICU “fighting for their life”. Although I understand what this is meant to convey I find it strange. The person is most likely unconscious.

A: I am only answering this question because it is so tasteless. Congratulations. Also, obituaries seldom say they are “pushin’ up daisies.” I also find that strange.

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Q: Is it OK to fantasize about dreams unrealized, goals not reached, etc. Have you ever done so? And, if you did, what was the fantasy?

A: Okay, this is making me laff. My answer is true. For 20 years I dreamed about winning a Pulitzer Prize. Now I dream about winning the World Series as the second baseman for the Yankees, muscling an inside-out curve ball into the right field gap to score two runs in the bottom of the ninth at Yankee Stadium. THE FIRST WORKED, WHY NOT THIS ONE?

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Q: OK, I would have asked you this privately, but you seem desperate for a public question, so here goes. Since we are somehow starting a third season of the You're Invited podcast, and we could use a big splash, are you willing to appear on an episode with Pat Myers? It would be similar to the first time you were on, but you now would be able to riff off the E. Your first go-round was one of the most downloaded episodes of the series.

A: Yes, Mike, as I recall you did this via Zoom, and my only condition is that we be totally naked and smoking cigars. I have not consulted Pat on this answer, just FYI.

Q: Is there a difference between “crippling anxiety concerning the future” and “getting old”? -Marc from the Military. Also, Pat, where does the question mark go? -Also Marc from the Also Military

A: This is from Pat: Marc has the question mark in the right place, since what’s inside the quotation marks isn’t a question itself.

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Q: Is killing the KidsPost just another sign that management wants to eliminate the paper version of the paper?

A: I am no longer with the paper, obviously, and no longer privy to internal affairs. I will tell you, from contacts with people still there, they don’t know what the effing eff is going on. There have been some beautiful tributes online by, you know, former children, about how that page helped them grow and think and be happy and … read. I don’t have an effing clue.

Q: DCSteve1441: Gene, as I'm sure you know, there are lots of ideas about how the Biden administration can bypass the Trumplicans in the House if they refuse to raise the debt ceiling. One of the most intriguing is ordering the U.S. Mint to strike a $1 trillion coin and deposit into the U.S. Treasury. So my question for you is this: If you were in charge of implementing that order, whose portrait (if any) and what inscription(s) would you put on that coin?

A: It would be Gummo Marx. The inscription would be “Void Where Prohibited.”

Q: Gene, several times you've mentioned that you wouldn't be a good panelist on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me since you don't really think fast enough for it. Has Peter Sagal ever asked you to be on "Not My Job"? Would you do it if he did?

A: He’s a good friend, and he hasn’t, for good reason. He is taking pity on me. I have a ten-second synaptic delay, which is not a problem for a columnist but a big one for an improv comedian . Not everyone has that sort of impairment. Some people have instant talent. Have you ever seen Jonathan Groff, King George of “Hamilton,” dancing to “Anything Goes”? Here it is. He is not a dancer. But he dances. Well.

Q: Silver Spring: I have a precocious 14 year old daughter (freshman in HS; 15 in March.) Last night, I was awakened at 11 pm and after frantically searching the house for Daughter and our dog, we heard the dog barking outside. My husband went outside to find Daughter and dog down the street talking to a young gentleman. She reports that "dog was pacing and had to pee," which would make sense except that usually she has to be bribed to do anything related to the dog. My question is how do I survive the next 4 years?

A: You don’t. You bear them. You withstand them, with prejudice and injuries. Then she turns 19, and everything gets better. Be glad she ain’t a boy. That would be 14 more years of Hell.

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Q: My husband and I argue about this all the time: should you just wipe up messes as you go or dedicate a whole day to cleaning your house? I'm a clean as you go sort of person - I find it easier to just clean a fresh mess than try to clean it up later after the stain has set - but my husband says you waste more time cleaning a bit here and a bit there and that a whole day is necessary to get a good, deep clean of everything.

A: I have a very strong opinion on this, but cannot give it because I need women to not loathe me anymore than they already do.

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Q: So just curious--Have you ever had someone question why you didn’t publish their SI entry, and had the ensuing conversation lead to the realization that you had simply missed the reference or punchline, and that once that was clarified, you actually did think it was print-worthy? I know that sometimes there are some entries which get printed which take me a while (if ever) to figure out what the joke is--I can only imagine wading through hundreds of entries trying to determine which ones are bad humor, vs. missed humor...

A: I cannot recall such a case, but I am a congenital liar. Pat is not. This from Pat:

Good question. I don't recall deciding that I'd "robbed someone of ink" when that person wanted to know why I didn't run the entry, or explained the reference. But yes, there have been times when I've looked at someone's entries after the fact -- when I used to mail out a letter with each prize, I'd then check to see which entries that person submitted -- and I'd see an entry that really should have run. Sometimes there was a little flaw in an entry that caused me to skip to the next one, something I could have easily improved. Sometimes, yeah, I'd miss the reference, or just not notice the brilliance. It's going to happen when one person looks at 1,500 pieces of said brilliance (and mostly nonbrilliance) in the space of a couple of days. That's why I liked letting people reenter (or enter for the first time) old contests, in a retrospective at the end of the year. I hope we'll do it this year as well.

This is Gene again, and I just noticed for the first time that “congenital” has “genital” in there. And con! How can this have eluded me for so many decades?

Q: Not a question: Not an aptonym: did you see the story where the guy fire bombed a woman's health care facility ( yeah, I did that) in Peoria. It wasn't because he was a right to lifer, it was because three years after the fact that the his ex-girlfriend made the decision, he wanted to control. A lot there...any way his last name is Massengill.

A: I didn’t see where this was going. You are a master of comedic timing. And a douchebag!

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Q: A very important issue: Today is Groundhog Day, and I have always wondered about this. How do they KNOW whether the Groundhog saw his shadow? We know if WE saw our shadows. We may even know if we saw HIS shadow. But how in the hell can anyone know if the GROUNDHOG saw his OWN shadow? Did they ask it? We must get to the bottom of this!

A: We need to get a bunch of groundhogs, kill them, and examine their retinas posthumously. Science can handle this.

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Q: This is in response to the person who objects to the expectation of responding to "thank you" with "you're welcome." You agreed with him, and then jocularly added "you're welcome." (Ha-ha.) I disagree, think "you're welcome" is: welcome. What is intolerable is that few people actually say "you're welcome" in our degraded era; instead they tend to say "no problem," or even more egregiously: "no worries." I do not appreciate being told "no worries," under any circumstances. Your thoughts?

A: I blame Millennials for “no problem.” I cannot forgive them. Rachel claims I am being ethnist, inasmuch as “de nada” means, in Spanish, essentially, “no problem.” I blame Rachel.

Q: Does the expression "near miss" drive you crazy? It is an actual miss, is it not? A couple weeks ago I was so excited when an NPR host said "near collision" which is what it actually was. — Ms. Jane

A: Yes, it is a near hit. It’s like a near-death experience. We don’t call it a “near life experience.”

Q: Should we be allowed to smack a co-worker who goes around humming or whistling an infectious ear worm song? It seems like we should get at least three such Mulligans in a lifetime.

A: Yes, and two smacks if the earworm is “Sugar Sugar.”

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Q: As you and I and every right-thinking person knows, there are two distinctly different ways in which one holds a door for someone else. The first is where you push or pull the door open *before* you go through it, usually accompanied with a gesture to the hold-ee to go on through. The second is where you've already gone through the door, but hold on to it for a second afterwards so that it doesn't slam back in the face of the person following you. In Scenario 1, it is clear that you are holding the door for the entire transaction of the hold-ee's walkthrough. And I thought that in Scenario 2 it was clear that you are only holding the door until the following person takes it from you, so as to avoid the face-slamming situation described above. Yet there have been SO MANY TIMES when I've been in Scenario 2 where the following person just sauntered on their merry way without taking the door from me, leaving me standing there awkwardly holding a door behind me. Gene, what is the proper response in this scenario?

A: You must stand there holding the door for as long as necessary, even if you look like an idiot and pee yourself.

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Q: I have a “fewer” colds theory. Even as the 6 feet rules and mask-wearing have gone out the window, people continue to be more considerate about staying home when sick than they were before the pandemic. Used to be coming to work hacking, sneezing and looking like death warmed over demonstrated your incredible dedication to your job. Now if a guy coughs a few times at the gym everyone gives him the evil eye. Are others finding this to be true?

A: I wrote in a column about a year ago that coughing in public is now as stigmatizing as farting in public.

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Q: It's Feb-yoo-airy in speech, but Feb-roo-ary in my head when I need to spell it. Sometimes I pronounce the T in often, other times I don't. Why? No idea, no discernible rhyme or reason for when I do vs. don't. Was this a comment instead of a question? Probably, but the big orange button let me get away with it because there are (almost) no rules in the Gene Pool! - KJS

A: First, it’s not Feb-you-erry in speech. But more important, it is NEVER right to pronounce the T in often. Do you pronounce the T in listen, glisten? Soften? Moisten. You are committing crimes against English.

Q: Gene: 'Blue Hands' again. Dr. Google thinks I may have Raynauds Disease, for which the treat seems to be to "stay warm". If so, does this mean I have medical authority to take control of our thermostat? Will you tell my husband about that? Worried in Santa Fe

A: My ma had Reynaud’s Disease and treated it aggressively with codeine. Everything worked out great.

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Q: Gene, did Philip the Cat survive the late December cold spell? Can you give us a status report? Given the forecast for very cold weather over the weekend, will you again try to take him in? Bless you and Rachel for your kindness to him.

A: He did survive, but not because of us. He is one tough cuss. We brought him in for three days of horrible cold, and BOY was he pissed. For one day he sat under the bathtub and yelled at us, and shat on one of Rachel’s shirts. Then he ran away and has not come back since, except for cans of food we leave out. He likes wet food, thank you.

Q: Are there any clever ways people can boost the existence of The Gene Pool (with Invitational) such as, I don't know, streaking during the Super Bowl with "geneweingarten@substack.com" written across one's buttocks?

A: I have already amassed a team of butt-streakers. I’m afraid yours is not broad enough to carry the full message.

Q: Don’t you agree with me that the Constitution should be amended to prohibit anyone from running for President who was born before the parent of a previous President?

A: The Gene Pool research department has just determined that Barack Obama’s ma was born nine days after Joe Biden. Am still researching Teddy Roosevelt and Taft. Look for the answer on Tuesday, in the next Gene Pool.

I copy us down. Thanks for the bracing conversation.

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