Style Conversational Week 1107: Unnatural acts, and the Loser Zing-Along; The Style Invitational Empress talks about the new contest and results, plus Loser events Washington Post Blogs January 15, 2015 Thursday 9:10 PM EST Copyright 2015 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved Length: 1439 words Byline: Pat Myers Body For the second straight Congress, there's no new Rep. Johnson. But, ahem, there is once again a new Peters. It's a mortal lock that a lot more congressional legislation is going to be proposed in the next 10 days than in the rest of the 114th Congress. By my count, we have 102 names to work with in Style Invitational Week 1107 (no duplicates, for once) and many, many of them lend themselves to be used as words, either straightforwardly or as homonyms , or as syllables that will form homonyms when combined with someone else's name. The "joint legislation" contest -variously titled "There Ought to Be a Law," "Bill Us Now," "Bill Us Later," "Hill's Bills," "Send Us the Bill" and "A Word From Our Cosponsors" -has consistently been one of our most popular contests since it appeared in Week 5, April 4, 1993 (my first successful contest suggestion!). The pool of names used in each contest has varied, but the idea has stayed the same: String two or more names together to create some proposed law, resolution, etc., that reflects those names in some funny way. Note that because this is a relatively small freshman class, I've padded the list with most of the senators whose names (or homonyms thereof) never got ink in an earlier joint legislation contest. (As best as I could determine, anyway -I copied all the results onto one text file and searched name by name.) Some of the new people's names were used earlier, but I included the whole freshman class. I arrived at the "pronouncers," as they're called, by watching campaign spots on YouTube, with the candidate approving this message in his own voice. (After watching about 20 of these, I've decided that they must all have been produced by the same company, and that several of the candidates themselves may have been produced from the same uterus.) The new delegate from American Samoa, however, addressed her constituents by calling herself Aumua Amata, rather than Congress's official Amata Coleman. Radewagen, and I ended up calling her office's voice mail to hear the pronunciation. There's a LITTLE give on the pronunciations you can use: I could see Capito as "Capital" or Katko as "cat go." But Mooney can't be "money." But even with what I'd consider a valid approximation of the sound of the name, it can be hard to figure out some even cleverly done entries. (Like this one from 2013 by Frank Osen: In "The Donnelly-Veasey Act to establish limits on emigration," it's "don't leave easy.") I beg of you, especially when you're making whole phrases with the name combinations: Write out your entry and ask someone else, with no guidance talks about the new contest and results, plus Loser eve.... from you, to read it and see if that person can figure it out. If that person fails you, try one or two other people. If most people can't see what you're getting at, you have no joke. On the other hand, it's not necessarily no good because someone doesn't get the joke; sometimes I've failed to get an entry that other people got right away. (Sometimes I'll post an anonymous entry on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook to ask for help. That's why I note that you're welcome to send me translations, as long as they're on a separate line so I can try first to get them without help.) And so for the 2011 and 2013 contests, ran the results on two separate lists; the second one featured "translations" of all the entries. This allowed people the fun of figuring out the jokes themselves, but also an explanation for any they couldn't get. Here are the translated results of Week 1005. I'll most likely do that again, unless it turns out that all the inking entries are especially clear. I have nothing against clarity! If you're looking for inspiration, you can look up all the old contests on Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List and search on "legislation" and "bills"; clicking on the "LEG" link at the top of the list will give you a page of all the contests, but those links are to the contest announcements, not the results. I had misgivings about Week 1103: Would pairing up a TV show and a song produce matches beyond the obvious or the silly, into the realm of funny and clever? Jeff Contompasis offered up several good examples that persuaded me to go ahead, and I'm glad I did; while most of the entries confirmed my hunch, we ended up with lots of laughs in the final cull -especially when presented in a series, like the several "Cosby" variations in the online Invite. And we have three First Offenders this week, after a couple of weeks' lull without a being able to mail out a Firstink. It's the third Inkin' Memorial for Larry Gray of rural Union Bridge, Md. Larry's "Three Times a Lady" for "The Biggest Loser" was one of the few entries to make both me and the Royal Consort laugh out loud. Meanwhile, Frank Osen moves back into his regular parking space in the Losers' Circle with his 27th blot of ink "above the fold." Nancy Schwalb picks up a remarkable fourth above-the-fold ink in just 21 blots in all, while Mark Raffman and Christopher Lamora gain yet more redundant swag. Among the unprintables: For "19 Kids and Counting": "Mama Told Me Not to Come"; and "Beat It" for "Pee-wee's Playhouse" (Rob Huffman) "Free Man in Paris" for "The Simple Life"; and "Heart-Shaped Box" for "Leave It to Beaver" (Jeff Contompasis) I'm so sorry if you weren't one of the 60 or so people who came out of the 20-degree cold into the warmth of Craig and Valerie Dykstra's hospitality as they hosted the Loser Post-Holiday Party at their beautiful and whimsical home in the outer suburbs of Northern Virginia. By "whimsical," I mean that several chronologically adult Losers repeatedly tried out the curved tube slide from the main floor to the basement rec room. Video of Chutes and Losers! There was lots of delicious potluck food and drink, and lots of meeting new people and reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances. I finally managed to present Elden Carnahan with the booklet containing his first 500 blots of Invite Ink, thus inducting him -a year and a half late -to the Style Invitational Hall of Fame. Video of the E reading a sampling of Elden's entries; start around 4:30. . But the Big Moments of the party were the performances of song parodies written for the occasion. Nan Reiner and Mark Raffman collaborated once again on an ode to Loserdom, and this time 43-time Loser (and professional musician) Steve Honley accompanied them on piano. (Video here.) LAME! (to the tune of "Mame")We write light verse 'bout people who died... Lame!Pen puns 'bout politicians who lied... Lame!We pray to see elected a dweeb who has a double-entendre name.We know we'll be rejected, but still we play our masochistic game. We spout some trivia that's not true... Lame!Spawn phony foals, and parodies too... talks about the new contest and results, plus Loser eve.... Lame!We're just pathetic rodents who scurry on some hamster wheel of fame...We find it motivationalTo hope that our creation'll Ink in the Invitational... Lame! There's no low prank that we won't employ... Lame!We yank our TankaWankas for joy... Lame!We think that we'll be chosen when punchiness and pith are at their peak,Then find some guy named Osen has grabbed a hold of Abe again this week. We riff on people's intimate parts... Lame!When all else fails, we fumble for farts... Lame!Oh, how our old professors would scoff about the "scholars" we became...But we've had publication be-Cause of our odd fixation; we Have the last laugh! Who cares if it's lame? Lame! LAME!! Nan also sang the heck out of an update of a fabulous song she'd done at an earlier party, "Everything's Coming Up Inkblots." And we all sang a get-well song to 269-time Loser Mae Scanlan, who was having some problems with a newly installed pacemaker. Here's "Pacemaker, Pacemaker," by Melissa Balmain and Nan. Thanks to Not Yet a Loser Richard Wexler for doing all the video. Next on the Loser Social Engorgements calendar: Brunch Feb. 8 at Buddy's Crabs and Ribs near the City Dock in Annapolis, Md. I probably won't make that one, but I do plan to be at the March 22 brunch at Paradiso in Alexandria/Springfield, Va. And later in the spring or perhaps early summer -date and place TBD but we'll give a lot of notice - will be our next Big Event, the Flushies award "banquet." Congratulations to 2014 Loser of the Year Danielle Nowlin on the birth of Benjamin Steele Nowlin, her third Loserkind, born Jan 10. For some reason, Danielle didn't make it over to the Loser party, even though she'd had the baby that morning and wasn't planning to have any more of them for the rest of the day.