Style Conversational Week 1162: 42 giraffes and 21 ‘Screams’ later ... The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results Loser and pack mule (Duncan Stevens , Vienna, Va.) with Loser-in-Training Simon. Duncan supplied this week’s Meet the Parentheses bio; see below. (FAMILY PHOTO) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // February 11, 2016 Washington Post writers were admonished this week by management to “respect our readers’ time” and write shorter articles. If the Empress really gave a hoot about her readers’ time, she wouldn’t ask them to write elaborate song parodies in return for a 2-by-3-inch scrap of metal with a cartoon on it (if that). But if for no other reason than to send you to work more promptly on (or at least laugh at) this week’s Style Invitational, she’ll try to show a little more self-discipline. When the entries started coming in forr Week 1158, I got a few gripey notes that Bob Staake’s artsy, shaded drawings of seven everyday objects were harder to misinterpret than the stark doodles he’d done the first time we did such a contest , back in 2001. But they didn’t seem to deter the 200 or so Losers who entered this time around, and who revealed their minds to be warped in many different directions. Still, I’m glad that this contest, like all our caption contests, offered a choice of pictures to work with: When 200 people are looking for something funny in a single simple picture, a lot of them are going to have the same general idea. At least 21 entries — probably quite a few more — evoked Edvard Munch’s iconic “Scream” painting in the description of the electric plug; and the mottled shading of the peanut in Picture 4 prompted 42 entries mentioning giraffes — giraffe-moth hybrids, giraffe larvae, giraffe slugs, giraffe seeds, giraffe coffee beans, giraffe testes, giraffe scrotum, giraffe goiter, giraffe sperm, giraffe poop, giraffe wearing camouflage, a boneless giraffe, filet of giraffe. I ended up going with Kathy Hardis Fraeman’s giraffe in the snow, which imaginatively incorporated the negative space of the picture. Melissa Balmain, who’s an award-winning poet and editor of the light-verse journal Light , often blots up her Invite ink in various verse contests. But her family-focused humor has also served her well in a variety of other ’Vites; this Inkin’ Memorial — for seeing a flashlight battery and the positive-side “+,” and thinking of Fisher-Price exorcists — marks her seventh contest win and 81st blot of ink, all since Week 941. (Hmm, I’m thinking we’d want to Meet These Parentheses, no?) Meanwhile, longtime Loser Edward Gordon gets Ink No. 62 and his eighth “above the fold,” while Bruce Niedt (also a published poet ) gets just his sixth ink but a second trip to the Losers’ Circle. But the milestone news is for Really Longtime Loser Roy Ashley, who this week smears his shirt pocket with his 350th blot of ink — scoring with an entry that didn’t interpret Picture 5 as anything but a paintbrush, but did so in a very funny way. *AREA NEWSPAPER STEALS FROM OTHER PAPER, CALLS IT ‘HOMAGE’* I adore the Onion — the proliferation of totally craven, unwitty fake-news sites only puts the Onion’s pointed, almost always perfectly aimed satire into sharper relief. And I wasn’t surprised that so many in the Loser Community were able to produce Onion-quality and Onion-toned headlines in our Week 794 contest back in 2009. The Onion has been through a number of changes since then; most notably, it had to fold its print edition, and recently was bought (this is true! not the Onion!) by the Spanish-language broadcast network Univision. But its satire of both Great Issues and Quotidian Life continues to use the form of deadpan straight-news newspaper articles, complete with headlines. If you haven’t read a lot of Onion heds, I strongly suggest you go to TheOnion.com and sample a variety of them. As with this contest, the actual articles aren’t necessary, though they’re often worthwhile. Our first Onion contest, by the way, was inspired by a fascinating cover story in The Washington Post Magazine. If you have the time — trying to be respectful of it here — it’s worth the read. *A little thing I wanted to address ... * My requests on datat to include with entries has varied over the years, as I’ve started different systems to keep track of Losers’ addresses. Some years ago I’d told the regular entrants that they need not include their mailing addresses week after week, since I’d already entered them into a database. But these days, when I look up Losers’ entries before I send out their prizes, it’s handy to have the address right there, so I don’t have to go to another list. Not a yuge deal, but in a week in which I’m sending out 30-plus letters before the post office closes (I’m talking about you, backward-crossword), it does help me out to have the address right there on the e-mail every time. Actually, now that I’m hand-writing the envelopes rather than making labels (this actually saves me time), I’ve managed to memorize the street addresses of a bunch of Recidivist Losers. But I still need to double-check the Zip codes. (I promise I won’t stalk your house.) *MEET THE PARENTHESES: (DUNCAN STEVENS, VIENNA, VA.) * /Duncan got his first ink back in 2012, in Week 970. But it’s been just the past few months that he’s emerged as a Loser Phenom, winning prizes so often — including this week, for his 30th blot of ink — that the Empress knows his street address by heart. She’s still looking forward to meeting him in person, however, since he hasn’t appeared yet at a Loser event. As with our previous Meet the Parentheses contributors, Duncan adapted a basic Q&A template. / *Age: *Evidently not old enough to know better. *Official Loser Anagram (aka Granola Smear):* Unscented Vans. Though I’m also partial to Nuns Dent Caves and Nuns, Vets Dance. *What brought me to the Invite:* I had been enjoying the Invite ever since I moved to D.C. and started subscribing to the Post in 2000, but I would glance at the contest, think “hey, I should enter,” and almost never get around to it. But last summer I said to myself, “Self, this is lame. You like wordplay. There’s a lively wordplay contest in your paper every week. You have no excuse.” So I started sending in entries more or less every week, and I found that a lot of contests that I had never thought to try — like neologisms or snarky notes to “glassbowls” — were a lot of fun once I put some effort into them. *What’s an example of something that confirms your Loserosity? * I’m a longtime Ultimate Frisbee player, and it’s a tradition (though a waning one) that each team makes up a friendly cheer for the other team at the end of the game. I’m the designated cheer-person for our team, and I’ll often do a song parody or limerick, like this one for a team called Fifi’s Nasty Little Secret: We got on the phone with our scout, Who said “Fifi’s great, there’s no doubt!” But the whole NSA Was listening that day, So now Fifi’s secret is out. I also sometimes spoof hymns for my church choir: “Jesus Christ is risen today/Man, that guy won’t go away.” *Favorite entries:* I was proud my long parody of the Sesame Street song “I Love Trash!”; it was about the movie “Wall-E.” Some of it got ink in Week 1029 : Oh, I move trash! After centuries of mankind’s excesses, They’ve left me to clean up their messes, So I move trash! I’m a robot compactor of unit class Wall-E, I clean up the residue of human folly; At night I sit back and rewatch “Hello, Dolly!” By day I go out and move trash! (the whole thing is on Facebook here ). *Some non-inking entries I was similarly proud of:* /For Week 924, fake facts about U.S. history:/ Before Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 plane was shot down in Soviet airspace, his last words to his CIA handlers were “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” /For Week 1041, answers to questions posed in songs:/ Q. Does anybody really know what time it is? (Chicago) A. At the sound of the tone... /For Week 1142, tweets from a hybrid of two people:/ Nikita Khrushchevita: Don’t cry for me, Soviet Union/ The truth is I never left you/ I gave long speeches/ Till you were woozy/ And at the UN/ I banged my shoesies. *How about favorite Invite entries by other contestants? * Beanie Babies is a good name for stuffed animals, but a bad name for a Jewish preschool. (Edward Gordon) Post headline: Doesn’t get any easier for Virginia Bank head: Tyke to be told there is no Easter Bunny (Mark Raffman) Name the panda Elvis CIA reveals Bin Laden’s cryptic last words (Frank Osen) Fake facts about U.S. history: As a community organizer in the Windy City, young Barack Obama walked down eight roads before someone called him a man. (Jonathan Hardis) *What do you do when you’re not composing Invite entries?* I’m an attorney at the FDIC, where I worked with famed Loser parodist Barbara Sarshik before she retired. I sing tenor in the choir at my Episcopal church in downtown D.C., where I also serve as treasurer, bread-baker and homeless-breakfast cook. I also play Ultimate Frisbee, and dabble in improv comedy. When not doing those things, I’m often playing with my proto-Loser six- and three-year-olds, who wish the Invite involved more Sesame Street and Thomas the Tank Engine. *Do you have anything else to say for yourself? * 1. When I was 4, I went to see “Peter Pan,” twice. There’s a point when Tinker Bell gets sick and the audience has to clap to make her better, so the second time I started clapping long before she got sick. Preventive medicine, you know. 2. I’m descended directly from two Civil War Union generals, one of whom was the other’s son-in-law. 3. As an attorney in private practice, I once helped represent the natives of Bikini Atoll in their (unfortunately unsuccessful) attempt to get compensation from the U.S. government for the irradiation/partial obliteration of their native islands. *What is your favorite color?* Blue. No, yellow.