Style Conversational Week 1180: A DIY repaneling project The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results Last weekend's comics, like this one from Saturday, were full of promising lines to be taken out of context. This week's contest invites you to do the same over the next 12 days. (June 11, 2016; King Features Syndicate) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // June 16, 2016 Hey, how did Chris Doyle know about this contest ahead of time and could write the line on the Week 1180 example? He’s not credited as suggesting the contest; my husband is. Whuh-oh, is my husband Chris Doyle? Is that why he has 1,700 blots of Style Invitational ink? Nah — I did meet the peripatetic Chris a couple of times at Loser events many years ago when he was in the D.C. area, but I didn’t make him live with me. (The Royal Consort is surely the only person on Earth, as well as several nearby planets, who could endure that.) I merely posted my plan for the contest a few days ago in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, now nearing 1,100 members. I asked the Devs whether they thought it would be a good contest; they did. And I posted a few random lines from various comic strips over the weekend — including the one from “Zits” about the dead squirrel — and asked for cartoonable examples. I went with Chris’s. Since people couldn’t use any strips dated before today, the Devotees weren’t gaining any advantage by knowing about it in advance. (Still, if you enter Invite contests, or think you might want to, it’s still useful to join the group and check out any discussions about the contests — there are also lots of unrelated humor posts — because the Losers often share helpful hints, word lists, even computer programs for checking your work. Some of them also, after the week’s results run, share their favorite “noinks,” entries that should have gotten published at the top of the list if there were any justice to be found in this miserable world.) *Tips for entering Week 1180: * -- No, the line you think of doesn’t have to fit in the same space as the original line; I’ll just be running the entries as lines of text. *EXCEPT:* I do hope Bob Staake will illustrate one entry four weeks from now, either the winner or one of the runners-up. And that particular entry will probably have to be short. So if you’re craving to be Staaked, make sure that at least one of your entries would make a workable cartoon. And while your line doesn’t have to be comic-strip-terse, it also shouldn’t be a really long sentence or a paragraph, totally out of character with comic strips. — *Does it have to be one single line? Could it be two very short ones? /Sure, I don’t care. / * We are in the market for funny. ---*Should your entry include the line of dialogue that you’re replacing? /Sure, that would be great. / * But I don’t expect to run both the original and yours in the results, so if the humor comes from the /change / from one to the other — if the reader would have to see both versions to find the line funny or clever — it might not work. --- *Should I attach a photo, Snipping Tool clip, etc., of the original? /I wouldn’t mind!/ * The Post’s online comics page, washingtonpost.com/comics, contains links for the previous two weeks of comics; so since your window is 12 days, you’ll be able to sit down on June 27 and have the material from whole contest window available to you. On the other hand, /I /won’t be judging for a good week after that, and so might have to track down the cartoons from the early days. (I will save the print Style section for the next 12 days, so I won’t need them for comics that run in the paper.) The online entry form, subpl.at/INVITE1180, now has a place where you can “upload a photo here!” It’s set to allow for as many as 25 uploads, but I’d bet that you’d be risking some problem if you put a whole lot of photos on a single entry. Just send another entry. — *Should I draw the comic myself with my hot graphix skillz? /Feel free, but I probably won’t be able to use it. / * And if you do, you MUST also include the text in the regular entry field. — *I’m not a subscriber and I’ll exceed my number of free page views! /Email me at pat.myers@washpost.com/ * // and I’ll forward you an email through which you should be able to sign up for a digital subscription to the whole Post — which is putting out 1,000 pieces of “content” a /day — / for the absurdly low $19 a year. I’m paying something like that every /month./ *DRAWING A BLANK: IF YOU CAN’T GET THE ENTRY FORM* For several hours this past Tuesday, and for about 17 minutes on Wednesday, Losers clicking on or typing in the subpl.at/ Web address to enter the Invite got nothing but a blank white screen. Because we like to add excitement to our lives — well, it certainly added it to mine when a reader wrote to me on Tuesday asking if she was insane. (Diagnosis: still inconclusive.) The good news is that Web whiz Sruti Cheedalla immediately went into action, got other people involved, and told me eight minutes later that all was fixed. Evidently there was a hacking problem — something involving the shortened URLs that we use to create easy-to-type addresses; someone was using the software to create his own malicious URLs. Then Wednesday around 1 p.m., it happened again. But this time, the Web people were immediately notified by an alarm they’d created the day before. And 17 minutes later, all was well. SO: IF you encounter a blank screen instead of the entry form you’re going to get, please go get some ice cream and try again in a half-hour. This, too, shall pass. I think. (FYI, sub.pl/at refers toThe Post’s newish Sub(mission) Platform. *A MATTER OF LAUGH AND DEATH*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1176 * /*A great alternative headline that didn’t fit in print, submitted by both Jesse Frankovich and Tom Witte/ I was hopeful but not totally optimistic about Week 1176 , a contest suggested by Newbie Phenom John Hutchins for funny things to include in various people’s obituaries. In fact, at last week’s West Chester Poetry Conference, Frank Osen — that would be the 254-time Loser Frank Osen — told me that the contest was one he couldn’t get his mind around. Uh-oh: if Frank’s mind won’t wrap, what will Joe Loser’s do? But all panned out fine, and I don’t think it was even all that morbid. (I hope readers agree.) And even Frank blotted up an honorable mention. It’s the fifth win — and Ink No. 132 in all — for Drew Bennett, a retired Marine colonel who now is now a college president in West Plains, Mo. (which is oddly an Ozark hotbed of Loserdom, now that 60-time Loser John Schott also has ended up there). Over the years, Drew would often precede his entries with some godawful little verse beginning “O Empress, My Empress”; now he has to put them in a separate field on the entry form — which means that I just now discovered the following: Oh Empress, My Empress... Is this read by a computer or are these words for your eyes only, Should I write this for you or for Hal so lonely. Drew is not also an English professor. Other Loser Phenom Duncan Stevens, last week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner, takes second this week — in one of several blots of ink — with his cute auctioneer joke that would make a great one-minute skit. Loser Since Year 1 Bruce Alter grabs No. 115, his 13th “above the fold”; but it’s just the 15th ink — though his second above the fold — for Stephen Litterst up in Delaware. (I wonder if they did dance at Bob Fosse’s funeral.) *What Doug Dug: * The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood, my former longtime Style colleague who recently won an award for headline writing from the Society for Features Journalism (for a story on teaching children manners, “Don’t Let Your Little Dickens Become a Scrooge”): Doug singled out both Your Mama jokes, by Jon Gearhart and Beverley Sharp; the crossword enthusiast couple buried two across and six down (up-and-coming Hildy Zampella); and Frank Mann’s joke about convicted gift-taking pol Bob McDonnell. This morning, Doug added one: “Sitting on the train, I was reminded of the Metro announcer entry, another favorite.” That was Roy Ashley’s obit for “Mr. Jrzbzzg” who “grmmphled on Drccssday.” Just one unprintable to share, but it was sent by both Steve Honley and Jon Ketzner: “Linda Lovelace went down for the last time today.” *LOSERFEST 2016: PITTSBURGH* Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson reports that he drove up to P-Town with Uberloser Elden Carnahan to scope out fun things to do on the last weekend of August, and came back with lots of ideas, many of them involving food. Check out the various options and other stuff at loserfest.org, and sign up for updates. *NEXT LOSER BRUNCH, SUNDAY, JUNE 26* It’s at noon at the overflowing buffet at Paradiso Restaurant on Franconia Road, just off the Beltway between Alexandria and Springfield. I might have a conflict (I should know in the next day or two) but I’ve been to Paradiso brunches many times; bring a huge appetite! RSVP here .