Style Conversational Week 1189: Getting a jump on the Limerixicon The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over this week’s contest and results If your limerick is just good enough for second place, you score an antique book by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who penned not only “it was a dark and stormy night” but also “the pen is mightier than the sword.” (Henry William Pickersgill (not for The Washington Post)) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // August 18, 2016 A couple of eagle-eyed Losers got a bit of a head start on this week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1189. A couple of days ago, in preparation for our annual Limerixicon, I updated “Get Your ’Rick Rolling,” my don’t-say-I-didn’t-tell-you guide to what I’m looking for in a limerick. I also created the week’s contest entry form and tested it. And sure enough, on Tuesday a couple of Losers let me know they’d discovered the guide and form already online. Oops. But this is a very small oops, compared with some of my more impressive blunders (links not available). An oopslet. An oop. Because: ● Our Limerixicon has run every August, one week or another, since 2004. It was going to be either this week or next. ● The home page of OEDILF.com , the forever-in-progress limerick dictionary that we’re hopefully going to be enhancing in a few weeks, says: “We are currently accepting submissions based on words beginning with the letters Aa- through Ga-.” Given that the Limerixicon’s sliver of the alphabet is always the section after what’s invited at the time, you might have figured we wouldn’t be asking for gb-, gc- or gd- words. ● And most important, this contest isn’t in any way — and has never been — a race. And the entry window has expanded significantly: For many years, the Invite came out on Sunday, even when it finally went online, and entries were due two Mondays afterward. But the Monday deadline stayed in effect when the contest moved to Saturdays, and then when we started publishing it online on Saturday, then Friday, then late Thursday, and now on Thursday around noon. So now you have 11.5 days to send me stuff. And if someone else has 13.5 days? So what? But yes, in the future, I won’t get these tasks out of the way early. For this week’s example of a limerick featuring a “ge-” word, I combed through our dozen years of previous Limerixicons. Good news: Very few of them contained ge- words other than “get.” And if you’re going to enter a limerick featuring “get,” you’ll have to use it prominently, not as in, say, “get out.” At the very least, it should be accented when read out loud. Here are some (most, actually) of the other ge- limericks I found in previous contests , both Limerixicons and others. If these, along with the Get Your ’Rick Rolling guide, still leave you with questions about limericks — or if you just cannot get enough of them — go to Elden Carnahan’s basically-Loser-porn Master Contest List and search on “limerick”; then click on the /results / of that week number, usually four weeks down. A cheeky young *geek* named O’Malley Had a tendency sometimes to dally While fixing computers For clients from Hooters, Implanted in Silicone Valley. /(Beverley Sharp, da- words, 2008)/ Mr. Waters? A call on the line, With a *gender* I just can’t define. Someone born long ago To an actor you know — It’s Chianti, the fruit of Divine. /(Mike Turniansky, di- words, 2009)/ Computers are great, I’ll agree, I need technical help, though, you see; And through each passing year, As new options appear, I find that it’s all *geek* to me. /(Mae Scanlan, in a 2010 contest for a limerick including one of a half-dozen given lines, in this case Line 3) / A dozen? But why? What forecloses One less? Still, what everyone knows is You’re scarcely a *gent* If you only present Just eleven long-stemmed perfect roses. /(Robert Schechter, 2011, ea- through el-)/ Caltech’s a big deal on TV, And its physicist-nerds are the key. “The Big Bang Theory” speaks In the language of geeks: PhD = BMOC. /(Chris Doyle, in a 2012 contest for limericks about movies, TV shows, etc. Actually, the emphases in Line 3 are pretty much of a stretch; had that not-really-an-anapest appeared in Line 1 or 2, this limerick wouldn’t have worked) / My friend’s a gastronomy *geek,* But my own needs are simple and meek: Pâté and champagne Are too fancy. Just plain Peas and hominy’s all that I seek./(Jon Gearhart, last year’s ga- contest)/ *FREUDIAN QUIPS*: THE INK BLOTS OF WEEK 1185* /(A non-inking headline by Chris Doyle)/ At first glance (and a few thereafter) some of the five ink blots we asked you to describe in Week 1185 seemed rather similar and perhaps not too fruitful. But — especially once I decided not to be so particular and literal about every little detail (but why would a frog have wings?) — I ended up with a short­list of more than 80 entries from the pool of 1,500, 40 of which got ink this week. (The other 40, of course, included yours.) Not surprisingly, there were many similar entries for a particular blot; lots of pandas in Blot 2, Cheshire cats in 3, Melania in 4. It’s the first Inkin’ Memorial for Hildy Zampella, and just the 15th blot of ink overall — but that’s only because she didn’t start Inviting until Week 1140; lately her name has been showing up in the results more often than not. With the combination of her humor and her great name, I predict that she’s soon going to have people meet her and say, “Oh! Style Invitational!” The second-place finisher, David Franks, first got Invite ink back in 2002, but chose to live an actual life (he’s recently moved from Wichita to deep-in-the-Ozarks Greenland, Ark.). It’s David’s 15th ink, third “above the fold.” If he’d prefer our new Grossery Bag (they’re being shipped as we speak) or one of our last Loser Mugs rather than the dragon/dino hat, I know someone who’d be happy to have the latter. Like Hildy, runner-up John Hutchins has been a Year 24 phenom; since first inking in Week 1152, he’s blotted up 28 inks. This is his second visit to the Losers’ Circle; the first time was a win. On the other hand, we have the indefatigable Dudley Thompson, staining himself 121 times since his debut in Week 171 — 1996 — with five wins and 11 runners-up in between. *Kinkblots*: The unprintables from Week 1185* /(By Jeff Contompasis, who even sends in headings for the Unprintables section)/ I said /I / wouldn’t psychoanalyze people from their blot interpretations. I didn’t say the readers wouldn’t. Blot 3: Olive Oyl being pleasured by a bishop with pimples on his posterior. (Ed Edwards) Blot 3, upside down: Cartman with Devil horns going down on Connie Conehead, lightning bolts and smoke erupting from his ears. (Jon Gearhart) Blot 4: The IEUD had serious side effects. (Dudley Thompson) Ewww. *FUTURE LOSER FOOD CONSUMPTION* Next weekend the Royal Consort and I are headed up to Pittsburgh for this year’s Loserfest; I think there will be 14 assorted Losers and hangers-on tagging along after the intrepid Loserfest Pope Kyle Hendrickson on four days of activities . interspersed with food-, food- and food-punctuated activities. I won’t be able to make it to next Loser brunch, Sept. 18 at Chadwicks in Old Town Alexandria, but will try to make the Oct. 16 one up in Columbia, Md. I recommend both venues. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at NRARS.org; click on “Our Social Engorgements.”