Style Conversational Week 1384: Ta-DUH! It’s a stupid-question contest The winner of the Week 217 stupid-question contest, in 1997, got a scale model of the human prostate, much like this one. The winner of this week's stupid-question contest gets merely the Lose Cannon trophy. The winner of the Week 217 stupid-question contest, in 1997, got a scale model of the human prostate, much like this one. The winner of this week's stupid-question contest gets merely the Lose Cannon trophy. By Pat Myers May 14, 2020 at 4:31 p.m. EDT This week’s Style Invitational contest, Week 1384, was inspired by a suggestion from Loser Dan Helming for a contest for stupid restaurant takeout orders during our social-distancing period. That seemed a bit narrow in scope, but I liked the mentally healthy, socially constructive idea, in these Trying Times, of snarkily mocking people’s stupid comments in a broader context. The Invite has asked for questions many times; in fact, there’s a whole page of Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List, a.k.a. The Great Time Suck, for the category of “Questions.” Many of the listings are for our recurring Questionable Journalism contest, which we did last week for Week 1383 and is still running through Monday, May 18, but there are also several in the dumb-question genre. From the Questions page you now can click on links not only to each contest announcement, but, on the right side of each row, to the results. Here’s a selection of ink from contests in 1997 and 2014. First on the list is Week 217, back in the era of the Invite’s founder, The Czar of The Style Invitational: AD Report from Week 217, in which you were asked to disprove the old maxim that there are no dumb questions. Despite our warning to the contrary, many people submitted tired old jokes, and some tired new jokes, such as why people call those things “hemorrhoids” instead of “asteroids.” Sixth Runner-Up: Excuse me, does this pharmacy carry that “date rape” drug? (Russell Beland, Springfield) Fifth Runner-Up: Why do people drive so close in front of me? Don’t they realize it’s dangerous? (Jerry Ewing, Fairfax) Fourth Runner-Up: Just where do you get off telling me what to do, Your Honor? (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) Third Runner-Up: Do I, like, have a shot at boinking you? (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) [Tom’s Invite specialty of sex humor, especially in the persona of a womanizing cad, was already well established by 1997; e.g., for a 1994 contest for a sentence that will never be uttered: “Go ahead, have dessert. I am quite confident that sex with you will be worth a $93 dinner tab.”] AD Second Runner-Up: Are you sure that’s a spaceship behind the comet? Because I wouldn’t want to make a mistake here. Okay, swell. Just checking. (Paul Styrene, Olney; John Kammer, Herndon) [This referred to the 1997 tragedy of the Heaven’s Gate cult, whose leader persuaded 39 people to kill themselves so that they would be transported to a spaceship that he said would accompany the imminent Hale-Bopp Comet. The Invite has been trafficking in dark humor for a very long time.] First Runner-Up: If you are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat? (Dave Ferry, Leesburg) And the winner of the demonstration-model prostate gland: If I win this week, can I have the $75 instead of the prostate gland? (Edith Eisenberg, Potomac) [Edith’s win was the second and last of her blots of ink. Once you’ve got the gland, why look for anything more?] AD Selected honorable mentions: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if he had a Stanley gasoline-powered wood chucker? (John Kammer, Herndon) You know when you check off on your taxes to pay for the presidential campaign and they say it won’t cost you anything? Well, why can’t they do that and get rid of the whole budget deficit in one fell swoop? (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.) What color codpiece do you think goes with this outfit? (Roy Ashley, Washington) Why doesn’t it tickle when I tickle myself, but it hurts when I stick a fork in my eye? (Niels Hoven, Silver Spring) Did people in the olden days realize what fuddy-duddies they were? (Andy Spitzler, Baltimore) Are Ice-T and Ice Cube related? (Don Frese, Baltimore) What do they do with the candy cobs? (Mike Connaghan, Gaithersburg) Doesn’t it count that I was thinking of you the whole time? (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) AD Why did you sit down if the seat was up? (Joe Ponessa, Philadelphia) I know who killed Nicole Simpson. But who killed Ron Goldman? (Bob Dalton, Beaumont, Tex.) Does this crack come with a money-back guarantee? (J.F. Martin, Hoover, Ala.) Do you think Mike Nesmith might replace John if the money was right? (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) If a hole in the street is a manhole, is a hole in a man a streethole? (Elden Carnahan, Laurel) And Last: Why should we spare you the questions about who is buried in Grant’s Tomb and why you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? (Hank Wallace, Washington) And then … the Czar ran a contest to answer the inking questions! (Should we, four weeks from now? I’ll have to see if they look remotely promising for answers; that’s not how I’ll pick the winners, though. Rhetorical questions clearly wouldn’t work, even if they worked for the initial contest.) AD Report from Week 220, in which we asked you to answer any of the winning Dumb Questions from Week 117 [sic!]: Third Runner-Up: Are you sure that is a UFO behind the comet? Have I ever steered you wrong? I mean, besides that castration thing. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park) [Yes, another thing the Heaven’s Gate leader did.] Second Runner-Up: Do you think Mike Nesmith might replace John if the money was right? I dunno. How much money do you think it would take to get him into the casket? (Kevin Cuddihy, Fairfax) First Runner-Up: Excuse me, does this pharmacy carry that “date rape” drug? Yes sir, we have a new improved version. It is this watermelon-size suppository. The man takes it. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia) And the winner of the Beldar Conehead doll: Are Ice-T and Ice Cube related? Actually, they are married. But I hear it is on the rocks. (David Kleinbard, Silver Spring) AD Honorable Mentions: What does the “A” in UVA stand for? Well, the U is for University, so the V must be for “of” and the A for Virginia. It’s in Latin. (Russ Beland, Springfield) Why doesn’t it tickle when I tickle myself, but it hurts when I stick a fork in my eye? You are obviously using the wrong fork. — Judith Martin [Miss Manners], Washington (J.F. Martin, Hoover, Ala.) Did people in the olden days realize what fuddy-duddies they were? No. They were too busy chasing the whippersnappers off their front lawns. (Paul Styrene, Olney) Does this crack come with a money-back guarantee? C’mon lady, I’m a married man. I’m just tryin’ to fix your sink trap here. (Peyton Coyner, Afton) Do I, like, have a shot at boinking you? Sorry, I don’t believe in mating outside my species. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) AD — No, I am saving myself for Tom Witte of the Style Invitational. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) Why should we spare you the questions about who is buried in Grant’s Tomb and why you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? Because the Czar has the greatest sense of humor in the world, and presides over the last true meritocracy. His time is not to be wasted with unoriginal spewings from lazy minds, except for the old “Why are animals made of meat?” question that has been banging around the Internet and that Dave Ferry slipped past him. (Sarah Worcester, Bowie) ---- And let’s jump forward to 2014, with more selected ink (which were complete with links so that people in 2020 would be able to get the references): In Week 1081 the Empress asked you to give us some stupid questions that would be even funnier than the sincerely stupid ones on the Yahoo Answers site. As with last week’s bad-poetry results, some entries were disqualified for not being stupid enough; the best of these was from Rob Huffman: If NASA could put a man on the moon, why couldn’t they make a better fake orange juice than Tang? AD The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: How do you say “Don’t claw the sofa” in Siamese? (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) 2nd place and the breast-shaped milk mug: I don’t understand those “take a penny/leave a penny” jars near cash registers. If you take somebody’s penny and leave one of your own, then what’s the point? (Scott Poyer, Annapolis, Md.) 3rd place: Do these new glasses make my brain look big? — Rick Perry, Austin (Gary Crockett) 4th place: Why do people argue about which came first: the chicken or the egg? Everyone knows you need a chicken to produce an egg! (Frank Mann, Washington) Past their d’oh date: honorable mentions Can I still clap along if I feel like a room without a ceiling? (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) I’m a vegetarian, so I wondered if I need to take that bloody thing out of green olives. (Mae Scanlan, Washington) What’s with this letter from my bank saying there’s no money in my checking account? I still have LOTS of checks in my checkbook! (Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.) Can I save twice as much on my car insurance if I take 30 minutes? (Mark Raffman) I know chicken fingers are really made from the toes, since, duh, chickens don’t have fingers. But where do the nuggets come from? Is it the stuff they … ew, is that even sanitary? (Gregory Koch, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.) Was Johns Hopkins University named for twins? (Gary F. Suggars, Baltimore, a First Offender) My prescription bottle says, “Do not operate heavy machinery.” Will Obamacare pay for someone to do my laundry? (Robyn Carlson, Keyser, W.Va.) How do all my neighbors get their dogs to poop into their Washington Post bags? I can never get the timing right with Ginger. Does anyone else have this problem, or is it just cockapoos? (Ivars Kuskevics. Takoma Park, Md.) If your life flashes before your eyes when you’re dying, well, suppose you did a whole lot of stuff — will it be a really long flash, or it just doesn’t get all the way through, or what? (Steve Honley, Washington) I want to see “A Christmas Carol” at Ford’s Theatre, but do you really think it’s safe? I heard they had a bad incident there. (Rob Wolf, Gaithersburg, Md.) Has anyone brought a stepladder up Mount Everest to set a new record? (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) Why do people sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” when they’re already at the ballgame? (John Kupiec, Fairfax, Va.) How can you tell a male hurricane from a female? (Bird Waring, Larchmont, N.Y.) Where does The Style Invitational get its jokes from? Is it the Internet? I bet it is, because sometimes I see the same stuff there that’s in the Invitational. (Luther Jett, Washington Grove, Md., a First Offender) That last one could be taken in two ways: One, that, as we’ve seen, jokes from the Internet occasionally wind up in the Invitational, mostly because people innocently thought of the same idea, but very, very rarely (I’m looking at you, Loser Who’s Still Entering) the person stole the joke. The other way to take it is that whole lists Style Invitational entries (usually from the 1990s) are ubiquitous online, like this set of neologisms, this set of new meanings for real words, and these analogies or similes from Week 120, often attributed to high school students. And at least once, both: Someone sent me — I should have saved it, because I’ve forgotten the details — one of the words or analogies from one of those lists, as an Invite entry. Don’t do this for Week 1384! Omission accomplished*: The results of Week 1380 *Non-inking headline submitted by both Tom Witte and Jesse Frankovich Kenji Thielstrom's original suggestion for the contest that became Week 1380. Kenji Thielstrom's original suggestion for the contest that became Week 1380. Back in March, my friend Kenji Thielstrom, a regular reader of the Invitational, sent me the graphic pictured here as a contest idea: As it spells out, if you take the “Dem” out of “pandemic,” you’re left with “panic.” Very cool idea (if, in this case, too partisan) but a very tall order to find in a word or term not only a related word, but one in the middle AND one, in parts, flanking it. Finding the word in the middle is a challenge we’ve done many times, with our “air quotes” contests (most recently the results of Week 1355; winner, by Hildy Zampella: H"USB"and: Consider yourself lucky if you get it right on the first try). But we’d never done the opposite — to find a word on the two sides of the deletion. (I did end up allowing the left or right half to be chopped as well.) I was sure that it would yield good material, but I had a logistical concern: how to keep the reader focused only on the letters to the sides, and not look at all at the now irrelevant material that’s front and center? So I decided to do a triple contrast: (a) capital letters on the ends, lowercase for the rest; (b) boldface for the ends, lightface for the rest; and (c) actually striking out the discarded letters. It was a formatting headache that required several fixes to get totally right, but I’m pleased at the results online, and hopeful for the print page, which is in smaller and sans serif type, and which we’ll see in newsprint on Saturday. (Meanwhile, the new Post system I use for the Conversational doesn’t even allow for strike-throughs, which is why I’ll use parentheses below. Yeah, I know.) Not surprisingly, the entry pool was full of political jabs; in the final list, I found myself rearranging the order of the entries so it wouldn’t be a wearying barrage of bad-leader bad-leader bad-leader. More surprisingly, the ink was spread around to nearly 40 Losers among the 51 entries (though Gary Crockett’s four blots of ink squirt him past the 450-mark inexorably toward the Hall of Fame). Kevin Dopart’s L(eadersh) IP — “service provided to the states by the White House” gave him his 29th Invite win and, with the honorable mention for POT(ato fung) US, “a blight that can ruin a country,” his 1,531st blot of ink. On a saner but still very impressive level, second place Jeff Hazle, whose CLASSrooM was one of the few neologisms, rather than existing terms, among the entries, makes his 19th trip to the Losers’ Circle with his 119th (and 120th) ink. And this week’s other runners-up, Chuck Helwig and David Peckarsky, are relative newbies, with 12 and 36 inks, respectively, though both have scored “above the fold in the past.” Also exciting: First Offender Emma Daley vaults over the One Hit Wonders charts to debut with two honorable mentions: GROcery shopPING, to feel around on the top shelf for one more mac and cheese (something that this altitude-challenged Empress knows well) and SPeaker of the hOUSE, “Just because I’m the only other person here doesn’t mean I always want to listen to you.” Super debut, Emma — bring it on! What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me on my choices for the winner and runners-up this week, and also singled out Raymond Gallucci’s BOOostER for apostate Redskins fans; Sam Mertens’s PENitenCE for what the impeaching Democrats would have gotten; and William Kennard’s INject household cleANER, “Trump’s advice, day by day.” NOthing wrong with these in any WAY: The unprintables: First, I’d chosen this one by Jesse Frankovich as an honorable mention but it was axed by the managing editor. I can’t argue with that, though; even considering who it is, there are some things The Washington Post shouldn’t say (even attributed to anonymous people) about the president of the United States: GO( **** yourse) LF: What taxpayers say when they find out what the president spends their money on. Then there was this one by Tom Witte that I’d considered running online, but figured it’s better here, and not just because the singular and plural didn’t agree: PENItentiarieS: Something that is not always welcome where it is placed. And then we had these two from Gary Crockett: climAXES: They cause falling wood; and TumescENT: A fabric structure supported by a pole. The hits kept on coming: More covid parodies from Week 1378 on Facebook Two weeks ago, when I published about 20 song parody lyrics and videos about Life in the Age of Corona (results of Week 1378), I lamented robbing so many good songs of ink, and promised in this column that I’d post some of them in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group in the coming days. And so I really hope you’ll check out the sixteen extra parodies (including videos) that you can find by searching for #coronaparody in the group (or by, I hope, clicking right here). If you count the Likes and heart emoji and whatnot, the most popular of the 16 was this “noink” by Jesse Frankovich to — what else — the Major General’s Song in the voice of Covid-19 Itself: I am the very model of a novel viral pathogen; I represent how humans have incited nature’s wrath again. The rapid rate at which I spread from host to host is warranting The people all around the world to stay at home in quarantine. To be alone for weeks on end will give a person's psyche fits, But hey, I’m kinda cute with all my little reddish spiky bits. For underestimating me I have to thank the president; To say that I was serious he was a bit too hesitant. A million-plus Americans so far have tested positive; Of health and economic devastation I am causative. If Donald thinks I’m beaten then he ought to do his math again — I am the very model of a novel viral pathogen! ---- So Maryland is starting to open up this week! Could we have a June 14 Flushies picnic after all? Well, let’s see what transpires … Meanwhile, see you next week.