Style Conversational Week 1411: Getting our wit together
The Empress of The Style Invitational on the Invite’s long history of scatological humor
A pair of millinerials: Foamy velveteen dragon hats from the Kennedy Center gift shop, both donated by Loser Dave Prevar, put the Invite's cuteness level over the top in this week's contest, with the Empress's 3-year-old neighbor Maxwell Matthews, as well as back in 2016 with Margaret Stevens (then 6), daughter of Loser Duncan.
A pair of millinerials: Foamy velveteen dragon hats from the Kennedy Center gift shop, both donated by Loser Dave Prevar, put the Invite's cuteness level over the top in this week's contest, with the Empress's 3-year-old neighbor Maxwell Matthews, as well as back in 2016 with Margaret Stevens (then 6), daughter of Loser Duncan. (TWP)
By 
Pat Myers
November 19, 2020 at 4:36 p.m. EST
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Ad from space: “A great void. We make it happen. Ex-lax.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington)

It struck me that Kevin’s Lose Cannon winner for Week 1407 today (results here) is the epitome of Style Invitational humor: It’s a pun — a double pun, really: not just on “void,” but also “great,” as in great-big / great-fantastic. It plays off our culture, spoofing so well the terse, declamatory taglines of commercials; you can imagine, say, James Earl Jones’s authoritative voice intoning the slogan. And, of course: poop.

Poop punning: It’s what we do. The Style Invitational.

And what Kevin does is win the Invite: This week’s Lose Cannon gives him his 32nd first prize, and with two honorable mentions this week as well, he’s blotted up somewhere north of 1,560 Invitational inks.

Scatological humor — usually but not always more sophisticated than your usual potty joke — has been a hallmark of The Style Invitational since its founding by the Czar in 1993. Here’s Gene Weingarten on the topic in his newly defunct weekly online chat, back in 2002:

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“I once gave a talk to American newspaper feature editors, and I began by asking ‘Why is poop funny'? Everyone laughed (thereby confirming the premise) but no one offered an explanation. My explanation was this: Humans spend much of their lives preening and posturing, pretending that we are a hugely sophisticated organism, greatly distanced from common beasts. And yet we all have to do this ludicrous thing. (It’s the same reason sex is funny.) Basically, we are pompous asses. And poop proves it.”

The Czar’s attraction to bodily function humor was so immediately clear that Elden Carnahan got ink with this “and last” entry in Week 69: Principles of how the world works (1994): “Carnahan’s Rule Of Three: The longer one works to bring ironic Talmudic allusion and elegant Chaucerian wit to one’s entry, the greater the likelihood the winner will prominently feature “drool,” “snot” or “poopy.”

After I ascended to the throne as Empress in December 2003, some in the Loser Community were concerned that a woman — or heck, a non-Weingarten — would be too prim to continue with the toilet jokes, but I don’t think I cut back on them to any great extent. (This week, we have not just Kevin’s Ex-lax joke but also Frank Mann’s space-set ad for Imodium: “You’ll never have to tell Houston you have a problem.”)

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Here’s just a small sampling of scatological humor — a stool sampling! hahahahah! — from the past 1,400 contests, found by searching on “Ex-lax,” “laxative,” “poop,” “toilet,” “log,” etc.

Good idea: Shampoo. Bad idea: Shampoop. (Dave Zarrow)

Good idea: Wash hands after using toilet. Bad idea: Wash hands using toilet. (Jay Snyder)

Combine the beginning and end of two words: Ene-mans: Ex-Lax coffee cake. (Chris Doyle)

Puns on book titles: What did we say when we were very young and constipated? We Need a Poo. (Chris Doyle)

Insert product placements into biblical and other literary passages. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. Thanks, Ex-Lax! (Russell Beland)

Redefine a product name as a word: Ex-Lax: A listing of the shortcomings of a former spouse. (Randal Wetzel)

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Portmanteau words: Pooperfume: A scent so awful that they should have called it Chanel No. 2. (Chris Doyle)

Warning labels: Camping toilet: “Do NOT void where prohibited.” (Kevin Dopart; Chris Doyle)

A & Q with Shakespeare:

A. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. (“The Merchant of Venice”)

Q. What happens when you flush an airplane toilet? (Gary Crockett)

Excuses to miss a day of work: “When I got up this morning, I took two Ex-Lax in addition to my Prozac. I can’t get off the john, but I feel good about it.” (Chuck Smith)

A. Because It Didn’t Rhyme.

Q. Why did Mother Goose reject the rhyme “Mary, Mary Quite Constipated”? (Jeff Brechlin)

A. The Heimlich Manure.

Q. What is the name of Henry Heimlich’s second most important contribution to emergency medicine, a procedure to alleviate acute constipation? (Chuck Smith)

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“Joint legislation” combining the names of two new members of Congress: The Castor-Corker Law to help prevent laxative overdoses. (Cited as submitted by too many people.)

Redefine a word: Logarithm: A series of exertions on the john. (Vic Krysko)

Move the last letter of a word to the beginning Scatalog: Improvised toilet paper. (Jeff Contompasis)

Crapture: The bliss of becoming unconstipated, as in Philippians 1:22: “But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor.” (Kevin Dopart)

Poems on spelling bee words:

Jalap (JA-lupp), a laxative made from a Mexican plant

With its purgative properties, jalap

Sends you off to the loo at a gallop,

For it's quite unsurpassed —

In fact, it's a blast —

At freeing a laggardly bowel up. (Frank Osen)

“Untrue confessions”: I like to fill an unused poop bag with Tootsie Rolls and eat them at the dog park. (Frank Osen)

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In public toilets I belt out “Elmo’s Potty Time Song” to mask the gross sounds my body is making. (Chris Doyle)

Foal names: Mate First American with King of Scat and name the foal Amerigo Vespoopi. (Jennifer Hart)

Erudite humor that requires explanation: An American tourist in Italy is constipated for a week, but when he arrives in Florence, the water is better and his condition goes away. “With Firenze* like this,” he said, “who needs enemas?” *Firenze is the Italian word for Florence.

Plays on foreign terms: Peeanissimo: The quieter volume you get from aiming at the side of the toilet bowl. (Dave Prevar)

Cinquains:

Swan, so

Graceful, arches

Its delicate neck and

Wriggles its feathered rump as if

To poop. (Bonnie Speary Devore)

Questions children ask: Why is poop funny? Because all palindromes are funny, except radar and did. (Russell Beland)

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Replace a P in a word with another letter: Loseurs: Witty, sophisticated humorists pretending to be juvenile, crude boors with a poop fixation. (John McCooey)

The difference between … an overactive bladder and a Loser magnet: One results in frequent thoughts of toilets; the other, from them. (Kevin Dopart)

Analogies: Winning the Style Invitational is sort of like finding a flaming bag of dog poop on your porch. In fact, some weeks it’s EXACTLY like that. (Elden Carnahan)

I don’t think that Kevin’s “void” joke will be used anytime soon by a laxative company, though personal-care ads have become way, er, cheekier over the years. The commercials for PooPourri toilet spray, for example, turn modesty on its head in the head. But some entries were beaten to the punch by reality: Several Losers, for example, suggested setting ads for birth control in a noisy kindergarten — much like the famous 2004 European commercial for Zazoo condoms, featuring a tyke who has a full-blown meltdown in the supermarket when Dad puts the candy back on the shelf.

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One theme I don’t use (and neither did the Czar): “soap” jokes about prison. We don’t run rape jokes.

What Doug Dug: The faves of Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood this week included Kevin’s winning toilet-joke wordplay, Jonathan’s second-place Generic Team joke and, among the honorable mentions, Drew Bennett’s “ReadySkins,” Kevin’s cell/bars double pun for Verizon Wireless and prison; and, of course, Cutie Pie Maxwell Matthews, who lives across the street from me and was very eager to pose in that hat until I picked up my camera, then not so much.

Coming to a bad end: This week’s contest, Week 1411
During the Invitational’s Czarist era, we actually just ripped off the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which has been run out of the English department at San Jose State since 1982. In Week 477 (2002) the Czar asked for exactly what the Bulwerians were asking for: bad opening lines to a (nonexistent) novel. I don’t think I’d much like it if some newspaper just copied an Invite contest while ours was going on (the B-W, named for the author who began a book “It was a dark and stormy night,” though he also coined such lines as “The pen is mightier than the sword,” runs all year round). So in 2008 I did the flip side — an ending to a novel — and a dozen years later, I’m giving it another round.
You can see all the results to Week 788 here; below are the top winners and some honorable mentions.

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4. As he left, the captain flashed a smile — a wide, satisfied grin with lips parted a quarter-inch, the right corner of the mouth raised slightly above the left, and a dry lower lip slightly stuck to the teeth — that defied description. (Jay Shuck, Minneapolis)

3. Oh, and by the way, Chapters 3, 8, 10 and part of 16 were all dreams, in case you hadn’t caught on. (Art Grinath, Takoma Park)

2. First the infarction, then the ambulance ride, now going under the knife, he drifted away under anesthesia, humming Celine Dion’s tune “My Heart Will Go On.” But it didn’t. (Larry Miller, Rockville)

And the Winner of the Inker — As the wail of the nearing sirens shook him awake, Todd rose from the charred remains of Rensfield Manor, wiped the ectoplasm from his brow and, stuffing the Amulet of Valtor inside his shirt, gazed ruefully at the venom-encrusted Sword of Darjan, realizing that this long night wasn’t over yet, because he still had a heck of a lot of explaining to do. (LuAnn Bishop, West Haven, Conn.)

And Washington ceased to exist in a fireball that churned skyward like the gaseous plea of a whale that had ingested a crate of habanero peppers, red and yellow — the explosion, not the peppers, though habaneros, which are the world’s hottest, can in fact be red or yellow. Not that this mattered to the former residents of Washington, who were now mere dust particles; all they were was dust in the wind. (Jeff Brechlin, Eagan, Minn.)

Over the years, she became for Gary a fuzzy memory, until he had trouble even making out her features, though he was still pretty sure she was female and her name started with a B or R. (Jay Shuck)

He had only 75 words to go on his contractually required novel of 50,000 words. A guy could say a lot in 75 words, like “Pudding is best when it’s warm.” He wondered whether to count hyphenated words as two words. Strange thoughts come to a fellow at times like these. Should he have written “50,000” as “fifty thousand”? He was close enough to count down: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. (Art Grinath)

And here are the results, spread over two weeks, to the opening-line contest.

Part 1

Week 479 CXLVI Invest Case Scenario


The Vertical Bathtub Company
Manufacturers of fine bathtubs in which you stand while bathing.

The Hammock Barn
Fine hammocks constructed entirely of pork products.

Ye Olde Dental Associates
Tooth care like when grandma was a girl. (Ask about our BYOB anesthesia options.)

This week's contest: Suggest new companies in which it might be unwise to invest, as in the examples above. First-prize winner gets a sad-looking ceramic gorilla squatting on a copy of the Wall Street Journal. No, we don't know what it is supposed to mean, either. But when Margareta Metcalf of the Cordell Collection in Bethesda saw it, she held it for us, perhaps understanding -- with the innate genius that professional antique dealers possess -- that no one else on Earth would buy it.

First runner-up wins the tacky but estimable Style Invitational Loser Pen. Other runners-up win the coveted Style Invitational Loser T-shirt. Honorable mentions get the mildly sought-after Style Invitational bumper sticker. Send your entries via fax to 202-334- 4312, or by e-mail to losers@washpost.com. U.S. mail entries are no longer accepted. Deadline is Monday, Nov. 18. All entries must include the week number of the contest and your name, postal address and telephone number. E-mail entries must include the week number in the subject field. Contests will be judged on the basis of humor and originality. All entries become the property of The  Washington Post.

Entries may be edited for taste or content. Results will be published in four weeks. No purchase required for entry. Employees of The Washington Post, and their immediate relatives, are not eligible for prizes. Pseudonymous entries will be disqualified. The revised title for next week's contest is by Chris Doyle of Forsyth, Mo.

 

Report 1 from Week CXLIV (477): the first of two weeks' worth of Opening Lines of Very, Very Bad Novels.

But first:

How dumb is the Czar? So dumb he doesn't even realize that Gene Weingarten is shtupping his wife. (Bob Dalton, Arlington)

Not bad. It won the emergency "How Dumb Is the Czar?" contest announced two weeks ago when it became apparent to the Czar that he had created a contest no one would win. Week CXLII, the results of which were to have been published today, required you to find funny hidden cabals in the news stories of the day. A daunting task. Too daunting. None of the measly 120 entries produced even a germ of an idea worthy of publication. Fortunately, you proved equally inept as writers of literature, in a good way. Today, the first of two weeks' worth of Opening Lines of Very, Very Bad Novels.

Third Runner-Up: She awoke early and thought to herself, "Yet another day for me, Jennie Smith, here in Seattle, working as a secretary." She got up, went to the bathroom, reached for her hairbrush and used it, thinking, "I miss Sean, my son whom my husband (Jeff) now has custody of since our messy divorce in February 2001." (Fred Burggraf, Charlotte Hall, Md.)

Second Runner-Up: When legendary actress and beauty Angelique Lafayette -- great-great-great-great-great-great- granddaughter of General Lafayette of Revolutionary War fame -- walked into the boardroom of the corporation she had suddenly inherited when her late lover and CEO, Piers Johnson, had died ignominiously in her bed after explosive lovemaking, there was nothing in her regal manner to suggest her overwhelming urge to urinate all over her expensive gray wool crepe Chanel suit. (Francesca Kelly, Rome)

First Runner-Up: It was a bright and sunny night . . . (Marty McCullen, Gettysburg, Pa.)

And the winner of the antique Martha Washington plate:

I've never had a case more complex than the theft of the jade pillbox, nor a twist more shocking than the weepy eleventh-hour confession of the gardener, Mr. Rosebottom, and the strange events that followed in which his son, Elmer, was revealed to have provided the poison that killed Mrs. Dinglewood, with whom he had been having a secret affair for years. But perhaps I should begin at the beginning . . . (Brian Barrett, Bethesda)

Honorable Mentions:

Tina was depressed. She sat and stared out her window at the window across the street that seemed to reflect her staring out her own window. It made her reflect on her reflection, which, granted, at that distance was not clearly reflected. It was just like her life, she reflected. Always just a faint reflection of itself. This was all Jim's fault. (Shell Benson, Arlington)

For as long as he could recall, Nikolai had been obsessed with the banjo. It was heavy and substantial, yet graceful -- ironically, not unlike a wood-and-metal, stringed version of the giant lollipops that had so tormented his dreams these past few weeks. (Rob Doherty, Alexandria)

With the darkness absolute and the silence absoluter, Helen of deTROIt felt trapped. She felt like she was confined in a small crate, which she was, literally and metaphorically. The point is, this chick with the fiendishly clever name is stuck in a box, and she's got some things to say. You'll want to listen, trust me.

(Mike Cozy, Silver Spring)

It was a rainy and dark night and Wanda was ready to start a new life with her husband and their three loving children, Tyler, Gwen, McKenzie and Sasha . . . (Jeff Kern, Gaithersburg)

A toe. Five toes, a foot. Three feet, a yard. Thirty yards, a neighborhood. A neighborhood where it would all happen. And it all depended on a single toe. A toe that held the fate of all mankind in its grasp, though its lack of opposable thumbs endangered everything. This toe was on the foot of the man who must win the marathon to save the world. (Eryk B. Nice, Ithaca, N.Y.)

Her desire for him became enflamed as she imagined him possessing her totally, carrying her to new heights of erotic pleasure as her body responded by getting all heeby-jeeby. (Eryk B. Nice, Ithaca, N.Y.)

Greg awoke from a fitful sleep to find that his hair had fallen out. Not the hair on his head . . . (Milo Sauer, Fairfax)

Bob sat transfixed by Elizabeth's beauty. Her tiny fondue- colored eyes, the way her hair curled around her neck like the tail of a pig, and her breath that always smelled of walnuts gave him an uncomfortable churning sensation deep in his stomach, as if he urgently had to go to the bathroom. "Is this love?" a little voice, the one that sounded like a fish, asked him, not really expecting a reply. (Bird Waring, New York)

Once upon a time -- my, what a trite turn of phrase! It calls to mind those fanciful yet simplistic stories of old -- most often a thinly disguised morality tale that causes the reader to groan aloud in anticipation of yet another retread of a worn-out and obvious theme. Well, anyway, once upon a time . . . (Amy Corbett Storch, Washington)

Frank Jolson was as fat as a cheetah is fast. That is to say, if you could come up with some kind of mathematical equation where you could compare speed and weight, like some sort of vector thingy, and you assume that it's not like an old or lame cheetah, then the speed of the cheetah and the weight of Frank Jolson would be pretty close, if not the same, which is to say very much. (Brian Barrett, Bethesda)

Part 2

Week 481 CXLVIII: Homonymphomania


Gasolean: A crouching posture assumed at the pumps during the sniper spree.

Communicashun: The "I won't dignify that accusation with a response" tactic adopted by a politician who is guilty of wrongdoing.

Camaroddery: Male bonding over guns.

This week's contest was suggested by Carl Northrop of Washington. Carl suggests that you create a new homonym of any existing word, and define it, as in the examples above. Warning: The new word must be spelled in such a way that it is obviously pronounced identically to the original word. First-prize winner gets a genuine photocopy of "John Train's Most Remarkable Names," a most remarkable book of true aptonyms and other noms-de-silliness.

First runner-up wins the tacky but estimable Style Invitational Loser Pen. Other runners-up win the coveted Style Invitational Loser T-shirt. Honorable mentions get the mildly sought-after Style Invitational bumper sticker. Send your entries via fax to 202-334- 4312, or by e-mail to losers@washpost.com.U.S. mail entries are no longer accepted. Deadline is Monday, Dec. 2. All entries must include the week number of the contest and your name, postal address and telephone number. E-mail entries must include the week number in the subject field. Contests will be judged on the basis of humor and originality. All entries become the property of The  Washington Post.

Entries may be edited for taste or content. Results will be published in four weeks. No purchase required for entry. Employees of The Washington Post, and their immediate relatives, are not eligible for prizes. Pseudonymous entries will be disqualified. The revised title for next week's contest is by Jos. Romm of Washington.

Report from Week 2 of Week CXLIV (477), in which you were to provide the opening lines to a very bad novel.

As always, the line between very bad and very good sometimes blurs. And so no prize is awarded to Dennis McDermott of Hutchinson, Minn., who showed a few too many writerly moves with: Her silk blouse entered my office first, like a dead heat in a dirigible race . . .

{diam}Third Runner-Up: Golde took a bite of her bagel. She chewed it slowly, and her husband could tell this was the precursor to some profound insight into the human condition. Swallowing, she leaned forward and said: "Pourquoi 'L'Affaire de la Famille' a-t-il un valet qui s'appelle French s'il n'est pas du tout franc{cedil}ais? Que c'est pretentieux, n'est-ce pas?" Her husband chuckled at the irony.

(Bruce W. Alter, Fairfax Station)

{diam}Second Runner-Up: There were these five guys hanging around and then one guy said to another guy, "Hey, what're you doin'?" and another guy looked around and said, "Not much," but the first guy wasn't talking to that guy, so he had to re-ask the other guy -- the first guy he was actually talking to -- "Hey, what're you doin'?" but by this point that other, second, guy had become interested with the logo on some completely other guy's shirt, causing immense frustration on the part of the first guy.

(Seth Brown, Williamstown, Mass.)

{diam}First Runner-Up: Dawn arrived like the dawn man dumping a load of fresh dawn on the front lawn. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)

{diam}And the winner of the "Maid in Manhattan" ostrich feather duster:

The Kraut machine gun raked the bunker behind which Biff and the men hid. They were pinned down. The bullets whizzed by like projectiles shot from a gun. Each bullet carried death, but not if they missed, which they currently were doing. Biff was afraid that one of the bullets had his name on it, but he doubted that even the Germans were that anal-retentive to put individual names on bullets. Still, he kept his head down because it would have been ironic to be killed by a bullet with someone else's name on it.

(Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

{diam}Honorable Mentions:

Mr. Eddings waited at the corner for the streetlight to change, unaware that when his story was made into a major motion picture, this scene would be part of a later flashback, in which slow-motion cinematography from multiple angles accompanied by overly dramatic music would gradually reveal the complete stranger half a block away who was masterminding the kidnapping of his daughter. (Danny Bravman, Potomac)

The motorcade with the president moved slowly down the street. Harold glanced up and saw the window open at the Texas School Book Depository. He pulled the Stinger missile system out of his duffel bag. He had not traveled back in time three decades unprepared.

(Joseph Romm, Washington)

As an erotic fiction writer, Felicia, with her small, perky breasts and ever-hard nipples, knew that any story could be saved by the inclusion of more titillating prose. Too bad there was no such quick fix for her own life, the author thought, her supple body stretched naked across the satin sheets of her bed, glistening with sweat from a just-finished workout to tone the compact muscles of her perfectly rounded buttocks. No, Fluffy was dead, the house about to be repossessed -- and no amount of boinking with well-endowed strangers was going to change that.

(Sara Wright, New Haven, Conn.)

Mary watched the train rumble off down the track, and as the powerful engine rushed into the gaping maw of the tunnel, she thought about her last night with Peter -- not so much because of the train/tunnel symbolism, for she and Peter shared the vegetable love noted in Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress," but because they had come to fierce words over the nature of symbolism itself, not that she didn't wish at times that Peter would simply shut up and get on track, so to speak. (Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls)

He stared at her the way an antiques appraiser would stare at a roomful of antique furniture, her hair a delicately crafted lamp, her legs an inviting love seat with a tacky floral design, and her chest a chest of drawers, which is funny because although her drawers weren't on her chest, he was interested in getting into them as well.

(Seth Brown, Williamstown, Mass.)

Joe settled into his favorite chair and started reading his newly purchased novel, which began, "Howard settled into his favorite chair and started reading his newly purchased novel, which began . . ." (Jerry Pannullo, Kensington)

He was the king of hearts, looking for a diamond in the rough, but alas, he had no aces up his sleeve. Some jack was giving him trouble tonight at the club downtown, but he knew how to handle this joker. Deal him out, call a spade a spade, and get on with the business of finding his queen. Though he wore a poker face, inside he was sure his luck would turn, the deck had to be stacked in his favor eventually, didn't it?

(Colette Zanin, Greenbelt)

The leggy blonde behind the desk spelled trouble with a capital T, not having her Word preferences set for autocaps, and unable to change the default.

(Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)

Jack did not appreciate the gravity of the situation. He just didn't comprehend that every object exerts an attracting force of 6.6668 joules, independent of magnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces, and covalent bonds. He further didn't understand that the gravitational constant was not enough to counteract relativity (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared), and that, given the relative motion of him, and the bullet, (factoring in air resistance), he was (barring a space-time anomaly) about to be seriously hurt, or maybe killed.

(Greg Krakower, New York)

See you next WEDNESDAY (maybe)
As always during Thanksgiving week, the online Invitational comes out a day early, on Wednesday. I expect to publish the Week 1412 contest and Week 1408 results next Wednesday morning; not sure yet whether there’ll be a Conversational. If not, have a safe and happy-as-you-can Thanksgiving.