PERMANENT INKSTAIN FOR BETH BANISZEWSKI

This is what you've done, each Week. I arrange the rows in reverse chronological order, because there are some Losers, and they know who they are, who check up on my points-awarding every Week.

But I would just like to reiterate that such checking up is not a problem for me. I have said many times that each Loser's enlightened self-interest is my best QA.

If you wish to see what your ink was, refer to the Master Contest List or search All Invitational Text. Remember that Types I, P, some H, and sometimes A are seen "above the Report" -- that is, if they are listed here for Week 7777, for example, they will be found in text files or images of Week 7777. Everything else will be found in a "Report" section of a file two, three, or four weeks later; 7781 in this Example.

If you see any error, please let me know, elden.carnahan@gmail.com.

Key to Ink Types:

WKTITLESYNOPSISINK TYPES
1011 Top these! Try your hand at any of the contests mentioned in this look back. H
932 We'll call them your-mama jokes Tell us an original "your mama" joke. H
923 Chemical Wordfare Create a new chemical element or other chemical term. 2
783 The Shill Game Name a celebrity or fictional character to endorse a real product or company. H
782 That's the Ticket! Explain why any of the items on the list below is qualified to be President of the United States. H
776 An Act of Sunny Side Note the silver lining in some otherwise disappointing turn of events. H
764 Can You Up Chuck? Come up with entirely new and funny Chuck Norris Facts. H
757 Gorey Thoughts From A to Z Send us some rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. H P W
743 Picture This Write a caption for any of these Bob Staake cartoons. H
740 Give Us a Hint Offer clues in various situations that something isn't working out well. H H H
725 Beggars For Description Describe, without being boring, a cartoon to fit any of the provided captions. H H
723 Name Your Poison Create a name and recipe for a cocktail and, if you like, describe when it might be served. H
722 Let's Play Nopardy! We supply 12 phrases and you get to provide questions they might answer. The phrases were entries in our Week 717 contest, which asked for Googlenopes -- phrases that showed no previous hits from the Google search engine. I
721 Know Your Market For any of the provided photos, supply two captions: one that would appeal to The Style Invitational and one that would appeal to the Harrisburg Patriot-News. H
717 Pitch Us a No-Hitter Send us some genuine Googlenopes. A Googlenope is a phrase or very brief sentence that, entered into the Google search engine with quotation marks around it, produces no hits. T
705 Simile Outrageous Come up with funny analogies, perhaps with some 21st-century references. H
693 Everything Being Sequel Give a brief scenario for the sequel to a well-known movie. 2 H
689 Busted Play Come up with a more objectionable or stupid toy than a working fart-powered toy rocket. H
679 Ask Backwards Here are the answers. You supply the questions to as many as you dare. H
675 Cut Us Some Slack Come up with humorous ways to be lazy. H
666 Bedevil Us Give a mini-sermon explaining how some innocuous object or event signals the End of Days. H
664 A Thousand Times?! No! Come up with a new signature line for Russell Beland's -- or anyone else's -- e-mails. H
663 Worth at Least a Dozen Words Interpret any of the provided cartoons as you see fit in a caption. H
662 How Low Will You Go? Humiliate yourself for ink, and a stupid prize. H
633 Your Secret Here! Send us some original secrets (they don't have to be true). H
631 Picture This What's going on in any of these cartoons? H
504 Life Is Snort Write a schmaltzy last line of a "Life Is Short." 1 H
476 Portmanteautapping Make a new word by squishing together two existing words. The constituent words must share at least two letters. H
463 Retell Sales Give us the beginning of any well-known story as retold by any famous person, living or dead, except for Ronald Reagan. H
456 A Bad-Ask Contest You are still on Jeopardy!, and you still have to supply questions to the provided answers, but the winners will be the least funny answers. H
405 The "Sty"le Invitational Take any word--this may include people or places--put a portion of it in "air quotes" and redefine it. You may not alter the spelling. H
383 A Kinder, Gender Nation Take an noun and give us a reason or two why it should be either masculine or feminine. H
372 Trial Balloons Fill in the balloons. H
366 Just Fulghum Come up with a list of at least three Major Life Lessons one can learn from any of the venues provided. H
362 Something Missing Tell us what is missing in each of the provided cartoons. H
355 Seeing Stars Tell us ways we can attract celebrity participation to this contest. H
353 Patently Silly What do these devices do? H H
345 Picture This What is going on in these cartoons? 4
342 Plainly Ridiculous Take any direct quotation from any article in today's Washington Post and translate it into "plain English." H
335 A LOVER'S SPAT Enter the contest that is run by the editor of your choice. H
330 NERD PLANET FROM THE SUN Come up with comments from the Nerd Side even less interesting than the observation that the 21st century doesn't really start until 2001. 2 H
328 NICE CAPADES Send in some pleasant observation, in which you take a really cheerful or heartwarming view of something that less charitable people might conceivably see differently. H
327 ASK BACKWARDS You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? H
324 A PREQUEL OPPORTUNITY OFFERING Come up with a "prequel" to some classic film or work of literature. You must produce a title and a brief plot summary, which of course must take place prior to the main action of the original work. H
316 CALLING THE TOON What are these things? H
313 THE STYLE INVITATIONAL SOUVENIR SHOP Come up with bad names for a new store at a mall. 2

MOST OF YOUR INK

Here is, I hope, most of your ink to be found in the All Invitational Text list. I have to find these with what are called regular expressions, which is a method used in a lot of programming languages to find and modify certain text strings in larger corpora. Basically I look for something like this:

"Report From Week 758"

or

"And from The Style Invitational four weeks ago . . ."

and then some text, your name, and your town, arranged in this familiar way:

"GlaxoSmithKline: I have six kids named Chesterfield, Winston, Lark, BensonHedges, Doral and Kool. If I name my new baby Nicorette, can I get a free coupon for your products? (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)"

I don't catch everything, but I believe I find 90%.

Unlike in the table to the left, I've arranged these in chronological order, so you can see how your humor matured, like a forgotten cheese deep in the walls of an old house. You started out, perhaps in Year 1, sending in riddles you sort of remembered from grade school, and now look at ya, ain't you Dorothy Parker.





[still working on this ...]