PERMANENT INKSTAIN FOR GARY PATISHNOCK

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
992 Mittsterpiece Theatre Suppose public-TV shows, past or present, were turned out onto the open market to make a living on commercial TV. Tell us what would happen. H
618 Of D.C. I Sing Give us a song about Washington, set to a recognizable tune. H
599 So What's the News? Tell us what the illustrated events are. H
578 Ask Backwards You are on "Jeopardy!" Above are the answers. Send us the questions. H
574 Boor Us Silly Come up with some unwise attempts at humor--one either likely to backfire or to create other unpleasant consequences. H
573 Thine Ad Goest Here Propose biblical and other literary passages, poems, etc., that could benefit from product placement. 3
507 Crocktails Come up with a drink named for something or someone associated with Washington and describe the drink. H
474 Alphabettering Create a sentence that uses each letter of the alphabet at least once but that would never be heard on the politically correct, genteel, rarified air of NPR. H
472 Water Stupid Idea Propose bad ideas for saving water in the continuing drought. H H
469 Playing Check-In Suggest appropriate hotel check-in names for any celebrities, past or present, living or dead. H
467 Get Your But in Here Produce a line that fits this structure: (Real thing based upon current events) is (word or phrase suggesting some quality) but (other word or phrase suggesting a dissimilar or incompatible quality), like (funny analogy). H
437 The Telegraph Poll Tell us the beginning of a joke that badly telegraphs the punch line. H
422 Taught Language Come up with lessons learned from (1) the movies, (2) popular songs, (3) romance novels or (4) the comics page. H H
409 Nice Job, if You Get It Take anything that might need its image enhanced and rename it in a way the keeps its essential identity, but makes it seem nicer. H W
370 No End in Sight Write the beginnings of sentences you don't want to hear the end of. H H
343 Eastwood Ho. Create a Good-Bad-Ugly progression. H H
245 LIKE FUN Complete any of the provided "A is like B because" sentences. H
227 WILD PITCHES Come up worthy successors to Joe Camel. Name the product, and describe the totally inappropriate cartoon character that would be created to represent it. H
183 COCKNEY RHYMING SLANG II Create hawkers' rhymes for modern-day occupations like lobbyists, lawyers, talk show hosts, actuaries, etc., at a maximum of four lines. It must contain at least one rhyme. 4
177 SOUNDS LIKE TROUBLE Tell us what any of the provided sounds are. H
171 ON SECOND THOUGHT Ideas that never got off the drawing board, for good reason. H
154 ENTER LAUGHING Make up a knock-knock joke. The subject of the third line must be something crude, silly, or profound. H
153 STUMP US Complete this sentence, "I should be elected President of the United States because…" and launch your campaign. H I
132 GIVE US THE BACKS OFF OUR SHIRTS. What should our loser's T-shirt say on the back? Your goal is to somehow capture the spirit of the contest. 2
128 LIKE, DUH Come up with snappy answers to stupid questions. 2 H
123 WHY IS POOP FUNNY? Come up with creative answers to any of the five questions above that might be asked by a 5-year-old. H
122 THE UNKINDEST CUTE OF ALL Come up with a new story line for "Peanuts", some plot development or new character that will put the strip back on the road to relevance. I
118 WEAK 118 Take any photo caption or headline appearing anywhere in today's Post and alter its meaning by adding, deleting, or changing one letter. H
116 WRITE PURE POETRY Write a complete sentence using only the letters contained on the top row of a typewriter. Alternatively, you can use the letters of the first four lines of the standard eye chart. H
108 NEAR MISSES Come up with the first drafts of great lines in history, entertainment or literature. L
104 HERE, DOGGEREL Create poems so bad they thud. The first line must be a name. The second line can be as long or as short as you wish. The third line must sound the same as the first line, using the name as a verb or some other part of speech. H
102 HELP! I'M A PRISONER IN THIS CONTEST Come up with fortune cookie messages that you would love to see, but never will. H
42 HEY, IT COULD BE WORSE There are worse things in life than the Washington Redskins. Just tell us what they are. 4
40 NOT WRONG. JUST INCORRECT. What's next on the political correctness agenda? H
34 INSPECT A GADGET What do these machines do? 6 H H
32 FATAL ART ATTACK In 50 words or fewer, describe a performance art concept that might get public funding. Winners will be audacious enough to seem like art, but pretentious enough to seem to have a social "message." 4
29 AD NAUSEAM Come up with an unfortunate slogan for any real product, service, or organization. 3
26 CASTING ABOUT FOR AN IDEA Name a political person (past or present) and the TV or movie role in which he or she could have been cast. 4

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 ...]