PERMANENT INKSTAIN FOR JESSE RIFKIN

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
1361 2020 vision -- the year in preview Name some humorous news event to happen in 2020. H H
1359 Back up in the air (quotes) Write a sentence or two and highlight an "air quote" that spans two or more words (and two sentences if you like). L
1356 Ask Backwards 38 Sixteen "answers" are provided. Tell us the questions. H H
1355 The inside word Highlight part of a word, name or short phrase in "air quotes" to give the word a new meaning or description. H
1353 What's playing at the retroplex Change a movie title to its "opposite" by reversing one or more words; then describe the new movie. H W
1352 Hee-rotica -- Steamy prose for unsteamy life Write a short steamy scene (100 words would be considered long) about a non-steamy event. H
1349 Revise and extend these remarks Go to congress.gov/congressional-record and click on the PDF for any day's Congressional Record. Choose any sentence (or substantial part of one) and write a question that it could answer. H
1347 Reologisms Write a clever, funny definition for any of the provided Loser-concocted words and phrases, and/or show they'd be used. 3 H
1342 MRGRS: Mash 2 abbrevs. Combine two acronyms or other abbreviations, whether of entities or expressions, into one big one, and describe it, offer a slogan for the new organization, etc. H
1341 Portmanteautapping from E to R Coin a portmanteau word beginning with E through R, in which the words overlap by at least two letters, and describe it. H
1340 Not-ables -- slightly alter a famous name Slightly alter the name (make sure the original is obvious) of a famous personage -- past or present, real or fictional -- and describe the resulting nonpersonage, or offer a quote from that person, or both. H H
1337 Lidder me this: anagram riddles Write a Q&A joke (or an A followed by a Q, if you're into "Jeopardy!") in which the punchline contains an anagram or one or more relevant words or names. H
1334 Mull 'er over: A search for collision Combine any two words, names, abbreviations, etc., from anywhere in the redacted Mueller report, in a two-word or hyphenated phrase and define it. H
1329 Shakespeare + Thee: Tailgaters Select any line from a work by Shakespeare (poetry or prose) and pair it with your own line to create a humorous rhyming couplet. H
1327 Mess with our (or anyone's) heads Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline (or a big part of a headline) by writing a bank head, or subtitle. H
1324 Chapter and worse Tell or describe a Bible story, or another classical or folk tale, very briefly (75 words would be lengthy) in the voice of a particular author or other person. H

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 ...]