Week 51: Caption Crunch, Vol. II


This week's contest:

Supply captions for any of these pictures. First-prize winner receives a fancy pogo stick, a value of about $ 85. Runners-up, as always, get the coveted Style Invitational losers' T-shirts. Honorable Mentions get the mildy sought-after Style Invitational bumper sticker. Winners will be selected on the basis of humor and originality. Mail your entries to the Style Invitational, Week 48, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, or fax them to 202-334-4312. Entries must be received on or before Monday, Feb. 28. Please include your address and phone number. Winners will be announced in three weeks. No purchase necessary. The Faerie of the Fine Print & The Ear No One Reads, making a triumphant return, hereby urgently requests photographs of your pets wearing costumes. Best picture wins a picture of an elephant pooping, and an elegant papier-mache duck. Employees of The Washington Post and their immediate families are not eligible for prizes.

Report from Week 48, in which we asked you to beg for our year-end surplus Loser's T-Shirts.

First, the easy ones: Persons who bribed us. Shirts go to:

Elizabeth Gaston of Alexandria, who sent us a huge homemade chocolate cake in the shape of a severed horse's head.

David Smith of Washington, who composed and recorded a rap song. The final verse is: "Why not make me the happiest of men/ And give me a shirt before I rap again/ But if instead you put me on the shelf/ You can put pickles up yo'self."

Brad Graf of Leesburg, who surrendered to us his cherished collection of loser bubble gum cards, including Mitch Williams, the Dallas Mavericks, Thurman Thomas and Wes Unseld, all of which will forevermore adorn the wall of the Style Invitational treehouse.

And last, librarian Tom Mann of Washington, who sent us, by way of inducement, a letter gleefully divulging the whereabouts of two amusing misprints in obscure periodicals, including an unfortunate misspelling of the word "fugue" in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, first edition, in the agate bibliography of the article on "Gudmundsen-Holmgren, Pelle (b. Copenhagen, 21 Nov. 1932)". Nice going, Tom! How very droll! You get a shirt! Now all you need is a life!

A special Maniac's Award to Kacey Kology of Catlett, Va., who appears to have written the succinct message "Give Now" in her own blood. We don't want to know, Kacey. We just don't want to know. Us give you shirt, ok? Kacey get shirt. Now Kacey go away.

More than five hundred people promised to do various extreme things for a shirt, like eating cicada stew or driving the Beltway backward in a Pinto, but these don't win because, well, let's be frank here: You get the shirt, and then we never hear from you again. What do you think we are? Idiots?

The point was to publicly humiliate yourself the way Erin J. Dingle of Thurmont, Md., did. Erin wrote, "Please send me a T-shirt, because I am too stupid to win one any other way." Erin gets a shirt.

A shirt goes to Don Maclean of Burke, who said, "I am twelve years old and I didn't get any presents for Christmas because my parents are in jail for selling nude Michael Jackson photos to my classmates. Also, while I was outside in a shelter food line, a snow plow ran over my puppy. People in line the next day told me he was deliciousI"

A shirt goes to Eleanor Grass of Washington, who says the picture of the pathetic genderless pooping individual on the front of the shirt "looks just like me!"

A shirt goes to Stephen Dudzik of Silver Spring, who reports: "I am dying of pleonasms, a rare parasitic worm, and a T-shirt would brighten my remaining days."

And a shirt goes to to "Poor, pitiful little Bert Worcester," son of Sarah Worcester of Bowie, who writes: "My mommy says if you send her a shirt she'll give me one of her kidneys and I won't have to go to dialysis anymore."

In the category of T-shirts awarded merely to avoid having to finish reading an entry, first prize goes to Daniel Riley of Woodbridge, who writes, "I am in need of a soft, soothing cotton shirt because my religion requires me to worship three hours a day with jumper cables clamped to my nipples, and..."

And the last T-shirt winner:

"Sorry I haven't come over recently, Mom. The kids keep us awfully busy. How about another T-shirt or two? Love, Chuck." (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

Next Week: The Washington Olympics.