Week 546: A Nice Pair of Cities


The Why (Ariz.)-Whynot (Miss.) Conference on Risk Assessment

The Sawtooth (Alaska)-Tuscaloosa (Ala.) Dental Research Institute

The Hot Coffee (Miss.)-Tea (S.D.)-Orme (Tenn.) Flight Attendants' Reunion

This week's contest was suggested by Jane Auerbach of Los Angeles, who, while new to the Greater Loser Community, has been delving with an almost worrisome verve into Style Invitational history. Jane suggests combining elements of two classic contests -- one based on team names for particular towns, the other on joint legislation -- for a contest to come up with Sister Cities: Choose any two or more real U.S. towns and come up with a joint endeavor they would undertake, as in the examples above.

First-prize winner receives the Inker, the official Style Invitational Trophy. First runner-up wins a bag of a genuine San Francisco Treat, courtesy of Mary Ann Henningsen of Hayward, Calif.: Fruit Flavored Beef Jerky, direct from Chinatown but also containing a Spanish translation (cecina de res) as well as Chinese. The main ingredients are beef and fruit punch concentrate. Other runners-up win the coveted Style Invitational Loser T-shirt. Honorable mentions get one of the lusted-after new Style Invitational Magnets.

One prize per entrant per week. Send your entries via fax to 202-334-4312 or by e-mail to losers@washpost.com. Snail-mail entries are not accepted. Deadline is Monday, March 1. Put the week number in the subject line of your e-mail, or you risk being ignored as spam. Include your name, postal address and phone number with your entry. Contests are 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 March 21. 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 from Week 542, in which we pay homage to newly retired Post columnist Bob Levey by corrupting his monthly neologism contest into our own All Tasteless Edition.

In tribute and with a certain curiosity, The Empress, after choosing her winners, sent Bob a list of all the entries below and asked if he'd make his own choice. He responded quickly with his picks, enthusing, "These entries are so good that it makes a newly-retired neologism guy wanna come ba-a-a-a-ack." And his winner? It was -- we swear to you -- the same entry that The Empress had chosen. Which goes to show that if Bob hadn't had to be so goshdarn honorable over there on the comics pages, his own contest might have been just a bit spicier.

Fourth runner-up: While some kids are having sex at younger and younger ages, others are actually waiting longer. Someone who waits a really long time is called a cherryatric. (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village)

Third runner-up: What do you call it when you explain your well-timed indecent exposure as a "wardrobe malfunction"? How about niplomacy? Or siliconniving. (Steve Fahey, Kensington; Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls)

Second runner-up: The little serenade your stomach performs after a midnight refrigerator raid: It's eine schweine Nachtmusik. (Peter Metrinko, Plymouth, Minn.)

First runner-up, the winner of a genuine "The Uncle Loves Me" T-shirt: Too much plastic surgery on a woman past a certain age produces an unintended, sort of cadaverous effect: Call it sepulchritude. (Tom Kreitzberg, Silver Spring)

And the winner of the Inker: It's sad to say that there are some guys around who'd ogle a breastfeeding mother. You'd call a somebody like this a La Lecher. (Chris Doyle, Forsyth, Mo.)

Bob also singled out for special mention this one by Tom Witte, who wins only his admiration, since The Style Invitational has no budget for fancy lunches:

Some guys believe that a woman's most important side is behind her. These guys could be called cannoisseurs.

Honorable Mentions:

When you put the plastic top on your morning cup of takeout, and coffee spurts out of the little hole in the lid, it's called premature ecafulation. (Michelle Harvey, Takoma Park)

People who are on fire jump about and twitch so! This frenzied, comical movement might be called the inflammenco. (Tom Witte)

A newspaper's economizing by chopping dozens of veteran journalists off its payroll: costration. (That, of course, is a mix of "cost" and "ration.") (John O'Byrne, Dublin)

You consider terrorists to be evil, of course, yet one of them catches your eye in the newspaper, because, well, he's a great looker. You'd call this man a jihottie. (Tom Witte)

You realize you've been spending many of your working hours mulling over how best to stick it to your golden-boy co-worker. You might call this scruminating. (Tom Kreitzberg)

You're a down-on-your-luck student in 19th-century Russia. Your planned murder of the landlady was going swimmingly. But then her sister walked in on you at just the wrong moment, and darn it, you had to take her out, too. This pesky frustration is called D'oh! svidanya. (Mary Ann Henningsen, Hayward, Calif.)

You step on the elevator and push the fourth-floor button. Before the doors close, an incredibly attractive woman rushes in and presses Floor 20. Your unfortunate early departure could be called Otis interruptus. (Chris Doyle)

The look on a guy's face when he learns how his girlfriend has been managing to buy up that closetful of Manolos: whorror. (Virginia Fairchild, Alpharetta, Ga.)

Phone sex is phone sex, but cell phone sex is Nookia. (Chris Doyle)

Your husband brought home a copy of the Kama Sutra and is determined to try all 153 positions over the next five months: Get ready for the shtup du jour. (Chris Doyle)

That line of rubberneckers driving slowly by the scene of a traffic accident hoping to see some gore? It's an abattour. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel)

You have been doing so well at hiding your disgusting habits from the new sweetie, until inevitably, you horrify her by hawking up half a lung right onto the sidewalk. This unfortunate but decisive way to end a promising relationship is a Waterloogie. (Milo Sauer, Fairfax)

The first time you use Viagra and your libido is, well, raised from the dead, you experience tombescence. (Chris Doyle)

Someone who has money up the wazoo could be said to suffer from Hummerhoids. (Deb Parrish, Fairfax Station)

If you're really sharp at predicting when that special woman in your life will be in a bad mood, you could be said to be acumenstrual. (Jane Auerbach, Los Angeles)

You're on your tiptoes, eyeing the cover of Hustler on the top row of the magazine rack, when a woman from church walks up. You quickly grab a copy of the Economist. This maneuver is called highbrowsing. (Chris Doyle)

Surely you've experienced that common feeling that the Earth will be destroyed by eucalyptus-devouring pseudo-ursine demons. Well, now there's a name for it: apokoalypse. (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.)

Submitting a huge, stinking mess of entries to The Style Invitational and claiming them as your own when, in fact, you copied and pasted them en masse from Web sites like unwords.com is plagiarrhea, a totally original combo of "plagiarism" and "huge, stinking mess." (Mark Hagenau, Derry, N.H.)

Some guys care only about one trait in a woman, and they're very upfront about it. These guys could be called aficionudders. Or chesthetes. (Tom Witte)

That irritation caused by envy of other Style Invitational entries, leaving the victim scratching his head and lamenting, "Why didn't I think of that?" That's what we call a case of joke itch. (Jeff Brechlin)

Nobody, but nobody is more boring than a preachy ex-alcoholic. This kind of person is called an AA-hol[ic]. (Tom Witte)

You know how people throw around terms from Eastern religion and pop psych to sound smarter than they are? The term for that is Upanischadenfreude. It's a mix of "Upanishad," a foreign word that probably means something, and "schadenfreude," which is another one. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills)

And last: The Czar is gone and the Empress, being a lady, won't accept the gross vulgarities that have been submitted in the past. Her intellectual level could be termed: non compost mentis (as in not allowing poop jokes). (Marleen May, Rockville) [As you can see, we are indeed in a new era.]