Week 554: Love the Tiny Tail Stain!


Former President Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti: Strike finds sad, immature rat in spider hole. -- Richard Grantham

Britney Spears weds childhood friend in Vegas: Wavering, she did play his bride for ten seconds . . . -- Meyran Kraus

As we promised back in Week 547, we've finally gotten around to paying tribute to (i.e., ripping off) a truly amazing online contest, brought to our attention by Rick "Conan the Librarian" Spencer of Severn. The Anagrammy Awards, at www.anagrammy.com, are a set of monthly competitions for anagrams of various topics and lengths. Richard Grantham of Melbourne, Australia, the site's archivist, invites all Losers to check out the site and enter the contest, even with material from this one. (We, on the other hand, are snootier and won't accept anagrams that have been published elsewhere.)

This week's contest: Write an anagram based on a name or event that's been in the news recently, as in the examples above, which The Empress just up and stole from this Web site. The anagrams may be anywhere up to 100 letters long. What?? How on Earth can you keep that many letters straight? Well, just go over to this site and download the incredibly nifty free program called Anagram Artist, created by Mike Keith of Virginia. Otherwise, just pull out some Scrabble tiles and move them around.

First-prize winner receives the Inker, the official Style Invitational Trophy. First runner-up wins "In Other Words: A Book of Irish and American Anagrams" (e.g., "The Picture of Dorian Gray": "I Favor Gay Reproduction") by longtime Loser John O'Byrne, Dublin, and Jerry Ring, donated by Brendan Byrne of Regina, Saskatchewan. Other runners-up win the coveted Style Invitational Loser T-shirt. Honorable mentions get one of the lusted-after 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, April 26. 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 May 16. 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 Tom Witte of Montgomery Village.

Report from Week 550, in which we asked for creative uses for objects that tend to accumulate around the house:

Wow, thank you, guys, for letting us know that Washington Post delivery bags could be used to pick up . . . dog poop! Yes, yes, a number of you also wanted us to know that this would be an improvement over the original contents harharhar. Other common suggestions were that old AOL sign-up disks would make cool house shingles, coffee cans could hold AOL disks, Post delivery bags could hold coffee cans and packing peanuts, etc.

{diam}Third runner-up: Washington Post delivery bag: A great stocking mask for the bank robber who longs to win a Darwin Award. (Steve Fahey, Kensington; Josh Borken, Bloomington, Minn.)

{diam}Second runner-up: Loser Scott Campisi, clearly with way too much time on his hands in Wake Village, Tex., sent in this photo of a little car he fashioned from a milk jug and a few other things, which he sent scooting across the room by stomping on inflated Texarkana Gazette delivery bags, as his sweat socks demonstrate:

{diam}First runner-up, the winner of the duck-motif wine bottle and shoe brush: Old AOL sign-up disks that come in the mail: If your pet snake just got fixed and you want to make sure the area will heal properly, feed his head through the middle of the CD. (Jean Sorensen, Herndon)

{diam}And the winner of the Inker:

Stand an empty coffee can on the ground. Prop two chopsticks against the can and a third one across the mouth. Glue a CD covered with duck sauce to the top chopstick. The mouse crawls up a chopstick and onto the CD for the duck sauce. The CD flips over, sending the mouse into the can, trapped by the CD on top. The world beats a path to your door. (Bird Waring, New York)

Honorable Mentions:

Coffee cans:

They make great hair for a Princess Leia robot. (Bruce W. Alter, Fairfax Station)

They're ideal storage containers for your 100 percent Colombian. (Bob Dalton, Arlington)

Old AOL Disks You Get in the Mail:

They're great for tiling the floor of a chat room. (Steve Shapiro, Alexandria)

It makes a good Frisbee for the electronic dog you got back in 1999, when it seemed so cutting-edge. (Michelle Bowen-Ziecheck, Chicago)

Grind them up and use as dot-compost. (Jack Cooper, Cheltenham)

Put a bunch of them together and voila! -- your pet fly has its own mirror. (Mary Ann Henningsen, Hayward, Calif.)

Scrawling messages on them and using them as Frisbees serves as an equally effective communication device. (Bob Dalton)

Milk Jugs:

Cut in half. Use the lower halves as brassiere cups for community theater productions of "Das Rheingold." Use the upper halves as helmets. (Thad Humphries, Warrenton)

Tie a few of them onto your kid with a rope, and go back to sleep on the beach.

(Jeff Brechlin, Potomac Falls)

Place them, unwashed, in your hamper to hide that dirty-clothes odor. (Robin D. Grove, Chevy Chase)

Packing Peanuts:

Snack on them while watching a game of Wiffle ball. (Steve Shapiro, Arlington)

Make them into a wind chime as a gift for Marlee Matlin. (Bob Dalton)

Washington Post Delivery Bags:

To protect my check from possible water damage, I always wrap my Post subscription payment several times in a delivery bag. They really appreciate that at the paper. (Russell Beland, Springfield)

They're wonderful for storing and freezing all kinds of meats -- just the right size for legs, necks, liver and forearms. (H. Lecter, Rio de Janeiro) (Dave Vierling, Silver Spring)

To send The Post back in if it was delivered by mistake. (R. J. Sturgeon, Kensington)

Perfect for wrapping bleeding hearts during organ transplants. (Mary Lou French, Lorton)

Fill with water, drop in a betta and tack it up on your bulletin board: instant fishbowl and, more important, instant friend. (Jean Sorensen)

Post bags make great condoms. A little snug, but that's okay. (Russell Beland)

The bag from the Sunday Post, when placed over a Loser's head for the appropriate interval, produces the ideal cognitive level for creating Style Invitational entries. I've had one on for six minutes now and just rea . . . (Cecil J. Clark Jr., Arlington)

Other stuff:

Plastic grocery bags make great frog parachutes. (Jeff Brechlin)

Used fabric softener sheets still smell great after coming out of the dryer, so put them in your garbage can, where they will make your trash smell great, too! (Vincent Buquicchio, Arlington)

Stickers from bananas are a great way to decorate an unused passport. Note: Do not reveal the source of this information. (Nick Sibilla, Reston)

Fill old Diet Coke cans with concrete, and build a colorful retaining wall that flanks your obnoxious neighbor's property. (Jeff Brechlin)

Combinations:

Ballpoint pens that have ink but won't write, bent paper clips and a matchbook make a dandy home tattooing kit. (Russell Beland)

And Last: "The Empress as I Imagine Her," mixed media, 2004 (Kevin Mellema, Falls Church)