Style Invitational Week 1153: Be three-paired — find 2 things with the
same abbrev.


And link them somehow. Plus winning ways to show love to your lawyer
or other ‘lovable’ pro.



The doody and the deity: FSM stands for Fecal Sludge Management as well
as for Flying Spaghetti Monster. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post)
By Pat Myers December 9



(Click here to skip down <#report> to the results of Week 1149, ways to
show your love for your lawyer, DMV clerk, etc.)

*FSM: To follow Fecal Sludge Management, it is best to wear rubber
gloves and a mask.
To follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you need only wear a spaghetti
strainer on your head.*

*FMM stands for the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary* *
* *. . . and also for Female-Male-Male, a position not endorsed by the
Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. *





We came up with that nice comparison above to use in Part 2 of our
series of initialisms contests, covering EAA through HZZ ... and then,
at the /very /last minute, we realized: /We did Part 2! / We’re on Part
3! But you get the idea: There’s a set of Wikipedia pages containing
nothing but thousands of three-letter combinations
— TLAs,
they’re called, three-letter acronyms and initialisms. And each one of
these TLAs is a link to a page listing various things that the TLA is
used to represent. *This week: Choose two or more entities represented
by a single three-letter combination from IAA through LZZ — find the
Wikipedia links at bit.ly/invite3-2015

— and say how they are alike or different or have /some/ connection,* as
in the examples above. The entity could be something abbreviated by the
three letters, as above, or it might be a three-letter word or name:
“let” or “Ito,” say. It doesn’t even have to be mentioned in the
Wikipedia list, but it must be real. And remember, the TLA has to start
with I, J, K or L.**

Kick back and listen to this 1970 collection of natterings by the only
vice president from Maryland, and the first to resign in disgrace.

Winner gets the Inkin’ Memorial
,
the Lincoln statue bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational
trophy. Second place also salutes a titan of the Republican Party: It’s
a genuine original LP record of “Spiro T. Agnew: The Speeches That
Stirred America,” which the Empress procured from Som Records,
that great D.C. emporium of vinyl. Made to
promote the Nixon-Agnew 1972 reelection ticket, the disc features 60
solid minutes of the then-veep having his say on “Youth, Hippies and
Yippies, Draft Dodgers,” etc. (Not clear if “nattering nabobs of
negativism” made the cut; also, there’s no tape of Agnew accepting
construction kickbacks in his White House office
.)

*Other runners-up* win their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug,
the older-model
“This Is Your Brain on Mugs” mug

or the ardently desired “Whole Fools” Grossery Bag.
Honorable
mentions get one of our brand-new Loser magnets, “Magnet Dum Laude”

or “Falling Jest Short.”

First Offenders receive a smelly tree-shaped air “freshener” (FirStink

for their first ink). Email entries to /losers@washpost.com
/ or, if you were born in the 19th century,
fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday night, Dec. 21; results
published Jan. 10 (online Jan. 7). You may submit up to 25 entries per
contest. Include “Week 1153” in your email subject line or it might be
ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number
with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at wapo.st/InvRules
. The headline for this week’s results is by
Chris Doyle; the honorable-mentions subhead is by Jesse Frankovich. Join
the lively Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook at
/on.fb.me/invdev ./ “Like” the Style
Invitational Ink of the Day on Facebook at /bit.ly/inkofday; / follow
@StyleInvite on Twitter.

*The Style Conversational: *The Empress’s weekly online column,
published Thursday afternoons, discusses each new contest and set of
results. Especially if you plan to enter, check it out at
wapo.st/styleconv
.

And from The Style Invitational posted four weeks ago . . .

*FESTIVAL OF SLIGHTS: WAYS TO ‘LOVE A LAWYER’ AND MORE FROM WEEK 1149*
In Week 1149, we asked you for tips on how to celebrate National Love
Your Lawyer Day — a real thing, dreamed up by the American Lawyers
Public Image Association — or similar “holidays”
real or imagined.

4th place:

How to celebrate *National Mime Day: *Grab a hammer, smash the glass
box, and let him out. (Roy Ashley, Washington)

3rd place

For *Cosmetologist Appreciation Day?* Just make up something. (Kevin
Dopart, Washington)

2nd place and the bottle of wine containing a snake and a scorpion:

For *Love Your Lawyer Day:* Hire him for a rush project right before
daylight-saving time ends, so he can fulfill every lawyer’s dream:
billing 25 hours in a single day. (Mark Raffman, Esq., Reston, Va.)

And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:

*A greeting card for National Love a Supermodel Day: *
To thank you for your flawless skin
And hips and tummy (oh so thin)
And thighs that do not meet, it
Will be my pleasure to bring cake
To your next shoot, where, on a break,
You’ll get to watch me eat it.
(Melissa Balmain, Rochester, N.Y.)

Better call it a day: honorable mentions

*For Love Your Lawyer Day: *
♥ Take him to lunch, factoring in the 0.25 hour he’ll bill for advising
you to order the prime rib. (George-Ann Rosenberg, Washington)

♥Send a card, and of course charge for the cost of the card, gas to the
card store, ink from the pen used to sign the card, postage, carriage,
the intellectual property represented by the inscription, plus 50
percent overhead costs. (Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.)

♥Have sex with her spendthrift spouse. (Edward Gordon, Austin, Tex.)

♥Buy your lawyer a treadmill with a screen that shows the back end of an
ambulance driving away. (Drew Bennett, West Plains, Mo.)

♥Buy him a dog named Your Honor so he can enjoy uttering phrases like
“Sit, Your Honor!” and “Beg, Your Honor!” (Mark Raffman)

♥Send a card with your best wishes, stipulating that “wishes” provide no
assurances and “best” implies no actual superlative benefit. (George-Ann
Rosenberg)

♥Buy him a judge. (Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.)

*FOR THE REST OF HUMANITY
(OR “HUMANITY”):*

It’s *Love Your Gym Teacher Day:* Remember yours with a three-pack of
pale gray candles in a trio of evocative scents: Damp Tile, BO and
Three-Day Sweat Sock. (Nancy Della Rovere, Silver Spring, Md.)

Tell *your cable installer* you’ll pick him up for dinner between 4 and
10 p.m. on Thursday. Call at 9:30 to reschedule for a week from Tuesday.
(Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

Invite a few *airline executives* over for dinner. Serve each one three
peanuts and a thimbleful of Scotch. (Jon Gearhart)

For *Love Your Psychiatrist Day:*
I talked to both the others and we think:
We ought to give a day off to our shrink.
We’ll muddle through somehow if we just try;
Enjoy yourself! Signed: Me, Myself and I.
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

**Buy *your lab tech* a lovely gown — backless, of course. (Frank Osen,
Pasadena, Calif.)

For *a freelance writer: *Mail her a postcard saying, “We’ve considered
the idea of a day set aside to appreciate you. Unfortunately, it does
not suit our current needs.” (Lawrence McGuire, Waldorf, Md.)

The Orange Line will mark *Love Our Subway Day *by announcing at each
stop, “We _ov_ yo_, Met_o.” Celebratory gargling and snorting is
encouraged. — Metro Mgmt. (Larry Neal, McLean, Va.)

Celebrate *Love Your Chiropractor Day* by getting extra kinky. (Jeff
Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

For *National Mail Carrier Day,* send your note of thanks to
mylocalcarrier@usps.com. (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)

Present *a paparazzo* with a framed photo of himself at work stalking
some celebrity, but not the picture you tweeted of him taking a break
peeing behind a car. (Dave Prevar, Annapolis)

For*Love Your Bloomingdale’s Ad Exec

Day:* Spike her morning coffee while she’s not looking – wink, wink –
then lock her office door and, you know, “love” her. (Nan Reiner, Boca
Raton, Fla.)

For *Love Your Improv Comedian Day:* Spend the day doing whatever random
strangers tell you to do. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

Give *your banker *a hotel stay with free check-in (other services
included for additional fees). (Lela Martin, Midlothian, Va.)

For *Love Your Garbage Collector Day,* hide a few festively decorated
gifts among your refuse. Your collector will enjoy the curbside
“scavenger hunt.” (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.)

Buy a Super Bowl ticket for your favorite*Washington Redskin *so he can
go to a Super Bowl at least once. (Jeff Hazle, Woodbridge)

A card for *National Love Your Mortician Day:*
It was only this summer you buried our dad
In a casket you claimed was the cheapest you had.
When we looked at the bill, we decided right then:
We’ll be none of us dying to meet you again. (Chris Doyle, Ponder, Tex.)

Hold a buffet lunch on *DMV Clerk Recognition Day:* Place the food on
the main table but put the utensils in a different room. Then let the
guests know they need to have brought their own plates, notarized.
(Kevin Dopart)

On *Lenders Appreciation Day, *call up a savings and loan, offer to
throw them a party, then call back and tell them they don’t qualify.
(Frank Osen)

*Still running — deadline Monday night, Dec. 14: our contest to enter
any of 50 previous contests. See bit.l *
*y/invite1152 .*