The Invitational Week 25: F Things Up
A neologism contest. Plus winning fake trivia about climate and weather.
PAT MYERS AND GENE WEINGARTEN
JUN 22, 2023

(Photo from BoredPanda.com)
FOODWINKED! This week’s Invitational contest: Change a word by adding, deleting, or substituting one or more F’s, in honor of Jesse Frankovich’s 1,000th blot of ink. See below.

Hi, everyone: It’s Pat, still. It seems the hospital people decided to keep Gene another couple of days and check out a few other nuts and bolts while he’s up on the lift, and so I’m afraid that the hilarious medical anecdotes that you sent in on the “Got a question” form are still awaiting Gene’s “Well, if you think that’s something” responses. Gene will get to them as soon as he can — next Tuesday or, he hopes, in a special Gene Pool post before that. Meanwhile, you can continue to share your tales (as you did earlier this week) about penis peeling and scrotal tick extraction in the comment thread below (if you’re reading this on an email, click here and then on “The Invitational Week 25”). And if you have questions or comments for Pat, put them in the thread below rather than using the form.

Meanwhile, if it’s Thursday, it must be …

The Invitational Week 25: F things up with this neologism contest
Fartistry: Dad’s special talent.

Foolah: Counterfeit money.

Foodwinked: Promised better eats than you got. “Those Jack in the Box tacos looked pretty good in the commercial ...”

Back in 2004, the Empress’s first year, she ran a contest for anagrams of people and events in the news. The results were phenomenal. So phenomenal that this one, by a brand-new Loser from Michigan, one Jesse Frankovich, scored only an honorable mention:
The letters of
Earth Day: April twenty-second
anagram to
Hardy planet? We CAN destroy it!

For the next year or so, Jesse’s name popped up maybe a dozen times in various Invite wordplay contests — and, just as suddenly, disappeared. For years and years. Then, in 2015: “Super Soaker” is a good name for a water gun but a bad name for a
mortgage company. That ink in Week 1140 marked the beginning of The Frankofying of The Invitational: Virtually every week for the past 400, the transportation planner for the state of Michigan has been awash in Invite ink, averaging almost three blots in every contest — 184 in one year alone.

And so we weren’t surprised to learn that with his two picture captions last week, Jesse galloped up without a drop of sweat to the 1,000-ink mark — an achievement that brings with it a “prize” that two of its five previous winners immediately and sanely declined but Jesse quickly embraced: a chance to choose and guest-judge an Invitational contest, even though he’s gearing up for his wedding in a very few months. So this week you’ll be writing for him — but at least, for once, you don’t have to compete with him.


Jesse with a booklet of his first 500 blots of ink, given to him at a dinner when he visited D.C. in 2019. Want a copy? Win this week’s contest.
For Week 25, much as with the contests selected by K Club members Brendan Beary and Kevin Dopart, who also played off their initials: Create a new word, phrase, or name by replacing one or more letters in an existing one with F’s, and/or by adding F’s, as in Jesse’s own examples above, and describe it, with a definition, its use in a funny sentence, or both.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to bit.ly/inv-form-25. As usual, you can submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same entry form. See more formatting directions on the form.

Deadline is Saturday, July 1, at 4 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, July 6.

This week’s winner receives a collection of Jesse Frankovich’s first 500 blots of ink, like the one he’s holding up in the photo above, his award for making it into the Invite Hall of Fame. Guess what: It’s really clever and really funny.

Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in a variety of designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a sweet email from the Empress, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for those who’ve just lost their Invite virginity.

The Jest Stream: Weather/climate fictoids from Week 23
Week 23 was our latest in The Invitational’s long series of contests for bogus trivia, this time about climate and the weather — as if that’s not already supplied straight-faced 24 hours a day on your local social media outlet, and directly into your dental fillings. Despite the Empress’s express warning that “jokes about ‘hot air’ and politicians almost never get ink,” some of you evidently thought that didn’t apply to your own gems such as “Expect blustery hot wind in the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses.”

Third runner-up: The National Weather Service maintains a research facility housing more than 500 licensed groundhogs. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

Second runner-up: Fifty years ago, winter temperatures were thirty degrees colder and snowfall ten times what it is now, according to the Your Grandpa Climate Bureau. (Jon Carter, Fredericksburg, Va.)

First runner-up: Eighty percent of all weather maps have something on it that looks like a penis. (Marni Penning Coleman, Falls Church, Va.)

And the winner of the coloring book of farting cats: In the 1950s, the CIA secretly carpet-bombed South America with pesticides to try to kill all the butterflies that might start hurricanes. (Sam Mertens, Silver Spring, Md.)

Under the Weather: Honorable mentions
Weatherology is the study of meteors. (Bill Dorner, Wolcott, Conn.)

Annual quicksand deaths in the U.S., which reached a reported high of 4,200 in 1977, have largely been eradicated by dryer weather and better screenwriting. (Jon Carter)

Progress in artificial snow has been so rapid that some researchers worry it could become an existential threat to regular snow. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

When a rainbow appears in the sky, Floridians are forbidden to look up. (Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

In 2022, thanks to drought and a receding Great Salt Lake, archaeologists uncovered twenty never-before-seen Pokémon. (Jon Carter)

Activists switched from the phrase “global warming” to “climate change” after twelve feet of snowpack was discovered in Tahiti. (Sam Mertens)

Alan Jay Lerner was inspired to write “The Rain in Spain” when the aircraft he was flying in was caught in a microburst at the Madrid airport. (Ed Gordon, Austin, Tex.)

Although temperatures in Texas rarely reach below freezing, more flakes accumulate there than in any other state. (Dave Airozo, Silver Spring, Md.)

“Graupel” means “reindeer poop” in Finnish. (Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)

As a result of drought conditions in 1940s Los Angeles, it took four years to film the pivotal scene in Singin’ in the Rain. (Steve Smith, Potomac, Md.)

Climate change is a boon to at least one agricultural sector: With the extended droughts in California, the Sun-Maid company now plants raisin vines, saving several steps in production. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)

Daniel Fahrenheit established 0° on his temperature scale as the point at which a rectal thermometer becomes unbearably cold. (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)

Because of the coriolis effect, a man who “dresses right” in the northern hemisphere will “dress left” in the southern hemisphere. (Roy Ashley)

In the southern hemisphere, hurricanes are named alphabetically starting with Z. (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)

Each snowflake has six points, just like the Star of David — proof that Jews control the weather! –D.C. Council member Trayon White (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

Ice floats because as water freezes, the H₂O molecules form little life preserver shapes. (Kevin Dopart)

In 2024 the U.N.’s World Meterological Congress will replace the gender-binary terms El Niño and La Niña with gender-neutral Alex and Taylor. (Al Lubran, Rockville, Md.)

A butterfly flapping its wings in Central Park will have zero effect on the weather, if it knows what’s good for it. (Jon Carter)

In the South, a sun-shower is sometimes called “the devil beating his wife.” In the North, it’s known as “tears of patriarchal oppression.” (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

Kids play Twister at AccuWeather’s meteorology summer camp, where there are no winners or losers but everyone gets a precipitation trophy. (Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)

Large metal objects reflect heat, which can lead to unstable weather patterns in their vicinity. This is why mobile-home parks tend to attract tornadoes. (Jonathan Jensen)

Schools in North Dakota have “clement weather” days built into the school calendar. (Karen Lambert, Chevy Chase, Md.)

Thanks to their advanced balloon program, the Chinese are world leaders in forecasting Montana weather. (Eric Nelkin, Silver Spring, Md.)

The driest place on earth is the Atacama Desert in Chile, where it last rained in March 2015, one day after local resident Pablo Rimaldo washed his car. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

The Dust Bowl wreaked havoc on farmers in the 1930s until crop dusters were outfitted with tanks of Lemon Pledge. (Jon Carter)

The newest climate-related fashion statement among Republican legislators is a miniature, fully operable gas stove lapel pin. (Frank Osen)

The seas are NOT rising due to climate change. America is ACTUALLY SINKING due to the additional weight of illegal immigrants! – D.T., Miami-Dade County Courthouse (Rob Cohen)

The windiest place on Earth is in Greenland, and is aptly named Cap Farewell. (Tom Witte)

The slipperiness of ice is measured with a device called a bananamometer. (Jesse Frankovich)

To observe the separation of church and state, NOAA has discontinued forecasting “floods of biblical proportions” and instead has adopted the phrase “floods of Costco proportions.” (Bill Dorner)

While neither snow nor rain nor heat will stay the couriers of the U.S. Postal Service, union reps point out that their motto says nothing about 6 mph winds, moderate tree pollen or a heavy dew. (Pam Shermeyer)

The headline “The Jest Stream” was submitted by both Rob Cohen and Jeff Contompasis, and both Beverley Sharp and Chris Doyle sent in the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 4 p.m. ET Saturday, June 24: Our Week 24 contest to slightly change an ad slogan to use it for a different business. Click here or type in bit.ly/inv-week-23.

Elden Carnahan memorial service
In last Thursday’s Invitational we celebrated the wry humor — and the enormous contribution to The Invitational as a social community — of Elden Carnahan, who died last week. It’s now been announced that a memorial service will be held on Saturday, July 15, at 2 p.m. at Laurel Presbyterian Church, Laurel, Md. Elden’s daughter April and the Carnahan family have greatly appreciated the notes left at eldencarnahan.com, the blog April set up in his final months to share (very funny and quite moving) reminiscences.

See more about The Invitational, including our 2,600-member Facebook group, the Losers’ website, and our podcast.

InvisibleInk!
Idea: (Jesse Frankovich)
Examples: (Jesse Frankovich; Jesse Frankovich; Jesse Frankovich)
Title: (Rob Cohen; Jeff Contompasis)
Subhead: (Beverley Sharp; Chris Doyle)
Prize: ()
VisibleInk!