The Invitational Week 140: Going Ape Shirt
Write a funny review of this T-shirt or nine other products. Plus winning 'Narayana's Cows' wit.
Pat Myers and Gene Weingarten
Sep 04, 2025


Write the week’s funniest review of this shirt or other products we list, and you’ll win this, uh, wearable art. (temu.com)
Back in 2012, inspired by the then-novel idea of writing faux-rhapsodic reviews of a gallon of milk on Amazon.com (“sip gently, slowly, or one is in danger of … missing the subtleties of the milk’s texture and its terroir”), The Invitational chose some utterly mundane products — a spool of thread, a comb, a dishcloth, etc. — and invited the Losers to proclaim their delight. They did so deliciously, in the first of a string of such contests for products and Yelpy experiences.
Many of the Invite reviews are idiotic misunderstandings: For a pack of floss picks, for example, by Rob Huffman: “Worst picks ever — one star (and that’s a mercy). That little string kept breaking whenever I strummed my guitar. ‘Extra strong’ my a**!!” And Duncan Stevens panning a big box of kitty litter: “It says my home will be odor-free for seven days. I plan to have my cats longer than that, so this doesn’t work for me.”

For Invitational Week 140: Send us a humorous “review” for any of the following items, most of them from Walmart.com. Click on the products listed below to see the exact items. Keep them brief; 75 words would be long for us. You could attribute your review to some particular person.

A. 55-gallon trash bags, pack of 60

B. 20-pound case of circus peanuts candies in “rainbow colors,” about 58 per pound

C. Pink cake container/transporter

D. Three pairs of silicone toe separators

E. Case of 88 wind-up chattering-teeth toys

F. Bad Piggies unisex flip-flops

G. Eyelash curler with comb and five replacement pads

H. Trojan Pleasure Pack assorted condoms value pack, 36 count

I. Great Value Soft & Strong Premium Toilet Paper, 12 Mega Rolls

J. Ape-face T-shirt (link might require a Temu account; you can just see it above)

No-paywall text files of some earlier product review contests: 2022, 2017, 2012.

Special formatting note this week! Did you see how each product in the list above is preceded by a letter? Please begin each of your entries with A., B., etc.; that’ll let us easily group all the A-reviews together, and so on. And as usual, please write each entry as one long line (i.e., don’t press Enter until you’re ready to type your next entry).

Deadline is Saturday, Sept. 13, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, Sept. 18. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyURL.com/inv-form-140.

(Note: If you are reading this in an email, please click on the headline at the top of the page to get an updated version of The Gene Pool online, with any amendments, emendations, etc. made after the email was sent.)

This week’s winner receives the ape-face shirt pictured at the top of the page. Skateboard, ripped jeans, and ripped arms not included.

Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of eight nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a personal email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for First Offenders.

Calf-Wits: The ‘Narayana’s Cows’ poems of Week 138
In Invitational Week 138 we tried something utterly (and udderly) new to us, and possibly to civilization: We invited poems following, in either syllables per line or words per line, the numerical sequence called Narayana’s Cows, named for a 14th-century Indian mathematician. It is based on a cow having one calf each year and then, at age 4, those calves also having one calf per year, to infinity. So the sequence is: 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 13, 19, 28, 41 … well, that’s as far as we’re going this week. Today’s inking poems all count by syllables unless otherwise noted.

Once again, it was impossible to ignore Our Current Situation. So we laugh.

Third runner-up:
Of
The
Folks
In Trump’s
Cabinet
Of outright ass-
Kissing incompetents,
Is there anybody loonier
Than his “health” secretary, RFK Joonier?
(Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

Second runner-up:
We
Must
Fix
What folks
See at the
Smithsonian.
I’ll stop those nasty scenes
Because to all it’s no mystery
Your favorite president’s no slave to history.
(Kevin Dopart, Washington, D.C.)

First runner-up:
A
Huge
Bruise
Confirms
What we thought:
That under Trump
In good hands we are not.
(Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

And the winner of the set of ant-motif food holders:
Now
That
Trump’s
Nearing
Age 80,
He is worried
About the afterlife:
“I want to try and get to heaven”
(Despite breaking Commandments Four, Five, Six, and Seven).
(Chris Doyle)

We Herd Verse: Honorable mentions
What’s
In
A
Logo?
What we call
Cracker Barrel
With any other sign
Would be the same crappy place to dine.
(Jesse Frankovich)

I
Don’t
Want
A car
Of mine to
Be self-driving —
It’s less fun arriving.
I like getting there by my own wit,
But there’s another reason I'll never go for it:
Even if they gave me one for free, I still would have nothing to chauffeur it.
(Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

Crime
Is
Up
In just
One Zip code
Inside D.C.
Be a city hero,
United States Attorney Pirro,
And nab the crooks in two-zero-five-zero-zero.
(Kevin Dopart)

Its
Name
Should
Be changed
By Trump to
Untruth Social,
Because according to
Recognized fact-checking media,
he’s always been a walking encycLIEpedia. (Chris Doyle)

So
Last
Night
I tried
To walk like
An Egyptian,
And today I have an
Appointment with a Cairopractor. (Chris Doyle)

It’s
Tough
Stuff
To write
Jokes about
Lazy people,
Because they rarely work. (Jesse Frankovich)

The Interview
“Why,
No.
I
Surely
Never saw
That man in a
Massage setting, or in
Any inappropriate setting.
In fact, I can say that with absolute certainty.
… Gifts? He only ever gave me one… I will treasure that blindfold forever.”
(Sharon Neeman, Pardess Hanna, Israel)

Tangerine Dream
George,
Tom,
Abe,
Teddy—
For my face
They are ready.
Once I’m carved, what a sight,
At sunrise glowing in orange light. (Jesse Frankovich)

(Counting words rather than syllables)
I
Know
Everything
There is
To know about
The Dunning-Kruger effect.
(Roy Ashley, Washington, D.C.)

This
Steak
Lacks
Something.
Oh, waiter!
Urgent request:
Please, your finest bottle.
Yes, the red. Always the red with steak.
What the hell is this? I meant your best bottle of Heinz!
(Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

The
Dems’
Top
Trump troll,
Governor
Gavin Newsom,
Once and for all grew some
Balls and chose to trash-talk, not flatter
the prez. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
(Chris Doyle)

A
O
L
Announced
That soon it
Would do away
With dial-up internet.
And as it fades out, we’ll hear, I’m sure,
Bee-urh bee-urh eeeeeeeeeeeee-ooh bee-dong-bee-dong-urh kshhhhhhhhh-urrrrrrrhhh… (Jesse Frankovich)

(Cough)
(Cough)
(Cough)
(Cough, cough)
(Cough, cough, cough)
(Cough, cough, cough, cough)
(Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough)
If I could get your attention, sir.
You see, Mr. Trump, that device right there, well, it’s for….
How can I put this delicately? It’s, um, a bidet, not a water fountain.
(Leif Picoult)

“Throw
The
Book
At him,
The dude who
Threw a ham sub!”
Yells the Martial-Law Club.
Felony assault with lunch-store fare?
The grand jury brought no charge for submarine warfare.
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

I’m
In
Love!
I’ve found
My soulmate —
The perfect guy!
He’ll never be untrue,
Because he’s a robot — thanks, AI!
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

(Counting by words)
Old
MacDonald
Had
A farm,
Though he swore
To do no harm,
All his cows made methane gas,
Which is a climate change alarm. He fed old
Bessie lots of grass — in time a tune came out her ass. Her
Cowbell, as her lone apparel, chimed in like harsh discordant brass. We snub the signs at our own peril:
Who wants old Mother Earth all sterile? Don’t wring your hands and fear the reaper — let’s make Old Mac a beekeeper! You want more cowbells? Call Will Ferrell.
(Mike Ostapiej, Charleston, S.C.)

Just
One
Cow.
She calves,
Calves again,
And yet again.
The next year, two cows calve;
The year after, three. Now there are nine.
What will they all live on? Slaughtering cows — what, 13?! —
Is forbidden. There’s no money for hay —19!! — and his family can’t use
All that milk and butter. He thinks awhile (28!!!), then tells his wife: “You open a dairy. I guess I’ll teach math.” (Sharon Neeman)

And Last:
To the Judges:
What
Are
You
Trying
To do here?
Drive us crazy?
It’s the worst contest yet!
(Or maybe I’m just getting lazy?)
(Beverley Sharp, who has gotten ink in 631 different Invitational contests since her first in 2005)

The headline “Calf-Wits” is by Chris Doyle; Kevin Dopart wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

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