- The Week in Loserdom:
- Loserland prepared for the change in administrations with tons of jokes about the incoming president and a few about the outgoing as well. It looks, however, like the big hand just passed the three on the Warhol clock for Al Gore who has dropped off every humor scope after winning the Electoral College's version of the Loser pen.
- Results of Week XLVII
- Summary: The Week XLVII* (Old names / new names) showed that the Czar is just as keen as the Losers to get jokes about the new administration in early. At least eight entries printed went at either the new president or the freak election. Overall, there were many fine efforts, yet the Czar rewarded only two Losers with t-shirts. The Restoration does appear to be a budget-strapped affair.
The Siberian Express: The Amtrak of Omsk this week has none other than Art Grinath (with his dig at Metro escalators) as its passenger. Art deserved a t-shirt.
Score Losers: The 400th Loser of the restoration appeared this week in the form of Marco Cuniberti. Doyle pens to put him one shy of Genser for third for the year, while Witte had another big week and pulled to within four of Doyle. The suddenly hot Frankenfeld had a triple that puts him in a tie for 17th for the year with Bredeck, Broadus, and Grove.
- Week LI (Put the cartoon in order):
- This week appears to be a tough one. Making a comic strip funny is hard enough, doing it with a limited (and relatively unrelated) set of pictures should tax the creative minds of the Post's readers.
- The Weak Week Prediction: Look for few entries submitted, very few printed, and only a couple of really good bits. Look for ink for the normal cartoon Losers and probably no first timers.
The Weak Week Word to the Wise (WWWW) : The likely combination of room for just a few to be printed with relatively few submissions makes it important to try for one or two real good ones. If you submit something good, it will get ink.
Russ to Judgment: On a one-seventeen scale, sixteen being best, Week LI gets a:
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The editorial board was a little hesitant to give a second really low rating in a row, especially after last week's contest appeared to imporve with age. There was, however, no getting around it. This week's contest is reminiscent of a couple of early ones, seems to lack potential, and looks to be a lot of effort for little ink.
How Cool the Drool: On a one-five scale (where five is a stuffed mongoose) this week's Dukakis Halloween Mask gets a:
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Halloween is more than nine months away and, face it, Dukakis is entirely too 1-K.
7/365ths of year away: Idiom Ad Infinitum
14/365s of a year away: Pick-up lines
21/365ths of a year away: Male/Female
- A Weak Week Editorial:
- TWW appears to have developed a loyal, if small, readership. Based on the e-mail flooding TWW News Citadel most of our readers are not the Losernet regulars but are, instead, the occasional entrants who keep the contest fresh and, perhaps, actually have real lives. This is not, by any stretch, the people we expected to have reading TWW and the editorial junta is working to adjust to the unexpected audience.
The differences between the hard core NRARS veterans and TWW readership was brought home recently by the reaction to TWW observations that certain entries were not original. Many of us stumble on existing jokes by accident and, even if the idea for an entry is borrowed intentionally, well.. an ink is an ink. TWW editorial board has a strict personal policy against using borrowed material, but even we have had several printed entries that came uncomfortably close to pre-existing humor. The Czar, of course, purges most entries he knows to be derivative but, if a joke is obscure enough to get past the Czar, it's fair game. The NRARS regulars know all this and were silent about TWW's recent observations. Other readers were, however, quite concerned. Some focused on the wide spread "plagiarism" others on TWW's bold assertions of "plagiarism."
TWW position on unoriginal entries is exactly the same as our position on tasteless entries, obscene entries, and entries that don't fit the rules of the contest. While everyone should impose their own standards on their work, anything you can sneak past the Czar is fair game.
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